Ep 714 ｜ The Balenciaga Story Is Even Worse than You Think
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
160.4345
Summary
In this episode, Allie talks about the controversy surrounding Balenciaga using children to promote sexually explicit products, Kim Kardashian speaking out about it, and Christiana Mowry saying she s ending her 14-year marriage for self-love.
Transcript
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Balenciaga used children to promote sexually explicit products.
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Kim Kardashian speaking out about it, but I am not satisfied with these responses, and
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Also, actress and professing Christian Tia Mowry said she's ending her 14-year marriage
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As you can guess, I have a lot to say about that.
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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We spent it with my husband's family this year.
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Lots of cousins, lots of aunts and uncles, lots of food.
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But then the week before, I also had to take a little break because I had the stomach bug,
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which is one of the worst things that you can ever have.
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Somehow, and thankfully, graciously, my husband avoided it.
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I actually think I had it the worst of my kids.
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I mean, it really, it lasted a really long, like an inordinate amount of time.
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Thankfully, by the mercy of God, I had my appetite back just in time for the pecan cobbler.
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Yes, pecan cobbler that we had on Thanksgiving.
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But thank you to all of you who prayed for me, prayed for our family during that time.
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I'm sorry that I had to take a little break right before Thanksgiving.
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If you haven't listened, though, to last week's pre-recorded episodes,
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we pre-recorded them before we took the break on the week of Thanksgiving,
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Because on Monday, we talked about the recent climate meeting between all of the global elites,
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if you will, what was suggested there, what the strategy is for the future,
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But then we also did an episode with Naomi Riley,
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one of my favorite episodes maybe that we've ever done,
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because it's such a fascinating subject that so few people talk about.
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And that is what is really going on on Native American reservations.
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We hear, especially this time of year, we need our land back.
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But what is actually oppressing the Native American population to the point to where they have
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such disproportionate rates of sexual assault and violent crime and murder and poverty and homelessness?
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Why is the education system on these reservations so terrible?
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And so we dig into exactly why that is on that episode.
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But if you guys have been following me on Instagram,
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it's been very difficult for me not to have a show to talk to you about the drama
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that we are talking about today, namely Balenciaga.
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I'm like that meme of that kid sitting in the classroom who looks like he's about to burst
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if he doesn't say something or yell something or get something out.
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That's how I am when I don't have a show, an outlet to talk about the things that I need to talk about.
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But thankfully, I mean, or not thankfully, the Balenciaga story has carried over to today.
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It's not just going back a week to when this was relevant.
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This is still a very relevant conversation and discussion.
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So I'm going to break it all down and tell you what I think about this in just a second.
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that we have amazing merch that is for sale right now on our merch site.
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And I will link it in the description of this episode,
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I mean, the designers here at Blaze TV did such a good job.
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We've got two sweatshirts and we've got a little funny sticker.
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But I love the sweatshirt so much, but especially the Thrill of Hope one.
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On the back of the crew neck sweatshirt, comes in green, comes in white, has a depiction.
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It has a drawing of Mary with Jesus in her womb.
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I had like this rough idea of what I wanted it to be, but I'm not artistic.
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And Blaze TV designers took my jumbled thoughts and then made something really beautiful.
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when I asked for some inspiration for Christmas merch, raise a joyful ruckus.
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And so we've got that in blue and in green in a crew neck sweatshirt.
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That's a play on our raise a respectful ruckus that we always say.
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That's one of the things that I think we're called to do as Christians is to raise a respectful
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We've got that and then we've got our controversial sticker and that is Mr. Pitbull.
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I know I'm going to get even just from this one piece of commentary,
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I'm going to get messages and emails from those of you telling me how wrong and how awful I am
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for talking about the danger that I think Pitbulls represent.
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I don't know why, but I just thought that it added to his rough and tough look.
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So I'm just leaning in to the anti-Pitbull brand that I have donned.
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I hope mine came in so I can wear it and I can post it on Instagram.
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I think that's all of the housekeeping announcement stuff that I have.
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Now let's actually get into the story about Balenciaga.
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I don't, I didn't know very much about Balenciaga at all.
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Your girl is not really a designer fashion type person.
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And I'm also not really in that much to celebrity culture.
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I mean, I feel like I just kind of know things that are going on just by being on social media,
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The only thing I know about Balenciaga is that Cardi B, who I also don't really listen to,
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but somehow I have like, I have her lyrics in the reserves of my mind.
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And she has that one lyric in some song from a few years ago that says like,
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I like those Balenciagas, the one that looks like socks.
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So I guess Balenciaga sells shoes that look like socks.
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We are talking about Balenciaga getting in hot water because of a disgusting advertising campaign,
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a holiday campaign that they posted on their website involving young children.
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We're talking three or four-year-olds, and they are surrounded by items,
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including the item that they are holding that have to do with bondage sex.
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And I am going to allow you, if you don't know what I mean by that,
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And if you've seen the pictures, you can probably deduce what I'm talking about.
