Ep 538 ｜ Conversion Therapy & Canada’s Assault on Christianity ｜ Guest： Dr. Joseph Boot
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, Dr. Joseph Boot talks about Canada's new ban on conversion therapy, what it means, what the consequences are, and what the theological issues are that are at play here, and how Christians, Christian parents, Christian pastors, and Christian counselors can respond to this.
Transcript
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Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far.
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Today I am super, super excited for you to listen to this conversation that I just recorded
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We're talking about Canada's new conversion therapy law, what it means, what the consequences
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are, what the theological issues are that are at play here, and how Christians, Christian
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parents, Christian pastors, Christian counselors can respond to this faithfully.
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And towards the end of our conversation, as he is talking about the gospel and the theological
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And I just felt the Holy Spirit in our conversation, truly, because there is so much at stake,
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but there's just so much goodness in scripture.
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And I truly love talking about it, especially with someone who knows the word of God so well
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So you're going to be blessed by this conversation, challenged by this conversation, particularly
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But I encourage you to listen to this with an open heart.
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And I will just pray that there is fertile soil in the hearts of the people who are listening
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to and watching this, and that if you don't know and believe the gospel, that you will.
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Without further ado, here is our new friend, Dr. Joseph Boot.
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First, can you tell everyone who may not know who you are and what you do?
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I'm the founder and president of the Ezra Institute here in Canada, which is a Christian think tank
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We do Christian worldview and cultural apologetics, writing, teaching, training, and publishing.
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And I'm also the founding pastor of Westminster Chapel in Toronto.
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Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about what I know has been a hotly
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debated, at least in some circles, issue in Canada.
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And that is this, what's referred to as a banning of conversion therapy.
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What do they say it is, politicians who advocate for it, and then what is it actually, in your
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Well, they say it's a ban on a practice called conversion therapy.
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Actually, they say treatment, service, or practice called conversion therapy.
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The difficulty is they don't actually define what conversion therapy is.
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It clearly includes what we would call talk therapy, which is people talking, getting counseling,
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speaking to their pastor, and so forth about issues of gender identity and orientation.
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So the bill, its first incarnation was Bill C-6.
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When Parliament broke up, of course, it died, and then it was reintroduced as Bill C-4.
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In its first incarnation, 62 members of Parliament voted against it.
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But in this second round, the big shock, and it was a big shock to many, was that it was
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the conservative members of the House that actually proposed the fast-tracking of the
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bill, which then got fast-tracked through the Senate without discussion or debate.
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And one significant change between Bill C-6 and Bill C-4 is that the original Bill C-6 would
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have allowed an adult, a consenting adult, to take counseling, go to therapy, go and speak
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to their pastor for repeated discussions about gender identity, their sexual desires, unwanted
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sexual desires, or unwanted same-sex attraction.
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And this bill now outlaws it for consenting adults as well.
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So the claim is that it's a bill to prevent harmful practices of conversion therapy.
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And what that brings to people's minds is sort of electric shock therapy and sort of coercive
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practices, which there's no evidence that anybody practices.
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So the real target of the bill, and the reason there's been an unwillingness, I believe, to
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actually define conversion therapy, is actually conversion itself.
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I would argue that this is not an anti-conversion therapy bill, because therapy is not really
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Well, it's defined so broadly as to be the practice, treatment, or service, any practice,
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treatment, or service that changes a person's sexual orientation to heterosexual, change a
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person's gender identity to cisgender, change a person's gender expression so that it conforms
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to a sex assigned to a sex assigned at birth, or repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction
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And repress a person's non-cisgender gender identity, or to repress or reduce a person's
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gender expression that does not conform to the sex assigned to them at birth.
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So it doesn't actually define conversion therapy.
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It just says that nobody can seek help, counsel, either parents for their children or a consenting
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adult with unwanted same-sex desire or gender dysphoria, confusion about sexual orientation,
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unless they are wanting to pursue gender transition.
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Conversion therapy is not if you get counsel or therapy or guidance or treatment to transition,
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It only covers those who would affirm the body that you were born with, the gender, the sex
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you're born with, and say that normative human sexuality is male and female, normative sexual
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relationships are man, woman, male and female for the Christian in the context of marriage.
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C6 is actually harsher, it sounds like, than C4.
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Yet C4 had some conservative opposition to it, and C6 was expedited and passed unanimously.
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So C4 is the latest version, expedited, passed unanimously, without conservative opposition,
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My question is, and maybe you don't know the answer to this, maybe no one does, what transpired
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I mean, typically, in the states, that means that conservatives got something that they want
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It was less harsh than what they were afraid of in the first place.
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It sounds like progressives or liberals got more of what they want, and now conservatives
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And the difficulty and what's mystifying conservatives, social conservatives here, and of course,
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people have even written to their MPs and senators to ask the question, what on earth happened?
