Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Part I

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The New York Times Editorial Board Takes Aim at Trump over Transgender Issue: The New York Times Presents Alternative Morality and Worldview Contrary to Creation Order

The New York Times editorial board has come out swinging against President Donald Trump on the transgender issue. As you know, in his inaugural address, the President of the United States became the very first President of the United States to state that it will be the policy of his administration that the federal government will recognize two and only two genders. He made clear those two genders are male and female, and in the official definition of what it means to be male and female. He pointed to biology, as if any sane person would point anywhere else, identifying males as the human beings carrying the small reproductive cell and females being the persons carrying the large reproductive cell. Again, I just point to the fact that no President of the United States previously said any such thing and it would be hard to explain to most past presidents why such a thing would possibly, as a statement, be necessary, but let’s just go a bit further. 

The editorial board of the New York Times has come out foursquare against President Trump and his policies, the headline in the editorial, “Trump’s shameful campaign against transgender Americans.” Now, some of this is absolutely expected, but in worldview terms, this particular piece comes with a lot of necessary attention. We need to look at this and understand the arguments behind this, the worldview that it represents, and see the challenge that this kind of statement presents to Christians trying to think about these issues in the public square. Now, when we talk about an editorial, is this just like any opinion piece? No, it’s different. In this sense, an editorial coming with the authority of the editorial board is intended as an official statement of the New York Times. In the modern media world, newspapers have often had editorial boards that have made official statements.

Sometimes it just comes with, say, the newspaper’s masthead. Sometimes it comes with an official statement that it’s adopted and coming with the authority of the editorial board. The editorial eyesight from Sunday’s edition of the New York Times comes with the identifying statement, the editorial board, identified as “A group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate, and certain long-standing values. It is separate from the newsroom.” Now, I think they probably mean it when they say that these views are, in some sense, separate from the newsroom, but in almost any media context, that’s decreasingly believable, but you also note the self-congratulation in this. I just have to come back to it, a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by, well, what? What informs them? Expertise, research, debate, and then those words, “certain long-standing values.” Oh, you can count on the fact that the members of this editorial board are united in certain, long-standing values.

The LGBTQ revolution is one of the values that has already been made very clear by this editorial board and by this newspaper. The board’s editorial statement is quite lengthy, and it begins with this sentence, “Some of the most deplorable episodes in US history involve the government wielding the power of the state against minority groups.” It, then, identifies black people, indigenous people, and gay people to name just a few. The editors continue, “Though these campaigns might’ve received popular support at the time, history has consistently judged them to be immoral, illegal, and un-American.” Well, let’s just look at the claim made in those two sentences together. The sentences, the opening statement by the editorial board, in this case against President Trump’s policies on the transgender issue, the editorial board comes back and says, “This is in a line of shameful government actions, government discrimination against specific groups.” It mentions Black people, Indigenous people, and gay people, to name just a few. 

From a worldview perspective, we need to just step back and understand what’s going on here, because this is really big. If we don’t understand this, we’re going to miss a lot of what’s going on in the world around us. One of the issues is the development of liberation movements for specific groups, and this became concentrated in the ideology of identity politics, which is to say that if you can establish an identity as a group, and you can get the culture around you to agree that you are a people or a group marked by this particular characteristic or claim, translated into an identity, then you can turn around and argue for certain rights, recognition, policies, and preferences based upon the previous pattern of discrimination against your group. Now, we need to look honestly and say that, in history, that has sometimes happened. That kind of dynamic is something we often do need to recognize.

Wrongs have been done, but it’s another thing to just say we’re going to extend this identity, this claim of identity, to any group that demands it, and of course, no sane society does. So, in our society right now, there is a limitation to what groups are going to be recognized as making legitimate identity claims, and that’s a major conflict between the Left and the Right, between conservatives and liberals in the society today. For example, you think about the issues of the sexual revolution and just think about the initials “LGBTQ.” Here’s where Christians have been saying, for a very long time, and not just Christians, but I’ll say more conservative citizens, have been saying all along, “Look, this isn’t an immutable characteristic. This is not equivalent to race. It’s not about even something that’s as straightforward as gender,” and of course when it comes to transgender, it is the denial of something as straightforward as gender.

