Ep 648 | DEBUNKED: “Republicans Voted Against Birth Control”
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
171.59297
Summary
In this episode, Allie talks about the recent contraception bill that passed the House of Representatives, why so many Republicans voted against it, and why people should be afraid of eating bugs. Allie also talks about her struggles with sugar and how she's trying to get back on track with her diet.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Today we are talking about this contraception
00:00:06.540
bill, what the truth is about that, why so many Republicans voted against it.
00:00:11.020
We're also talking about the myths and the facts of monkeypox. Should people really be afraid of
00:00:18.280
it? And then we're also going to talk about this phenomenon that has been pushed on us
00:00:23.240
by the powers that be of eating bugs. Are we going to all be eating insects soon?
00:00:31.500
What does all of this have to do with our worldview as Christians? How does this speak to the view of
00:00:39.980
human beings and human nature of the people in charge? We are going to get into all of it. Of
00:00:45.480
course, as always, this episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to
00:00:50.640
GoodRanchers.com slash Allie for American Meat Deliver. That's GoodRanchers.com slash Allie.
00:01:05.280
All right, guys, let me know what you thought about that new kind of introduction of telling
00:01:09.980
you exactly what we're going to be talking about before we do the little intro music and get into
00:01:15.840
the rest of the episode. Give me your feedback. Send me an Instagram message. You can drop a
00:01:21.280
comment on YouTube. I look at those. I thought that would be kind of a better setup and give you an
00:01:25.800
idea, a better and a clearer and a faster idea of exactly what we will be talking about before I kind
00:01:32.340
of give my preamble that I usually do of saying something like, I hope you had a wonderful and
00:01:36.940
relaxing weekend. I hope you were able to stay cool. If you follow my baking endeavors, which is
00:01:41.840
something I started, I think, July 4th weekend, I'm now like baking something every Saturday or so,
00:01:49.460
I made a mixed berry pie. And actually, I felt pretty resourceful because I needed to get rid of
00:01:56.560
a bunch of fruit that was about to go bad in our refrigerator. Also, I had frozen pie crust left over
00:02:03.420
from, I don't know, maybe Thanksgiving. And so I used all ingredients that I already had. I didn't even
00:02:08.740
have to go to the store. And it was really good, if I do say so myself. Now, I am not that great of a
00:02:14.960
baker. I'm not like a baker that can make things pretty, at least not yet. I'm hoping that I will
00:02:19.840
get there. But it did taste good. I tried to do the latticing, you know, on the pie. And I was like,
00:02:25.620
this is for the birds. As soon as I started it, I was like, why would anyone, why would anyone do this?
00:02:31.000
Maybe this is something that is like you're good at. And maybe it is like soothing for you to do
00:02:36.800
something that was kind of mindless. It wasn't mindless for me. It actually took a lot of
00:02:40.140
concentration. I was bad at it. And it didn't look good. So I didn't have like a pretty baking
00:02:44.780
picture that I usually try to post. I'll post the recipe for that maybe on Instagram because some of
00:02:52.740
you were asking about it. I don't think that I'm going to be able to match the first baking endeavor
00:02:58.780
that I did of the summer, which was the peaches and cream. And now that recipe, I don't know if I
00:03:04.140
can post because it's my grandmother's recipe. I don't know if I can call it a secret recipe.
00:03:08.700
But I just don't know if I feel comfortable like giving it to the world. You know what I'm saying?
00:03:12.540
And so let me know what you think that I should bake this coming weekend and post of that. Although
00:03:19.440
I will say that today I am trying to eat less sugar starting today. And I am addicted to sugar. I
00:03:26.500
realized this about myself. It's really hard for me to cut back on it. I love sugar. I love sweets. I love
00:03:32.840
carbs. I love all different forms of sugar. And so I'm trying to cut back. So maybe if you can
00:03:37.940
recommend, I don't know about a sugar-free dessert. That doesn't sound good. But maybe
00:03:41.360
something that's a little bit healthier for me to bake this weekend. I would love your
00:03:45.400
recommendation on that. All right. Now let's get into the first topic. And that is this contraception
00:03:50.940
bill. You've probably seen a lot of propaganda on social media, in particular Instagram. I always say
00:03:57.240
that white woman Instagram is one of the worst places in the world. It's filled with so much
00:04:01.880
misinformation because we have these influencers and authors and self-empowerment, self-love,
00:04:09.480
new age gurus that also double as political commentators who are constantly posting these
00:04:17.980
infographics telling you about a certain piece of legislation or a certain news story. And it's
00:04:24.980
always wrong. It's always wrong. It always leaves out the correct information, the correct perspective,
00:04:31.060
or the other side of the story. I'm talking about Glennon Doyle. I'm talking about Jen Hatmaker.
00:04:35.600
I'm talking about even though I wouldn't necessarily put this person in that category,
00:04:40.560
but Chelsea Handler. Chelsea Handler is one of the biggest purveyors of political misinformation
00:04:45.820
that exists. She put out this video over the weekend saying, how could you ever vote for
00:04:51.600
Republicans? They just voted against access to contraception. They voted against codifying
00:04:56.200
interracial marriage. We talked about that whole myth last week. So go back and listen to that
00:05:00.900
episode. I think it was Thursdays. We can link it in the description of this episode. But she is
00:05:06.620
pushing this idea that Republicans, they not only want to ban abortion, but they also want to ban birth
00:05:14.120
control in contraception. And obviously, that's just not true. And we'll get into why in just one second.