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How did we go from 62 MPs objecting to this first incarnation of the bill, to a few weeks later, there
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being Bill C4 presented, well, when Parliament came back, and then within just a few weeks,
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the conservatives themselves, the conservatives themselves fast-tracking this bill passed any
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kind of scrutiny, any kind of debate, any kind of discussion, any kind of amendment, which
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And it's important to understand that the preamble to this bill, just so that viewers are aware,
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the preamble to this bill, which sets up the bill of why it's supposedly necessary, says
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this, whereas conversion therapy causes harm to society, because among other things, it
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is based on and propagates myths and stereotypes about sexual orientation, gender identity, and
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gender expression, including the myth that heterosexuality, cisgender identity, and gender
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expression that conforms to the sex assigned to a person at birth are to be preferred to
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over other sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions.
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Whereas in light of those harms, it is important to discourage and denounce the provision of conversion
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therapy in order to protect the human dignity and equality of all Canadians.
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And yet, in fact, in the break, not only does the bill harden to actually not protect the
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dignity and equality of all Canadians, anybody who is struggling with one of the
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these desires, dysphoria, or same-sex attractions that they don't want, no longer has equality,
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because they cannot actually seek out the help that they want.
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And you can see the theological nature of this bill.
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This is an emphatic religious statement by the Canadian government that the traditional Orthodox Christian and
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basically Western, actually one might even say global, this is the first time this has happened in human history,
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in terms of human civilization, to begin to criminalize people who hold to a normative understanding of human sexuality and identity
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that's not based in some neo-Marxist myth about fictive gender and fictive sexuality,
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One can only say that in Canada, this is the result of immense progressive political pressure,
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both within the Liberal Party, the NDP, and the Conservative Party,
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a large, powerful caucus of radical progressives within the Conservative Party itself,
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And in fact, MPs, Conservative MPs have said to me that to have opposed Bill C-4 would have been personal political suicide.
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I want to go back to something that you said, that this ostensibly bans conversion therapy,
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but actually affirms the true conversion of someone's gender.
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And of course, we don't believe that that's even possible.
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But insofar as someone can try to present as a different gender, what progressives call transitioning,
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it is affirming that kind of change, but it won't affirm the affirmation of someone's biological sex.
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And as you just said, that is theological, philosophical in nature,
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that says something about what these people believe about human beings and human nature,
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that it's actually the mind and feelings that trump physical reality,
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that physical reality like biology must conform to someone's thoughts and feelings,
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It's a battle, not just of the theological proportions, but teleological proportions,
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and really battling against reality in general, battling against science, battling against biology.
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And what it's saying is that someone's even fleeting feelings,
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because we know from science that a lot of kids who feel gender confusion,
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they end up growing out of that by puberty, just naturally.
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It's a battle against all of the data and the science that we know.
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but it does speak to what these people erroneously think human beings are and human nature is.
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And we're seeing the devastating effects of that.
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Yeah, well, the reality is that what this bill is a war on, as you've rightly pointed out,
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is creation itself and any form of normative structure that would transcend personal innate feelings.
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Your birth, your birth certificate doesn't matter.
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You will probably recall it was Karl Marx who said that the key to the holy family,
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by which he meant the Christian God, is the earthly family.
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And he said to destroy the former, we must get rid of the latter in theory and in practice.
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And this is fundamentally what this bill is about.
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But it's interesting the way in which even the sciences have been co-opted into this
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because of their willingness to pump teenagers full of and even children, younger children full of hormones
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and even pressure them into radical surgeries that mutilate the body.
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And, of course, this bill denies the stories and the reality of those who are detransitioning,
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who have recognized they made a terrible mistake.
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You point out there that the vast majority of young people grow out of these dysphoric conditions,
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well over 80 percent, without any sort of intervention.
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And yet this is a law that requires you can only preach, teach, counsel, affirm,
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a transition away from creational norms, from basically common sense, from science.
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And it was neo-Marxist Americans, actually, like Judith Butler,
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the lesbian Jewish feminist philosopher who wrote a book called Gender Trouble,
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in which she basically gave us – she was one of several, but she was highly influential –
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who gave us this idea of fictive sex, that man-woman, male-female,
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the normative structure of marriage, that these are merely social constructions
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And that's why we're seeing, Ali, this war on language and pronouns with respect to all of this,
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because she said that basically the only reason that we recognize a distinction
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between male, female, man, woman, the normative understanding of heterosexual relationship
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between male and female is because it serves the interests of power,
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in particular cultural Christian power of white males.
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And it's a kind of hegemony, and it's through a language regime that we use.
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And if we alter the language regime, we will alter social reality, biology.
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Our societal understanding of human relationships will be radically – we will alter them,
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the fiction of sex, of male and female, of marriage, of man and woman,
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And what this law does is basically now enforces, through criminal sanctions,
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a new theological, political language regime that prevents you from even speaking clearly
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and talking with people about these issues on a repeat basis,
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and prevents anybody who should wish to conform themselves to the traditional understanding
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And the incredible danger of this bill, especially for a Christian like myself
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and those who hold to a traditional understanding of male and female and marriage,
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is that it essentially is criminalizing the Christian faith.
