Ep 628 | Et Tu, Fox News?
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Summary
On today's episode of Relatable, Allie talks about the betrayal that conservatives feel over Fox News celebrating the gender transition of a small child. What does this tell us about the nature of companies and institutions? And what does it mean for the future of the Supreme Court?
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. This episode is brought to you by our friends
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at Good Ranchers. Go to goodranchers.com slash Allie. That's goodranchers.com slash Allie.
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All right, y'all. Hope you had a wonderful weekend. Today, we are going to talk about
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the betrayal that conservatives feel over Fox News celebrating the gender transition of a small
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child. What does this mean? Why does it matter? Should we continue to support Fox News? What
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does this tell us about the nature of companies and institutions? What do we think of this as
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Christians? But before we get into it, there is one other thing that I want to talk about that is
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going to lead us into that subject. And that is the Dobbs decision that will be published imminently.
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We don't know exactly when, either this week, next week, or the next week. And first, I'll start with
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a reminder to continue to pray about the Dobbs decision. And for the Supreme Court, that is
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the SCOTUS decision, as you guys probably know, that will determine the future of Roe v. Wade and
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whether states will be able to ban or significantly restrict abortion. Could be this Wednesday. I
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will guess that it will probably be the last week of June. I don't know that for sure. I just kind of
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have a hunch. I'll be on vacation next week, just FYI. So we're going to have a couple new episodes come
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out, but not four new episodes. But I won't be doing live shows. So I really hope that it's not then
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because I won't be able to give the commentary, the analysis that I want to give, and hopefully
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the celebration that I want to give. But let's pray for the justices, the conservative justices.
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Let us also pray that justice will prevail for pre-born children. As we talked about last week,
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a man traveled from California to Justice Kavanaugh's home to murder him. He turned himself in,
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thank God. But he said he was angry about Roe possibly being overturned. And ironically, he said that
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he was also upset that the Supreme Court upholds the Second Amendment. And that's just funny because
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he actually traveled from California, one of the states with the strictest gun control laws,
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to Justice Kavanaugh's home with a gun. And so after that threat, which the media barely reported on,
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consider that for a second, a Supreme Court justice nearly gets assassinated. And the same people who say
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that they care so much about norms and decency and normalcy and democracy barely even furrowed
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their brow over it. The Washington Post editorial board did publish to their credit, kind of,
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an opinion saying as gingerly as possible that maybe, possibly, justices shouldn't be afraid for
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their lives inside their own homes. And for that opinion, they got dragged on Twitter by the left,
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totally ratioed by leftists that the Washington Post has helped create over the years with their
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biased reporting. They insisted, these people ratioing the Washington Post for this milquetoast
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opinion, they insisted that actually the Supreme Court justices should feel unsafe in their homes
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because apparently the Supreme Court has made people feel unsafe through their decisions. And so I
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guess they just see it as kind of what they deserve. People in the comments were citing all of these
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decisions that they didn't like by the Supreme Court that has made the country more dangerous,
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they say. And this just speaks to the truth. This reaction to this, again, a milquetoast opinion,
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an obvious opinion by the Washington Post editorial board just confirms what I always say,
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that many leftists do not mean it when they say they want democracy. They do not like the
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Constitution. They do not like the idea of inalienable rights. They do not like fair representation. They
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do not like impartial, non-political institutions. The Supreme Court just interprets the law in light
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of the Constitution, and they don't like that. It really doesn't matter. It should not matter if you
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or I like the decision. The question should be, is it constitutional? But you really don't see
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leftists ever debating that question, the only question that really matters. It's always about
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how a particular decision or policy makes them feel. They do not care if it's constitutional.
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They want their political objectives met no matter what. That's why most in the left-wing media are not
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even talking about this assassination attempt, because at best, at best, they don't care.
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It is not a huge deal to them, to these kinds of leftists. If Brett Kavanaugh is assassinated,
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they see it as karma. As crazy as that might sound, I know it sounds kind of hyperbolic,
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but judging from their silence, judging from their apparent, again, at best, apathy towards it,
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it would seem that they kind of think of it as, well, what goes around comes around. They actually
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see the threat to what they would call abortion rights as so egregious that it may actually deserve
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that the justice who rules against what they call abortion rights may actually deserve to be killed.
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That is why, even after the threat of assassination, leftists were still protesting outside of his and
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Justice Barrett's homes where they have small children. The ends always justify the means to
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them. There is nothing too radical for their tactics. And I wish, again, that I were exaggerating,
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but when the Dobbs draft leaked, I saw blue checkmark after blue checkmark unashamedly saying that the
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justices should be threatened and intimidated. And actually, when I think about it, I need to clarify
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something. I typically say that when left-wing activists say that they want democracy, they mean
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authoritarianism that they like. And when they say authoritarian, they mean democracy that they don't
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like. So any law that restricts abortion or allows gun ownership, that's fascism somehow, always,
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in the same way that they use racism to mean anything that they disagree with.
