Obergefell: 10 Years Later

Collin Hansen: When the politics change, when the law changes, the law becomes an instructor to the culture. And that’s certainly what we’ve seen in the last 10 years, where an older time tested ultimately from God Himself. Design of marriage between a man and a woman can no longer be assumed at any level of our society, outside of the church and outside of explicit teaching and practice within our families.

When I’m teaching cultural apologetics, it could be in a divinity school context, where I’m training pastors. It could be in a local church context, but I ask a question that always elicits interesting, maybe even surprising responses. I ask the students or church members. Usually works better with students because of their age, I asked them to tell me what year California banned gay marriage. Now you might easily recall that answer off the top of your head, but not many people do. The answers I get are range anywhere from the 1950s 1960s or so, maybe the 1980s but usually, especially when I’m talking with younger audiences, I get nothing less than shock when I say the year 2008 2008 is the year that California voters banned gay marriage. That story illustrates what it means to live on a different side from a major US. Supreme Court decision in 2015 June 26 that decision was a burger fell V Hodges. You may have already read some commentary on this 10 year anniversary. You may recall many of these events yourself, but I thought today we would take a chance to reflect from a variety of different vantage points on what led to this decision and what have been the consequences for the church, for the world, for American society, for Western culture since then, when you think about that moment in 2008 when both major candidates for the Democratic Party’s nomination to be president united states opposed same sex marriage, that would be Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, you realize how dramatically this situation has changed in our society and in our politics. In fact, many have described this as the most the most rapid social transformation in American history. About the only thing that I can compare it to in terms of the rapid sweep of its influence would be the civil rights movement of the 1960s but likely that movement was less successful in in changing popular opinion than the quest to approve same sex marriage has been. So it’s definitely worth reflecting on these 10 years, things that we might be surprised by, things that we might might lament, but also some real opportunities for to see where God is at work, just as we’re always doing this podcast of gospel bound to see what changes are not inevitable and what changes were were unexpected. So let’s continue in our our deep dive on burger Hill V Hodges, 10 years later, the Supreme Court decision itself had a number of significant effects. Number one, it really closed off the Republican Party’s willingness to defend traditional marriage, the first incoming president to support same sex marriage was Donald Trump again. Just shows you how rapidly these things had has changed, because that was not the case with Barack Obama in 2008 had had made that shift in 2012 but really, this decision shut down a lot of the national debate before it had reached every single state. So keep in mind that before the US Supreme Court intervened, each state was taking up this issue, and there was a quick change from when states were always voting it down, like California, back in 2008 to approval from a number of other states. And so you could have imagined that every single state and then reaching into every family, into every church, would have been having this debate. And so it might have started in California or Vermont or New Hampshire or Illinois, but it would have very much spread immediately to votes in Mississippi, in Alabama, in South Dakota. To in different places like that that might have held out for much, for much longer, but in some ways, the Supreme Court decision was a reprieve on churches that even after years of debate around this time, in 2015 we’re simply not prepared to help youth and young adults, especially see why the Bible, by God Himself, would prohibit homosexual activity and would reserve marriage for only one man and one woman. What I’m trying to say here is that most likely, every single state would have eventually gotten to the point where they approved this, and there would have been really vicious debates within churches about whether to do that. Obviously it should not have happened. Churches should not, should not have supported it, but that’s just not where a lot of the cultural momentum was at the time when we go back 10 years. So the the decision itself was in no way a blessing, but it did have the effect of essentially, like I said, give a reprieve to churches and a lot of other Christian leaders that by this time were just not prepared to have that conversation. Now we’re going to detail in here why the situation did not end up that way, not just for these legal reasons, but for broader theological and cultural reasons, it actually did not go nearly as badly as many people, including myself would have thought it would go 10 years ago. But let’s illustrate again, why were so many church leaders unprepared to be able to talk about this issue, even though it was a really major cultural issue. It is simply unprecedented that something would cut, would would flip so quickly. If you look at Tim Keller’s New York Times Best Selling apologetic book, The reason for God in 2008 there is no chapter there on sexuality that’s not meant for me to be casting casting shade on Tim Keller for neglecting that topic. It’s simply to say that among the predominant questions in 2008 