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It's criminalizing the call to conversion, because the bill requires that any sort of advertising
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or promotion or even the attempt to lessen somebody's homosexual desires
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or gender dysphoric orientation or desire to cross-dress or whatever it may be,
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And if you would permit me 30 seconds to read what the Apostle Paul says about this,
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just so you know how serious this is for the Christian, in 1 Corinthians 6, he says,
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don't you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God's kingdom, do not be deceived,
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no sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or males who have sex with males,
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no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God's kingdom,
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and such, some of you used to be like this, and some of you used to be like this.
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But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ
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Every other sin a person commits is outside the body,
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but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body.
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Don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you,
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You are not your own, you were bought at a price, so glorify God with your body.
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So this is central to the Christian message, to Christian teaching,
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to the preaching of the gospel, and it's being criminalized.
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So under this law, would it be illegal for a pastor to exposit that passage from the pulpit,
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or are we only talking about paid services here that are banned?
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Well, it's any practice or treatment or service, and of course you can, the problem is,
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You can drive a bus, a freight train through the definition, there is no real definition,
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and you can drive a freight train through practice, service, or treatment.
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You are certainly forbidden in this law to in any way profit from the provision or the advertising of,
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It's actually unclear whether, let's say, a pastor was doing a sermon series on biblical sexuality
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for the congregation, and was involved in praying for people after the service about those issues.
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There's nothing in this law which would say that a pastor is protected in such an instance.
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And certainly if somebody after a series of sermons like that were to say,
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can I come and see you about my struggles with my sexuality and my sexual identity,
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and the pastor agreed to that and counseled in terms of the biblical understanding,
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that would be the provision of conversion therapy and would carry up to five years in prison.
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There's nothing which specifically says that conversion therapy is only a paid service.
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And I think the big concern is that it's going to be the perception of the person who's exposed to the counseling
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or the preaching or the teaching in any of these given environments
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that's probably going to determine whether they were undergoing conversion therapy or not.
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So I don't know too much about the Canadian system.
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I know in the United States this would very likely be considered a violation of the First Amendment.
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It would probably make its way to the Supreme Court,
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and there's just no way that a law like this, at least right now with the court that we have, would last.
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I thought that Canada had a guaranteed right to free speech, but maybe I'm wrong on that.
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Right now with Section 1 in Canada, with everything that's been going on the last 18 months,
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our charter seems to be in indefinite suspension when the government deems it justified.
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But there are guarantees of fundamental freedoms in Section 2 of the Canadian Charter.
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And of course, those include things like freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and so on.
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There is also a provision for bodily integrity and of the person, freedom of the person and bodily integrity.
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And certainly it could be argued that this criminalization of getting help,
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don't forget this prevents people, anybody struggling with these issues,
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from seeking out the kind of counsel, therapy, help that any other Canadian would be allowed and permitted.
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And with it really is a freedom of speech violation as well and expression,
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because the Christian parents and Christian pastors who want to counsel and help those struggling in this area,
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their speech, that kind of speech, and also publication.
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So anything that might be online, anything written, any recordings, anything at all that might promote
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or advertise or actually be considered conducting this conversion therapy falls under this law.
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So I expect there will be some form of constitutional challenge, Ali.
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But I am based on recent decisions by the Canadian Supreme Court with regard to religious freedom,
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for example, the Trinity Western University case with their lifestyle document for their university,
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which concerned sexual issues, the lifestyle document in terms of Christian sexual behavior.
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I'm not especially optimistic that a constitutional challenge in this regard,
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with a law that got unanimously passed without any single person standing up to object in both the lower and the upper house,
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I very much doubt our very progressive Supreme Court will uphold a constitutional challenge to this totalitarian law.
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I mean, in many respects, what you saw with the with the House and the Senate is is reminiscent of an almost fascistic practice.
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It's almost like we have a one party, a one party state.
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And when it wants to railroad a piece of criminal legislation through that will discriminate against certain people,
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Do you know if this law would prevent someone from counseling a person through detransition who wants to, again, present as their sex?
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Are you allowed to, I guess, probably not encourage, but simply help someone who, you know, so-called transitioned into a man,
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but now realizes, OK, I want to present is my biological sex.
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It does this law allow for the help through that process?
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No, as this bill is written, no, you would not be able to counsel somebody through through a detransition process.
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And as I certainly read this law, I'm not a lawyer, but the lawyers that I have spoken to in and I've got the bill in front of me and I've read it many times would not permit you to counsel somebody to conform their body,
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their own biology to to to the sex of their their birth and to to reduce or or transit or detransition.
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Wow. So as you said earlier, this is only allowing the affirmation of transitioning away from someone's sex, away from heterosexuality, never the other direction,
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even if this is a consenting adult or a teenager who says, wow, I made a mistake or I don't want to live this way anymore.
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I want to conform to heterosexuality or my biology.
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You're not even allowed to encourage someone who is voluntarily doing that, which, like you said, this is not then an anti-conversion therapy bill.
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I mean, this is simply an affirmation of anti-reality and makes an effort, actually, to deny people even access to help to conform to reality.
