Breakpoint

Thanks to the Coronavirus lockdown, nearly 100 babies born through commercial surrogacy were stranded in the Ukraine. The BBC video of the story was hard to watch. What may be even harder to do is to have a serious discussion about the ethical problems with surrogacy. But that's what we have for you today on the BreakPoint podcast. 

WORLD Magazine correspondent and BreakPoint writer Maria Baer talks with Shane Morris about issues such as legal rights, broken bonds between birth mother and child, medical dangers, and the commoditization not only of babies, but of women--especially poor women. Maria also discusses an interview she conducted with the head of the Ukrainian surrogacy company that made international news.

Does the very real pain of infertility justify the means by which couples obtain babies? What is a Christian position on surrogacy? 

“Born  into legal limbo in Ukraine,” WORLD radio podcast by Maria Baer

“Anderson Cooper and the New Normal: Why Surrogacy Is Oppression,” by John Stonestreet and Maria Baer, BreakPoint

“Adoption Is Beautiful, Surrogacy Isn’t,” by John Stonestreet and Maria Baer, BreakPoint

“Coronavirus: Surrogate babies stranded in Ukraine,” BBC News video

Do you like what you hear  on the BreakPoint Podcast?  Please consider making a donation as we approach our fiscal year end, June 30th. Thank you!

John Stonestreet and Shane Morris discuss the long-term consequences of the Supreme Court decision in Bostock vs. Clayton County, in which Justice Neil Gorsuch stood logic and language on their head and essentially re-wrote Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. As John argues, the decision will inevitably extend to areas like education and women's sports. And as Shane relates, by equating sexual orientation and gender identity with race, the Court is putting believers in traditional sexual morality on the level with racists and bigots.

Also in this episode: A Christian pastor argues that to win the next round of the culture war, Christians will need to have more children and raise them in the faith. So naturally he got a lot of flak--even from Christians. How is this possible? John and Shane discuss.

John and Shane also take listeners' questions:  Today on end of life decisions and whether monogamy is making a comeback.

And we also share a segment of author Natasha Crain's presentation at our Truth Love Together event entitled, "Teaching Your Kids Truth in a Noisy Age."

“Lawyer Predicts New and Ugly Chapter of the Culture War: A Conversation with the ADF’s John Bursch,” BreakPoint Podcast

“It’s Time for a New Culture War Strategy,” by Kevin DeYoung, The Gospel  Coalition

“Supreme Court Re-Writes 1964 Civil Rights Act” by John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera

The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus, by Allen Verhey

“Teaching Your Kids Truth in a Noisy Age” a presentation by Natasha Crain

In a YouTube video produced by a friend who leads the Christian youth organization, Link Year, dozens of students line up for a foot race to win a $100 bill. Before they begin, the leader informs them they won’t each start from the same place. He then reads a series of statements, telling everyone to whom those statements apply to take two steps forward.

The very first statement was, “Your mom and dad are still married.” The second statement was, “You grew up with a father figure in the home.” Then there are many others.

By the time he’s finished, some students in the group are mere feet from the finish line.  Others remain haven’t moved at all, still at the starting line, looking frustrated and hopeless.  The message is clear and profound. Everyone runs the race of life, but some people have more help than others.

We are currently in a cultural moment where all of the emphasis is on white privilege, and as a white man, I fully admit that while I have worked hard to be where I am, I have enjoyed more than a few helping hands and “get out of jail free” cards that others have not. Often, our culture has a backwards way of addressing inequality, as Dr. Glenn Sunshine recently pointed out on the Theology Pugcast. Opportunities should not be removed from those who have them, they should be given it to those who don’t have it.

At the same time, this video reveals what we know to be true from mountains of research. The most powerful head starts any child can have is being raised in a home with married mom and dad. That remains the single, most consistent and accurate indicator of a child’s long-term success.

Rob Kenney didn’t have that head start. This newly-minted YouTube celebrity with three grown children of his own, had a father who walked out on him when he was fourteen. Unsure of where to go, Kenney moved in with his older brother, and slowly learned the skills his dad wasn’t there to teach him.

Realizing now what all he missed, Kenney started a YouTube channel to teach skills to young people without dads in their life. As my Tennessee friend might put it, he’s not teaching rocket surgery. The videos are about things dads typically teach their sons and daughters: how to tie a tie, how to change a tire, how to unclog a sink, how to shave, and how to hang a shelf.

Kenney named his YouTube channel, “Dad, how do I?”  When his son, apparently aware of and willing to share the blessings he’s enjoyed with such a great father, posted a link to his dad’s channel on the photo sharing site Imgur, it exploded. In just two months, the channel has over 2 million subscribers.