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It's a type of sexual activity, often pornography,
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that has to do with very often pain and humiliation.
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And there are different types of outfits and tools, I guess, that are used.
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They often look like leather and just painful and gothic and just strange.
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And they decided that, oh, this would be like a good pairing with children to put on our website.
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They sell these plush teddy bear backpacks that look perhaps like a children's toy.
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And if you're watching on YouTube, we'll put some of the stuff up.
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We're going to blur out the kids' faces because the last thing that I want to do
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is to aid in the exploitation of these children.
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But I do want you to see what I'm talking about so you know I'm not just making this up.
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They look like children's toys, but they are wearing these leather straps and the choker and the spikes.
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And some people were saying, well, maybe it's just gothic.
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But as we will talk about in just a second, Balenciaga apologized for this.
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And some of the celebrities involved with Balenciaga actually apologized and said they're re-evaluating their relationship.
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And so Balenciaga never said, oh, no, it has nothing to do with bondage.
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Balenciaga never said, oh, no, no, no, you're wrong.
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No, when people said, why are children being paired with bondage, BDSM stuff?
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So let's back up a little bit and just give you kind of a recap.
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And so as you can see in this picture with the child's face blurred out, she is holding this little bear in the bondage outfit.
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And then some of the items that you can see, this child, one of the children, they're standing on a bed.
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They've got like chains and chokers around them.
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The combination of childlike items and clearly adult sexual items I think is very strange.
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There's one picture as well where the child is laying down on the couch on his or her stomach.
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I think the androgynous nature also of the children's appearance and outfits is probably intentional there.
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And in the picture where the child is laying down on his or her stomach, there are like wine glasses and alcohol glasses all around.
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There's another picture that they put up of a child standing in his bedroom with this plush bondage toy over in the corner.
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And so I originally saw all of this from a from a tweet from a person who goes by shoe on head.
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But she does talk about a lot of things, including child exploitation.
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And then people started digging into the rest of the or the other advertisements that Balenciaga posts, some of the other photos that they had been publishing.
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And one of the photos, this is was on their website.
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In one of the papers, you can actually see the text.
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Some Internet sleuths figured out that this case that is shown is a Supreme Court case, United States v. Michael Williams from 2008.
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It has to do with child sex abuse material, child pornography.
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And the little bit that is shown is actually part of a case called Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition.
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Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 2002 Supreme Court case that struck down two overbroad, what they considered overbroad provisions of the Child Pornography Prevention Act.
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of 1996, because they abridged the freedom to engage in a substantial amount of lawful speech.
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The case was brought against the government by the Free Speech Coalition, a California trade association for the adult entertainment industry, along with Bold Type Inc., a publisher of a book advocating the nudist lifestyle.
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These are people who wanted to paint and to post erotic images.
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But under the Child Pornography Prevention Act, some of the things that they wanted to publish were illegal.
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And so this Free Speech Coalition, they challenged the illegality of this kind of artistry and went to the Supreme Court.
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And the Supreme Court said that, you know what, you're right.
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The Child Pornography Prevention Act is too overbroad, and you should be able to depict some of the things that these type of artists want to publish.
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It should be covered under the First Amendment.
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Now, that doesn't mean, obviously, that all forms of child sex abuse material are covered under the First Amendment.
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But this particular Supreme Court case said that the Child Pornography Prevention Act just went too far.
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Tell me why Balenciaga would choose, of all Supreme Court cases, because it's pretty common for these kinds of campaigns to use Supreme Court cases as documents because they are available to the public.
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They don't have to worry about copyright and things like that.
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But why, out of all of the Supreme Court cases that they could have chosen, why did they choose this one?
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Why did they choose this one to put on display?
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It's almost like they wanted people to see that they chose this particular Supreme Court case.
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So this has a lot of people, understandably, scratching their heads.
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Now, Balenciaga has been pushing the limits of fashion for a while.
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And I don't think most people even really pay attention to that.
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If you look at their 2023 line, a spring collection, which is what they are now advertising, that includes the bondage, the teddy bear backpack things.
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Most of the most of the attire that we're seeing, and we'll put some up on YouTube, is bondage related.
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Like it's a lot of leather, a lot of chains, a lot of things that look painful, not comfortable.
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You also have some of their models looking like they've just gotten beaten up.
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Like you are condoning, you are glorifying, glamorizing sexual abuse.
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You'll see that there is this one, again, I think androgynous looking model wearing Balenciaga, I guess, had just walked the runway.
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Who has like a fake bloody nose, a fake almost like broken nose, a fake black eye, and is holding up this plush teddy bear with its bondage gear on.
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The same plush teddy bear that is being held by children in their advertising campaign.
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So, Balenciaga, are you trying to condone, glamorize, normalize, mainstream, not just sex with children, which is rape, but also violent sexual abuse of children?
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That that is the road that you want to go down, that you are glamorizing, and that you are now mainlining, mainstreaming the violent rape of children using BDSM?