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And that brings me to a conversation that I want to have about parents and what this could mean for Christian parents.
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And I read a really interesting, sad, also in some ways encouraging article last night in The Daily Signal.
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This is in the United States, but it obviously has implications for what parents will be going through in Canada.
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And this is kind of what will sound like to some people, certainly on the left, a scandalous sounding or maybe a mean, harsh sounding headline.
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What I've learned rescuing my daughter from her transgender fantasy in The Daily Signal.
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This is written by a mom and I'll just kind of summarize it, maybe read some quotes from it.
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But basically, this young daughter, she says, was, you know, she acted like a girl, liked traditionally girly feminine things from the time that she was little.
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She refused to even play with her brother's toys.
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And then as she became a teenager, as she got into middle school, she started getting involved with different communities online.
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And that encouraged or that included things like anime, like the so-called furry cosplay community that this mother didn't know actually has aspects to it that are predatory, that are pedophilic,
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that can include encouragement to transition and encouragement towards sexual and gender fluidity.
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And this young girl decided that she was transgender, that she was really born a boy.
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She became very mean and hostile to her family.
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She logged into all of her daughter's social media accounts.
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And she found not just this confusing propaganda about gender and sexuality, but actually found that she was talking to predatory people,
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that she was looking at pornography as a young girl, and that she was involved in a community that was really encouraging this kind of predation,
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And her daughter changed, for the worse, into almost a totally different person, a different person than the daughter that she had raised.
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But she eventually, the mom said, you know what, this is enough.
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And so she took away her daughter's, all of her devices, her social media accounts.
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She forbade her from hanging out with a lot of the people that were influencing her in this direction.
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And she basically detoxed her daughter from all of these different avenues that were encouraging her daughter to transition and take part in this awful, gross behavior,
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and ensured that she didn't have any access to the pornography that she was being sent, all of this awful stuff.
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And basically, long story short, her daughter changed for the better.
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Her daughter turned into the young girl that her mother had raised, and she's much happier.
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She doesn't have that same attitude of hostility and just self-loathing that her mother had seen when her daughter had gone down these rabbit holes online.
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But this mother had the freedom to do this here still.
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She had the freedom to take this strong approach in her daughter's life, and her daughter is better off for it.
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My question is, and somewhere like Canada, under this law, is this even allowed?
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This mom just being a good mom and stepping up for the well-being of her daughter, is that even allowed under this law?
00:31:11.740
Or could a parent potentially see jail time for doing what this mother did for the sake of her daughter in Canada?
00:31:20.020
Well, Ali, the truth is, we've already seen in British Columbia a case where a husband and father who would not affirm the revised identity of his daughter,
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who was a minor at the time, forbidden from speaking about the issue publicly by the courts,
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In fact, in Ontario, you can already have your children seized by the state if you do not affirm their path that they want to go on in this area of human identity and sexuality.
00:32:12.140
So what needs to be understood by people outside of Canada is that there are sleeper laws around that exist already in various provinces
00:32:20.380
that were already going down this path of forbidding conversion therapy.
00:32:26.540
And here in Ontario, the legal necessity to affirm the desires of minors,
00:32:34.980
and a failure to do that as a parent can get you into trouble with the law,
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well, this bill will only further that direction.
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And alongside of that, we have a radicalized education, government education system here in Canada.
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It's governed provincially, education, so I'm in Ontario, but it's the same right across the country.
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You have a radical LGBTQ plus progressive agenda in schools.
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So queer theory basically now dominates the classroom,
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whether it's with books, whether it's with curriculum materials,
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In fact, right into kindergarten, this radical agenda is being promoted.
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And so the story that you've talked about of what's happening actually in our schools is that
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this conversion is already happening in the other way.
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It's going on through education and parents are, there's a legislative environment,
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which is increasingly forbidding parents from insisting on my house, my rules, my family, my domain.
00:34:00.800
And this bill, Bill C-4, would basically criminalize any parent who takes their child
00:34:11.100
But don't forget, adults can't have this service either.
00:34:13.420
But any child that's taken by a parent, even outside of the country,
00:34:16.700
if somebody were to travel to the United States on vacation with their family,
00:34:21.600
with a child struggling in this area who has got unwanted desires or attraction,
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and you were to take them to an American pastor or counselor, that's a crime,
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And to do so in Canada for a parent would be a crime.
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This is hardening a legislative environment that already exists and an educational environment
00:34:43.840
that already drills queer theory into the minds of children from kindergarten upwards.
00:34:53.520
So it doesn't even allow parents to be parents.
00:34:56.440
The reality is, is that certainly transition in particular, so-called transition,
00:35:02.040
when a child is given hormone blockers when they're going through puberty.
00:35:07.760
There are stories, of course, here in the United States of young girls being able to get double
00:35:12.820
mastectomies and hormone blockers when they are teenagers without parental consent in some states
00:35:21.460
And that causes not only physical harm, but it just exacerbates the psychological distress
00:35:26.400
that a lot of young people have, the numbers of post-transition suicide are astronomical.