00:05:31.760
All right, this contraception bill, which is called the Right to Contraception Act, is already passed
00:05:37.300
the House of Representatives, which of course, the Democrats have the majority there. So that's not so much
00:05:42.380
of a surprise. It faces an uncertain fate in the Senate. It probably won't pass in the Senate.
00:05:47.240
And I will tell you why. So here is what the bill, H.R. 8373, says that it does to protect a person's
00:05:55.020
ability to access contraceptives and to engage in contraception and to protect a healthcare provider's
00:06:00.580
ability to provide contraceptives, contraception and information related to contraception. Maybe that
00:06:07.340
sounds pretty innocuous. But the first question that you should ask yourself is, is this actually
00:06:12.500
necessary? Are people being blocked from accessing contraception? I actually saw it was Representative
00:06:19.480
Nancy Mace from South Carolina. She said that her state is about to pass a bill or is looking at a
00:06:26.920
bill right now that is restricting contraception in her state. And so I looked up the details of this
00:06:33.520
because I wanted to see what the bill was, what it said. And unfortunately, I couldn't find any
00:06:37.500
information on it. What I found is that in the state of South Carolina, they just a few weeks ago
00:06:42.380
made it easier for people to get birth control that actually you don't even need a doctor's
00:06:47.620
prescription in South Carolina now in order to get birth control. So I'm not really sure what
00:06:53.360
Representative Nancy Mace is talking about. She is also one of the one of the only Republicans,
00:06:59.820
one of eight Republicans in the House of Representatives to vote for this so-called
00:07:04.740
right to contraception act, which was authored by the Democrats. Why is that a problem? Why did these
00:07:13.220
eight? Why is it a problem that these eight Republicans voted? Yes. Why did the rest of the Republicans
00:07:17.900
vote? No. Well, National Review, John McCormick at National Review does a really good job of breaking
00:07:23.500
this down. So let me read a little bit of what he says in this article, which is titled Democrats
00:07:30.360
Contraception Bill Overrides Religious Freedom Law and Protects Abortion. Surprise, surprise. So it's not
00:07:36.760
really about just accessing contraception, which people are able to do already very easily in every
00:07:43.540
state. It's actually about overriding religious freedom and protecting abortion, which is something,
00:07:49.400
of course, two goals that Democrats are very fiercely intent on on pursuing. So he says this
00:07:57.740
Dems are rushing toward a vote. Democrats are rushing toward a vote on a bill this week that would
00:08:02.560
establish a nationwide right to receive and distribute any drug that may act as a, quote,
00:08:07.620
contraceptive, superseding the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Religious Freedom Restoration
00:08:12.940
Act is a 1993 law that establishes a balancing test for courts to use when deciding religious liberty
00:08:19.040
cases involving federal laws and regulations. RFRA was overwhelmingly popular when it passed in the
00:08:25.020
House on a voice vote. It was actually sponsored by then Congressman Chuck Schumer, Democrat from New
00:08:30.500
York, and passed the Senate on a 97-3 vote in 1993. But since then, Democrats have turned against
00:08:35.960
the law. So that should also tell you, you hear constantly from the left, oh, Republicans have become
00:08:41.000
so extreme. They've become they've gone further to the right. We're turning into this Christian
00:08:45.280
nationalist hellscape. No, every single data point, every single statistical indication that
00:08:51.360
we have, even anecdotal information that we have shows us that it is Democrats that have moved to
00:08:57.420
the left dramatically over the past 30 years. It is not that Republicans have changed very much.
00:09:03.260
Democrats appear to be taking a page from their 2012 playbook, McCormick writes in National Review,
00:09:08.440
picking a fight over religious liberty in order to portray Republicans as opposing the legal right to
00:09:13.200
contraception. That is why, as we talked about last week, Democrats are pushing bills like this,
00:09:18.160
bills to codify Obergefell, to codify gay marriage and include interracial marriage for
00:09:24.860
some reason in there. It's just wild. And they're pushing this bill, the right to contraception,
00:09:31.420
as if that is something that is that is at risk of that people are at risk of losing. It's because
00:09:38.120
they are trying to portray Republicans as against these things, and they are packing the bills
00:09:43.080
with these poison pills that they know Republicans are going to be against so they can turn around
00:09:48.140
to their uninformed constituents or misinformed constituents, I should say. And they know the
00:09:53.800
media is going to carry water for them in doing this and say, look, Republicans are against
00:09:58.160
contraception. Republicans are against interracial marriage. Republicans are against liberty. They're
00:10:03.460
against all these things. They're trying to take us back to the 1950s when really they know that they
00:10:08.120
are including things in these bills that no conservative would stand for, like the overriding
00:10:12.920
of religious liberty. So here's one part that I think is really disturbing, although not surprising.
00:10:19.600
The Democrats' right to contraception act explicitly condemns state conscience laws that protect
00:10:25.640
health care providers who refuse to offer contraception, a term that the bill says includes
00:10:31.220
sterilization procedures. So what does this mean? If you've got a Catholic hospital, for example,
00:10:37.060
that does not provide birth control and will not perform sterilization procedures because it's
00:10:44.620
against their theology, it's against their sincerely held beliefs, this law tries to override that. It
00:10:50.140
says, no, actually, you have to provide contraception. Actually, you have to perform these sterilization
00:10:55.380
procedures on these patients if that is what they want. It doesn't matter what your religion says.