According to Kenney, the response to his channel has been overwhelming, and not just from the huge number of clicks and eyeballs. The comments people are leaving on his videos, thanking him for the channel, are heartbreaking and heartwarming all at the same time.

Both young men and young women have told him that his videos were filling a void their absent fathers left behind, and not just the how-to tips. They thank Kenney for his understanding and his affirmation. They thank him for the way he frequently tells viewers words they have never heard, “I’m proud of you.” They even thank him for the corny dad jokes.

“Thank you for being the dad I never had,” wrote one. “God bless you, sir,” wrote another, adding how he had learned that “just because you don’t have a good dad, doesn’t mean YOU cannot be one! Someone has to break the pattern.”  Another observed: “Sir, you’ve unwittingly adopted the entire Internet.”

Kenney is blown away, but still humble. “I didn’t always do everything right with my kids,” he admits but he recognizes, as Intellectual Takeout did when they broke the story about his channel, America has a devastating fatherless ache. “The pain is pretty real in our world,” said Kenney. “Hopefully this will help alleviate some of it.”

Of course, I hope Kenney’s idea goes viral well beyond YouTube and well beyond the Internet. I pray this story of a dad making how-to videos reminds us of the central, irreplaceable value of fathers, and inspires other men to act as fathers to the fatherless.

After all, our response to the head start kids with loving dads shouldn’t be, “Hey, that’s not fair!” Instead we should say: “Everybody should have that.” If the Church today is to be effective in binding up the wounds of a broken culture, it will have to model and pass on the love of our Heavenly Father for the fatherless.

Maybe it’s as simple as just being there to answer a question like, “Dad, how do I…?”

Since I wasn’t even alive in 1968, I’ll defer to Boomers and historians to tell us whether the country was more divided back then or today. In my lifetime, however, I can confidently say that the racial, political, economic, and ideological polarization has never been worse, nor has the violence and outrage. 

No matter the issue, from public policy to personal morality to global health, people seem to immediately run to their ideological and political corners. No discussion, little charity, less concern about the requirements of a common life together. A lot of yelling. It’s difficult to imagine a people less able to accomplish a life together than us, with no shared vision and no shared memory.

Tomorrow, however, offers us an opportunity to come out of our ideological and political corners and agree to commemorate a significant day in American history. Every American, regardless of politics or background, should reflect on a day marked in many African American communities for over 150 years.

Tomorrow, June 19th, is Juneteenth, the anniversary of the day in 1865 in which the particularly vicious evil of chattel slavery effectively came to an end in this country. Here’s the history.

In 1862, President Lincoln issued the most famous executive order in history, known as the Emancipation Proclamation. “…on the first day of January,” read the order, “in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State … in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward and forever free.”

With this order, Lincoln only declared the emancipation of slaves within the Confederacy. Pro-Union border states and even areas in the South controlled by Union troops were not “in rebellion against the United States.” Practically speaking, the Emancipation Proclamation was more symbolic than effective.

The surrender of Confederate general Robert E. Lee at Appomattox in April of 1865 signaled the end of the Confederacy and foresaw the final end of slavery. Even then, however, pockets of resistance persisted. Emancipation would have to be enforced.

On June 19, 1865, “more than two thousand Federal soldiers of the 13th Army Corps arrived in Galveston [Texas] and with them Major General Gordon Granger . . . Granger’s men marched through Galveston reading General Order, No. 3,” which informed “the people of Texas… that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

That is a moment worthy of commemorating. 

In fact, African-Americans in Texas began commemorating Juneteenth very next year, 1866. As African-Americans migrated north and west, they took the commemoration with them. Even today, though officially recognized in hundreds of cities and in 47 out of 50 states, Juneteenth remains largely an African-American celebration.

But it’s a day all Americans should commemorate. Juneteenth was the culmination of the efforts of men and women across race and social standing to put an end to a particularly shameful practice on our shores. Last year, my Colson Center colleague Tim Padgett wrote in an outstanding column on Juneteenth at BreakPoint.org, In it, he described how American abolitionists “were driven by the understanding that the realities of American Slavery were irreconcilable to their Christian beliefs about the dignity of humanity and their American dreams about the centrality of liberty. They saw that the slave was made in the image of God as anyone else and therefore as deserving of honor as themselves.”

Juneteenth 1865 is an important event in our national timeline, an attempt to live up to what Chuck Colson liked to call our American creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

We’ve not yet lived up to that creed. We still have a long way to go. Perhaps remembering Juneteenth together could remind us of the type of nation we say we are, and compel us to keep trying.