00:35:32.400
This idea that so-called transition to conform to how someone feels is the solution to people's distress.
00:35:44.180
And really what you see, you see this manipulation tactic of saying, well, we have to ban conversion
00:35:50.180
therapy or we have to simply affirm someone's feelings about their so-called gender identity
00:35:57.740
Actually, this mom in the article that I read, she said that her daughter would start using this
00:36:02.860
manipulation tactic to her, that if you don't let me do what I want, if you don't let me transition,
00:36:06.780
if you don't let me talk to this furry community, whatever that is online and talk to these older
00:36:12.900
people online, then I'll just, I'll just kill myself.
00:36:16.480
And this mom recognized this as a tactic and said that she just responded in love and compassion,
00:36:22.000
but was unrelenting in her commitment to reality.
00:36:28.640
And thankfully here in most places, you can still do that.
00:36:35.420
But the state is not going to be there when your daughter who decided to get a double mastectomy
00:36:41.420
at 15 years old is still contemplating suicide.
00:36:44.460
Like the state is not going to be there holding your child's hand when they realize they've
00:36:49.520
made that mistake or your, the state is not going to be there to care for your child as
00:36:54.200
they are continuing through the distress of life, trying to reconcile reality with what's
00:37:00.080
The state wasn't there when your child was born, when they laid that baby on your chest,
00:37:04.000
the state wasn't there when you were waking up in the middle of the night to comfort your
00:37:07.540
child because they're crying and they need their mom or dad.
00:37:12.940
The state doesn't care about your child's well-being.
00:37:15.980
Does it care about your child's, um, your, your child's health?
00:37:22.460
And this to me seems not only, um, it doesn't seem like only an LGBTQ agenda in the sense
00:37:30.700
that it is trying to, you know, encourage or, uh, you know, encourage or preserve LGBTQ
00:37:41.720
It seems also specifically anti-parent and anti-family.
00:37:46.800
And it just seems like it goes back to kind of what you were saying about the neo-Marxist,
00:37:51.840
uh, you know, attack on what they see as any kind of hegemony or any kind of hierarchy.
00:37:58.560
And that includes the family, this attempt to try to liberate all people from any kind of
00:38:05.920
It seems like this also has to do with an attempt to what they would say is liberate children
00:38:12.020
from the authority and the oppression of their family.
00:38:15.480
So they can just express themselves however they want to.
00:38:18.780
Um, the problem is we know practically where that leads.
00:38:28.080
I can't even, I don't even think we can quantify or really fathom what's going to be the long-term
00:38:34.500
I think my mind won't even let me go there, but to you, like, how do you encourage people
00:38:40.220
in Canada, Christians who are bound by the authority of the word of God to push back on
00:38:49.320
I can't even really wrap my mind around it, honestly.
00:38:54.580
Well, it is, it's a, it's a, it's a wicked ideology.
00:38:57.900
And I think that is the, the, the thing absolutely to keep in mind front and center that this is
00:39:06.180
It's an ideological assault on the family, upon the church, upon, specifically upon the
00:39:13.420
Christian faith, um, and upon the society and the social order that, um, has created
00:39:23.020
Um, there is no social revolution without sexual revolution.
00:39:27.920
And so the, the ultimate agenda here is, uh, to, uh, totally revolutionize society.
00:39:38.480
And of course, uh, there were those who in the sixties and seventies warned us about this.
00:39:44.500
Uh, but the claim is radical that there is no normative human identity at all.
00:39:49.100
And the goal here is a kind of, um, sexual utopia, um, a sort of imaginary, of course, utopia
00:39:56.580
means no place, uh, but it's an imaginary world, uh, in which, um, uh, human autonomy, human
00:40:04.580
dignity is defined as the most radical kind of autonomy, uh, where there is no such thing
00:40:10.480
as a normative family already in the legal structure in Ontario here.
00:40:14.140
Um, there is, uh, uh, legislation that allows for totally unrelated individuals to enter into
00:40:22.240
a contract before a baby is even born to be, uh, the parents of that child.
00:40:29.840
Uh, and so these, these laws and bill C4, which, uh, reinforces it all, uh, have a revolutionary,
00:40:40.940
And I, I liked the way you put it about, um, you know, liberating people or freeing people
00:40:46.540
from, uh, their, their creational condition, um, from the, from the norms of creation itself.
00:40:54.900
I mean, if you free a lemur of his tail or a camel of his humps or a man of his testicles,
00:41:00.380
you destroy the very thing you are claiming to liberate.
00:41:04.100
And so this, this liberation, uh, is no liberation at all.
00:41:09.620
It's a, it's a new form of slavery and like all utopias, it's totalitarian and it will, uh,
00:41:18.540
And so my encouragement to Christians and my encouragement already to pastors across the
00:41:24.640
country is that, uh, we need to have a biblical sexuality Sunday where churches across the
00:41:30.520
country agree to preach and speak on the biblical understanding of sexuality.