00:11:01.440
It doesn't matter what your theology is. Even for an individual doctor, an individual doctor is pro-life
00:11:07.480
and it is against their sincerely held beliefs to prescribe certain things or to perform certain
00:11:14.360
procedures. They're not going to stop their patient from being able to receive that in another way,
00:11:18.420
but they personally are not going to be able to act upon that without violating their conscience.
00:11:23.120
This law says too bad. You've got to give birth control, even though birth control pills
00:11:27.860
have an abortifacient property in them in that they're not just necessarily stopping ovulation,
00:11:36.080
but they also have the possibility to kill a fertilized egg. We've talked about this a lot
00:11:40.560
in the past. We can link a past episode on that if you're interested in more information. But this law
00:11:45.800
is saying too bad. You can't have any moral or conscience objections or religious objections to these
00:11:51.580
that is then going to inform the actions that you take as a doctor. Also, a really disturbing part of
00:11:58.920
this is that the bill states that a person with no minimum age listed has a statutory right under this
00:12:05.580
act to obtain contraception and sterilization. And so a minor could go to one of these places,
00:12:13.220
could go to Planned Parenthood and say 13 years old, get birth control, try to find a way to get
00:12:20.220
sterilized and the parents would not have to provide any consent. Marjorie Dannen-Felzer,
00:12:27.800
who is president of Susan B. Anthony List, Pro-Life America, writes this,
00:12:32.660
because the definition of contraceptives in this bill is overbroad, it could mandate access to
00:12:38.560
abortion drugs. H.R. 8373 states that contraceptives include drugs, devices, or biological products
00:12:45.580
intended for contraception, whether specifically intended to prevent pregnancy or for other
00:12:50.140
health needs. This could include non-controversial applications of the drug, but it could also
00:12:54.880
include the use of the drug to induce abortion. What follows is that this bill would then require
00:12:59.400
the right to obtain a chemical abortion, the right to provide a chemical abortion, and would overturn
00:13:03.920
any law that regulates chemical abortion by singling it out. And so this is why Republicans voted against it,
00:13:13.260
because the bill can be used to force any organization or individual, health care provider,
00:13:18.060
including midwives, nurses, pharmacists, to provide contraceptives to whoever wants it, minor
00:13:22.520
or adult, no religious exceptions, tries to undermine the Federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993,
00:13:28.840
tries to undermine state-level Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, no protections or reporting requirements
00:13:34.360
for minors who may be forced to obtain contraception by abusers and or groomers.
00:13:41.720
So that is why Republicans voted against it. I would say that most Republicans believe in allowing
00:13:48.500
access to birth control, although, of course, Justice Thomas did call into question how the right of
00:13:56.940
birth control came into being. That doesn't mean that he's morally against birth control. It doesn't even
00:14:01.060
mean that he is against the legal ability to access birth control. And so Democrats could say, well,
00:14:07.480
because in his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas called into question the the reasoning of Griswold
00:14:16.100
v. Connecticut, then that's why we have to kind of codify this. That's why we have to put this into law.
00:14:22.560
But of course, they included all of these poison pills that they knew that Republicans wouldn't support.
00:14:26.780
And I'm very glad that Republicans didn't support it. And I'm very concerned that there were
00:14:30.640
Republicans who did. I'm very concerned that someone like Nancy Mace, Republican from South
00:14:35.640
Carolina, voted for this bill, knowing that it gets rid of conscience objections, knowing that it could
00:14:41.940
include the so-called right to a chemical abortion. Now, what Republican in her right mind, what true
00:14:48.560
conservative in her right mind would support something like that? That's really disturbing to me.
00:14:53.340
That's what happens when you are purposely trying to seem like you can kind of walk the line or you're
00:14:59.280
moderate or you're so logical and nuanced or whatever it is. You actually end up supporting
00:15:04.160
laws or supporting bills that are not pro-life, that are not conservative. And that would really
00:15:11.920
be detrimental to the very constituents that voted for you, especially the Christians, the Christian
00:15:18.200
doctors who don't want to prescribe, who don't want to perform these procedures. Very troubling,
00:15:36.180
So the last thing that I wanted to say on this contraception bill, I wanted to give a little
00:15:40.040
bit of encouragement to you and just remind you, because I know it can be hard, like the post-Roe
00:15:44.800
propaganda that we're seeing of, well, Republicans want to ban abortion, but they also want to ban
00:15:49.720
birth control. So they're really just trying to force births. The extreme example that you are
00:15:57.180
hearing of some random young girl in Indiana having to not being able to get an abortion or the stories
00:16:06.500
that you're hearing of doctors violating the laws by not caring for their patients who have ectopic
00:16:15.000
pregnancies or miscarriages. It's really hard. We're going to be constantly bombarded
00:16:19.700
with this kind of stuff from now until November. So my encouragement to you, whenever you hear
00:16:24.780
something, a headline, and this goes for the left or the right, but because most of the media is
00:16:31.080
dominated by left-wing ideology, I think it especially applies here. Whenever something sounds
00:16:36.940
too good to be true or too bad to be true when it comes to how conservatives are being characterized,
00:16:44.140
always stop, take a step back, and ask some questions. Ask the basic question, is this really
00:16:50.240
true? And then ask, how do you know? Read through the article. Try to discern the biases that are being
00:16:56.160
put forth. Try to break down the language that is being used. Ask yourself what information is being
00:17:01.840
left out. If you see, for example, a story of a woman who wasn't able to be treated for a miscarriage
00:17:09.800
in Texas because of the Texas law, go read the Texas law. You will see that the Texas law makes
00:17:15.740
an exception if the doctor believes that there is a medical emergency, not even just for the life of
00:17:21.000
the mother, but if the doctor believes that there is a medical emergency, also explicitly excludes care
00:17:26.680
for miscarriage or ectopic pregnancies in the Texas law. And so make sure that you know the facts.