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Now, Balenciaga, after they started receiving this backlash, and they saw that people were understandably very upset about this, they did release a statement, a couple statements, which I find entirely insufficient, and I'll tell you why.
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So they posted this first on their Instagram story.
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We sincerely apologize for any offense our holiday campaign may have caused.
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They're not sorry that they did it in this original apology.
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They're sorry that you were offended by it, you rubes.
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Our plush bear bags should not have been featured with children in this campaign.
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We have immediately removed the campaign from all platforms.
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So I think that they realized pretty quickly that that original apology, we apologize that you were offended, wasn't really going to cut it.
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We apologize for displaying unsettling documents in our campaign.
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We take this matter very seriously and are taking legal action against the parties responsible for creating the set and including unapproved items for our spring 23 campaign photo shoot.
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We strongly condemn abusive children in any form.
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Like you're telling me that you still can't take responsibility for this?
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Like this is not advertising campaigns for companies that are this major, that are this elite, that are this big.
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They don't just pass through like one set of hands or one set of eyes.
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I mean, you are talking about dozens, at least dozens of adults who had to approve each and every step of this advertising campaign, of these photographs.
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This isn't something that was just thrown together one day in, oops, we accidentally ignored that detail.
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Oh, we didn't realize that this child who is four is a four-year-old child holding bondage gear.
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The only reason they're saying anything is because people got upset.
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Even if you did, if you were just completely naive and you gave them the total benefit of the doubt,
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and you said, oh, somehow this just passed through all of these adults and they just didn't catch how this could be problematic.
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Why are you creating a teddy bear that has bondage gear on in the first place?
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Even if you didn't include children, even if it were just adults holding this teddy bear with bondage gear on,
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with a bondage collar and all of that, with BDSM stuff on, that would still be freaking weird.
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Like, you are still bringing a child-likeness into violent sexual activity.
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So don't just apologize that you put the Supreme Court case there, which was, they're saying, a coincidence.
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Don't just apologize that you used minors in this campaign to promote your BDSM stuff.
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Apologize that you're making this stuff in the first place.
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I mean, it would be bad enough to create this stuff for adults.
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But you're creating stuff that you know looks like a child's toy.
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And you're putting it in a set that looks like their room.
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You're putting it in a set that looks like their bed, that looks like their couch.
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It's the product itself that looks like a child's toy and yet is wearing sexual gear.
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I saw a lot of conservatives applauding when they apologized.
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Like, okay, we're happy that for once conservatives, which it was mostly conservatives, it's not as much anymore.
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It was, though, seemingly kind of partisan in the beginning.
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But then I would say that it has grown to be kind of like nonpartisan, bipartisan for the most part.
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There's still a lot of people like mainstream outlets on the left who are really just reporting about the reaction to it rather than the problematic nature of the campaign itself.
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But I will say that this has become like a nonpartisan, bipartisan concern campaign.
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And so I but I understand why there are conservatives who were applauding their apology, who are saying this is great.
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No, I will be applauding when there are trials.
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I will be applauding when there is an investigation by the DOJ into Balenciaga.
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We made an impact when there is some kind of legal accountability or at least investigation, some kind of process looking into how this company is exploiting children.
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That's when I will maybe say, you know what, I am, I'm feeling positive about how this is turning out.
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This is just lip service because they're afraid of losing money.
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So the photographer told CNN, his name is Gabriel Gallimberti.
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He told CNN that the direction and shooting of the campaign were totally out of his hands.
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I'm not going to say that they were ever sexual in nature, but he did do a campaign for several years showing kids and their favorite toys.
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And he would go into their homes and do a photo shoot of children with their favorite toys.
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I'm not saying that he had any malintent when it came to that.
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But I do think some people looked back on that and said, that's weird.
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So you seem to have you have history taking picture of kids and now you decided to take a picture of kids holding BDSM stuff.
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As he says, as a photographer, I was only and solely registered to lit the given scene.
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I think it meant light the given scene and take the shots according to my signature style.
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As usual, the direction of the campaign and of the shooting are not in the hands of the photographer.
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Like when you showed up and you saw that, OK, this kid is laying on the couch with this weird sexually suggestive bear surrounded by wine glasses and champagne glasses and chokers and collars like, oh, that's probably not something that I want to put my name on.
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You could have said, no, I don't do anything sexually suggestive at all with kids.
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This is not a campaign that should include children.
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So while it may not have been your idea to do this, you could have said, no, you could have just not done it.
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And then the father of one of the child models actually defended allowing his child to be a part of this, because that's a lot of people's question.
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A lot of people's question is, where were the parents?
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And some parents, I think, are taken with a brand name like Balenciaga and they think, wow, like this is my child's big break.
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Maybe this is literally paying our bills this week.
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And so the father said, according to Daily Mail, that he was present at the shoot, which was a, quote, enjoyable day out and said that the bizarre pictures had been taken totally out of context.