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So I say that they don't really want democracy typically. But I think, actually, the more
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accurate thing to say is that what they want is pure democracy. And this is what pure democracy
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always devolves into, which is mob rule. And this is why the founders resisted it and gave us a
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republic, a representative democracy with the Senate and an electoral college and state and local
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governments so that 51 percent of the population don't tyrannize the 49 percent, so that a handful of
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major cities in California and New York and the country don't get to make decisions for every
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other state. Mob rule is exactly what we have seen Democrats push in the last two years. They talk
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about the importance of justice, of equity. They don't. Well, again, it's not that they don't really
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mean those things. They mean their versions of justice and equity, which ironically are unjust and
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inequitable. Like, think about the Derek Chauvin and Kyle Rittenhouse trials. The jurors were
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threatened. The judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse case was threatened because the left-wing activists
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wanted the results that they wanted, that made them feel good. They weren't actually concerned with
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an impartial decision-making process. They weren't actually concerned with the right-to-do process.
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They weren't actually concerned with impartial justice. I mean, whatever you think about those
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cases, do we really want to live in a country without due process, where jurors make a decision
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not based on evidence but based on the ruthlessness of the social justice mob? Does that seem like a
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fair and just society for anyone? What these activists protesting outside the homes of the
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justices are saying is this. I don't care what the Constitution says. I don't want you to interpret
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the law without bias. I don't want you to remain an impartial institution. That's what they're saying.
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I want you to make a decision based on your fear of us. That's how they feel. That's what they're
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communicating. Again, I ask you, does that sound like a good system? If you're on the left, do you
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want Sotomayor to make her decisions based on her fear of a right-wing mob? Well, good news for you.
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You don't have to worry about that if you're on the left because if a right-wing mob were protesting
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outside her home, they would be in jail right now. If a right-wing man traveled from Texas to Virginia
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with a gun to kill Justice Kagan, it's all anyone would be talking about for weeks and weeks. Ah, but
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right. The right, the right are the ones that we need to fear. The people on the right are the true
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threat to stability in this country. Okay. In a sense, though, the right is a threat to the left-wing
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idea of democracy, which is, again, essentially mob rule because we actually care about the
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Constitution. If the Supreme Court makes a decision that we don't like, what do you find
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online? A bunch of threats? A bunch of just hysteria? No, you see a bunch of articles about
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why the logic and the constitutionality of the decision was wrong, not hysterical emotionalism
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about how the decision makes us feel. And, you know, maybe that's our problem as conservatives.
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Maybe that's why we so often lose is because we're not hysterical enough. We care about the rules and
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we care about fairness too much. I don't know, though, how to change that because I don't want
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to be like the other side. I and many conservatives, and conservatives are not monolithic, so I
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understand not everyone has this belief system, but I and many conservatives, we're conservatives
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because we are Christians. And so we feel tethered to a higher and transcendent standard that includes
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biblical principles of impartial justice and integrity, and political victories are not the
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end-all be-all, although we see them as important because we care about people, because, again, we care
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about justice here on earth. But it's not the end-all be-all. Progressivism is a religion for many people
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on the left, and it is the end-all be-all for them, which is why the means so often or the ends so much
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so often justify the means for them. But it's different for a lot of conservatives who feel like
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we are tethered to something higher and more transcendent. And such is the nature of progressivism
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versus conservatism. Conserving justice in good institutions takes conscientiousness. It takes
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caution. It takes care. Progressivism simply seeks to dismantle institutions, which can be done
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recklessly. And that makes it hard for the right to compete against the left. That's why all of
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these institutions have been captured by leftism. That and the fact that every company and major
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institution in this country, as I just mentioned, are left-wing. Big tech, academia, public education,
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the federal government, and here's something else against us. The Republicans we do have don't even use
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the tools constitutionally available to them to push back against leftism. I mean, save a few
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Republicans like Ron DeSantis, who is willing to go down the only feasible path forward for
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conservatism, which is using the power on hand to push policy that aligns with good conservative
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values. So that means revoking privileges for companies that threaten to subvert the will of
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the majority of Floridians like Disney did. That means trying to shape curriculum away from racial
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division and inappropriate sex ed. That means protecting women's sports. That means preserving the life
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inside the womb. That means protecting parents' rights. But a lot of Republicans are willing to
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do that. In fact, they're just ready to stab you in the back. For example, right now, there are
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Republicans in the Senate conspiring with Democrats to make it harder for law-abiding citizens to
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exercise their Second Amendment rights. They think if they give an inch to the left, they'll be liked.
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They'll be insulated from criticism. It's a fantasy that never works. And that's why most Republicans
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won't even touch the culture wars. Abortion, gender ideology. You don't have that problem with the
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left. They're constantly fighting culture wars because they, to their credit, recognize something
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that most Republicans refuse to. That we are in a moral theological fight more than we are in a
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political one. We are fighting over human nature. We are fighting over where truth comes from. We are
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fighting over where rights come from. We are fighting over the idea of right and wrong and who gets to
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decide that. Many Republicans in power, the reason why they're not willing to fight that battle is
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because, if we're honest, they are actually on the same page morally and theologically as the secular
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left. So they don't really care about the gender and abortion stuff. They just don't care about it
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because they, at best, they're just complacent, at best. And at worst, they actually agree with it.
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And that's how you get a Republican governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, killing a bill protecting women's
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sports and stating his pronouns at the beginning of a Zoom call. That's how you get that. And that
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is also how you get Fox News, a supposedly conservative network, airing a segment celebrating
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the transition of a child from a girl into a boy. All right. So I was stunned over the weekend.