00:17:33.380
Make sure that you are reading these bills and these laws for yourself so you can combat the
00:17:37.740
misinformation. And even if you don't have the information to combat the misinformation,
00:17:42.720
just start by asking some critical questions. That's something that unfortunately does not
00:17:47.360
happen on social media. You're probably seeing a lot of your friends very uncritically share these
00:17:52.820
headlines and share these stories without asking any questions whatsoever, including when it comes to
00:17:57.160
the contraception bill. But God gave you a mind. He gave you a mind to think. He gave you the ability
00:18:02.100
to ask questions. I get a lot of messages saying, can you break this down for me? Can you debunk
00:18:07.700
this? Which I'm happy to do? That is a huge chunk of what we do on Relatable, what I do on my Instagram
00:18:12.860
page. But do not underestimate your God-given ability and capacity to ask these questions and
00:18:20.300
to break things down and to debunk things for yourself. And always remember, Christian, that
00:18:26.980
abortion kills an innocent human being. Abortion kills an image bearer of God. And that is what we must
00:18:35.880
unashamedly push back against. You're going to hear the emotionalism from the other side, how
00:18:40.780
abortion must be a right because of XYZ. But look, abortion intentionally kills a human being. God
00:18:46.780
tells us not to murder. End of story. And we have compassion for the mother, but we also have
00:18:52.020
compassion for the child. And we don't sacrifice the physical life of the child for the needs or the
00:18:56.740
wishes of the mother. If the life of the mother and the life of the child are competing against each
00:19:02.120
other, then we do believe that the doctor should do everything possible to try to save both lives.
00:19:07.440
Unfortunately, sometimes early delivery is necessary to save the life of the mother. But we do not
00:19:12.300
believe in intentionally torturing, dismembering, and poisoning babies inside the womb. That's not a
00:19:19.200
radical position. That's a common sense and logical position. It's a compassionate one. It is also a
00:19:24.680
biblical one. All right, now I want to talk about monkeypox. And at the end, we're going to bring this
00:19:28.780
together because the subjects that we're talking about today, as I mentioned at the beginning,
00:19:33.440
do tie together and I think all speak to the same issue that we should be thinking through as
00:19:38.120
Christians. So monkeypox, we are being told by the WHO that we all need to take very seriously.
00:19:43.360
The general population needs to take very seriously. We saw some stories over the weekend. There's
00:19:48.180
an infant that's been infected. There's been a toddler that's been infected that we've been told over
00:19:52.940
and over again that anyone can get monkeypox, that everyone needs to take it seriously.
00:19:57.160
There was a tweet by Alejandra Caraballo. She says today, this is July 23rd, a couple days ago,
00:20:04.600
the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a health emergency and emphasized the focus on
00:20:09.100
men who have sex with men. Given the climate in the U.S., this will lead to a dark place
00:20:13.020
with rampant homophobia resulting from this. We have learned nothing from HIV AIDS.
00:20:19.520
Devda Padanake says monkeypox spreads from body fluid to body fluid via rashes, but people are
00:20:25.360
focusing on male to male transmission just as they did with HIV AIDS in the early 90s. Homophobia is
00:20:30.600
widespread even among scientists, forget usual suspects, media. How you report reveals your
00:20:37.500
bigotry. So this is a very common sentiment that you are seeing on Twitter. My friend, Bethany Mandel,
00:20:44.800
she tweeted last week, she quote tweeted like a, it was like a picture of people waiting in line to get
00:20:51.220
the monkeypox vaccine. They all had their masks on. And she said, wow, thousands of people are
00:20:56.880
waiting in line for a vaccine that they could for a disease that they could just avoid by not having
00:21:04.300
sex with multiple people. She didn't mention anything about homosexuality. She didn't mention
00:21:10.040
anything about gay men. And she was just absolutely dragged. She was dragged through the mud by people
00:21:14.280
on Twitter. I think I mentioned this briefly last week by people calling her homophobic, people calling
00:21:19.140
her bigot, even people who are conservative saying that she is being like stuck up in her heterosexuality.