when California was voting homosexual, homosexuality was not obviously one of those issues that would need to be addressed on the same order of magnitude as questions about the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, or the or the trustworthiness of the scriptures, or creation debates and the relationship between Christianity and science, those were still predominant questions. There in 2008 though it was, it had not yet reached that level in Tim Keller’s estimation. Let’s give another illustration of why that was not considered the case. Well, like I said, you have both Democratic nominees for President in 2008 saying that they are against gay marriage. It’s so shocking to people now, but let’s go back and look again. Rick Warren, Pastor Orange County California, hosted a presidential forum featuring not only the Democratic nominee Barack Obama, but also the Republican nominee John McCain. Then both of them opposed same sex marriage in 2008 Rick Warren would go on to deliver the invocation in 2009 at President Obama’s inauguration. So just shows you, this was not considered a make or break issue among many people politically at the time, the thought was the silent majority of Americans will always, or at least for much longer, will oppose this. So it’s just not kind of an existential threat for the church and for Christian public, public witness. Now, by 2012 first, it perhaps a seeming leak or blunder by Vice President Joe Biden to indicate his support for same sex marriage. Perhaps it was deliberately calculated. I’m not sure how that went. President Obama does come out in 2012 and and call for same sex and marriage across the United States. So again, just a very quick shift in those in those four years. But let’s start to illustrate now what that meant for the church. Now, one of the things that it meant for the church is that Rick Warren, in 2008 2009 could give that invocation for a Democratic president. But by the time President Obama was re elected in 2012 come 2013 the the leader of the Passion movement, Louie Giglio, pastor in Atlanta, was asked to do the same thing by the Obama administration, but the backlash from Democratic voters and activists and politicians was so severe, he was disinvited from delivering that invocation. Once again, in four short years, you have a total sea change. It’s. That is, I think what we’re going to find is that there were a number of underlying conditions that could have given us a sense of where this was going and what we should have seen coming. But that just shows you why so many people were were caught off guard by this change in public opinion.

Let’s fast forward then to 2015 and this is one of the moments where I can say throughout my adult life, and also just going back to my ministry, I’ve been working for the gospel Coalition for five years by this time, but I can remember feeling like we might lose everything, not our our faith in Jesus Christ, not his promises to us. But it seemed like, institutionally, financially, politically, it seemed like everything was arrayed against Orthodox Christians and other religious adherents who were opposed to same sex marriage. I can even remember the specific date. It was March 31 2015 the scene was Indianapolis, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, of course, would much more famously go on to be vice president under Donald Trump in his first administration. But despite having been a stalwart Republican and evangelical Christian, would not sign a religious liberty bill. Again. This is just a few short months before the Obergefell v Hodges decision would not sign a religious liberty bill that would exempt Christians from needing to in their business dealings and other public dealings, to endorse same sex marriage. Basically, it was a way of saying, If you deny services or something like that, it’s not a form of discrimination. The pushback specifically, and this is what’s so significant here, the pushback, specifically from the corporate community, from big businesses, was something that was relatively new to American politics, where the major corporations of the United States, instead of being on the sort of Republican or conservative side of an equation, it’s not like they were always bastions of anti abortion activism or something like that, but this was one of the most extreme examples of them really putting the full weight of their economic power on the scales against biblical sexuality and more broadly, Orthodox Christian belief. And specifically in Indiana, it was pressure from the business sales force, part of the broader tech culture, which at the time leaned heavily progressive on sexuality issues and other political issues in general. That was a moment where I felt we are in very serious trouble, because who, who is on our side? We we can’t trust the courts. We can’t trust the voters. We can’t trust the politicians, certainly not in the Democratic Party, especially that was pushing so aggressively for this. Republicans had been were backing off there the corporations were weighing in with just their massive influence, essentially stigmatizing any city or state or anybody who wouldn’t go all in on this so called pride agenda. Now, when I see people talk about the negative world that we as Christians supposedly live in today in the United States, I think this is what they mean. I think this is the best interpretation, and I can relate to it at this level. I absolutely felt like at this time, something substantial had changed the the floor, the, you know, the kind of like trap door had been pulled from underneath us, or a rug had been pulled out from underneath us. This was a very scary time. Give you another illustration of what it felt like at this