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He said no parent would actively encourage the child to take part in something which was pornographic.
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And I think the publicity surrounding what has what happened has been blown out of proportion.
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I think that you just didn't have discernment as a parent, that maybe you were just blinded by the lights and the importance of it all.
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I mean, you could say that maybe you honestly did not know that that's what the bear was.
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Like, maybe you were misinformed or you were uninformed about that.
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But that would be the statement that she would make as a parent after.
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Like, oh, I didn't know that this was a part of a BDSM line by Balenciaga.
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Like, I did not know that this was pornographic in nature.
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And again, we know that it is because Balenciaga has never denied it.
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They never said, oh, that's not what these bears are.
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That's not what these items were surrounding the children.
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Because if it wasn't supposed to be sexual in nature, they would have said, you weirdos, why are you thinking this way?
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This has nothing to do with sexuality whatsoever.
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So, I mean, we understand what it was supposed to be.
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That just goes to show, like, when we talk about crazy things like Drag Queen Story Hour or parents putting their kids on puberty blockers or allowing their kids to be introduced to sexual content in schools and having no problem with it or taking their kids to these family-friendly drag shows.
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It's because there are parents who just don't see the protection of their child's innocence as important.
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I'm not saying that they don't, in their own convoluted way, think that they love their children.
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But their definition of love, their definition of seeking their child's best interest is so fundamentally flawed and so different than, you know, yours and mine that it's almost like we're speaking a different language.
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It's very difficult to comprehend how a parent could actually love their child and put their child in a situation in which they will be sexualized and exposed to sexuality.
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Balenciaga, again, they're saying that this is not on us.
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They have now filed a $25 million lawsuit against the producers of the ad campaign.
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Balenciaga, this is according to New York Post, brought the suit on Friday, November 25th, against production company North 6 Inc.
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and set designer Nicolas Desjardins and his company for the inclusion in one of the ads of legal documents related to Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition.
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Balenciaga is bringing the case to secret dress for extensive damages defendants caused in connection with an advertising campaign Balenciaga hired them to produce, according to the Manhattan Supreme Court summons.
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Like, you're trying to get money, but don't act like this is not your responsibility.
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Is this something that happens independently of the approval of the people in charge?
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The people in leadership at Balenciaga knew that this was happening.
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They signed off on the creation of a plush teddy bear backpack with BDSM gear on.
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So don't act like, oh, your hands are clean of this.
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And then there were some other strange developments.
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Some other conclusions to more online sleuths, particularly on Instagram and TikTok.
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They were looking into some of the other pictures that Balenciaga has posted.
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And they found some things that I think are just worth asking questions about.
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Again, I would have probably said, well, this is just a conspiracy.
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If it were just the background stuff, I would have thought, you know what?
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I am not someone who looks for symbolism in everything in Hollywood or everything that
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a brand puts out or everything that a celebrity wears.
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Like there are people who put stock into like the color combinations that celebrities wear
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I just think in general, that's kind of a waste of time.
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And yet there is some symbolism or there are some things present in these kinds of campaigns
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and photos that are so obvious and the connections are so blatant that you would be dumb not to
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And when a company is so overt as to put the child and the BDSM gear together, like I think
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that it is just common sense or logical to say, OK, what else have they been kind of sneaking
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into their campaigns before they became this overt?
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So some people are looking at one of one photo or one set of photos that featured
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that featured a book in the background about the Belgian painter Michael Bormans.
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I saw this Instagram post where they had looked it up on Google Images, like what the artwork
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Again, one of his books in the background of one of Balenciaga's photos, and they are very
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disturbing and very often violent and nude depictions, paintings of children.
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There is a picture of a little girl making herself throw up after eating.
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I'm sorry, this is disturbing of naked children playing in what looks like the blood from one
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There is another Balenciaga photo that has a framed certificate in the background that
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seems to say College Month Honorarium with the name John Philip Fisher underneath it.
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Now, this is very difficult to verify, but some people are saying that this is a strange selection
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of a name because there was a man by the name of John Philip Fisher.
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He, in 2018, was charged and convicted of molesting his granddaughter from the age of four years
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So there is no proof that they chose the name John Philip Fisher to be on a certificate in
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the background of one of their photos because of this guy who was convicted of molestation
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All three names in the same order of all the names that you could select to put on a certificate
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Also, there's an Instagram account called Mama Bear of Facts.
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She posted a series of pictures alleged to have previously been posted by a Balenciaga stylist
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by the name of Lada Valkava, and her Instagram is now private.
00:32:00.080
And so we can't go into her Instagram and see these pictures for ourselves, but there
00:32:05.180
are screenshots that people have been sharing of this Balenciaga stylist.
00:32:11.460
She, I don't believe, was the stylist of this particular ad campaign, but she has styled
00:32:17.000
Again, we see a lot of violent depictions of children and a lot of satanic depictions.
00:32:28.620
I'm so sorry to even say this, but sexually assaulting a woman.