00:21:26.220
I mean, it was just it was just wild because what she is saying is actually factually true. This is not
00:21:31.940
a concern in general for the general population. And here's how we here's how we know this. So the New
00:21:37.480
England Journal of Medicine released a study last week saying this monkeypox virus infection in humans
00:21:43.860
across 16 countries from April to June 2022. 98% of infected people were gay or bisexual men. 96% gay men,
00:21:53.040
2% bisexual men. 75% of infected people were white. 41% of infected people had HIV. 32% reported
00:22:02.960
attendance at a sex on site event in the previous month. The median age was 38 median number of sexual
00:22:09.840
partners in the previous three months. Five. Minimum was three. Max 15 in three months. Wow.
00:22:18.920
Transmission suspected to have occurred through sexual activity in 95% of the cases. No deaths were
00:22:25.240
reported. Also, there were no women in this report who had gotten who they saw as being infected with
00:22:36.020
monkeypox. And yet we are being told by Twitter warriors, by journalists, by public health experts
00:22:43.040
with blue checks on Twitter that anyone can get it. Everyone needs to be worried about it. I just
00:22:48.380
heard a story from a friend this morning who the mom of someone that they know at their pediatrician's
00:22:55.440
office went to the pediatrician to ask about a monkeypox vaccine. This is an STD. This should be
00:23:02.660
regarded as an STD. I know some people are saying it's not an STD, but when 95% of cases are to have
00:23:10.320
occurred through sexual activity, that is an STI. Sure. There, I mean, there are technically other
00:23:19.020
ways that you can get other kinds of STIs, things that we know to be STIs, but you can get in some kind
00:23:26.060
of like rare occurrence, rare way through having contact with the person's bodily fluids without having
00:23:31.720
sex. That doesn't make them not STIs. The only reason people are denying this is because they're
00:23:36.880
scared of homophobia. They're scared of stigma. But look, when this is affecting predominantly one
00:23:43.560
community, if you say that you care about that community, if you want to save them the pain that
00:23:50.160
comes with monkeypox, then maybe you should just talk plainly about this. There were these two threads
00:23:55.820
over the weekend. One of them was by this guy who worked for the Open Society, which is George Soros'
00:24:02.060
organization, a Swedish guy who talked about how getting monkeypox was so painful. But he had just
00:24:09.340
attended an orgy and had sex with like 15 guys, and he believes that he got it from there. And then
00:24:16.060
there was this other horrible thread, and I won't even get into the details of it because I didn't know
00:24:19.800
that some of these things existed, and it's really, really, really disturbing. But this guy
00:24:23.560
talks about getting monkeypox, and it was because he had attended two orgies recently. And if you
00:24:30.900
criticize this, if you say, hey, maybe like you shouldn't, maybe monogamy is better, or like maybe
00:24:37.220
you shouldn't engage in this kind of behavior, you're called a homophobe. You're called a bigot.
00:24:41.140
Not that I think anyone should even care about being labeled those names because they've just lost
00:24:46.120
all meaning because the left just launches them totally indiscriminately at anyone that they disagree
00:24:50.540
with. But you're basically saying, if you're saying that, if you're saying that it is bigoted
00:24:57.240
to say, oh, maybe you shouldn't like attend gay orgies when there is a pretty serious disease going,
00:25:03.600
at least when there's a pretty serious disease going around at these orgies. If you're saying
00:25:08.260
that that is homophobic, then you're saying that that kind of lifestyle, that having that many sexual
00:25:13.360
partners and being that promiscuous is so integral to homosexuality, that to criticize that
00:25:19.920
is to criticize homosexuality itself. I mean, that's a really big tell. That's a really big
00:25:25.300
tell. So Benjamin Ryan, he wrote for the Washington Post. He is he's been covering infectious disease
00:25:33.460
and LGBTQ health for two decades. He contributes to the New York Times, NBC News. He wrote for the
00:25:39.620
Washington Post that we are being misled about monkeypox. And he argues that gay men need the
00:25:45.540
unvarnished truth about the threat that monkeypox is and that we should try to lose the shroud of
00:25:53.080
political correctness and the concern about stigma and just talk about what is actually true. So he
00:26:00.480
says this, quote, anyone could get monkeypox. Countless public health experts have uttered statements such
00:26:06.060
as this in the past two months. Members of the media and politicians have parroted the message.
00:26:09.620
This broad strokes maximum maxim that everyone on Earth is susceptible to this viral infection
00:26:15.800
might be factual on its surface technically, but it is so egregiously misleading, he says,
00:26:21.360
that it amounts to misinformation. He says epidemiology is less concerned with whether
00:26:26.220
someone could contract an infection. Instead, much more vital questions focus on which groups of
00:26:31.140
people are most likely to be exposed. He said public health leaders are prioritizing fighting stigma over
00:26:38.540
their duty to directly inform the public about the true contours and drivers of this global outbreak.
00:26:43.900
Why do we trust any of these organizations or institutions anymore? I mean, this is really
00:26:48.500
actually dangerous. Wouldn't it be great to have public health institutions that we can trust,
00:26:54.380
that we know is actually going to tell us the truth? Of course, we learned how untrustworthy
00:26:58.620
they are during COVID, but now we're just seeing it again that they don't actually care about health.