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I think it was maybe on Friday when I first saw this. Someone sent this to me. America Newsroom,
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is that what it's called? America's Newsroom. They did a segment about this child named Ryland,
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who is now 14 years old, who was born a girl. Of course, we believe still is a girl whose parents
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transitioned Ryland when she was very young, five years old. America's Newsroom ran a segment on
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this, celebrating it, calling it wonderful and courageous and heroic. And I will not only describe
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to you why this is so troubling to me from a variety of angles. We are also going to look at a study
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after we talk about this segment from the Heritage Foundation that just came out today
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that completely dismantles this idea that transition of a child actually saves their
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life or prevents them from committing suicide. That was one argument that was made in this whole
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Fox News segment. And we're going to dismantle that. But first, before we get into it, let me
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actually let me play you a clip of what was shown on Fox News on Friday.
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Only walking down the street, you wouldn't think anything different.
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14-year-old Ryland Whittington is a typical Southern California teenager.
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And the Whittingtons, along with mom Hillary, dad Jeff, and sister Brinley, are a typical family.
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The only difference, though, in Ryland's eyes, is what this family can mean to the tens of thousands
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We put our story out there so people could see that, like, there's another family out there
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that is going through what we're going through, or there's another family who's proud of who they are.
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Before Ryland could even speak, he managed to tell his parents that he is a boy.
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I could just see that it wasn't him trying to be a brat. It was, like, painful. It was truly painful
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for him to have to wear feminine clothing and for us constantly telling him that you're a girl.
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And unlike some trans kids, when Ryland came out at age 5 a few years later, he had the full support
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of his parents. Initially, there was some pushback from us and tried to understand this.
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We were confused like most people are. We thought that gender and sexuality were the same thing.
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It took us a while to figure out that those two things are different.
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All right. So this is someone, this is a family who is no stranger to the spotlight. This mom wrote
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a book when Ryland was 6 years old about her child, quote, coming out at the age of 5. Notice what
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they said there. Notice that they said that Ryland, that they knew before Ryland could speak that she
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was actually a boy because of her discomfort in girly clothes. Now, let's think about this.
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You as an individual, or if you've been around children, if you are a parent yourself,
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think about what you know about the broad spectrum of behaviors of children. I think about myself.
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When I was a child, I had two older brothers, and I was just kind of independent, strong-willed,
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as you can imagine. Maybe that's why I didn't like wearing the things that my mom wanted me to wear.
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But I went through a stage when I was young of not wanting to wear bows. I never wanted to wear
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dresses. It actually did make me uncomfortable. It, like, embarrassed me. I thought that I was
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cooler, or I don't know, that I was making my own decisions or whatever. I mean, I'm talking about
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probably, like, four to five years old. I was in preschool, and all I wanted to wear were these,
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like, raggedy white t-shirts and my jeans. And I also went through a stage in second grade of,
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like, thinking snakes were cool, wanting to, like, check out snake books in the library. I just wasn't
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a frilly kind of person. I'm still actually not really a frilly kind of person. I don't like,
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you know, a bunch of, like, ruffles and a lot of things that, you know, girls really like. However,
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I am completely comfortable and totally confident and very happy being a woman. I was really happy
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as a young girl being a girl. I just didn't like a lot of the things that young girls did. I wouldn't
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even call myself a tomboy, though, because I wouldn't, I didn't like sports or anything like
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that. I just, there were just some girly things that I didn't really like. And I just, thank God,
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thank, literally, thank you, Lord, that I was not raised in a time when a preschool teacher or maybe
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a friend of my family or someone that we know suggested to my parents, you know, maybe your child
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is confused. Maybe your child is actually supposed to be the opposite gender. Maybe you should try to raise
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your child as a boy because, of course, my parents would never have gone along with that, whether
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they were raising me now or 30 years ago. But still, to have that pressure, to even have those
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conversations, to have the emotional manipulation that now is thrown at parents, that if you don't
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want your child to commit suicide, if you want your child to be happy, if you want your child to be
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satisfied at all, then you need to transition your child. At five years old? At five years old?
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I just wonder if these parents ever lay in bed at night and just wonder, what if I had just let
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her grow up? What if I had just let her grow up? What if I had tried to help her be okay with her
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body? Like, what if I had tried to teach her that, hey, your body is good. God gave you your body. It's
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okay that you don't like to wear girly stuff. It's okay that you don't like bows. It's okay that you
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don't like dresses and that you like sports. That's okay. Like, we'll celebrate that. It's cool.
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It's cool to be a girl that likes sports. It's cool to be a girl that wears jeans. That's totally
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fine. But look, God made you a girl, and that is awesome. You like dirt bikes. You like baseball,
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whatever it is. That's great. We will make sure that you can do those hobbies, and we will celebrate
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you as a girl who likes those things. I just do wonder. And in general, I mean, I think that parents
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make the best decisions for their kids. I certainly think that parents want to do the best things for
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their kids. But to know that this mom has been out there writing books about this. There is a CNN
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documentary about this child's life for years now. Now this kid is 14 years old, and that they have
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been bragging about transitioning their child at five years. I mean, that just breaks my heart,
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because the fact of the matter is, is that this child is a girl. Like, she is a girl. And right now,
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maybe there's not a whole lot of difference. Like, she can pass as a prepubescent boy. But we know from
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the stories that we have heard from detransitioners, like, that there are a lot of consequences to not
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just social transition, but especially medical transition. And it just, the story itself breaks
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my heart. But then let us talk about, let us talk about Fox News sharing this, and what this means.