00:32:35.380
So this is apparently a Balenciaga stylist named Lada Valkava.
00:32:40.740
So there are a lot of parts of this company that I think are very disturbing, or at least,
00:32:47.720
I mean, we know that there are some parts that are objectively disturbing, and then there
00:32:51.500
are some other questions that people have that take us down a very disturbing path.
00:32:57.240
And man, I have spoken out against the conspiracies that are Q and QAnon, because I think that going
00:33:04.220
down those conspiracy rabbit holes can really ruin people's lives and take you away from that
00:33:08.860
which is actually true, and that which we can see, and that which we know, it's kind of
00:33:15.460
But man, when you see things like this, and you just ask yourself the question, like, how
00:33:24.360
Like, how insidious is this problem of the sexualization of the violence against children?
00:33:31.800
The problem with the QAnon conspiracy was not that it problematized child sex abuse, or that
00:33:38.460
it talked about sex trafficking, all of those are real problems.
00:33:41.720
The problem with QAnon was that it saw Donald Trump as the savior, and Q as the secret person,
00:33:52.720
Q, actually, the whole QAnon conspiracy theory, because it very often went down rabbit holes that
00:34:01.320
just were not true, and were actually crazy, it missed what is really going on underneath
00:34:10.500
And that is that these real companies happening in real time are sexualizing children, and they're
00:34:21.040
It probably doesn't even have to do with the secret global cabal.
00:34:24.400
It just has to do with evil, and with malice, and with wickedness that is insidious, and
00:34:30.980
that is pervasive in all different forms of society.
00:34:36.120
And you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that, or to know that, or to care about
00:34:42.000
I think one really big damaging effect of the whole QAnon thing, or maybe the media emphasis
00:34:48.160
on it, is that it conflated concern with child sexualization, and with child sex abuse
00:34:55.500
material, and sex trafficking with conspiracy theorists and QAnon.
00:35:00.800
And that meant that one side really didn't want to talk about it, and the other side didn't.
00:35:07.440
That is a really damaging effect of not just conspiracy theories, but also the media thinking
00:35:13.020
that everything that the right cares about is a conspiracy theory.
00:35:15.580
This should not be a partisan issue, especially when you have Balenciaga, just like every other
00:35:22.520
company, virtue signaling about words that are said, and not actually caring about the
00:35:29.760
corruption, the deadliness, and just the darkness that is at the core of their mission.
00:35:35.220
They recently cut ties with Kanye West after he made a series of anti-Semitic remarks, and
00:35:42.120
yet they are allowing this kind of thing to happen, again, with their approval, no matter
00:35:52.800
Celebrities like Nicole Kidman, Bella Hadid, Haley Bieber, they, at least from what I've seen
00:36:02.300
They have not condemned the ads, and these are the kind of people, of course, that would
00:36:09.740
if Balenciaga said something that was distasteful about, like, black people or about immigrants,
00:36:14.980
of course, they would be the first people, or trans people, the first people to speak
00:36:19.820
Why is this subject something that people are so reticent to say anything about?
00:36:26.500
It should be the first thing that you have a concern about.
00:36:29.460
So now, Kim Kardashian, I don't even know if I want to say to her credit, I'll just
00:36:35.100
say, but I guess it is to her credit, and I'm glad that she said something.
00:36:39.720
She put out a tweet thread about this because people have been tagging her, people have been
00:36:44.300
saying, hey, Kim, you need to say something about this, you need to speak up about this.
00:36:49.080
She put out a tweet thread yesterday and said, I have been quiet for the past few days, not
00:36:53.660
because I haven't been disgusted and outraged by the recent Balenciaga campaigns, but because
00:36:57.840
I wanted an opportunity to speak to their team to understand for myself how this could
00:37:03.480
As a mother of four, I have been shaken by the disturbing images.
00:37:06.840
The safety of children must be held with the highest regard, and any attempts to normalize
00:37:11.100
child abuse of any kind should have no place in our society, period.
00:37:14.260
I appreciate Balenciaga's removal of the campaigns and apology.
00:37:17.540
And speaking with them, I believe they understand the seriousness of the issue and will take the
00:37:21.020
necessary measures for this to never happen again.
00:37:26.160
Then she goes on to say, as for my future with Balenciaga, I am currently reevaluing my
00:37:29.960
relationship with the brand based off their willingness to accept accountability for something
00:37:33.300
that should never have happened to begin with and the actions I am expecting them to
00:37:39.240
I can almost guarantee she is not going to sever ties with Balenciaga, reevaluating.
00:37:44.020
It's just, I just don't believe it's going to happen.
00:37:46.400
If they had said something that was politically incorrect, according to the left, then she probably
00:37:51.920
would have severed ties with them, I guess, depending on the money involved there.
00:37:57.300
But again, I say, why is this subject, the sexual exploitation as children regarded by anyone
00:38:04.760
Why should the story be that the right pounces or the conservatives pounce?