00:41:36.660
The Sunday after, uh, this bill on the anniversary of the, the Sunday following the passage of this
00:41:42.260
bill, um, we need to defend the, the family totalitarianism.
00:41:47.100
Of course, we, in our minds, we see, you know, jackboots and powerful authoritarian dictators
00:41:52.660
and so forth, but that's not the meaning of totalitarianism.
00:41:55.360
Um, totalitarianism is the attempt of the state.
00:41:58.940
And you talked about the state there a lot because you're absolutely right.
00:42:01.600
Where were they when your children were being born?
00:42:04.700
Where were they when you were doing the night feeds?
00:42:07.260
Uh, where were they when you were instructing and raising your children in the home?
00:42:11.240
Um, but the, the, the, the, the, the, the state here totalitarianism means the effort to treat
00:42:19.280
the family, the church and other societal institutions in a parts to whole fashion.
00:42:24.620
And we're seeing now the state, uh, treating family and church and other institutions as merely
00:42:32.260
They get to dictate in totalitarian terms, uh, the kind of teaching, the kind of help, the
00:42:38.760
kind of counsel that, uh, even the family or the church can give and offer to its own children,
00:42:47.940
Uh, and so this is make no mistake, a totalitarian bill.
00:42:51.640
And the only way to resist, uh, to stand against totalitarianism is to resist it, to continue
00:42:57.140
to speak, uh, to continue to act faithfully in the Christian family, uh, to continue to push
00:43:04.180
It's been very interesting, Ali, that, uh, while Canada is doing this, other nations
00:43:08.740
around the world have been having robust debate about, uh, transgenderism and the fact that
00:43:15.540
there is absolutely zero science behind this, um, and are pushing back against, um, laws that
00:43:22.980
would allow minors to transition, even in the United Kingdom, that's been happening.
00:43:26.540
And so the fact that Canada is plowing this course, you can see that what's going on here
00:43:32.000
is we've got a social experiment happening and the first requirement of any experiment
00:43:39.740
You can't do a legitimate experiment unless you have a controlled environment.
00:43:48.460
It's a religious bill and it, and it, uh, uh, it, uh, militates at the most fundamental
00:43:55.920
and foundational level against the Christian foundations of the country.
00:43:59.260
When you think that the Bible begins with a marriage, uh, the, the relationship of God
00:44:07.000
to his people, Israel is described as a marriage and Israel is an adulterous people.
00:44:13.020
You move on to the New Testament and you have the Holy family, uh, and then the father and
00:44:20.140
the son, the very description of, uh, the Godhead is in familial terms, uh, fatherhood, sonship.
00:44:28.660
Jesus's first miracle is performed at a wedding.
00:44:32.500
The relationship of Christ to his church is described as a marriage and history ends, according
00:44:39.460
to scripture in the marriage supper of the lamb.
00:44:42.220
So marriage and normative human sexuality and identity, he made the male and female is
00:44:53.900
It's the beginning of distinguishing and God drawing distinctions within, uh, creation
00:45:02.660
And what we're seeing now in Canada and beyond is an attempt to join what God has separated
00:45:11.020
And that is the ideological character, um, of this bill and other pieces of legislation
00:45:18.700
And this is a totalitarian attempt now to, uh, freeze all freedom of speech, um, to put fear
00:45:26.520
and terror into people for being parents, for being pastors, for being counselors, and to
00:45:32.080
advance a social revolution, uh, via a radical sexual revolution in the service of some radical,
00:45:39.180
neo-Marxist, um, thinkers who want to deny created reality because ultimately of a hatred of God.
00:45:48.080
One thing that you, that you mentioned, just the significance of marriage, male, female
00:46:01.640
marriage, the only legitimate marriage that God says exists, God who created marriage defines
00:46:08.500
Something that we talk a lot about on this podcast is that we don't just read the Bible
00:46:16.340
You hear that a lot from the progressive side of the aisle that says, well, you know, Jesus
00:46:20.280
never mentioned abortion or Jesus never mentioned transgenderism.
00:46:24.000
Jesus never, uh, mentioned marriage or homosexuality, which is not exactly true.
00:46:30.100
Obviously, if you look at Matthew 19, he does define marriage and gender very clearly, but
00:46:34.900
we say, you don't just read the Bible to look for all of the things that God tells us not
00:46:40.640
You also look at the Bible to say, to look at what God says to do and what God is.
00:46:46.040
And so we're, what God says is, and is good and right and true.
00:46:51.040
And I came up with, I love alliterations because it helps me remember things.
00:46:55.900
And what you were talking about, the, about scripture, starting with the marriage and ending with
00:47:00.680
a marriage, our relationship in marriage being a reflection of Christ and the church in Ephesians
00:47:06.900
five, I like to say that the definition of marriage is rooted in creation.
00:47:13.440
It's repeated by Jesus himself in Matthew 19, and it is therefore reflective of the gospel
00:47:24.320
And so it's not just about what the Bible specifically says about homosexuality.