In the wake of Monday’s shocking Supreme Court decision that essentially re-writes Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, John Stonestreet welcomes to the BreakPoint Podcast John Bursch of the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Bursch, who argued the case on behalf of the owners of the Harris Funeral Home, gives his take on Justice Gorsuch’s absurd majority opinion—an opinion which in spite of Gorsuch’s denial, now expands the definition of “sex” in civil rights law to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

How far-reaching is this decision? What are its implications? And what does it mean for religious freedom?

The Alliance Defending Freedom website

The Colson Center’s “What Would You Say?” videos

“Supreme Court Re-Writes 1964 Civil Rights Act: Title VII to Include Sexual Orientation,” by John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera

The question most central to defining a worldview, other than “Who is God?” and “What does it mean to be human?” is “What’s really wrong with the world?” It’s a tricky question, because there are a lot of things wrong the world. The question is what is the core problem that needs to be addressed in the world, the root cause of evil and human suffering, and what solution can be offered to fix it?

For example, we should want to see justice flourish and racism of all kinds come to an end, especially in light of our nation’s history and evidence that our African American neighbors are not treated equally before the law. But not everyone who talks about ending racism and creating justice means the same thing. For a growing number of people, including some Christians with good motives, these goals are shorthand for an ideology that divides instead of reconciles, that sees people as either oppressed or oppressor rather than as divine image bearers created from “one blood.”

The ideas of Critical Theory, especially since the horrific killing of George Floyd, have become a central part of our national conversation. Once largely limited to the academy, these ideas have trickled down the way ideas do, to the media, through popular culture into the cultural imagination. Even those not familiar with the term “critical theory” will likely recognize its central tenets.

Critical Theory originated with a group of political philosophers who applied Karl Marx’s ideas about economics to society as a whole, especially across additional categories of class distinction, such as race, sex, and gender identity. The result was an all-encompassing worldview that purported to reveal hidden power structures behind society’s problems and institutions, by dividing people along the lines of oppressed and oppressor.

As Colson Center Senior Fellow and historian Glenn Sunshine explained in a recent episode of The Theology Pugcast, Critical Theory, like the classical Marxism it borrows from, views human beings in purely materialist terms. So, according to Critical Theory our race, sexual orientation, gender identity aren’t mere aspects of who we are, they are our defining characteristics. In each of these areas, we are either part of oppressed groups or we are oppressors.

According to critical theory, the oppressed group automatically has moral authority, while the oppressor group does not. Someone who is a racial minority, or a sexual minority of some kind are automatically victims of oppression and have claims against oppressors and the unearned privilege that makes their life easier (and this part is critical) at the expense of their oppressed neighbors.

Overlooked in this analysis are individual choices and life situations, which often hold a far greater impact on a person’s life. For example, whether or not a child grows up with a father is statistically more important than their ethnic identity. Other factors, such as religious commitment, education, sexual decisions, and family stability have profound power to shape the lives and futures as individuals, families, and whole communities.

Critical theory, however, ignores every other factor or squashes it into the oppressor-oppressed dynamic. This view distorts reality, and often turns on itself.

A recent article at Quillette described a Danish professor and critical theorist attacked by fellow critical theorists. They claimed his branch of Critical Theory was racist. This is no isolated case. Critical Theorists have produced scholarly articles and whole books claiming that everything from logic to math are tools of white, heteronormative oppression.

The problem, as is explained in a recent “What Would You Say” video, is that Critical Theory’s answer to the question “what’s wrong with the world” is just wrong. Specifically, critical theory gets the human condition wrong and the human problem wrong. As a result, its solutions are simplistic and, at times, dangerous. They’re not compatible with Christianity, and we should reject them.

Now, to be clear, I believe racism still plagues our country, and is embedded in the hearts of individuals and in institutions and systems. We can reach this conclusion by care, by listening, and by statistical data, not to mention from  how the Christian worldview describes about the cause and condition of fallen humanity.

Too often, any attempt to listen and to engage the race issue is dismissed as critical theory. It’s not. At the same time, Critical Theory’s analysis and answers to the problem of racism violate what we know to be true about the human condition. Only the Biblical story frames for us human value, human sin, and human hope, which both allows us and calls us to confront racism wherever it rears its ugly head, without embracing a theory that sees people as nothing but their race.   

Yesterday, by a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination in employment on the basis of sex, also includes sexual orientation and gender identity.