00:38:09.140
But again, I guess I'm not all that surprised because a lot of the people who think that child
00:38:13.960
sexual exploitation is a conspiracy theory would take their child to see a grown man in fake cleavage
00:38:24.120
and fishnets dance for money and who think that it's totally normal for a teacher to talk to their
00:38:34.180
child about changing their genitalia when they're six years old.
00:38:38.280
So I guess, again, this is just not a value that everyone has, but it should be.
00:38:45.360
On this podcast, children are always the unconsenting subjects of progressive social experiments.
00:38:54.220
And the religious right, really, like we did not even have enough foresight.
00:39:01.780
People called us slippery slopers for saying that opening up sexuality and normalizing different
00:39:10.680
kinds of sexual activity outside of the marriage between a man and a woman is going to lead to
00:39:16.720
the normalization of other kinds of sexual perversion.
00:39:20.380
Of course, we were called conspiracy theories then, but actually, we didn't see far enough
00:39:32.240
Children, of course, they're the group of people.
00:39:38.600
Their safety, their protection is entirely dependent upon adults seeking their best interest.
00:39:45.740
And look, that has been the role of the church, by the way, for thousands of years.
00:39:49.580
I've given this spiel before, but Christianity revolutionized how the world saw children.
00:39:55.640
Go back to pagan Greece and pagan Rome in the ancient days.
00:40:00.020
And when the church burst on the scene, it revolutionized how society regarded children and regarded women, regarded slaves, regarded the sick, regarded the elderly, all people who were pushed to the margins because of their lack of productivity and their political power and capital.
00:40:17.040
Christianity, universalizing the idea that people are made in the image of God, and then doubling
00:40:24.060
down on that idea, emphasizing that idea even more by saying we are all equally dead without
00:40:31.740
It changed the game for how human beings are regarded, that we're not just valuable based
00:40:40.740
on what we bring to the table, but we are inherently valuable because we have souls, because we were
00:40:48.420
And we have a responsibility to care for the vulnerable.
00:40:51.480
We have a responsibility to speak up for the voiceless.
00:40:57.680
It will not be true in a post-Christian world, by the way.
00:41:00.720
It is not true currently in countries in which Christianity has not been the historical basis.
00:41:07.480
The entire idea of human rights, but especially children's rights and the protection of children
00:41:12.520
is based on a Christian idea and ideal that human beings are made in the image of God and
00:41:18.400
that children are not products for exploitation, but are rather vulnerable people to be protected,
00:41:34.080
And people don't realize that when you pull Christianity out of the foundation of a society,
00:41:44.020
The things that America thinks are just obvious.
00:41:48.580
Human rights, dignity, equality, laws against murder and theft.
00:42:02.040
You don't realize how much you're taking that for granted, that those things actually
00:42:07.040
And when you take the foundation away, again, things get really ugly really fast.
00:42:12.060
I mean, look at what's happening in Canada with the whole assisted suicide movement.
00:42:15.920
That's what happens when you take away the idea that human beings have any value and are
00:42:35.540
As I said a couple of weeks ago, I used to think, what is the society that progressives want?
00:42:49.380
Like we are actually already seeing the consequences of when progressivism says,
00:42:59.900
Let's tear down all of the constructions that were put up for the sake of order and safety
00:43:07.840
Let's take those down and see what happens when things just run wild.
00:43:11.720
When everyone decides for themselves what's good and what's right.
00:43:30.340
Okay, I wanted to talk quickly about this Tia Mowry story about divorce and her interview
00:43:51.280
with Black Entertainment TV and how she said it's just basically about self-love and self-care.
00:44:08.880
I think she and her sister both, Tia and Tamara.
00:44:18.460
And it's hard to find Christians in Hollywood that you want to look up to who have marriages
00:44:31.540
And now Tia Mowry's comments really make me question, honestly, the authenticity of her
00:44:48.280
I pray to God that she is and that she repents of this horrible theology that she has in
00:44:53.660
regards to a divorce and how we think about relationships and love and commitment and
00:45:01.080
But I think that we can judge a tree by its fruit and say, based on her comments here,
00:45:10.120
And I worry about the fruit that it will produce in others as well.
00:45:15.780
Tia Mowry reveals why she followed for divorce, plus why she considers her 14-year marriage
00:45:23.620
Mowry said she knew it was time to move on from her marriage by saying this.
00:45:27.380
I knew when I really started to focus on my happiness.
00:45:31.780
We tend to focus on everybody else's happiness, making sure that everybody else is OK, meaning
00:45:37.880
But at the end of the day, it's about self-love.
00:45:44.560
When you start to really work on yourself, love yourself, know your value and know your
00:45:49.860
worth, then all of a sudden there's this awakening and it's not easy.
00:45:54.700
But at the end of the day, I feel like it is so, so worth it.
00:45:57.720
I would not be shocked at all if she got this from Glennon Doyle.