00:27:04.260
This is also how progressivism destroys institutions. An uncomfortable truth, he says,
00:27:11.260
one documented and peer-reviewed papers is that sexual behaviors and networks specific to gay
00:27:15.560
and bisexual men have long made them more likely to acquire various sexually transmitted infections
00:27:21.380
compared with heterosexual people. Huh. This includes not only HIV, but also syphilis, gonorrhea,
00:27:26.820
chlamydia, hepatitis B, and sexually transmitted hepatitis C. Global public health experts agree that
00:27:32.480
skin-to-skin contact in the context of sexual activity between men has been the principal driver
00:27:36.440
of the monkeypox outbreak, at least thus far. Sadly, state and local public health departments
00:27:42.320
in the United States are failing to report the CDC vital demographic details about people diagnosed
00:27:47.380
with monkeypox because they're scared of stigma. I mean, really, how is this not hate towards this
00:27:53.400
group? How is this not hate? Because you're not willing to inform them and tell them the truth.
00:27:58.240
This stymies the nation's capacity to respond to the outbreak with impactful interventions such as
00:28:02.660
targeted vaccines and to promote health equity. So the truth always gets in, the truth always gets
00:28:10.880
in the way of whatever the left's primary goals are. In this case, their primary goal is to eliminate
00:28:16.920
stigma. When it was COVID, their primary goal was to take control. And so the data is always so muddled.
00:28:26.460
We can't actually ever get to the truth because they are so concerned with their political agenda
00:28:31.600
and being politically incorrect. But I will just say, and I know this is controversial,
00:28:37.500
but I mean, he's talking about some controversial and uncomfortable truths about the diseases that
00:28:41.900
are more prevalent among this community. And I will just say it is almost like it's almost like the
00:28:47.660
creator of the universe and the creator of human beings is made in the image of God knew what he was
00:28:52.780
talking about when he directed man and woman to preserve sex for marriage between man and woman.
00:28:59.600
It's almost like he knew what was good for us. It's almost like he directed that not because he is
00:29:03.700
hateful or not because he wants to rob us of good things, but actually because he wants to give us good
00:29:09.900
things. So maybe God's directions, maybe God's definitions, maybe God's parameters are actually for
00:29:15.980
our benefit, not just for our, not just for our spiritual health, but also for our physical
00:29:23.760
health. First Corinthians 619. We read this a lot. Or do you not know that your body, Christian,
00:29:30.280
is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you whom you have from God? You are not your own for you are
00:29:37.660
bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. Christianity actually cares very much about the body.
00:29:43.180
We believe that there will be, that we will be raised in new heavenly bodies. Jesus Christ became
00:29:49.860
flesh and dwelt among us. Some people believe that Christianity is just, we're all just sex negative.
00:29:57.260
The reason that we believe in preserving sex for the context of marriage between a man and a woman is
00:30:03.660
because we're just repressive and we don't like the body and we don't believe in physical desire.
00:30:08.020
That's not true at all. Actually, Christianity cares very much about the body. We care very much
00:30:13.160
about biology. We care very much about sex. We think sex is a wonderful thing, but we also believe
00:30:18.580
that the God who created these things has proper context for them and that the smartest thing that
00:30:23.420
we can do, the wisest and the most compassionate thing we can do both for ourselves and for each
00:30:27.440
other is to follow the design that God gave us in these things. But obviously not everyone is going
00:30:33.820
to believe that. Not everyone is going to follow that design. So as it is, we have communities who are
00:30:39.820
having orgies, who are having unprotected sex with multiple men on a weekly basis who are
00:30:45.640
spreading monkeypox. And if you care about this group, no matter what you think about the behavior
00:30:50.540
that they are engaging in, they deserve the truth about this. Unfortunately, when you don't have the
00:30:56.700
Christian perspective of seeing human beings as made in the image of God, as seeing them as valuable,
00:31:01.160
you actually do allow things like political correctness and political agendas to blind you to reality and to
00:31:07.460
inhibit you from being able to speak the truth about these things.
00:31:21.080
All right. If you're not getting your meat from Good Ranchers, you might have to start eating
00:31:24.980
bugs sometime soon because this is being pushed on us constantly. And it's really freaking weird.
00:31:31.700
Like it really actually disturbs me. I had some friends that went to Mexico recently and they were
00:31:36.220
actually like crickets on the menu, which I know. I know millions of people, millions of people
00:31:41.420
every day eat bugs. But that is not something we typically do in the West because we have the
00:31:47.800
luxury of livestock and we eat things like beef and chicken. And we just don't typically eat bugs.
00:31:56.240
And they went to Mexico and they actually have like crickets with their guacamole. It's just too much for me.
00:32:01.180
Well, the push to eat more insects in the West has been going on for a little while now.
00:32:07.860
Let me read you some some headlines, some recent headlines about this.
00:32:11.380
This is Tasting Table. Why Europeans may soon begin eating more insects in Europe.
00:32:17.100
Crickets, mealworms and grasshoppers were officially certified as safe to be eaten by humans in 2021.
00:32:23.460
The Guardian. If we want to save the planet, the future of food is insects.
00:32:26.960
Companies are using powdered insects in some of their products. You have to be careful.
00:32:31.200
Look at the ingredients if you don't want to be eating them.
00:32:33.620
A British company is making a milk substitute called Intomilk from black soldier fly larvae.
00:32:39.200
I want to barf. Time magazine. They're healthy. They're sustainable. So why don't humans eat more bugs?
00:32:44.760
So Time magazine is advocating for insects as an alternative source of protein for people in places without a lot of food diversity.