time, shortly after the presidential election in 2016 I met with leaders from the Council for Christian colleges and universities that a number of regional gatherings around the United States. I participated in the one in Atlanta. Now this happened just after President Trump was elected, before he took office, but all of us this really caught probably everybody in the room, by surprise, all of the work that the CCCU had been doing was to prepare for a Hillary Clinton administration starting in 2017 carrying on many of the policies, especially in this realm from President Obama or perhaps even becoming more aggressive. Do. I think I’m accurately characterizing the read of that room to say that I saw no viable hope or strategy for resisting the Clinton administration, and I don’t mean in the realm of public policy, for the sake of the family, for the sake of children, for the sake of our neighbors, for the sake of truth, I mean, to protect Christian institutions other than the church. I think there were a number of safeguards for the church still in place, but protecting again, colleges and universities, nonprofit ministries of a wide variety, especially ones that address the family, like adoption agencies. But I saw no viable hope or resistance strategy for being able to resist any number of different attacks from the government, whether it be from the the NCAA in the realm of of sports. In other words, they could be expelled from the NCAA if a university had a policy on sexuality that prohibited homosexuality, or really anything else for that matter, at all, would have been considered discriminatory. So perhaps the NCAA could have issued those sanctions. Perhaps federal funding would have been revoked. Keep in mind, there’s a right wide variety of federal funding, ranging from from grants for, you know, grants for research, but also just the backing of federal loans widespread within Christian colleges, especially private universities, there were a lot of students and their families take out loans. Those could be easily revoked. But the problem was actually worse back then, believe it or not, in fact, just the very existence of these schools, their very fact that they had a policy of this sort could have been a violation in the eyes of the courts and the eyes of the executive and legislative branches of discrimination, and could be simply shut down for that reason alone, either change or you’re going to be found against the law, liable to lawsuits, perhaps even some forms of criminal prosecution. Now, had many people say to me since then, that would not have happened, because the courts would have intervened, and that’s certainly possible. Now, these are the same courts that we’re just we’re talking about here right today. The same court that produced the five four decision in Obergefell v Hodges is perhaps the case that Justice Kennedy, for example, could have flipped to the other side and said, on the one hand, I think that this is, this absolutely should be, should be allowed, even, even required of everybody in the United States, every municipality to allow for these same sex marriages. And at the same time, I don’t think that these other institutions should be shut down as a result of this decision. Now we’re going to come back a little bit later to see why I’m why I’m not very confident in that. Specifically, it’s what Justice Kennedy wrote in his majority decision about harm if denying people their constitutional rights to same sex marriage is a matter of grave harm, and I don’t see how allowing for religious liberty exemptions, conscience exemptions would be would be viable. So you’re really looking at a very dangerous situation that I can understand why so many people would feel as though was a kind of cultural transition into a negative world. And as we reported on this issue at the gospel coalition very frequently over these 10 years and really beyond before, that one fact has stood out to me as especially scary, but also one for which I give God a great deal of thanks. A number of different times, these issues have hinged upon one vote here or there, a couple different votes, an unexpected political swing, one way or another, and a number of different times the difference between a so called Equality Act that would mandate this view in favor of same sex marriage and equating any restrictions on same sex marriage or transgenderism or anything else being in violation of the Constitution

has really been the difference between President Trump being in the White House or the difference between a couple different Senate seats, Democrats versus Republicans. Democrats have been behind the Equality Act, and that view of the. Discrimination, and most Republicans have been, have been against it. And so you just, you really look at a few different seats held by Senate Republicans President Trump in the in the executive branch, and then the three justices nominated by him to the Supreme Court in his first term have in many cases, been the difference in this matter. So you’ll often hear people talk about how politics is downstream from culture, like, basically, why are we so focused on on political outcomes? What really matters is, is focusing on the culture. What they mean by it is, I think they’re often accurate when they make this statement. In fact, the spread of approval for homosexuality is one of the best examples of this phenomenon. You had wide scale representation and aggressive pushing for homosexuality in the in the media, especially in television and film. You can go all the way back to the earliest seasons of the hit TV show Friends, certainly as you continue to progress in the 1990s you see that in Will and Grace, that’s usually the show that’s most, most famously