00:46:02.140
She probably read Untamed by Glennon Doyle and was like, yes, I need to follow along in
00:46:07.620
this person's footsteps and liberate myself from the covenant that I made with my husband
00:46:13.880
before God, the commitment that I've made to this marriage, the commitment that I made
00:46:19.440
And for the sake of my own feelings, for the sake of my own self-affirmation, my own self-worship,
00:46:24.820
my own self-adoration, I am going to disintegrate this marriage, this covenant that God has brought
00:46:32.080
together at the expense, not only of that commitment, but also at the expense of the
00:46:36.880
health and the well-being and the security and stability of my children.
00:46:41.780
It is wrong when people say, it's just false, just based on data, based on any common sense
00:46:47.880
that children just need their parents to be happy.
00:46:52.020
Yes, I do think that ideally, ideally, children are in a home with two parents who are happy,
00:46:59.580
who are happily in love, who show affection to one another, who get along, who are happy
00:47:05.660
and fulfilled as spouses, as parents, in the mission and causes that God has called them
00:47:17.660
But children do not need their parents to be happy-go-lucky all the time.
00:47:24.520
They do not need their parents to always be smiling.
00:47:27.840
They do not need their parents to feel good about themselves all the time.
00:47:33.980
Ideally, they have happy, healthy parents consistently, but children need their parents to be together.
00:47:49.180
I am saying, though, that there are better things, there are deeper things, there are
00:47:56.140
more important things to life and to marriage and to child raising than your own feelings
00:48:06.640
And what she is teaching her children in this is that my feelings matter more than yours.
00:48:12.660
And not only is she saying that my feelings matter more than my children's feelings, she's
00:48:17.240
saying that my feelings matter more than your stability and security and well-being.
00:48:22.520
She may have deluded herself into thinking that, oh, my children will be better off if
00:48:26.480
I'm just happy, if I feel myself, if I'm feeling good about my self-esteem, if I'm liberated
00:48:32.880
from the bonds of marriage because I have tricked myself into thinking that that's what freedom
00:48:42.660
Katie Faust often says she is an adult asking her children to do hard things for her rather
00:48:49.180
than how it should be adults doing hard things for their children.
00:48:53.760
And that might mean working through a marriage that is not in that very moment giving you
00:48:58.760
all of the butterflies and feelings that you want it to.
00:49:03.000
Yes, marriage is about love, but it's also about another four-letter word, and that is work.
00:49:09.700
Children benefit from seeing the sacrifice and from seeing sometimes the hardship and sometimes
00:49:16.340
the difficulty that is inherent in any committed relationship.
00:49:22.400
And that is you offering a firm foundation for your children.
00:49:27.940
There is a reason why scripture says that God hates divorce.
00:49:31.860
That doesn't mean there's not forgiveness and redemption and grace there, but you are taking
00:49:39.900
This is what Jesus says in Matthew 19 that really goes against this whole idea that, oh,
00:49:47.660
well, all that matters is that we're just happy and that we feel good about ourselves
00:49:53.440
The Pharisees in verse 3, Matthew 19, 3, Pharisees came to him and tested him by asking,
00:49:58.300
is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?
00:50:01.000
And Jesus said, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them
00:50:06.820
male and female and said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold
00:50:11.400
fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.
00:50:18.620
What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.
00:50:24.320
And I actually think the next couple of verses are important too.
00:50:27.080
They said to him, why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to
00:50:33.420
Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your
00:50:42.460
And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality and marries another
00:50:49.360
And then you can read the whole thing about the passage.
00:50:52.500
So basically saying, yes, God did allow for laws in ancient Israel that permitted divorce
00:51:05.060
It was not supposed to be like that from the beginning.
00:51:07.540
It is because of man's wickedness that sometimes God allowed for there to be the legality of
00:51:16.780
But Jesus is saying that is not how it's supposed to be.
00:51:28.440
Let me read you what the Bible says about self-love.
00:51:42.680
As I have mentioned many times as I argue in my book, because as I have argued here, I do
00:51:48.020
not encourage self-loathing or self-deprecation.
00:51:59.920
And I do tell you that the Bible does not command us to love ourselves.
00:52:04.700
That how we feel about ourselves is a really bad indicator of how much we're worth and how
00:52:11.640
valuable we are, what we think about ourselves, what we see when we look in the mirror, our
00:52:29.600
Self-love is entirely dependent on our mood, on what other people think of us, what other
00:52:36.980
people say about us, about our accolades, about our success or lack thereof.
00:52:45.380
Can you imagine if you made all your decisions based on how you feel about yourself on any given
00:52:51.500
day or in any given season, but instead we view ourselves through the prism of God's
00:52:58.560
love, which does not change because for the Christian, it is dependent upon Christ, what
00:53:03.540
he has done for us and who he says that we are.
00:53:07.520
And that Jesus, Hebrews 13, 8 says, is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
00:53:15.600
So that's good news that we do not make decisions based on how we feel about ourselves, that we
00:53:25.140
We do not love other people based on how much we love ourselves.