The decision, Bostock v. Clayton County,  involved three cases. In two of them, a social worker and a skydiving instructor claimed they were fired for being gay. The third case involved the firing of a funeral home employee who, after being hired as a man, identified and presented as a woman.

Everyone expected the decision to hinge on whether or not the word “sex” should be limited to a biological understanding or expanded to include the categories of sexual orientation and gender identity. The lawyers for the defense argued that when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, they had no sense the word “sex” meant anything other than biological categories. Therefore, ruling for the plaintiffs would amount to re-writing the Civil Rights Act, something only Congress can do.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, in a bit of rhetorical jiu-jitsu, succeeded in re-writing the law even while denying doing so. After claiming to “agree that homosexuality and transgender status are distinct concepts from sex,” he then argued that “discrimination based on homosexuality or transgender status necessarily entails discrimination based on sex.”

“Sex,” wrote Gorsuch, “plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision” to fire a homosexual or transgender person “for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex.” And that, he wrote, “is exactly what Title VII forbids.”

In other words, rather than directly saying the word sex in Title VII should include sexual orientation and gender identity, he essentially argued that if employers wouldn’t fire a man for sleeping with a woman, they shouldn’t be able to fire a woman for sleeping with a woman. Extending that logic, if a woman is allowed to dress like a woman, you can’t fire a man for dressing like a woman.

To be clear, Gorsuch didn’t really explain why his logic applied to transgender persons. He assumed something that many gays and lesbians disagree with, that what applies to same-sex attracted people is equally applicable to transgender people. (Of course, the “T” hitched late to the LGB acronym, and has long made their living off others’ fights. Consider the #blacktranslivesmatter movement, for example.)

Gorsuch anticipated the objection that sexual orientation and gender identity were the furthest things from the drafters’ minds: “Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act,” he wrote, “might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. Likely, they weren’t thinking about many of the Act’s consequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees. But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands.” [Emphasis added]

If Gorsuch is right about that, then there is no fixed meaning in the text of any law or statute. As Justice Kavanaugh wrote in his stinging dissent, claiming to uphold the “literal” meaning of the word, Gorsuch completely savages the ordinary meaning. Justice Alito, in his dissent, took it even further. “…a more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall…”

Alito’s closing words are worth quoting in full: “…the authority of this Court is limited to saying what the law is. The Court itself recognizes this, ‘The place to make new legislation . . . lies in Congress. When it comes to statutory interpretation, our role is limited to applying the law’s demands as faithfully as we can in the cases that come before us.’ It is easy to utter such words. If only the Court would live by them.” 

The consequences of yesterday’s ruling will be significant. It is, to be clear, a broad ruling masquerading as a narrow one. Justice Gorsuch’s claim that the decision has no bearing on “bathrooms, locker rooms, and other things of that kind,” is patent nonsense. This is more likely the beginning of a national SOGI law, in which sexual orientation and gender identity is equated with race and protections are extended and applied to other areas of the Civil Rights Act, including those that govern housing and education.

Remember when we were also told Obergefell would have no bearing on religious freedom or other issues? Certain ideas, when imposed, make other ideas possible, even necessary. Yesterday’s decision would have never happened without Obergefell. The decisions of tomorrow, when Title IX and other federal laws are completely reimagined as if biological realities don’t exist, will be made because of yesterday’s decision.

“I can’t breathe,” the last words George Floyd said to his killers, became the chant of nationwide protests. Sometime last week a new slogan emerged: “Defund the police.” Even “Abolish the police.”

At face value, the new slogan sounds absurd. Because it is. When a CNN news anchor asked the president of the Minneapolis City Council, “What if in the middle of (the) night my home is broken into? Who do I call?” The Councilwoman’s response, that the ability to call for help in the first place was a matter of “white privilege,” was, shall we say, less than enlightening.

Abolishing police is the stuff of utopian fantasies, only possible in worlds without evildoers. Because such worlds do not exist, law enforcement of some kind, at least here on earth, will always be necessary. To think otherwise is to misunderstand the human condition.

“The line separating good and evil,” wrote Solzhenitsyn, “passes not through states, nor classes, nor political parties.” Neither does it pass through occupations, as if policemen are intrinsically “evil,” while social workers or teachers or protestors are intrinsically “good.” The problem is in all of us, in every human heart.

Still, just because law enforcement will always be necessary this side of the New Earth does not mean reform of law enforcement is unnecessary. Indeed, this what many people mean, despite what they say.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn, a veteran of the Civil Rights movement, worries that calls to defund or abolish the police could “hijack the momentum to make serious police reforms in the wake of George Floyd's death.” As he put it, “if you mean reimagining policing, say that.”

In fact, police departments across the nation have made reforms in recent years, attempting to root out corruption and improve community relations. An oft-cited example is Camden, New Jersey, one of the most violent cities in America not that long ago.

In 2012, after concluding police corruption was contributing to the violence, the city dissolved the department and turned over law enforcement to the county. Twice the number of officers were put on the street, with a new emphasis known as “community policing,” while still spending less money.

Within five years, the number of homicides dropped by two-thirds. Among the goals, a former chief told NPR, was “to change how the community viewed police officers . . . from ‘warrior’ to ‘guardian.’”

Behind Camden’s reforms are a handful of principles worthy of consideration. For example, ending “qualified immunity,” which “shields government officials from being sued for discretionary actions performed within their official capacity.” This practice shields wrongdoers from accountability and is a problem not just, but especially in, law enforcement.

The police officer who knelt on the neck of George Floyd until he died should have been held accountable for a number of previous complaints. The TSA officer in Denver, who was caught selecting which male passengers he wanted to “pat down” in 2014, should have faced criminal charges instead of just the loss of his job. And, hospital officials who prevented my friend from seeing his wife for three weeks before she died last month, should be held accountable for the failed policies they hid behind.

A second reform has to do with police unions. Among the reasons Camden dissolved its police force was because the union made it impossible to discipline bad and corrupt officers. Mayors across the country tell similar stories.

Again, this is not a problem unique to law enforcement. If we want to see an improvement in failing schools, teachers’ unions cannot be allowed to protect bad teachers. Of course, when it comes to police, corruption and incompetence can lead to someone being killed.

A final principle is civil society must be strengthened. As New York Magazine put it, “In the U.S., the police are the answer for everything. To an overdose, a noisy party, a counterfeit bill in a shop. They are the first and often the last resort for any complaint, no matter how petty. There’s no end to the responsibilities with which we have charged them . . .”

In other words, police officers are carrying the weight of failed families, broken communities, invisible churches, and human isolation. As Chuck Colson used to say, the choice often boils down to the conscience or the constable. Only moral formation and mutual accountability can reduce our reliance on police.

In the late 18th and early 19th century, communities in both Britain and the United States saw a significant drop in crime and a significant increase in safety. Why? At least one reason seems to be Sunday School.

Of course, there’s also much to be said about the increased militarization of the police. That’s not a solution for a broken community, as some often claim. Rather, it’s evidence of just how big the problem is.

So, defund? No. Abolish? No. Reform? Yes. But know this: it won’t ultimately be a government job.

Today on the BreakPoint Podcast, host Shane Morris welcomes Natasha Crain, author of "Talking with Your Kids About Jesus: 30 Conversations Every Christian Parent Must Have."  Natasha offers parents encouragement and sound advice on dealing with our kids' questions and concerns about the faith. 

You can also watch Natasha Crain's presentation on "Teaching Your Kids Truth in a Noisy World" at our free online event, Truth, Love, Together. 

Talking with Your Kids about Jesus: 30 Conversations Every Christian Parent Must Have, by Natasha Crain

“Teaching Your Kids Truth in a Noisy World,” a Truth, Love, Together presentation by Natasha Crain

John Stonestreet and Shane Morris take apart the idea of de-funding or abolishing the police--from a biblical perspective. What Scripture tells us about fallen humanity should be enough to convince us that this is a terrible idea. Now, that doesn't mean, as John argues, that we don't police reform in certain areas. John and Shane discuss potential reforms.

Also in this episode: Anarchists take over a chunk of downtown Seattle and proclaim a "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone"; is "critical theory" compatible with Christianity? And feminist author J. K. Rowling criticizes trans-inclusive language and gets scalded. But not only is she not backing down, she's doubling down. And that, John and Shane point out, is a lesson for Christians.

In today's web-only bonus section, we get a clip from Them Before Us President Katy Faust from her presentation on the importance of fathers; John and Shane talk about the housing authority of Birmingham, Alabama, breaking its relationship with one of the nation's largest, ethnically diverse churches because the pastor "liked" a comment on social media; and John takes a reader's question: What should Christians think about the Black Lives Matter movement?

What Would You Say about Critical Theory?  Video

“Meet Critical Theorists’ Latest Target: Critical Theorists”by Kathrine Jebsen Moore, Quillette

“J. K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues” by J. K. Rowling

“Tweeting Something Isn’t Necessarily Doing Something,” by John Stonestreet and Maria Baer, BreakPoint

“Race, Justice, and the Church,” a Colson Center conversation  with Andy Crouch and Pastor Chris Brooks