cited. You see it earlier with with Ellen DeGeneres, but there was a lot of pushback to Ellen, when that when that happened there. So a lot of people say, Well, look, Christians and and their other allies in politics were very naive. They should have realized that the culture was changing, and they were very slow to recognize that that happening and to push back on it, they were too dependent on politics. And I think in many ways, that’s definitely true. There’s no doubt about that in my mind. However, one thing we also see, you see this going back to the civil rights movement as well. You see both dynamics. On the one hand, the the politics did not change the culture. There’s still a lot of racism, a lot of resistance to civil rights for many years afterward, you go back to Brown versus Board of Education 1954 you see a good example of that. But at the same time, when the politics change, when the law changes, the law becomes an instructor to the culture, and that’s certainly what we’ve seen in the last 10 years, where an older time tested, ultimately from God Himself. Design of marriage between a man and a woman can no longer be assumed at any level of our society, outside of the church and outside of explicit teaching and practice within our families. So go back to what I saw earlier. Why are those students so shocked? It’s not only because our culture changed. Our culture changed very slowly for a long time and then very rapidly, when the political situation had happened, and then once the politics were there, it wasn’t like Obergefell had gotten a ton of pushback. It was really accepted as a kind of fait accompli, again, because the cultural change. But then it had the power of enforcement in all the land, no debate allowed. That’s also where politics, where the law becomes the tutor, and where, where the culture has to follow. That was something that we saw all the way back in the civil rights movement as well. Once you have the federal government intervening in a certain direction, it inevitably will change the culture back in the civil rights movement, you see that as in a positive way, but you see it in a very negative way that has all sorts of ramifications, to our public libraries, to our tax law, to instruction in public schools, to any number of different ways that we fundamentally see marriage. So we see politics downstream from culture. In some ways, culture is downstream from politics. I do want to push back, though, on significant aspects of the negative world thesis. I want to use the rest of the time that we have here to be able to show that my concern with the negative world thesis as it relies so heavily on the events of 10 years ago, with the burger Phil V Hodges and around sexuality in general, is that the negative world construction is both too optimistic and too pessimistic. It’s too optimistic and it’s too pessimistic. Let me just start by saying of how this is too pessimistic. I think there’s a sense of hopelessness, a lack of agency, a lack of vision to see how cultures really change and to see that cultures exist on multiple. Levels at a surface level, at a mid level and a bottom level. A lot of what we see in politics happens at a surface level on kind of a year to year basis, or a psych presidential election cycle to cycle. So you see a lot of pendulum swings at that level. And I think we’re unfortunately equating a lot of the observations about these dynamics with the burger fell V Hodges from 10 years ago, as in the negative world, as being part of the surface level changes. Let me illustrate you a few reasons of why I have this observation. Again, I’ve said we’re too pessimistic about cultural changed. Consider a few consider a few facts. Support for gay marriage is declining in the United States. Do you know that that is a fact? Support for same sex marriage is declining in the United States. Now it’s still high. But so far, what we see is not the inevitable march to 100% or even to a tiny, little rump of 5% but in fact, what we see is that support for same sex marriage peaked in 2022 and has declined since then 71% down to 69% that’s an aggregate of Americans. However, when you break this down and look at specifically Republican voters, Republican voters that put the first openly supportive president when it comes to same sex marriage into office, Donald Trump, first one in terms of when he when he first went into Office following Obama’s flip flop. On that topic, well, support among Republican donors is down and down substantially. Now, let me illustrate this a little bit further. Ryan Burge, the sociologist, has data on this that I found really helpful. He breaks it down among evangelicals, and he looks at evangelicals who attend church weekly in 2018 31% of evangelicals who attend church weekly were supportive of same sex marriage. Certainly that any number there would be too high, but you can see how much lower it is than the rest of the culture. There’s a very substantial difference in how the church, especially the faithful participants in church, see these things for us everybody else. We’ll come back to that later. But then that number has declined from 31% in 2018 to 22% in 2022 that, my friends, is a very substantial decline, nine points down in just four years. We are sometimes too pessimistic about what God is doing and what’s happening in the church in this supposedly negative world, I think it doesn’t allow us to be able to see the way that some of these changes Bob along the surface of our culture. Let’s look back a little bit of why things felt so pessimistic, though, again, I understand this feeling. I lived through it just like anybody else did for a time there we felt like we were caught in a vice between the government and media.