00:53:29.100
I know that a lot of people say you can't love your neighbor until you love yourself because
00:53:37.040
He's saying that you already naturally love yourself.
00:53:43.000
That doesn't mean that you like yourself all the time.
00:53:44.780
That does mean that you are always seeking your best interest.
00:53:49.700
We naturally are seeking to satiate our hunger.
00:53:55.980
We are naturally seeking, in a lot of ways, alleviation from pain.
00:53:59.720
We are seeking things that are good for ourselves.
00:54:03.360
Even people pleasers are seeking the affirmation that comes from pleasing other people.
00:54:07.260
Even people who tragically die by suicide are seeking alleviation from their misery.
00:54:14.480
Our society, Tia Mowry, is not suffering from a deficit of self-love.
00:54:22.320
That is actually the cause of most of our problems.
00:54:25.240
We are being fed a lie that you don't love yourself enough.
00:54:35.700
And so we just have to preach self-love over and over again.
00:54:40.080
If that was the problem, we would be doing a lot better than we are.
00:54:44.340
But actually, we've been preaching self-love and self-focus and self-fulfillment for decades,
00:54:59.820
Are they higher or lower than they were 20 to 30 years ago?
00:55:07.320
Our problem is actually that we are focusing on ourselves too much.
00:55:10.700
The problem, Tia Mowry, is not that you are focused too much on the happiness of other
00:55:15.880
people, but that you are now focused too much on the happiness of yourself.
00:55:20.020
I'm not saying that we shouldn't be happy, but our happiness, thank God, as Christians
00:55:25.120
is not derived from how we feel about ourselves, but is derived from who God is and what he has
00:55:32.800
That means the joy that we have is unshakable even when we are sad, even when life is hard,
00:55:38.160
even when things are inconvenienced, even when we are asked more than we asked of, even
00:55:44.460
when things are asked of us that we think that we cannot give, God's love gives us the
00:55:49.820
reserves, the resources to be able to pour out love for other people, no matter how we
00:55:58.000
That's why the culture of self-love is toxic, because it's superficial, because it's unreliable.
00:56:03.400
And that's why the road to self-discovery and to self-liberation and self-fulfillment is
00:56:17.560
Allow him to be the source of your joy and your fulfillment and your commitment.
00:56:23.400
Allow him to be the solid ground that you are looking for.
00:56:28.700
The self can't be both the problem and the solution, Tia Mowry.
00:56:33.600
If inside yourself you are finding these very real feelings of insecurity and doubt and brokenness
00:56:41.420
and depression and anxiety, you are not going to find the solution to those things in the
00:56:45.100
same place where you are finding your problems.
00:56:48.200
The only way to find solutions to the problems that we have inside of ourselves is to look outside
00:56:53.580
of ourselves, namely to the God who created us, who tells us who we are, how much we're worth,
00:56:58.120
why we matter, why we're here, what our job is here on earth.
00:57:02.940
And one of those jobs is not to find out ways to love ourselves more.
00:57:10.200
There's a lot of freedom and self-forgetfulness.
00:57:16.700
That is stewarding the body and the time and the life that you have.
00:57:21.840
And that can include a lot of restful things, a lot of leisurely things, a lot of joy and
00:57:28.200
That is not living a life of like morose sadness.
00:57:32.140
That is not, you know, again, being hateful to yourself.
00:57:35.980
That is just finding your joy in something that is everlasting and unchanging.
00:57:40.040
And we see now what the pursuit of self-love and self-fulfillment gets you, and it gets
00:57:52.500
It gets you a delusion that makes you think that exchanging your child's, your children's
00:57:58.320
well-being for your own superficial feelings of self-esteem is a worthy exchange.
00:58:08.680
This is really the only time that we see in the Bible God even talking about self-love,
00:58:19.140
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty, for people
00:58:24.280
will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their
00:58:30.160
parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control,
00:58:34.840
brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of self-love.
00:58:38.680
Rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power, avoid such
00:58:49.560
For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins
00:58:56.500
and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth,
00:59:06.940
It's a superficial self-love theology that is just going to put you on a hamster wheel that
00:59:16.820
And he is the only one that will ever truly satisfy you.
00:59:27.600
She also goes on to say that my marriage is, that her marriage is a success.
00:59:33.620
I look at it as a curriculum when you're in college or high school.
00:59:36.460
You're learning, you're growing, you're evolving, you're creating.
00:59:38.540
And I was able to create with Corey some beautiful, amazing children.
00:59:41.300
At the end of the curriculum, there's a graduation.
01:00:04.220
Believe it or not, I didn't even get to everything that I wanted to get to,
01:00:08.160
today, I wanted to talk about Tampax's dumb tweet and the NHL going trans.
01:00:22.500
I just have a lot of pent-up commentary, as you can tell.
01:00:26.100
Also, if you're watching on YouTube, I hope you like our pretty Christmas decorations.