00:47:29.580
Although we do read that homosexuality is forbidden, it's also about what God says marriage is and
00:47:39.280
what that looks like and what it reflects and what it represents.
00:47:43.740
And if you miss that kind of, as you said in the beginning, when you were reading first
00:47:46.920
Corinthians six, like you actually do miss the gospel.
00:47:51.240
You miss the gospel because if earthly marriage is a reflection of Christ and the church, and
00:47:56.740
if we get the earthly part wrong, we're also going to get the spiritual part wrong as well.
00:48:02.640
When people tell me, you know, especially millennials or generation Z younger than me, they say, you
00:48:13.460
I even get professing Christians saying, what's wrong with stating my pronouns or saying that
00:48:18.340
someone who feels like they're a woman while they're a man, that they can transition.
00:48:25.440
They don't realize that this is essentially a gospel issue.
00:48:28.940
Yes, it's a scriptural authority issue, but it's a gospel issue.
00:48:32.000
You don't understand the gospel if you can't define marriage.
00:48:37.420
Even though we know that God is sovereign and that the gates of hell will not prevail
00:48:42.080
So no law that Canada passes or America passes is going to stop that.
00:48:46.100
We still realize that the stakes are really high here and that there is a lot on the line.
00:48:51.280
There's a lot of spiritual things that are on the line with a law like this.
00:48:56.900
I mean, you make an incredibly important point that anybody who says, well, this is not a
00:49:02.140
gospel issue, doesn't understand the gospel, doesn't understand the significance of the
00:49:08.040
teaching of scripture or the meaning of the relationship of Christ and his church.
00:49:11.340
This is at the heart of the meaning of the gospel.
00:49:13.340
Well, as I said, even the revelation of the character and nature of God himself is given
00:49:23.180
And you rightly mentioned that Jesus does, in fact, deal with these issues.
00:49:27.180
And of course, in Matthew 5, Jesus makes crystal clear that he upholds the entirety of the law.
00:49:33.760
And these issues are dealt with in the Torah, in the instruction that God gives throughout
00:49:42.240
the Older Testament as well, which is reiterated by Jesus and the apostle Paul.
00:49:47.040
So Jesus upholds every punctuation mark of his law.
00:49:52.500
And these are, I mean, what you've pointed out essentially is that these are pre-political
00:49:59.280
The state does not exist to redefine marriage, redefine human identity, redefine human sexuality,
00:50:09.320
The state exists to recognize and protect those things which are created realities and which
00:50:22.260
And this is the state overreach in all of this is so tyrannical.
00:50:29.200
It's hard to describe the extent to which this violates everything that the state is
00:50:36.400
And it is, instead of protecting our pre-political rights, marriage, family, and so on and so forth,
00:50:44.960
The state doesn't get to redefine reality in these terms.
00:50:49.260
And that's why, you know, we, it's so critical that at this juncture, we affirm that this
00:50:57.800
God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
00:51:03.080
And we have the centrality of the church as Christ's bride.
00:51:09.180
And the most fundamental distinction in the Bible is the male and female distinction.
00:51:14.660
And Ali, once that distinction has gone, then there are no possible creational distinctions
00:51:21.580
left, you know, forget good and evil, right and wrong.
00:51:25.280
These things disappear with the most fundamental distinction the Bible makes at the beginning
00:51:31.700
of creation, male and female, which reflects the distinction that exists in the being of
00:51:38.420
So this is absolutely a gospel issue, as you pointed out.
00:51:41.200
It's central to the call of the gospel, which is that we leave sin and rebellion against
00:51:46.800
God behind, and we conform ourselves to God's order, to his creation norms, to his law word.
00:51:55.760
Jesus says, if you love me, you'll obey my commandments.
00:52:01.060
You did live like this, but you've been washed, you've been justified, you've been
00:52:05.000
sanctified, you've been changed, you've been converted, and you now live a new life.
00:52:11.240
And that life, as you pointed out, is for the blessing, for the good, for the prosperity,
00:52:17.740
for the flourishing of the individual, the family, and human society.
00:52:22.840
God instituted these things for our good and for our blessing.
00:52:27.000
And that's why only destruction, as you pointed out, is going to follow in the wake of these
00:52:30.680
things, because in the end, you cannot violate God's laws and norms, and there not be consequences.
00:52:37.060
You don't jump out of an aircraft thinking you can violate the law of gravity without
00:52:41.780
a parachute, and you are going to come unstuck.
00:52:45.960
There is always a consequence for the violation of God's laws and norms, and there will be terrible
00:52:53.800
And it will be families, parents, churches that are left picking up the pieces when this
00:53:01.300
It will certainly be disproportionately a consequence that children have to bear, as is true with
00:53:15.300
The redefinition of the family, wombs and children becoming commodities for the redefinition of
00:53:26.820
Children are always the unconsenting subjects of progressive experiments.
00:53:33.300
They have been literally laid on the altar in the form of child sacrifice throughout history.
00:53:38.640
Now they are figuratively laid on the altar and are being used as sacrifices in different
00:53:47.360
But the end result, as you said, in both ways is death and is destruction.