Democratic administrations in particular were bent on shutting down schools and other ministries that would not conform. But really the media problem was worse. The media problem was worse. Believe it or not, evangelicals and other Orthodox Christians, as we ourselves experienced back then, faced severe pressure to conform to the world and to capitulate on our biblical convictions when it comes to homosexuality, when major when evangelicals were quoted in the media and profiled and featured, this question about same sex marriage was just about the only question that anybody wanted to know the answer to, not in 2008 it was not because of the way the politics were going, but by 2012 and then ultimately, by 2015 we were labeled as being on the wrong side of history. Maybe President Obama’s favorite phrase, being on the wrong side of history. And every defector from the Orthodox Christian view, you can look back, most famously, I think, David gushee, the formerly evangelical ethicist, and then later, before his death. Richard Hayes, who had written on the moral vision of the New Testament, he had died just just recently, as of late here, but these defectors, especially gushy back then, were lionized by media and gushy flipped. Immediately to become really a very aggressive opponent of any Christians who didn’t follow his lead and switch sides on this topic. And the profiles that media gave this lionizing by media really gave the impression of inevitability to these changes, not only within the society, but including within the church, but friends. Remember, I’m talking here about why we are tempted to be too pessimistic here. These changes did not happen. They didn’t happen just just consider a few of these, of these dynamics. World visions board had decided to allow people in same sex relationships. They reversed that decision almost immediately, going back to 2014 11 years ago, InterVarsity, Christian Fellowship, they they took up this issue in 2016 and they and they held the line. They did not capitulate. There was a lot of talk back then about pastors who had been, had been pushing in private, or sort of subtly alluding to a coming change on this, I think of of one in particular, of high profile and you really have not seen those kinds of defections. You haven’t seen all these evangelical schools changing. You haven’t seen all these churches flipping. You haven’t seen all these pastors coming out saying we need to make this change now. This doesn’t mean that every professor at every Christian college, or every person working for World Vision, or every mega church pastor who’s focused on a pragmatic version of trying to reach the culture today. It just doesn’t mean that that what they what they believe in their hearts is the same thing as what they’re saying or what’s written in their documents. But I am saying that they don’t feel comfortable so flagrantly flouting biblical teaching and that line of orthodoxy. This is not what it felt like was going to happen back 10 years ago, in 2015 with with this Supreme Court decision. And I think that I know why. And I think the most significant factor under God’s grace and under his provision for His church to remain faithful on this issue, at least at this time, was a publication in 2012 of Rosaria Butterfield’s book, The secret thoughts of an unlikely convert. The whole story changed when she spoke out. It could be easy to look back on this time, and think I know all sorts of Christians who will talk publicly about same sex attraction and the way that they wage war against their their sinful flesh, and way they resist those desires and they don’t enter into same sex relationships, either through celibacy or or even through marriage of the opposite sex, we can we can point to a number of them, beloved colleagues that I work with, especially through the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics, men and women like Sam Mulberry, Rebecca McLaughlin and Rachel Gilson. This was not the case before Rosario Butterfield, we may have known some people in private, but a lot of the momentum before that was the ex gay movement. And the ex gay movement imploded during this time, was widely discredited at that time, did not entirely disappear, but these major institutions just collapsed under this pressure, internally and externally, the courage, the faithfulness, the example of these men and women, I believe, changed the narrative, especially inside the church, and I think to a certain extent, more broadly than that as well, but especially inside the church, what these men and women did is they punctured a huge hole in this narrative about liberation from these old, you know, busted doctrines and that feeling of oppression, and showed that what they wanted more than anything else was God himself. They wanted to be freed from their sin, to be able to run after him, that what was holding them in bondage was their flesh, not the expectations of the world. They’re an old, dusty book, but through their courage, their outspoken willingness to talk about these most private of matters and temptations and sins, I think, really turned the tide. And part of what helps to explain this transformation I just alluded to there with the description of liberation and oppression, and that’s moral foundations theory. Some of you have seen me or heard me talk about this before. It’s a common, common point that I try to make. I teach it certainly in all of my classes as well. But Jonathan Hite is the originator of moral foundations theory, the social psychologist at New York University School of Business, moral foundations theory describes several different ways the kind of not religious and trans cultural ways that different societies will deal with morality. Now you don’t have to agree with all of this as as a Christian, because we have a strong sense of where morality comes from and heights coming from an evolutionary and atheistic perspective, but nevertheless describes these different aspects of moral foundations. Theory describes the care, harm dynamics, or think of them as these dichotomies here, so care, harm, fairness, cheating, loyalty and betrayal, authority and Subversion and purity and sanctity, part of what he was famous for teaching, especially in his book The righteous mind that came out in 2012 note That year, not that year when it came out. But he’s trying to explain why liberals and conservatives just could not talk about morality in the same way. What he noted is that self described conservatives, they will use all of these in their moral development and in their articulation of their views. However, liberals will only focus on a couple of them, specifically care and harm, as well as authority and subversion, so actually also fairness and cheating in there. So the authority subversion part is not something they look at, because they are against authority, but but primarily care harm, and then fairness and cheating. Now the reason I’m sharing this is twofold. Number one, because it helps us explain why the advocates of gay marriage, one, at least in the short term, also explains why that movement has stalled. The broader sexual revolution has stalled. I share this not because we need as Christians a way of being able to

account for what the Bible teaches. No we know what the Bible teaches, and that’s all. That’s sufficient. I share it because of how it helps us to be able to talk to other people in our culture and be able to observe how these different developments will play out for us to be wise and discerning about how these things will play out in the public square. So you can see that the reason the advocates of gay marriage one were not because their cause was correct and not because everybody was on the same page. There was a whole rainbow of different approaches, but there was a consolidation around a specific way informed by things like moral foundations theory. To make a public case for same sex marriage, they crafted a liberation story that saved your ordinary neighbors, including perhaps even your own children, from the harm of unfair exclusion. Let me say that again, what led to the success by gay marriage advocates at the Supreme Court 10 years ago was that they crafted a liberation story that saved your ordinary neighbors, maybe even your own children, from the harm of unfair exclusion. Do you hear moral foundations there liberation from oppression, harm, fairness? Those are the touch points. Those are the touch points that helped gay marriage to succeed. In fact, we don’t have to guess at this. We can look at justice. Kennedy’s explicit opinion from Obergefell v Hodges 10 years ago, 2015 Kennedy wrote this, especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to same sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. There it is the language of harm. This is why I think we would have had a difficulty making the case for religious liberty, because you don’t have the right to harm you. Another person in the sort of Western liberal notion of social ordering. So if, if simply denying or disapproving of their relationships is equivalent to harm, you have massive, massive problems with religious liberty, because even your mental unwillingness, let alone your public teaching, let alone your parenting, all of those can cause another person harm. And harm is one thing that our law is bound to protect people from. That’s That’s explicitly why same sex marriage, marriage one. Now I said this is the section about why we are being too pessimistic about these cultural changes. Why then? Why do I have optimism? Why do I have optimism, and why do I think the negative world thesis is too pessimistic. Back in 2015 what scared me the most was that I knew transgenderism was next, if you can erode the institution of marriage by eliminating gender differentiation, which keep in mind is not merely some sort of Christian or even religious construct, but the very the very biological order itself, of procreation, this is something for all the world, not merely those with a certain religious assent. If you can erode the institution of marriage by eliminating gender differentiation, then you can eliminate the categories of male and female. In fact, furthermore, you don’t need the body at all. What we need, then, is liberation from the givenness of the physical world, or, as we would say, of creation itself. This is what scared me most back in 2015 that another step was going to follow that was going to eliminate male and female, eliminate the body itself, and ultimately affect a liberation from the givenness of The physical world. The implications there are staggering. And yes, we have, we have seen some of this transgenderism continues to be pushed by radical advocates, as well as the hospitals and physicians who profit from various so called treatments and surgeries. We’re going to talk also about why this these, these ideas are still in the air we breathe, in the water that we’re that we’re swimming in. We’re not entirely freed from these and in fact, it’s very difficult for multiple reasons to to see this decision of bergafield V Hodges without the internet, not only because of how it spread the advocacy for homosexuality, but also how it erodes the physical, not only the body, but also the local, the community, the familial, the traditional. There’s no doubt these two things are tied together, but moral foundations theory helps us to see why the inevitable, seemingly progress of the sexual revolution has stalled or maybe even reversed. And here’s why, we can see with our own two eyes, regardless of our creed, that transgender athletes have an unfair biological advantage against women, it is unfair, and children and other minors have been harmed, harmed by pseudo scientific treatments, sometimes without even the consent or knowledge of the people who have been entrusted legally and otherwise, to care for them, and that is their parents. So again, this is why these issues, they’re seen on the spectrum of the sexual revolution, but they are not the same, because transgenderism is seen very understandably so, as unfair and as harmful, especially to minors. This is why you’re seeing unlike with