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Because I was pretty stunned by this. And when I said I was stunned by it, because I originally
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tweeted about it, and I said, I'm stunned that Fox News ran a segment celebrating a girl whose parents
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transitioned her into a boy when she was five, because she apparently told them she was a boy
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before she could talk. Absolutely maddening and heartbreaking. And some people said, well,
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how could you be surprised by this? Why are you surprised Fox News has been liberal for a while?
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And that's true. Fox News has been liberal for a while. And I was not under any kind of,
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I wasn't deluded into thinking that Fox News was like this bastion of social conservatism.
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They have segments, I think, every week, if not almost every day on a variety of shows on Fox News
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about Pride Month, celebrating Pride Month. Same thing on Fox and Friends. And this has been happening
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for a few years now. I have no doubt that the culture at Fox News is probably liberal. Now,
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I think that there are probably a lot of, you know, true social or some true social conservatives
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there. Not every show aligns with this. I would say that you'll never see Tucker Carlson doing
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something like this, doing a segment like this for sure. But I was still stunned, even knowing what I
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know, knowing that there were a lot of socially liberal, there are a lot of socially liberal people
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at Fox News. And while I'm not surprised when they celebrate gay pride, whatever, even though I
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disagree with that, to celebrate the gender transition of a child, to talk about a child
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being the opposite gender when they are a baby, before they could talk, to talk about transitioning
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a child at the age of five years old, and not even covering this. Nothing in this segment talked
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about the other side of it. That, hey, this is a very contentious debate. There are people who
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disagree with the transition of young people, because the statistics actually show that young
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people who experience this kind of gender confusion typically grow out of it after puberty. About 85%
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grow out of any kind of feelings of gender dysphoria that they feel. Like there was no talk about
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the consequences, the physical consequences, the psychological consequences that can occur in young
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people who are transitioned. This wasn't like a both sides of the debate thing here. This was
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unabashed, complete and total celebration of transitioning and mutilating a child's body
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by Fox News. I just, I was surprised that they went this far. And they actually doubled down on it. And
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this is, I mean, so this is America's newsroom. And it's Dana Perino. I don't think you saw her. It's
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Dana Perino reporting. Now, I don't know that Dana Perino actually agrees with all this. I didn't
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see her double down on it. She read the teleprompter. I'm sure she did not write the script herself.
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Actually, I'm almost completely positive she didn't. She probably feels like she's doing her job. I don't
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know where she stands on this. I'm not assuming one way or another. Obviously, if this were me,
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not that I would ever like have a job where I'm supposed to be like an unbiased reporter,
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because that's not what I do. I am a commentator. But there's no way that anyone, if Blaze TV,
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which they never would, but if they ever came to me and said, hey, you have to use quote unquote
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preferred pronouns, or you have to read this segment, I wouldn't do it. I would quit. I would
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quit before I would do something like that. So I thought that was interesting. Again, I don't know
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where she stands on it. I generally, I mean, I like Dana Perino. I was disappointed, obviously,
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by the participation in this segment. I'm sure that she would have something to say about that.
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I mean, she is a very like reasonable person. She gets a lot of good analysis and she's really
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good at her job. It was a little jarring to see her report on this. So, but other members of Fox News
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double down on this. So Brian Yanis is the, he was the correspondent who reported on this family.
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He tweeted, as part of our America Together LGBTQ plus Pride Month series at Fox News,
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we highlighted the story of Ryland Whittington, a trans California teen and his, he says his,
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family to openly, who openly spoke about their journey. I would rather have a living son than a dead
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daughter. And the story was produced, he said, by Melissa Christ. So as I said on Twitter,
00:24:41.100
the Fox is in the hen house. It is. I mean, when this is, I think it was Rush Limbaugh who used to
00:24:48.300
say that if an institution, if an institution is not actively conservative, it will eventually become
00:24:54.300
liberal. There are so many liberals within Fox News who don't see any issue with this whatsoever
00:25:00.160
that it is eventually, if they keep on hiring people like this, it will eventually be completely
00:25:07.360
almost, save maybe one or two shows, like a left wing, a left wing network that says some conservative
00:25:16.960
things sometimes. And that's a shame. I think Fox News is important to conservatism, even if it's not
00:25:24.300
as conservative as I would like them to be. I don't think social conservatism is nearly represented
00:25:29.480
enough on Fox News. But it's still important to combat the complete and total propaganda that we
00:25:38.880
see from left wing networks when it comes to a variety of subjects. And so this makes me sad.
00:25:45.080
This is not, I'm, this is not coming from someone who wants to see Fox News fail. Like I don't,
00:25:50.020
I don't want them to fail. I don't want them to, you know, be taken off air like a lot of people
00:25:54.860
on the left say, because I do think there is an important place for Fox News in the conservative
00:26:00.200
media landscape. But if it goes down this path, if it destroys itself from within, because it is
00:26:07.380
latching on to the most toxic and radical parts of progressivism, which is gender ideology inflicted
00:26:14.380
on children, then I will not be sad. I will not be sad if it combusts. I will not be sad if it goes
00:26:19.720
way. It deserves everything that it's going to get. And look, this is the same thing that I say
00:26:24.300
to Republicans who believe that they, if they give an inch to the left on guns or abortion or whatever,
00:26:29.540
then maybe they'll be liked by the left or they'll be insulated from the harshest form of criticism.