00:32:51.600
The U.N. Secretary General Special Envoy for the 2021 Food Summit said insects are 60 percent dry weight protein.
00:33:00.860
The BBC. Why I prefer eating grasshoppers to beef.
00:33:06.320
French restaurant serves up food of the future.
00:33:08.840
This is, according to VOA News, taking advantage of the new EU bug consumption approval.
00:33:30.340
Nicole Kidman saying that she is a huge fan of eating bugs as well.
00:33:35.200
I am here to reveal my hidden talent, eating micro-livestock cornworms.
00:33:50.540
She doesn't look like she's enjoying it at all, actually.
00:33:53.440
I mean, she's an actress, and even I didn't buy that.
00:34:06.940
Because they believe it's sustainable, it's good for the climate.
00:34:11.040
They believe that eating meat, we've heard this for a long time, is bad for the climate.
00:34:15.020
That's why you've got Bill Gates, who is investing in all of these, like, beyond meat companies
00:34:20.680
that make synthetic meat, which is so bad for you.
00:34:23.340
Like, it's so much soy, which is especially bad for men.
00:34:36.560
It creates a large carbon footprint, if you will, not that I really care about that.
00:34:40.980
But to create these synthetic meat products that are vegan, they are not good for you
00:34:47.500
But the climate change activists, including everyone at the World Economic Forum, they
00:34:52.240
believe that eating meat is bad for the climate.
00:34:54.200
Cows emit methane, a greenhouse gas, and they say that's damaging to the environment.
00:34:58.280
And that's partly why you're seeing what we talked about last week, that farms are being
00:35:02.900
shut down and property seized from farmers in places like the Netherlands.
00:35:05.920
I mean, you also have to wonder, we talked about this with Jackie Daly last week, if that
00:35:11.960
is also what is behind the series of very mysterious fires at these farms and these food plants that
00:35:26.900
They're not some, you know, like, crazy animal worshippers.
00:35:37.220
I disagree with your contention about the morality of eating animals, but that's fine.
00:35:42.780
I don't think that it is wrong or immoral to eat vegan.
00:35:45.740
My mom, for health reasons, has been eating vegan for the past several weeks.
00:35:50.900
She's given up a lot of food that she really likes.
00:35:55.100
And so it's, you know, it can be good for either periods of time or maybe some people
00:35:59.700
commit to it for their whole life and they found that it's really good for them.
00:36:04.080
But that doesn't change the fact that animal fat and protein is really good for you.
00:36:08.620
Insects will never provide what we get from cows and chicken and other animals.
00:36:13.060
Oh, and by the way, I wasn't saying that if you're vegan that you'll eat insects because
00:36:16.540
I'm guessing that if you're vegan, you won't eat insects either.
00:36:20.100
But they would prefer, the people in charge would prefer that we are vegan for the sake
00:36:30.520
We have to have livestock and chicken and cows for everything that we need for our nutrients.
00:36:37.060
And also not just for that, but also we need the manure from these animals, from cows in
00:36:43.780
order to fertilize our crops to make the vegetables that they want us to be eating more of.
00:36:48.880
So if we cut the meat production, if we allow the government to continue to seize these farms
00:36:56.700
and property, if we demolish our farming and our ranching industries, not just in the United
00:37:02.320
States, but abroad as well, like people are going to starve because it's not just meat.
00:37:08.840
It is also the other kinds of food that we eat that are fertilized by the manure from these
00:37:16.240
I mean, you are talking about mass starvation if they continue to try to push this stuff.
00:37:22.000
Insects are just not going to be able to replace everything that we get from these animals.
00:37:26.100
Now, from a theological perspective, it's not unbiblical to eat insects.
00:37:30.660
As I said, there are millions of people around the world, including Christians, that eat
00:37:39.500
John the Baptist ate locusts, and we know that he was a holy guy who was dedicated to the
00:37:43.940
So I don't think it is immoral, but to be forced to, based on the theory that doing so
00:37:49.820
is going to help the climate, is tyrannical nonsense.
00:37:59.760
And we are absolutely allowed to eat meat, not just insects, but we are allowed to eat
00:38:08.660
God says to Adam and Eve in Genesis 128, God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and
00:38:12.540
fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds
00:38:16.660
of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
00:38:21.260
So we are supposed to steward responsibly as we subdue the earth.
00:38:27.840
They don't like the idea of human beings having dominion.
00:38:32.740
They would like to believe that human beings really are just animals that were on the same
00:38:40.200
We are called to subdue and to steward the earth because we have authority over it.
00:38:45.960
We're supposed to be compassionate for animals.
00:38:48.740
But we are not to be paranoid about climate change and we are never to sacrifice the immediate
00:38:55.800
needs of humans for the sake of greenhouse gas emissions or for the sake of making our
00:39:02.380
carbon footprint smaller or for the sake of protecting the lives of animals.
00:39:10.600
That's not the stewardship responsibilities that he's given us.
00:39:13.060
And as far as climate change goes, I mean, obviously, there is a lot of debate.
00:39:18.480
There's a lot of debate out of the homogenous group of political activists that call themselves
00:39:24.580
climate scientists about what causes climate change, what human beings can do to actually
00:39:31.020
But I always go back to Genesis 8, 21 through 22 and remind myself of the sovereignty of God,
00:39:36.420
The Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention
00:39:44.600
Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done while the earth
00:39:48.660
remains, while the earth remains, sea time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter,
00:39:57.740
Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you.