00:53:55.100
And for Christians listening to this, you amazingly, there are, you know, professing Christians who
00:54:03.440
You, as you mentioned, being made male and female is what it means to be made in God's image.
00:54:10.880
And I just don't believe someone when they say that they don't affirm Genesis 1, but that
00:54:15.920
they will continue to affirm John 14, 6, that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
00:54:22.320
That is a far more scandalous statement in today's age, that Jesus is the only way to God than
00:54:33.100
I just don't believe you when you say that you don't affirm Genesis 1, but you do affirm
00:54:41.960
I do see this happen with people who profess to be Christians.
00:54:45.240
They start to wiggle on the, you know, gender sexuality stuff in the name of so-called nuance
00:54:55.920
Of course, repentance is absolutely possible by the grace of God.
00:55:01.800
And I think there was Katie, Katie Faust was a guest that I had on and she has an amazing
00:55:05.920
But she pointed out to me something that I hadn't thought about when it comes to the definition
00:55:10.120
of the family and the definition of right sexuality in God is that when you redefine the
00:55:17.260
family and sexuality, you are forbidding the children who are the products of that from
00:55:22.000
obeying the first commandment with a promise, honor your father and mother.
00:55:25.800
We create fatherlessness, which is a category of helplessness and vulnerability in the Bible.
00:55:32.080
We are told to help the fatherless, not create fatherlessness.
00:55:35.240
And there wasn't even really a category for motherlessness, which we see in the redefinition
00:55:39.580
of the family now, because that is so such an aberration historically.
00:55:43.660
And so, as you said, just to reiterate, like there's, there's so, there's so much, there's
00:55:49.180
so many biblical issues, theological issues at stake here.
00:55:51.960
So many practical ones as well, since parents are basically going to be forbidden from shepherding
00:55:58.340
their kids and pastors forbidden from shepherding their, their own flocks in the right way.
00:56:07.460
And I was thinking when you said that of also of John chapter one, because of course, the
00:56:12.520
gospel of John opens with a deliberate echo of Genesis chapter one.
00:56:18.520
In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God.
00:56:26.220
Without him, nothing was made that was made in him was life.
00:56:35.300
So any attempt to sever the Bible, uh, you know, Genesis and John, uh, divided up into pieces
00:56:42.320
and say, well, I can, I can't affirm Genesis one, but I can affirm the rest is of course.
00:56:46.360
Um, well, it's nonsense, Ellie, it's a complete myth.
00:56:50.420
There is a complete continuity as a historical continuity.
00:56:54.520
Uh, there's a historical continuum between creation and redemption in scripture.
00:56:59.700
And so the attempt to, to compromise and to synthesize, uh, these things, um, is, uh,
00:57:11.700
And as you point out, the ones that ultimately suffer in all of this are, uh, children and,
00:57:19.780
uh, they have to bear the compromise, the, the consequences, uh, of, uh, of our dereliction
00:57:28.500
And so we have, uh, uh, uh, a very important responsibility now at this juncture to make sure
00:57:35.700
we, um, fight for the truth of the gospel, uh, uh, and all that flows from it, including
00:57:44.980
Now you mentioned that, uh, the Sunday after this law goes into effect, you were calling
00:57:51.360
for, um, pastors in Canada to preach about biblical marriage and sexuality, correct?
00:57:59.120
And is there, is this an official, um, invitation that you've extended?
00:58:04.820
Like, is this something that American pastors can take part of?
00:58:07.780
Because I think it would be wonderful if there were American pastors who decided to do the
00:58:12.480
same thing on the same Sunday that their Canadian counterparts did it as well.
00:58:20.020
Um, so, uh, I'm not sure, um, exactly when this will broadcast, but we, I'm working with
00:58:25.120
a group of, um, pastors and leaders right now, uh, in Canada, and we'll be, we'll be
00:58:30.780
announcing, uh, the details of this, uh, shortly, um, and, uh, at which point, um, certainly we
00:58:38.740
And, and actually I think I will, I will suggest that excellent idea that we invite our American
00:58:44.800
brothers and sisters in the churches there to perhaps, um, do the same and, uh, uh, take
00:58:51.740
that, take that Sunday and make it a biblical sexuality Sunday so that the church can make
00:59:00.160
Cause the more we can work together, cause the challenges are the same, right over the
00:59:03.440
West, uh, the, the more of an impact we're going to have.
00:59:08.280
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today.
00:59:11.300
Uh, where can people find you if they want to read your books, your writings and things
00:59:17.380
So they can find, uh, they can find me at, uh, ezrainstitute.ca, uh, that's the website.
00:59:23.160
And, uh, there you can link to Ezra Press, uh, for all of our books and resources.
00:59:28.280
Um, we have a podcast, uh, which you can, the podcast for cultural reformation, which you
00:59:32.940
can find, uh, wherever you get your podcasts from.
00:59:36.120
Um, and of course you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and you can follow me on Twitter
00:59:44.180
I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.