00:26:34.780
It's not going to happen. Progressives, progressivism is totalitarian in nature. It wants to conquer
00:26:41.480
every square inch of everything and everyone. I mean, the left is not going to stop criticizing Fox News,
00:26:48.800
hating Fox News and trying to get Fox News taken off air. This is not going to insulate them from
00:26:53.780
cancellation. This is just going to make sure that they are hated by everyone. So I simply think that
00:26:58.940
this is this was not just an undiscerning move, but also a dangerous move, because this ideology is
00:27:06.220
claiming lives. It's claiming bodies. It's claiming people's minds. And it is victimizing not just young
00:27:12.320
people, but also women. When you affirm this kind of thing, when you affirm this idea that a man can
00:27:18.200
become a woman or worse yet, that a girl can become a boy or vice versa as a child, then you
00:27:24.900
are you are allowing you are enabling the disastrous policy that we are seeing in the form of men being
00:27:33.540
able to compete against women, men being able to go into women's locker rooms and bathrooms, men being
00:27:40.200
able to go into women's prisons and domestic shelters and abuse and re-victimize them. I mean,
00:27:45.560
that's something that we are seeing happen across the country. And when you affirm that,
00:27:50.000
when you believe, when you affirm this idea that you can switch genders, that is what you are
00:27:54.640
enabling. That is what you are allowing to happen. So it's dangerous in that way, but it's also
00:27:59.120
dangerous individually when you are encouraging young children to try to mutilate their bodies or
00:28:05.300
change their bodies or deny the gender identity, which is male and female based on your, based on
00:28:12.160
your biology that God gave them. And we're going to look at a study.
00:28:18.300
And I just want to note before we get into this heritage study that I read this morning,
00:28:23.460
that in this particular segment on Fox News, they also feature. So this kid, Ryland, I guess,
00:28:30.440
has been, you know, put forward in press conferences, which again, I just find to be very suspect that
00:28:36.960
he has been placed into the spotlight by his parents. So I screenshot this and we can, we can put it up
00:28:44.820
on YouTube. And I tweeted it featured is California State Senator Scott Wiener. That's his name. He is,
00:28:53.560
like I said, a state senator from California. He's standing behind Ryland who is standing at a podium,
00:28:58.560
I guess, at a press conference. Now, this is the same state senator we've talked about him before,
00:29:04.280
who recently tweeted that California should require drag queen 101 for kindergartners through
00:29:10.420
12th graders. He also wrote a bill a few years ago that prevented pedophiles, still does, it's into law,
00:29:17.840
prevents pedophiles from registering as sex offenders if their victim was 10 or fewer years younger than
00:29:24.820
them. So think about that. If an 18 year old assaulted an eight year old, then that 18 year
00:29:31.560
old wouldn't have to register as a sex offender because they were only 10 years apart. That was
00:29:36.620
a bill that was authored by State Senator Scott Wiener, who is highlighted in this montage put
00:29:43.020
together by Fox News. He also wrote the bill lessening the penalty for knowingly exposing someone
00:29:50.320
to HIV. So this guy is a real creep. And I would call him some other things, but I will hold my
00:29:57.060
tongue. So again, this guy is featured by Fox News in this montage. And also, if you look at other
00:30:03.100
advertisements and montages that Fox News puts up, they openly display the transgender flag.
00:30:11.740
Fox News. Fox News is not just pushing, oh, acceptance, tolerance of gay and lesbian people
00:30:16.980
getting married and visiting each other in hospitals, what this whole thing started as.
00:30:21.300
I mean, they are pushing transgenderism and not just for adults to transition. We are talking about
00:30:26.720
young kids not being able to go through puberty because they're put on puberty blockers because
00:30:32.440
their parents are transitioning them because they say that their child was confused before their child
00:30:37.100
could even speak. And you know that transitioning or preventing the natural puberty process in a young
00:30:46.800
person, you understand that that doesn't just inhibit the person's body from growing. It actually hurts
00:30:53.320
their brain. It actually hurts their mental development. In a way, it stunts them in all
00:30:58.960
forms of growth and traps them in this kind of adolescent, not just adolescent body, but also
00:31:04.100
adolescent mentality because your brain actually needs puberty too. This is part of when we mature.
00:31:09.960
This is a leap in maturation and in growth from thinking like a child to thinking closer to an
00:31:19.040
adult, even though your frontal lobe doesn't fully develop until 25. And I just, I've heard this said
00:31:24.160
before and it's, I think it's a worthy question for us to consider. What kind of people benefit from
00:31:34.380
children staying in a childlike body and a childlike mentality for much longer than they
00:31:43.580
are meant to? Like who benefits from prolonged adolescence, both physically and mentally? It's
00:31:50.100
really, really disturbing. I mean, we've also talked about, we don't have time to get into it all today
00:31:54.660
so we can link some past episodes. Just look into the history of transgenderism. Look into the roots of
00:32:00.720
this. Look into the roots of gender ideology from Dr. John Money, from Dr. Alfred Kinsey. Look into the
00:32:08.800
person, Monica Helms is the name that this person goes by, who created the transgender flag. Look at the
00:32:18.240
history of gender ideology and all of the other ideologies that it is intertwined with and you will
00:32:26.040
realize this is a dark, dark belief system. This is a dark ideology with a dark demonic history.
00:32:33.960
Fox News is promoting it. Let us get into a little bit of the, of the report that I told you about,
00:32:42.420
about the Heritage Foundation and what they found. Because the, one of the things that the mom said
00:32:49.880
that Brian Yanis from Fox News reported on, she said that she would rather, the mom said she would
00:32:57.600
rather have a living son than a dead daughter. And that's something that you hear a lot, that parents
00:33:04.360
say, that activists say. And what that means is that affirmation of this child's apparent gender
00:33:14.320
identity, which contradicts with the child's sex, is the only way to prevent that child from committing
00:33:20.320
suicide. That the reason why kids who identify as transgender commit suicide is because they are not
00:33:28.000
accepted by their family. That's a manipulation tactic. That's moral extortion. That is emotional,
00:33:36.960
emotional, emotional extortion, emotional manipulation. And it is inaccurate. It's also just
00:33:47.220
not true. It is not factually true. So the Heritage Report did this big study, and I'm going to link it
00:33:52.620
in the description of this episode, because I want you to read it yourself. We don't have time
00:33:57.500
to read it all, all of their findings on air. But let me just read you the results. You can read the
00:34:03.940
methodology. You can read their criticism of previous studies, why previous studies that seem
00:34:10.300
to show that kids benefit from being accepted and transitioning are actually faulty. They're based
00:34:18.580
on really bad data. So the Heritage Foundation breaks all of that down. But let me just read you
00:34:22.740
the results of their very thorough study. Quote, in the past several years, the suicide rate among those
00:34:28.860
ages 12 to 23 has become significantly higher in states that have a provision that allows
00:34:34.820
minors to receive routine health care without parental consent than in states without such
00:34:39.940
a provision. Before 2010, these two groups of states did not differ in their youth suicide rates.
00:34:44.980
Starting in 2010, when puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones became widely available,
00:34:49.920
elevated suicide rates in states where minors can more easily access those medical interventions
00:34:54.700
became observable. Rather than being protective against suicide, this pattern indicates that easier
00:35:00.500
access by minors to cross-sex medical interventions without parental consent is associated with higher
00:35:05.700
risk of suicide. Without making any adjustments, suicide rates among those ages 12 to 23 begin to spike
00:35:12.380
in states that have provisions that allow minors to access health care without parental consent
00:35:17.660
relative to states that have no such provision around 2016 after cross-sex medical interventions
00:35:23.460
became more common. By 2020, there are about 3.5 more suicides per 100,000 people ages 12 to 23 in
00:35:30.560
states with easier access than in states without an access provision. There is no similar spike in
00:35:35.380
suicide rates among those ages 28 to 39 at that time. So there's more. I would read it carefully and I
00:35:48.460
would keep this in your back pocket when you're having these discussions. Another thing that I would say
00:35:55.060
to the idea that you have to affirm someone's newfound identity in order to prevent them from committing
00:36:02.800
suicide is that we really don't have great data at all. We don't have any kind of good data collection
00:36:10.720
system that tells us why someone committed suicide. Most people don't have their so-called gender
00:36:19.020
identity or sexual orientation noted by any kind of official system when they commit suicide. And so
00:36:27.240
it's really a guess by the family and by the friends why a particular teenager or young person commits suicide.
00:36:36.020
We really, we don't have any numbers that tell us, oh, look at this group. They are committing suicide
00:36:42.560
because they are not accepted by their friends and family. Again, that's something that is thrown out
00:36:47.760
as a form of manipulation. It is not something that's actually proven. And so don't be manipulated by
00:36:55.000
that. Don't be extorted by that. Don't be told that you lack empathy or that you lack love because you
00:37:01.440
believe that a child, that a person should accept the body that God gave them. That is the most loving
00:37:06.260
thing you can do. Of course, as Christians, we believe the most loving thing that we can do is
00:37:10.920
agree with God. God is love, 1 John 4, 8. That same God in Genesis 127 tells us that he made us male and
00:37:17.680
female. So by agreeing with God, by affirming what God says is, by affirming what God says is good,
00:37:24.080
we are being as loving as we possibly can. And there was a thread that I think really emphasizes
00:37:31.300
this by a person named Jaden. Jaden is 22 years old. He is a former puberty blocked individual who
00:37:37.420
socially, hormonally, and surgically transitioned as a teenager. And he put up a thread talking about
00:37:45.380
his experience and also what he thought about Matt Walsh's What is a Woman? And his story is really
00:37:50.860
compelling and really sad and a good reminder for us of why we push back against this. And again,
00:37:55.800
why is it why it is so egregious to Fox News to try to glorify something like this?
00:38:03.040
All right. So let me read you some of this thread. He says, the interview that particularly caught my
00:38:08.960
attention in Matt Walsh's documentary was when was when Matt Walsh interviewed Dr. Michelle
00:38:13.860
Forcier, a physician who routinely treats trans youth. Forcier is a big proponent of affirmative
00:38:21.520
health care and pubertal blockers. It's no secret trans care is handled anecdotally. Forcier admits
00:38:29.540
that in the interview, but it's unnerving to hear a medical professional talk about something so
00:38:33.860
intimate and serious as transitioning in an inconsistent, nonchalant manner. And what this
00:38:38.760
person means by this, if you haven't seen the documentary, I encourage you to do so.