Obergefell v Hodges, which it looked like before that happened, it would have extended to protracted and very difficult defeats, state to state, including throughout the Midwest and the South. This is why what you’re seeing with transgenderism is only thankfully so for places like Colorado. Do you see this aggressive push to remove children from their home if parents don’t agree with a gender transition, that’s a real concern. Some. Similar concerns in California. No doubt, lot of Christians have been advocating in both situations against this. But the reason I’m more optimistic about cultural change and not as concerned about the negative world thesis as some others may be, is because in 2015 it seemed like a similar national mandate in favor of transgenderism is what was going to follow a burger fell. V Hodges, not only has that not happened, in fact, we’ve seen a reversal, not only in public opinion about this. And I think the public opinion about transgenderism is one reason why homosexuality, that approval is falling is falling back as well, but we’ve seen also increased protections from the Supreme Court, with those with those Trump nominees in particular, and into that six, three majority on the court. So within this category of of optimism, what can we do, not only to push back on this progress and kind of stem that tide of transgenderism, but how we push back on homosexuality itself, of course, ultimately, as Christians, we’re talking here about the grace of God, the work of the Spirit, the the responsibility of the family, especially of the church, to be able to teach The word of God, but in the public sphere, my friend Andrew Walker wrote on this for the gospel coalition suggests that we focus on children’s rights, that every child has a right to one father and one mother. After all, we know that great harm as a whole, in the aggregate, statistically speaking, befalls children who don’t grow up with both a father and a mother. Simply, again, this is a case against adoption and other fertility treatments for same sex couples. Now Andrew might be right, and if he is, it’s because of what we were saying there about the harm principle, going back to moral foundations theory. Now I think, though, my view is that we’re probably going to have to dig quite a bit deeper, and I I’m sure that Andrew would agree with this, but we need to, need to dig deeper, and we’re going to have to get down to the most basic assumptions of Western society. I mentioned that the negative world thesis is too pessimistic. Now I want to talk about why it’s too optimistic. The legal lineage of Obergefell v Hodges in 2015 goes back all the way to the Supreme Court decision Planned Parenthood versus Casey in 1992

and then with Anthony Kennedy, and then again, cited in the Lawrence v Texas decision in 2003 then overturned anti sodomy laws. Clearly, you you have to be able to overturn those laws to be able to allow for same sex marriage. This is a statement from Planned Parenthood V Casey 1992 and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that 9192 are often attributed. You just can see this in Christian Smith’s new book why religion became obsolete. You see them cite the early 1990s as a major break in American culture of a rapid decline of Christianity and traditional religion in general, institutional churches in particular. Here’s a statement from that Supreme Court decision. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe and of the mystery of human life. This is a creedal statement that I think is the primary one that I would use to describe the liberal tendency within Western society to liberate itself from the past, from other authorities, from tradition, from history, from accountability. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe and of the mystery of human life. The reason I remain somewhat pessimistic is because this underlying logic that ultimately gave us, not only legally in that lineage, but philosophically with the way that we live our lives. That underlying logic remains in place. It remains counter cultural to deny yourself to pick up your cross and to follow Jesus instead. This creed leads us to do what feels good. If something feels wrong, it can’t be right. We look inside ourselves for answers. We don’t trust authorities such as parents or books or history, and this is significant or even science. The science is against these transgender treatments. We see that through a. All these different reports, the cast reports specifically coming out of the UK, but it’s an authority that tells you that what you want might not be what’s right, but the underlying logic of Western culture as it is understood today does not allow that to be the case. Let’s broaden this out. Call, call, call this philosophy what you want, expressive individualism is the best way, I think. But ultimately, it’s nothing more than a matter of rejecting God and His Word and a choice between us of either taking God at His Word or else trusting the world and friends, you will recognize that that is the sin of Eden. Let’s go back then, to the book of Romans, the apostle Paul, chapter one, verses 18 to 23 it’s where we read and the most extensive discourse we have biblically about homosexuality, starting in verse 18, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and right unrighteousness of men who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth, for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. So they are without excuse for although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal god for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things, and immediately, then Paul then moves on to talk about how God gave them up to the lusts of their flesh, and specifically referring to homosexuality. Now it’s very clear biblically, homosexuality is not the only sin. It is not the only way we are tempted to worship the creature rather than the Creator. And it is not beyond the grace of Jesus Christ that is very clear. But you see linked biblically, that there’s something involved here that gets fundamentally at the way