00:40:01.120
As I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.
00:40:05.140
So that would include insects, but that also includes our cows and our chickens and the
00:40:15.540
This is under the authority and the responsibility of human beings.
00:40:24.800
There was also, I think it's related, there was this New York Times article that came out
00:40:28.700
over the weekend titled A Taste for Cannibalism.
00:40:32.060
And the article argues that the time is now to start eating human meat.
00:40:39.700
The article says this, cannibalism is about consumption and it's about burning up from
00:40:45.460
Burnout is essentially over consuming yourself, your own energy, your own will to survive, your
00:40:50.400
sleep schedule, your eating schedule, your body.
00:40:54.580
And so basically what it sounds like is that cannibalism, which they are advocating for,
00:41:00.840
not just for sustainability and climate change purposes, but also for like self-rejuvenation
00:41:06.620
and restoration purposes, that it actually just is a part of a neo-pagan routine.
00:41:13.860
I mean, there is a movement in leftism, which I've talked about with James Lindsay before,
00:41:19.180
that glorifies like pre-civilization, that glorifies barbarianism, that glorifies paganism,
00:41:27.780
that actually believes that Western civilization has been exclusively bad and that we would all
00:41:38.260
If we went back to the time before there was civilization, before there was conquest,
00:41:42.740
before there was imperialism and colonialism and all of these things that they say have
00:41:53.880
If you look back at the Aztecs, if you look back at the Native Americans, how violent their
00:42:00.920
tribes were, how violent their religions were, how violent and short and brutal their lives
00:42:07.400
were, because of these kinds of beliefs, because of these kinds of routines, again, a complete
00:42:13.400
disregard for the worth of human beings, no one wants to go back there.
00:42:17.860
The only reason that we are civilized, the only reason for Western civilization, the only
00:42:23.340
reason for the idea of rights, the only reason that we do scoff at the idea or we're disgusted
00:42:29.740
by the idea of cannibalism, the only reason why there is any kind of hatred towards something like
00:42:37.540
murder or theft or assault is because of the Christian worldview.
00:42:41.740
And I know people say, no, it's just common sense.
00:42:44.340
No, people would be against hurting other human beings, even if it weren't for Christianity.
00:42:50.700
That is one thing that makes Christianity stand out is this concept of being made in the image
00:42:56.660
And look, you get rid of that, you get rid of that concept.
00:42:59.500
And that's when all rights start going out the window, because if there is no greater
00:43:03.320
authority than the government that gives us our rights and says that we are worth something
00:43:07.780
that says that we have innate value, then of course, the government will be given the responsibility,
00:43:12.860
the power to give and take away those rights arbitrarily as they see fit.
00:43:17.720
If we really are all clumps of matter, if we really are just accidental balls of cells that
00:43:23.840
happen to wind up here, then why shouldn't you promote cannibalism?
00:43:34.440
Why shouldn't you be OK with mass starvation of people by taking away one of their main sources
00:43:45.940
Why shouldn't you be OK with lying to people about the dangers of monkeypox?
00:43:50.780
Why shouldn't you be OK with all of the assaults on humanity and on the value of life, on the
00:44:00.620
Why shouldn't you be OK with depopulation measures that we are seeing come from the people at the
00:44:09.400
Christianity is in direct opposition, is in direct opposition to the ideology of progressivism,
00:44:16.320
which sees us all as cosmic accidents and does not ascribe to us any innate value.
00:44:23.640
And that is really the worldview that we are seeing behind all of the stories that we talked
00:44:29.680
A degradation of human beings, a perspective of human beings as a debit to the world, as people
00:44:36.640
who take away from the world, who contribute to climate change and who take away our resources
00:44:47.820
and who weigh us down are really burdens on society rather than the Christian view of human
00:44:57.220
And really, I mean, the whole idea of like the Malthusian catastrophe, which has been debunked for
00:45:02.940
a really long time, that we are going to get overpopulated, and that all of our resources
00:45:07.240
are going to be stripped, and we have to depopulate in order to save the world.
00:45:12.780
I mean, that is not only dangerous, it's just factually untrue.
00:45:16.320
The reality is, is that we need much, we need many more people than we have right now.
00:45:20.700
That's something that Elon Musk talks about a lot.
00:45:23.660
And the more people we have, the more innovation we have.
00:45:27.480
Because humans aren't just these vegetables who come on the scene and they take the resources.
00:45:34.960
There, of course, are people like that who just take and they never give.
00:45:43.600
They are constantly coming up with more effective and efficient ways to care for people, to feed
00:45:52.940
It's not just innately valuable, but also capable of great and wonderful things that
00:45:58.780
can contribute to the world and can help us sustain ourselves, sustain our communities
00:46:09.160
That is directly opposed to the anti-human, the anti-natalist, the anti-image of God perspective
00:46:16.720
that we are constantly seeing pushed by the left that I believe is undergirding all of
00:46:28.180
We've got lots of good, lots of good episodes up our sleeve this week.
00:46:34.520
And I'm trying to get a debate for some time this week.
00:46:43.920
Share it on Twitter or text it to your friends.
00:46:46.980
Also, if you love Relatable, leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever