Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Well, welcome to the Truth Exchange podcast. This is the unique program where we have conversations about worldview all through the lens of oneism and twoism. This lens is based on Romans 1:25. We have exchanged the truth of God for the lie, worship and serve creation rather than the Creator who is blessed forevermore. Amen. I'm your host, Joshua Gila with Mary Weller. Mary, greetings.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Hello, Joshua. How are you?
[00:00:27] Speaker A: I'm doing all right. We are prepping up for the upcoming Peter Jones lectures. This is a mini think tank here located here in Columbia, South Carolina, June 5 through June 6. At a first glance, God and sex make an odd pairing, and they seem to stand at opposite ends of the value spectrum. God, who is spirit, and this is quoting the Westminster Shorter Catechism, who is infinite, eternal, unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. And then, in contrast, sex.
Well, it is created. It's the very essence, raw. It's pleasure or material pleasure.
And the two, never should they meet, really. We do not merge the two. But yet sex and gender is one of those delicate and divisive subjects in the church today. And so the theme of the think tank is the God of sex. Join Rosario Butterfield and Dr. Peter Jones with Mary Weller, my pastor, Josh Smith, as well as myself. I will be emceeing this event again at Columbia, South Carolina, at my church, King's Church, located at 500St. Andrews Road.
There is a cover charge. It's $50 for the whole event. Included in that is we do provide food.
And we would love to see you. We'd love to see all of our old friends as well as our new friends. So please register online. Truth exchange.com.
today we are begin really the series on, well, interviewing our guest speakers. Merit, you're first up, and you will be tackling again the issue of transgenderism. Now, I love the title of your talk, but I'll let you say what it is and why this is an issue that's still before us today. Why do people need to think in biblical categories about this issue rather than just dismissing it and saying, this will never last long. People will get over this. It's a fad.
Help us out.
Start with your title. Start with your title.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Okay, well, my title, I totally cribbed from Dr. Jones.
I was reading, as I do at least twice a year, his androgyny article.
And I, you know, honestly, like, for anyone who's viewing this, I just have to show you, like, what my papers look like. I mean, I've read this multiple times, but like the number of notes and flags and highlights that I have every time I read this article just seems to grow.
And, you know, we've talked. And we were talking even in our last episode, as we were just kind of going over the thinking behind what we wanted to do for this think tank. We were talking about how often people request and respond to the republication of this article on androgyny. And this time when I was reading through it, on the second page of the article, I hit a line that just. Joshua absolutely nailed me between the eyes. Actually had to put the page down, and I just had to cover my hands and sort of collect myself. And in pondering this idea, as he pondered how we respond to this push for religious androgyny and sexual androgyny within the culture, as he considered it back in, I think it was 2003, he said, in our response to this, this spiritual move, we cannot follow Lot, who would have sacrificed his daughters to placate the aggressors outside the door. And of course, he's referring to when the angels came to Sodom and Gomorrah and they were coming to Warren Lot's family.
All of the men in a lustful riot were pounding on Lot's door, demanding that the men be taken outside. So they literally, I mean, it was a rape gang. They literally wanted to have sexual relations with these men.
And Lot in it, in a passage that has just thunderstruck me since I was a little kid, when I first understood what the story was talking about, proposed sending his daughters out there to placate the rage and lustful desires of this mob in order to protect these angels.
Now, obviously that didn't happen, right?
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Right. As Peter was thinking back about the effect of this sex fueled society in which we live, and it was interesting. Even in your. Your intro, Joshua, you were. You were talking about some of the ways that we tend to think of sex.
And I would say the things that you described are thoroughly unbiblical. Sex is a good that was built into who we are as humans. It's productive and is sacred. It's. It's supposed to be set apart for that marital relationship that produces children, that results in a kind of love that we as husband and wife then have for our kids. That tells us something about God. And obviously there's mystery there, but sex is beauty. But when we pursue sex as only an effort to experience sexual pleasure, like the satisfaction of lust, then it does become awful, it does become violent. Often it does become vile. It does become oppressive.
And what hit me so hard with what Dr. Jones had said about Lot wanting to sacrifice his daughters to placate the address aggressors was that is exactly what we are doing in this transgender moment in our own culture.
And there's a lot to this, Joshua. And obviously I'll have more detail when I actually give my talk in South Carolina in June.
But the thing that hit me so hard was that I had just recently been looking more deeply into autogynephilia.
And autogynephilia is a sexual fetish. It's a paraphilia where men are turned on by and driven by the idea of viewing themselves as women.
And this is one of the reasons that men will quote, unquote, identify as women is, is not because they actually have an identity crisis where they truly feel like they're a female trapped in a male body. They, but rather the only way that they can find sexual gratification is to present themselves as women. And I would add, it's always as a hyper sexualized, objectified, pornified form of women. It's, it's never like, I don't know, like a sedate, intelligent, you know, I mean, it takes all these different forms, but men are doing that. And that is a driver of a lot of the, the sort of public facing trans celebrities and influencers that you see in our culture. The, the first one that comes to mind for me is Richard Levine, who now goes Rachel Levine, who was the head of, I think he was an admiral and in the Biden administration, he was a part of Health and Human Services right at the very top.
And he was putting, pushing for all age restrictions to be removed from medicalization of gender confused kids.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: So here's the man who was all the way in his 60s, he's been married, he's had children, he's lived that mandate centric life that we are all called to. Whether he was acknowledging that he was doing that or not, he had had the ability to do that.
Yet in stripping away and using gender confused kids as a victim class to gain power that he wanted, he was proposing and actually pushing medical practices that when they're applied to the youngest kids, will rob those kids of the very life that he had been allowed to live before. He lived a life driven exclusively by his fetish. Right.
So we are sacrificing our daughters. And the huge uptick in rapid onset gender dysphoria that we're seeing, it's amongst adolescent girls. That is not to say that there are not gender confused male adolescents. There are, there are many of them. But the most rapid uptick of that rapid onset gender dysphoria was in adolescent girls. And these kids are being sterilized. They are literally, quite literally now being sacrificed in the name of, of this perverse and creation rejecting creator, rejecting ideology that Dr. Jones was talking about. So that nailed me between the eyes. I mean, it literally took my breath away.
And always my response in that too is where is the hope?
And I have begun to put my finger on that. Well, because the hope is in the fact that whether you reject him or not, God is the Creator. He did create by his word, he did make us male and female. And none of our efforts to undo that will actually succeed. And what we're seeing on the other side of some of this is that a lot of d. Transitioners are coming face to face with Christ. They're coming face to face with the triune God, the one who made them male or female, and who is their redeemer and who is their only hope, quite frankly.
And so there is hope in it, but we have to deal with the reality of the ugliness, the sacrifice and the loss that people are experiencing because of this spiritual androgyny that, that we've now taken to the next level since Dr. Jones first wrote this article.
So that'll be the focus of my talk.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
And you, you said that statistically the trans movement affects women more than it
[00:11:14] Speaker B: affects men in its new iteration.
So way back when, when transsexualism first really started being a thing, and when they started even tracking people who had what we now refer to as gender dysphoria, gendered identity disorder, the, the number of females who had gender dysphoria was so minuscule, like they, it didn't even register. And so what you typically had was a cohort of not just prepubescent, but like toddler aged boys who wanted very much to be girls to the point where they felt great distress over it. But this usually resolved as life went on, especially during puberty. And it was, it was males who experienced this in 2016. It might have been 2017, but I think it was 2016.
Lisa Lippman of Brown University wrote a paper where she was tracking the sudden up upsurge over the last 10 or 15 years of adolescent girls. So, like going through puberty, adolescent girls who were suddenly after having no signs of gender distress, like lots of them had been very, very girly. There might have been some tomboys in there, but their families had no clue developmentally whatsoever that they had any kind of gender distress, were suddenly coming out as trans.
And so that's what rapid onset gender dysphoria was describing. And she was describing it because it was a brand new cohort.
And so there is rapid onset gender dysphoria that we see now, which is different from those little kids who, from the earliest age that they could express themselves, were. Were wanting to identify as female. They wouldn't have put it that way, but wanted to be girls. All of a sudden, you had this older cohort who had. Had no gender distress when they were very, very young, who were suddenly showing it at the age of puberty, and it was hitting girls way, way more than it tended to be hitting boys who were identifying as trans at that age. So. Yes.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: Yeah. So why the shift?
[00:13:42] Speaker B: Well, that's the question of the century. Right.
I think is this.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Is it.
Maybe this is too crass to put it this way, but was it a.
Was it like a promotion campaign that shifted?
[00:14:00] Speaker B: I don't think that's crass.
Yeah, I really do think that that had a lot to do with it.
You know, here we had Dr. Jones in 2003, and he was talking about.
He was talking about. I think it was in the androgyny article. It might have been in something else that he had written, but he was talking about a boy who had, like, won the right in a school. School. I can't remember whether it was in the United States or in the uk, but to attend class dressed as a female.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: And this was, like, such a one off.
And our listeners, you know, who. Who've listened to us discuss this before, this is such a one off that when Dr. Jones started talking about this more prominently in, like, 2008 and 2009, I am. I am the one who had the gumption to go to him and say, hey, this is kind of fringe. Like, I'm sure it's an issue, but, you know, however, yes, curriculum was quietly being changed. Kids books were quietly being changed.
This whole push for transgender identity, and a lot of it was pushed in the name of, like, inclusion and acceptance, was being pushed into the classroom. It was being pushed into media.
There were starting to be representations of transgender individuals.
And then you also have social media. Like, social media is a huge part of this, where you had tick Tock and you had YouTube where kids were just, like, going through their feeds, and there were these quote, unquote, transgender influencers who were coming on and talking about their trans journeys, and it was all put into terms of, like, liberation and self acceptance and all of these different things. And so there was a lot. There were a lot of kids who got caught up in transgender ideology because they had cell phones in their hands, they had iPads in their hands, and they were just streaming constantly. So there are a lot of kids and several detransitioners. I can think of the primary one. I can picture her face, and I can't say her name, but she was an early detransitioner. She. She talked about how she was on Tumblr.
She was on Tumblr because she was an artist. She started having transgender ideology pushed into her feed. She was feeling pressure because there was this whole intersectionality movement, and she was a straight, quote, unquote, CIS white female. So she was the oppressor. She was bad. She represented evil.
And as soon as she started kind of putting out there that she might be, like, non binary or she might be trans, all of a sudden, like, some of that pressure was taken away. She was put into this other category where now she was the oppressed, which gave her social power and gave her acclimation. She didn't have to feel bad about herself and in society's eyes anymore. So it became this very attractive thing. It was. It was a perfect storm. Joshua? Yeah, and certainly after the Obergefell decision was made, there were all of these organizations, these NGOs, that had been raising money and. And using that money to fight for, quote, unquote, marital equality, right? So they were fighting for gay marriage.
And once the Obergefell decision was made, once gay marriage, kind of like, and I. I use quotes on that, because marriage is between a male and a female. But once that was legalized and became socially acceptable, they didn't have a way to raise money anymore. They needed, like, a new victim class that they could be representing and taken care of. And that. That was transgenderism. It's really interesting. I was just interviewing a woman up in Northern California. She's a high school teacher, and she's been a very outspoken voice of resistance against the way that total acceptance of trans identity is. Is enforced in California's schools. But she.
She identifies as a lesbian, and she was a huge part of that gay rights movement and that marriage equality movement that was going on up in the Bay Area at the time. So she rubs elbows with the movers and the shakers of all these NGOs and these entities. And she was talking to me about that change that she started to see where once gave gay marriage was no longer an issue like, it was sort of so openly accepted culturally that you kind of looked weird for rejecting it or speaking out against it.
They all of a sudden, transgenderism became the new part of that movement. And it really. It troubles her that that's a whole nother story. But it was that perfect storm where they had sort of achieved the level and they needed to, like, level up now, and transgenderism was. That was that next level.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: You know, one of the things I was thinking about as in preparation for this podcast is applying the five points of paganism and the five points of the gospel to this topic.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: And I think about all this one, there is no distinction between the creator, creation. So one way an expression of the first lie is that is a bodily autonomy. I am the creator. I'm one with creation. I am one with the Creator. I get to express truth and my truth and love for Mary.
Ping back and forth with me on this if you want to.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: Because I was going to go through the five points in getting to really the issue of the problem, because I think that's where transgenderism really does express itself in. In one ism is the problem. But. But all is one. All religions are one. Humanity is one.
Does does the transgenderism movement fall nicely into one ism on this point of humanity being one, how does it recognize or deal with sexuality that is actually binary or is actually biblical?
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Well, they just label it as any number of chosen identities that one can take. Right. So, I mean, the interesting thing is that they within sexuality, like, your sexual desire seems to be innate. So, like, if you're gay, you're gay, and that's not going to change.
Right.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: It's immutable, right?
[00:21:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it's an immutable characteristic.
And yet you can change your sex.
And so the thing that we would say is immutable. Right. As Christians, like, it's the complete opposite where God makes us male and female, and he makes us male and female because we're called to fulfill the creation mandate, which involves having children.
Right.
And so you can't change your sex. And if you have same sex desire, those are sinful desires that must be submitted to the Lord and in repentance.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: And.
And you and I both know we
[00:21:55] Speaker A: do not divorce the telos.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: Right, Right.
And so on the trans side or the radical gender ideology side, it's the complete opposite. Like, you can change anything about yourself as far as, like, your sex is concerned, your sex or your gender identity are chosen, but your sexual desire is innate, even though it's not, you know, because then you have polyamorous people, you have people who are bisexual, you have people who lived as lesbians who, not even because of Christian faith, like, now live with men and vice versa. Like, it really is kind of a choose your own adventure. But they will hold to the innateness of sexual desire more than they will hold to the innateness of. Of your.
Your reality as a sex being.
So there is no difference. And. And that is the interesting thing. Like, so in the androgyny article, Peter was quoting someone named Carl Heinrich Ulrichs, who was writing. This guy was writing, like, in the 1800s, and he rejected all psychological and behavioral explanations of homosexuality and adopted a psychospiritual. Listen to the way he did it. He believed a homosexual was a man's body inhibited by a woman's soul, and vice versa for a lesbian.
So that's really interesting. Right. So he believed a homosexual was a man's body inhabited by a woman's soul. So desire for a man is a female desire. And your sexual desire is. Defines what your soul is.
Right, right.
And vice versa for a lesbian. And so I think that's really interesting. We were just going over that book My Shadow is Pink a couple of weeks ago on the podcast. And I mean, that's putting into children's terms, you know, the little boys talking. My dad has a shadow that's blue as can be, and he's like this masculine man, and there's nothing but blue in my whole family tree. But mine is quite different. It's not what you think. For mine is not blue. My shadow is pink. So he has a female soul, and his soul is defined by his desires. My shadow loves ponies and books and pink toys, princesses, fairies, and things. Quote, not for boys.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: So it's the exact same philosophy. It's the exact same theology just expressed in a very simple children's terms.
Yeah, it's your desires that define the truth of who you are. It's not the Creator who defines you and your sinful desires being a rebellion against what the Creator has lovingly ordained.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: The other point of Pagan in Five Points is all religions are one. And I think that by a default, you would have to embrace this. This. This notion that all religions are one. You could not hold to any historical notion of Christianity or the truth. I want to bookmark that statement.
It is a rejection of. Of anything that God says that God has made them male and female. Well, to embrace that the trans, the T, or any part of the LGBTQ really is. Is a rejection of God's word. Go back to that bookmark point this is that I know, I know a number of men.
One who actually I went to college with, identifies as a woman, hasn't done any of the surgery, lives in drag, was very, very conservative. He even, he and I actually both were going to be part of a church plant together all those years ago when I first, I first met you, Mary.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: And he actually wound up moving to the state that we were going to go and do the church plan. And when he moved, his secret life or desires, sinful desires came out, no pun intended.
He wound up actually being put under discipline because he joined a Reformed ish Acts 29:Church.
He was put over under discipline, turned over to Satan and now he still embraces quote unquote the label Christian last and interacted with him. He was at a Methodist United Methodist Church.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: There you go. Yeah.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: I know a number of men through my work with on Revoice who I'm still in contact with who radically disagree with me. Some of them are very hurt and very angry with me because of the whole revoice thing who embrace who are not trans, do not identify as trans. They, they identify as the all embracing queer label. One man in general that I'm thinking of does embrace his trans brothers and sisters quotes because they're part of the LGTP LGBTQ community.
[00:27:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: And while he says it's difficult to to deal with some of the categories and even against the Christian faith, they're a part of the story of God's reconciliation. This one particular individual who is was deeply involved with Revoice at the time he did, he had to reject a lot of biblical, faithfully biblical categories and even doctrines to embrace and to embrace this, this perspective. Of course there's we've got content on the side B issue and revoice that our listeners, they can go back and find that in our archives.
But that is one of the things that happens in, in the lie of one ism.
Do you embrace that all religions are one?
You have to, you have to radically reject the historic biblical Christian faith that was delivered once and for all historically confessed. Fourth point of oneism is there is a problem and the problem is us.
We make distinctions. We live in a created and ordered world.
This is my father's world.
That transcendent God Triune created a world of order. He created distinctions. Right. He created the day to rule versus the night. He created the sky over the land, he created the sea.
And he filled the whole cosmos with cross created things.
And then he made male and female. In oneism, it has to reject distinctions.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: In transgenderism, it's a dualism of mind. Rejecting those distinctions, if I'm putting that right.
And it rejects the body.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: Which is where we kind of find ourselves into the whole gnostic realm.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And what confuses me with this is that so many people who do identify as transgender do want to change their bodies to match their sense of what is real on the inside.
Right.
And before we were, before we were recording today, I had gone back through just to kind of refresh my memory, you know, so.
Because what I'm thinking about, what I'm concerned about, because it's happening to so many kids and to so many families right now, is young people who are told from such early, early ages. I mean, that My Shadow is Pink book.
[00:29:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: The way that came onto our radar just to. To remind the listeners is because fifth graders were reading it to kindergartners in Encinitas, California. Right. So this is a kindergarten aged aimed book. Yeah.
And so one of the things that we're dealing with right now in the United States of America, and it is changing, but we are still dealing with it, is the fact that so many of our medical associations have been captured by this lie and influenced by radical activists, groups like the World Professional association for Transgender Health, which is utterly discredited. Like it. It is so shocking the things that these people were doing and suggesting and prescribing and, you know, writing into policy.
But one of the things that is very commonly still put forth by medical associations, and I think it's still held to an official policy by the American Academy of Pediatrics, is that affirmation only is the approach that should be taken to, to gender confused kids.
And that in addition, there's a recommendation for something called the Dutch Protocol. Now I would have to go back and find out whether the Dutch protocol all is. And I will explain that in a second. Is referenced specifically in the.
In the American Academy of Pediatrics defense of affirmation only quote, unquote, care for kids.
But this is intervention that is supposed to be done at the earliest age possible, like in pre pubescence to block puberty, so that the. The cross sex treatments that are done are as successful as possible. Well, I went back to just remind myself about the history of this. And yes, so there was an early Dutch adult study that was done that followed like 141 Dutch adults, 105 of whom were. Were me male who wanted to appear female.
And as they conducted this study, what they found was that for the males in the study, their dissatisfaction was tied to the fact that they couldn't, quote, unquote, pass as female. No matter all the interventions that were done because they had gone through puberty, they had gone through male puberty. So women who wanted to identify as man had higher satisfaction rates because they were taking testosterone. I won't even get into, like, what testosterone actually does to a satisfied, you know, woman who wants to identify as a man because it's. It's graphic and it's disturbing. But setting that aside, what the Dutch determined was that because male puberty was so hard to undo, they wanted to start blocking male puberty now in this younger cohort of kids who. Who were gender confused and see if that would then allow them to. To pass better as adults, you know, in their trans identities.
So that's really confusing to me because. Well, for a whole lot of reasons. I mean, one, that original. Then next Dutch state study where they developed the Dutch protocol, which this was like, in the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, that's when they started experimenting with puberty blockers.
So they were. They were just trying to push this onto younger kids to make them have better outcomes. And.
And. But they were doing it on a very select group of kids who had, like, ongoing, very upsetting gender dysphoria. So there. There were supposed to be these very strict criteria for the kids that they were doing this for.
Somehow that translated to, okay, the best necessary thing that we need to do for any kid who's gender confused at any point here in the United States and in other Western countries was to block their puberty. To call it a pause button. To, you know, to do these interventions as early as possible.
And I don't understand that. Like, if you are who you say you are.
[00:34:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:32] Speaker B: And your soul matters, then why does it matter how your body looks? I don't. I. That doesn't track theologically for me, but it is this insistence that, yes, I identify as something other than what my physical body indicates, and therefore, I must change my physical. Physical body, even though my physical body has nothing to do with who I actually am.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: Is there, like, then a loophole or back door that the LGBTQ community then, therefore would use?
Because they rec. I'm sure that they think about that too, where they. They'll say, I'm trans, but I'm also queer. Or they're. Or they're starting to embrace this backdoor language so that they could get around that problem, because they're there if I'M If I'm hearing you right, you're saying that there. And the problem with the LGBTQ or the. The T aspect is that they're actually claiming there is an objective female. There really is an objective male.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: Ish. And. And, you know, I mean, so this is like, you're touching on a huge controversy within.
Within this whole movement. You know, like, there. There are groups like LGB Courage, where they really, like, they want to reject the T.
There are people in the trans movement who, you know, and. And unfortunately, even within, like, people who identify as trans, like, we tend to think that, okay, if you say you're trans, you have gender dysphoria, and you. You would be much more comfortable in the body of the opposite sex. No big thing. Well, that. That's not it. Like, with girls, a lot of the time, these adolescent girls who identify as trans, the rates of mental health issues are just astronomical, like, within these courts, right?
But a lot of them have experienced sexual trauma.
A lot of them have been overly sexualized. A lot of them have been exposed to porn. They don't like seeing women treated the way that women are treated in porn. And so they view their femininity as a huge vulnerability that they want to reject and get away from. Right?
So in the male cohorts, and this is not exclusive. There. There are exceptions to every rule, but sure, for non homosexual identified transgender men. So in other words, men who still desire sexual relationships with women but also identify as men, like, that's where autogynephilia comes into this. And I'm sure that there are other categories of this, but it's a paraphilia. So in other words, they aren't transgender.
They're turned on by the idea of themselves as women, but a really pornified version of women.
[00:37:38] Speaker A: Right?
[00:37:38] Speaker B: And so this has created. I've referenced this before, but, like, this has created, like, these crazy conversations and these crazy conflicts where, like, there are lesbians who have been kicked off of lesbian dating sites because they've put in their profiles that when they say that they are lesbian, they mean that they want a relationship with another biological female, that they don't want a relationship with a man who identifies as a woman. Right? And I've even heard this term transbans, like, so, like, it just. That's the thing is that when you unhook sexual desire and. And sexual identity from objective reality, like you, you just end up with chaos, right? Like, you.
You end up with this total chaos. Like, it. None of it really makes sense. The only thing that's coherent is the rejection of the Creator.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: And the creation that he's made. You know, so
[00:38:46] Speaker A: what do we mean by at truth exchange when we say that sexuality is tied to spirituality?
[00:38:52] Speaker B: Well, the interesting thing is that that reminds me a little bit of like the claim that like.
When we were, when we speak out against like transgender ideology, we're making it political. Right. Like, Right. It's the other half of that.
[00:39:15] Speaker A: So
[00:39:17] Speaker B: what is the chief end of man?
[00:39:20] Speaker A: Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.
[00:39:23] Speaker B: Right.
And we glorify God by acknowledging him in part as creator.
[00:39:31] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:39:32] Speaker B: And as the one who has defined us, named us, known us since before the foundation of the world.
And therefore I think that there are things that we don't think of as spiritual. Like we don't think of sex as sacred as a culture very much anymore.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: But we're wrong. It is sacred. It is spiritual. You know, Paul talks about like not having sex with prostitutes because there is something spiritual that happens when that physical union happens. Right.
When we, when we get married, God says, what I've put together, don't tear asunder. Right. Like we become one flesh, we become a life giving unit that we can't be with without that kind of relationship. And so, but the only way for that relationship to be good and life producing is and protecting and beautiful and God glorifying is to, to do it in the ways that he has mandated it. And so I think we can over spiritualize sex. And I think that we have seen some examples of that in the past couple of years where sex has, has been overstated because obviously, you know, there are people who are celibate. I mean, Christ when he walked on earth was celibate and he was a whole person who glorified God. Right. And, and granted, Christ is, you know, he's fully God and he's fully man. But Paul talked about the gift of, of not having that kind of desire. He. He was called to something else. So he wasn't married.
But, but he still is an image bearer. Right. So I think that we can chase image and pull it too far.
But certainly sex is spiritual and when we do it wrong, we, we do damage to ourselves and to the other people who are involved, frankly, when we create life without sex, without the marital bond, you know, so in talking about like IVF and surrogacy and all of the other things that we see coming up right now, like when, when you remove sex like the sexual married relationship out of that, that equation and, and you're making babies. What we're finding is that that production of life, it's unprotected life.
That a lot of these people don't love their children the way that a mother and a father would love their children in a family unit. So every aspect of it is spiritual. Spiritual.
It has to stay in its, its category. That was a really long rambling.
But.
[00:42:33] Speaker A: Well, it's. And it's the Romans 12. I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship.
And worship is a spiritual things. And, and we get into trouble when we divorce creation or created things from. From spiritual things. That's when we create a dualism or an unbiblical dualism. Yeah, Design, telos, matter.
We are sex beings. Is. Is very deeply intertwined and you cannot, you can't separate them. Like, like, like the Gnostics would.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: Right.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: A couple of questions for you, Mary, before we close out is in the title of your talk, you mentioned about giving Lot's daughters over.
In your synopsis, you mentioned to me that there is a disruption of family.
I'd like you to talk to us about why the trans movement from it being realized in people's lives to. As an ideology, how that disrupts families bake into that where we are at, at least here in the United States.
How easy is it for children to get access to trans help?
[00:43:58] Speaker B: That word help is doing a lot of work there.
It's carrying a very heavy load. Okay.
[00:44:07] Speaker A: So I'm sorry, when I mean help, I shouldn't say. I. I think that's the wrong way to put it.
[00:44:14] Speaker B: No.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: How easy is it for kids to get without parents knowledge?
[00:44:20] Speaker B: Okay, so that's, that's.
I'm gonna have to break this down a little bit, but sure, take your time.
This is where I was going with the immediate previous part of this conversation is that families get to torn apart in a number of different ways.
And someone who I love and I would love to have her on our podcast, I had attempted to reach out to her at one point and just didn't get it. It just didn't work. But I'd like to try again as someone named Katie Faust.
And Katie had founded a group called Them Before Us.
And what Katie is very, very concerned with is that in all of these instances where children come into the world and the adults who care for them are not following God's design of marriage being between a male and a female and raising their children together. In every single instance, you are creating children who immediately have the wound of missing either a mother or a father or brother. Both. Okay? Now, Katie was raised by a mom who is a lesbian.
And Katie loves her mom, and she also loves her mom's partner, and she's very, very open about that.
But she is sad that she was raised with the whole of not having a father just inherent to her mother's choices. That meant for Katie that she did not get to have a father. And. And God intends us to have a mother and a father to care for us. So it's not that any two adults can. Can raise a child, and it's just the same that any two will do in instances of surrogacy. So we're seeing more and more often, like these gay men who are adopting through surrogacy children who now inherently, in. In many, many instances don't have access to a biological mother or father. So they're immediately taken out of that family unit, that protection, and they're put in a scenario where the two people caring for them are. Are not biologically connected to them at all now.
So this is one of the ways that families are being destroyed. So when you. When you unhook some sex from the meaning of sex, which is to build families and to fill the earth and subdue it and to steward it for God's glory, immediately that's a tearing apart of the family.
Another way that families are being torn apart is that people who are trans activists and advocates believe that they can love your children better than you can if you're not willing to affirm your child in their transgender identity. Okay, Right. And so you start hearing these references to, like, glitter families. A glitter family is a family of people that you choose who support you and identifying who you are, and they affirm you and. And they love you more than your family does if your family, quote, unquote, rejects your trans identity.
You see teachers, you know, Libs of Tick Tock is finally, is constantly posting stuff like this, but you see these teachers who.
And. And trans activists who will wear T shirts that say things like, I'm your mother now, or, like, if your mom won't accept you as you truly are. So there's that truth claim. Right? So then I will be your parent. Now, we've seen instances of teachers in Washington and California. I know of two documented cases where there are teachers who are intervening with children who are identifying as transgender at school, but they were too scared to tell their parents at home. And where These teachers, via email and text messages to the children, were interviewing and saying, well, I'll be your mother. I'll accept you for who you are. And, and in one instance, there was this girl up in Washington who, like, she was starting to communicate to friends around her that she felt like she had to keep identifying as a boy so the teacher would love her because if she went back to her girl status, which she really missed and loved with her parents, then the teacher was going to reject her. Right? So that. So the tearing apart of families is happening that way.
The tearing apart of families is happening by law in, in places like here in California.
We are, by the declaration, I think, of our legislature, but most especially by our governor. We are a trans sanctuary state.
So in California, if a child runs away or if a parent who is affirming brings a child and leaves the non affirming parent in another state, California will not recognize the rights of the parents outside of California to, to not affirm. They will give that child sanctuary. They will give that child, quote, unquote, sanctuary.
They will put them in affirming foster care and they will use state taxpayer funds to pay for transgender surgeries and cross sex hormone treatments and puberty blockers if the child's young enough. Okay, so even if you're in a red state, you're not necessarily safe from the predations of the blue states, because the blue states, they will not honor your rights as parents. And so that's on a legislative level the way that families are being torn apart. And I will tell you, Joshua, I don't know the venue in which I'm going to be able to tell the entirety of this story, but there is a family that I have, I've interviewed the parents, a Ukrainian couple who had immigrated here. They had come to California and were living up in Shasta county and they had a daughter who was dealing with severe mental health issues anyway and began to identify as trans.
And Child Protective services did show up, did take their child away, did put their child into a foster care home. Home where she was put on hormones and she was, from the evidence that we can see, Al, also sexually assaulted.
And the courts determined here in California that because the family's culture as Ukrainian would not allow them to support her and her trans identity the way the courts thought that they should.
While they weren't deemed abusive parents, they were deemed unfit parents and they've had to flee the state with their other child to keep that child safe while they're trying to fight in the courts to get their daughter back, and they can tell from their insurance records that she is being put on these sex rejecting treatments.
So it's a wildly complicated situation. There are many, many layers to that particular situation, but it's not a uni situation.
I've, I've interviewed dads whose wives were affirming their trans identified children and who divorced them so that they could put their kids on puberty blockers and cross sex hormone treatments.
It just goes on and on.
But on the other side of that, Joshua, there's something I find really interesting.
I know, I know. A mother and a father, Reed and Addie, to pace their believers read as a pastor, and they have five kids and their youngest identifies as transgender. And she has cut off communication with her parents. At this point.
They have been told in not so many words, the same kind of thing that I was just describing to you that, you know, her chosen family loves her better because they are supporting her and her trans identity.
But Reid and Addie, because they are her mom and her dad and they love her with the love that God put in their hearts for her, they're waiting for her to come home.
They are planning their retirement and the steps that they take in their lives around the fact that when she comes home, she probably will have medically damaged herself.
And they are trying to prepare themselves so that when all the glitter family, all the chosen family, all the cheerleaders go away and this fight against the reality of her sexed human female body made in the image of a holy God, when by his grace, she comes back to herself and comes back and reconciles herself, her Lord and Savior, that they will be there and able to take care of her.
That's what a family does. That's what a family is within a biblical context, in a fallen world, a mother and a father seek to protect their children, to love their children and to love them well, according to reality. You know, I quote it all the time.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend, and profuse are the kisses of an enemy. And I was reading in proverbs recently too, and this, this is just regards regarding the way that people keep their animals.
You know, we're not even supposed to mistreat our animals, let alone our children.
But at the end of that proverb, and I don't, I don't have the verse location off the top of my head, but it says that the, the, the mercy of the world is cruelty.
And that's what we are seeing in this, in this movement.
The mercy of the world is, is cruelty. Yeah, it does destruction because it's unhooked from the reality of God, our, our Redeemer and our Creator.
And.
We talk in terms of destruction and the destruction is real.
But the final word and the final victory is the Lord's.
And there's, there's hope in that.
Yeah, there's in that.
[00:55:27] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:55:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:30] Speaker A: Yeah. I, I, I love that that aspect of this ministry is the emphasis of Creator and Redeemer. Yeah, we highlight that often and may that always be a balm and an anchor for our listeners and followers.
You know, the, the fifth point of oneism is that the solution is to look within.
[00:55:54] Speaker B: Right.
[00:55:54] Speaker A: And the trans movement is looking within. They're looking to with their themselves as the solution that they have to get away from the distinctions and they have to look to themselves.
But in 2 ism the beauty is that we look to him, we look to Christ, we look to our Creator, who is our Redeemer.
And so friends, in closing, if this podcast and discussion has stirred in you or you have someone, a loved one who is is messing with some of this ideology, or maybe you would like to be more better equipped, I encourage you, especially if you are local here in Columbia, South Carolina to join us. Would you register today? Go to TrumpExchange.com to reserve your spot and to be with us with Rosaria, with Peter, with Mary, myself and my pastor. And join us on Also, if you're a listener to this podcast regularly or even infrequent, would you share this episode so that the truth exchange message can really get out? And then last is subscribe. We're trying to make it weekly sometimes we might miss, but stay tuned, we will get those. To all my South Carolina farmers, thank you for encouraging me constantly to get the content to you all.
We know how important it is for good biblical godly Christ, exalting apologetic content, how badly it's needed out there. Last, would you pray for us? Pray for us as we prepare for this think tank. Thank you for listening to us today, Mary. Thank you for all the work that you have put into this and we look forward to I think our next guest is going to be Rosaria Butterfield. And so that's going to be a great one. That's going to be next week and again, thank you for listening to this podcast. Please, if you are local or you don't mind a little bit of a drive, come join us June 5th and the 6th in Columbia, South Carolina for the Peter Jones letters. The God of Sex hope to see you there.