00:38:42.580
She basically just says, yeah, kids can go on puberty blockers when he or she feels that he
00:38:49.700
or she wants to. And actually, she probably doesn't say he or she. She probably says when they want to.
00:38:55.460
So really, it's based on the feelings of a child who, again, doesn't even have anything close to a
00:39:00.100
developed brain. And as Matt points out in the documentary, kids think that there are a lot of
00:39:05.260
things when they're young. And in fact, they are not. And it is the responsibility, the role of adults to
00:39:11.220
guide them towards reality, not allow them to ruin themselves and to hurt themselves based on a
00:39:16.860
delusion. She's this person says, what I took issue with was the fact that she claims purity
00:39:23.260
blockers are completely reversible and don't have permitted effects. This is an ever increasingly
00:39:27.300
common narrative. And it's a fallacy with medical data lawsuits and personal reported experiences
00:39:31.880
directly contradicting it. And then he links some of those studies. And that's absolutely true.
00:39:38.160
We know for a fact that puberty blockers do have irreversible effects on young people. And we
00:39:47.100
actually quoted an expert, a very pro-gender switching surgeon who said that young men who
00:39:59.020
take puberty blockers and then receive these cross-sex hormones, that they are never able to achieve
00:40:05.260
orgasm. They can't even really have any kind of sexual stimulation because of the medication that
00:40:11.220
they went through as a young person or that they took as a young person in order to try and fail to
00:40:16.980
change their gender. Jaden says, at age 16, I was prescribed a spironolactone, a common testosterone
00:40:27.020
blocker for nearly a year. I'd struggle as I'd continue to take the medication, but have consistently high
00:40:33.360
T levels. An OBGYN swapped my testosterone blockers for a GNRH agonist implant known as
00:40:42.200
histrelin. In the coming years, I've experienced physical, mental, and sexual changes I could never
00:40:47.080
imagine. Jaden developed and still struggles with muscular atrophy, metabolic issues, bone density
00:40:53.500
concerns after having his testosterone permanently blocked by this GNRH. The lack of physical development
00:40:59.820
and sexual maturation I experienced during puberty is irreversible. Even when taking testosterone
00:41:05.560
replacement therapy, the fertility issues and eventual decimation of my fertility altogether will
00:41:11.160
never be rebounded. So we're talking permanent sterilization here. That is the consequence of
00:41:18.400
messing with a child's natural puberty process. Like we don't ever stop to ask, oh, maybe a person goes
00:41:26.720
through puberty for a reason? Like maybe there are some consequences to stopping any kind of natural
00:41:31.440
process. By the way, that's the entirety of the sexual revolution. The entirety of the sexual
00:41:36.380
revolution is never stopping to ask, maybe there is a reason why the natural process works the way it
00:41:43.660
does. Like maybe there is a reason the natural family always looked like mom, dad, child. Maybe there
00:41:49.440
is a reason reproduction requires a sperm and an egg. Like maybe there's not just a physical reason for
00:41:55.640
that, a scientific reason for that. Maybe there's also a psychological and social reason for that.
00:42:00.420
Like maybe we shouldn't be messing with the thing that has worked for all of human history for
00:42:06.400
millennia. But in the world of progressivism, social whims, whatever adults want, always trump
00:42:13.420
science. They trump facts. They trump God. They trump morality. And the problem is, is that human nature,
00:42:21.400
biology is like a beach ball. We can keep trying to push it down with hormone blockers. We can try to
00:42:26.720
change the language. We can try to use propaganda, like trans women are women, to try to push this
00:42:32.940
beach ball down. It's going to keep popping back up. It's going to pop up in, by man, it's going to,
00:42:40.180
that popping up is going to manifest itself in the damaged bodies and minds and lives of young people.
00:42:47.040
Jaden also says after starting estrogen injections, he started dealing with vascular issues and what is
00:42:52.260
likely nerve damage in his legs. He noticed a loss of libido in the first weeks of taking blockers and
00:42:57.600
started to feel as if he wasn't equipped to handle his emotions. He had brain fog, memory issues,
00:43:01.880
trouble concentrating and depression and dropped out of school. This is the reason, by the way,
00:43:07.660
so many so-called trans kids commit suicide. It is not because of a lack of acceptance. It's not because
00:43:14.020
of a lack of tolerance. It is because you're not supposed to mess with your hormones like that.
00:43:20.560
You're not supposed to mess with your puberty process. You're not supposed to mess with your
00:43:24.240
body in this way. This is a form of mutilation that, of course, is going to lead to depression
00:43:28.200
for so many reasons. Just the confusion and if it's true dysphoria, the dysphoria itself can lead
00:43:34.300
to depression, but also the jacking with your body and the natural processes that your body is supposed
00:43:40.460
to go through. I mean, that is also going to lead to depression and anxiety and suicide.
00:43:46.840
So the loving position, the right position, the truthful position is to be against this stuff.