God created us about the way that He created us to worship Him, to acknowledge him. And you don’t even need the explicit revelation of Scripture to be able to know what is right and wrong when it comes to how male and female interact with one another and to reject it is nothing less than a matter of idolatry, worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. I want to take you back to see just how significant this issue is, the decision from 10 years ago, but more broadly, why this deserves so much attention from the church. It has deserved and will continue to deserve so much attention. We are not merely talking about what two consenting adults do in their private lives. We are not just talking here about, if you don’t want a gay marriage, don’t get one. This is not what we’re talking about here. We are talking about whether a society will acknowledge an authority outside itself, and we’ll worship the creature or the creator. It’s not the only way we know that, but that’s what is at stake. You see there in Romans, one the gospel Coalition. We just turned 20 years old on the evening of Tuesday May 17, 2005 Don Carson gave a talk to the group who would become TGC, Council of pastors. He delivered a survey of Western Christianity since World War Two, and he listed 12 changes. The last change number 12, an apostolic number, as he pointed out, was personal freedom. Again, the West’s worship of personal freedom is the greatest threat to the stability of the society itself, because you can’t have a society that’s built on only personal freedom to do what you want, rather than the personal freedom to be able to give yourself for others because you’ve been freed from your sin, which is holding you in bondage to be able to love others. So again, he talked about how, since the Second World War, you have this, this priority on personal freedom. Specifically, he cited this May 17, 2005 homosexuality. Don Carson, TGC, first and long time president, asked if homosexuality would become in the 21st century. In. What indulgences had been in the 16th century. What if homosexuality would become the trigger issue that would split the church? The ultimate issue is the authority of God’s word and the authority of God to command what is good and bad for us and to obey Him as our God, as our Creator, as our good father, to give our freedom up to follow his good law, that’s what’s ultimately at stake here. But homosexuality is the primary way that that personal freedom to reject God has been expressed in our culture, if not in behavior, then certainly in framing. And we can talk here about rainbows and Pride Month. This is all very much on the nose here, and it’s it’s not an accident, but this observation from Don Carson may 17, 2005 was prophetic. You need to remember friends the moment in time. Here, this is right after President George W Bush’s re election. Gay marriage had never won at the ballot box the United States, the Episcopal Church didn’t sanction same sex blessings until 2012 the ELCA, the mainline Lutheran denomination, didn’t allow pastors to be in same sex relationships until 2009 United Methodist Church didn’t follow suit, until 2024 at which time, the global Methodist Church had already formed in protest. So you can see that the split Don Carson talked about, that he warned about at a time when Christians and churches were unprepared, unprepared, as we talked about earlier, because they thought the silent majority is with us. He saw that this could be the issue at the level of magnitude of 500 years you have the split of the Reformation. 500 years before that hit, the split between the East and the West in the church, 500 years later, you have a split in the western church over sexuality. That is the significance of what we’re talking about here friends, and the occasion for discussing it this Obergefell v Hodges decision from 10 years ago, only one denomination has pulled back, has come close to approval of same sex relationships and has pulled back.

That is the Christian Reformed Church, that Dutch denomination out of Grand Rapids, Michigan and this, friends, is a reason for optimism, a reason for hope. Amid a lot of these massive changes last 10 plus years, I want you to know about the demographic breakdown. This is based on reporting by our senior writer, Sarah Zylstra, who has been the primary reporter investigating these debates within the CRC. In the demographic breakdown of the CRC, it is largely older pastors and older members who are pushing for homosexuality. It is the younger ones who want to maintain the historic orthodox prohibition on same sex marriages, friends. We started this conversation, this journey on the wrong side of history, about how, 10 years ago, it seemed as though all these matters were stacked against us, that it was a matter of time before everybody caved, and a matter of time before you just could not resist the government’s pressures. You could not resist the media’s questions. We were on the wrong side of history, but the only side of history that matters is the one where you stand with the author of history, a church that compromises with the world becomes a church that disappears from the world. All of us must deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow Jesus, and as I look back on these 10 years, I am grateful to God for those men and women who model that discipleship by waging war on their sinful flesh by the power of the Spirit, especially when it comes to same sex attraction. I hope you will join me in trying to follow their example of thanking God for their faithfulness, petitioning him that they would remain faithful. I want to learn from. Their example in my own battle against sin, because ultimately, that’s what we’re talking about here. Will we be disciples of Jesus Christ when it’s hard and when it’s easy, when the burden is heavy and light? Will we unload that on Jesus Christ, or will we be tempted to follow the ways of the world? That is the question each one of us has to ask and answer, not only in our verbal profession, but also in the manner of our life.