00:43:53.640
Fox News is so far gone if they are going to embrace things like this. Look, I'm thankful for
00:43:59.680
the platform that Fox News has given me. Again, I think it has an important place in conservative
00:44:04.600
media, but it's a good reminder that you can't look to any corporation, any institution to be your
00:44:13.080
moral exemplar and to stand for truth. And I will go a step further is that it's not just that if an
00:44:21.000
entity isn't actively conservative, they will become liberal. I would argue if an entity isn't
00:44:27.160
actively Christian, it will eventually become liberal because culture and politics are both
00:44:34.040
downstream from theology. Whether you believe in God or not, if you don't believe in God, that is
00:44:39.600
still a form of theology. Your theology is that you don't believe in a God. That's going to inform
00:44:44.260
what you think about politics and culture. If you do believe in God, if you believe in the first verse
00:44:49.500
or the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, that God created the heavens and the earth,
00:44:55.760
then that is also going to inform what you think about culture and politics. So I would argue
00:45:01.260
if an entity does not have a firm foundation in God, does not have a firm foundation in Genesis,
00:45:09.600
a firm foundation in the word of God, then it will eventually give way to social pressure and social
00:45:18.120
whims because why not? That is why while I am happy to link arms with like unwoke liberals who are at least
00:45:25.900
for free speech and for diversity of thought and are not insane about the gender thing, they're a little
00:45:33.760
bit more nuanced. At the end of the day, I do not believe that being unwoke is good enough. I don't
00:45:42.140
believe that you can build a simply unwoke world. You have to replace it with something else and
00:45:48.580
whatever you replace it with has to have a firm foundation. Being unwoke or just being like
00:45:54.940
unconditionally tolerant we've already seen is not a firm foundation. That's why we are where we are
00:46:00.540
actually. So I'm not talking about a theocracy. I'm not talking about forcing people to be Christians
00:46:06.140
or having like a state-sanctioned religion. I am for us deciding, okay, like what do we want to build
00:46:13.060
on? Like where are we getting our definition of truth? Where are we getting our definition of
00:46:17.320
justice? I say, as all of Western civilization has said until relatively recently, that the Bible
00:46:25.600
is a great place to get that foundation. And in fact, the only place to get that foundation,
00:46:30.920
it is godlessness and scripturelessness that has brought us to where we are today. That's what it all
00:46:40.700
fully comes down to. We can have scientific and moral and philosophical, political, cultural
00:46:45.060
conversations, absolutely. But at the end of the day, it comes down to who you think made us.
00:46:51.340
Who's in charge? Why are we here? What are human beings? The more we deny the foundational concept,
00:46:59.920
which has been foundational not just to Christianity, but also to Western civilization,
00:47:04.280
that human beings are made in the image of God, that we are not self-creating, that we are not
00:47:07.780
self-declaring, that we are not self-identifying, but that we were created by God who tells us who we
00:47:13.100
are and what we are for, and even what our rights are, the more we will spiral, not just into moral
00:47:19.360
anarchy and confusion and chaos, but also into tyranny. We will always look for someone to lead us.
00:47:26.340
We will always look for someone to tell us what to do, to give us some guidance. And if it's not God,
00:47:34.660
it's going to be yourself, it's going to be the government. And we've seen where that leads. The
00:47:40.080
20th century tells us exactly where that goes. All right, we've got a lot of good episodes coming
00:47:47.260
up this week. Tomorrow, we will be talking to Senator Marco Rubio. If you've got questions for
00:47:52.860
him about any legislation or any particular issue or policy, then please shoot me a message on
00:47:59.260
Instagram. I will try to ask him some of the questions that you guys suggest. We've got other
00:48:05.380
good interviews coming your way this week. And once again, a reminder that I will be on,
00:48:12.540
I will be out next week. We're just taking another summer break, but I think we will have two new
00:48:16.700
episodes for you that we will pre-record that will come out. I'll probably do some kind of like
00:48:21.160
emergency something if Roe v. Wade or if the Dobbs decision is published next week, but I'm hoping and
00:48:28.520
praying that it happens the next week. So I'll be able to give you a proper and formal episode
00:48:34.300
on that. Also, another thing to pray for, the Southern Baptist Convention is meeting this week
00:48:39.820
in Anaheim, California. Go listen to last week's episode about the Southern Baptist Convention and
00:48:45.740
why this conference matters, why picking the SBC. President actually matters. It matters not just to
00:48:51.500
the country, but also to the world, because as Pastor Tom Askell pointed out last week,
00:48:55.540
the SBC is exporting its Christianity and its theology to the world through world missions.
00:49:03.380
And so, and it's also the largest denomination in the country. So whether you are a Southern
00:49:07.240
Baptist or not, it is very consequential which direction the denomination goes. So we talked
00:49:13.080
about that. We talked about the sexual abuse report last week. Go listen to that and also just
00:49:17.800
pray that wisdom and that God's grace would prevail in Anaheim, California.
00:49:23.780
Um, this week. All right. I think that's all I've got. As always, if you love this podcast,
00:49:32.300
please leave us a five-star review wherever you listen. Also, we've got great merch for you at the
00:49:39.040
merch store. We've got all different kinds of t-shirts and we've got stickers and we've got more
00:49:45.780
stuff coming out for you that I'm super excited about. Thank you guys for your enthusiasm and buying
00:49:51.220
our fun merch. All right. I will see you guys back here tomorrow.