Instead, this is a constructed ideology in service of a certain kind of affinity, a certain kind of sexual attraction, and a certain kind of activity, and I’m not going to describe it beyond that. So, two things had to happen for the LGBTQ revolution to reach the successes it has marked thus far. Number one, it had to establish and then be recognized as an identity claim, and then secondly, you take established identity claims in society, such as racial distinctions, and then you just get in that line and try to convince Americans that your identity claim is as sensical as any other. At that point, identity politics just becomes an issue of cultural battle. Which group, claiming which identity, gains what at the cultural table? And just a little footnote here, because this is a very important, indeed explosive footnote, one of the major distinctions in terms of a clash of identity politics is right now between gender feminists and the transgender movement. You can have one. You can’t have both.

When you have gender feminism, in which the feminists are very clear they’re working for the advancement of women, and they mean by that chromosomal women, they’re not talking about socially constructed women, they’re not talking about transgender women. These are often referred to now as trans exclusionary, radical, feminists. They include people, in terms of the cultural Left, as prominent as someone like Martina Navratilova, who identifies as lesbian. Very famous tennis star, of course. She does not believe that female competition should be invaded by male bodies, but she’s simply dismissed by the transgender revolutionaries as hopelessly out of date. My point is you have the collision of these different identity groups. You have the ideological feminists. On the one hand, you have the transgender revolutionaries on the other hand, and right now, the transgender revolutionaries seem to be, more or less, winning the battle, displacing the traditional second wave feminists. But then the editors of the New York Times, they’re seeking to make a moral argument.

Here’s their argument, “Rather than understanding this history, President Trump is borrowing from the worst of it. One of the very first acts of his second term was to order the government to view gender as immutable and discriminate against transgender citizens.” They quote the president as saying, “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.” The editors then say, “The early days of Mr. Trump’s second term have raised any number of concerns about actions that run dangerously counter to both the laws and the best interests of the country and its people, but the chaos of these past few weeks shouldn’t mask that, in this period, he has also waged a direct campaign against a single, vulnerable minority as we’ve seen in generations.” They’re saying he’s waging a campaign against a single vulnerable minority, as negative they would say, and as harmful as any scene in generations. My point is, look at the language here, this is the form of moral argument.

Understand they’re making the argument that transgender persons, or persons who claim transgender identity, we should say, represent a vulnerable minority. That’s also the way that political argument and identity politics works. You’re not only an identity. You also present yourselves as a minority under attack or suffering discrimination at the hands of the majority, and so does that sometimes happen? Of course it does. That’s just one of the symptoms of human nature in a fallen world. The point is that not every claim of identity or every claim of minority status can be respected, and I believe that transgender is an illustration of exactly the kind of claim that should not be recognized as a minority group, but I also want to make the point that, if you do recognize, say, transgender claiming people, you recognize them as a distinct group, then you’re falling right into the problem of identity politics. Frankly, you’re playing right into the game of establishing a minority that can press the claim that it has been discriminated against.

Let’s just notice that the editorial board of the New York Times is entirely behind that argument. As a matter of fact, they present that argument without any apparent need for justification, any kind of intellectual support or argument for the fact that the transgender movement is to be recognized in terms of identity politics and in terms of minority rights. They, then, go on to say, “The broadside against transgender people was not unexpected. Anti-transgender politicians spend at least $215 million to scapegoat transgender people for a variety of social ills.” Now, that’s stated without any documentation. It’s also stated without any adequate context. Nonetheless, the board went on to say, “The Republican Party has increasingly viewed attacking trans rights as a political winner, much as it did attacking civil rights during Richard Nixon’s presidency and attacking gay rights in George W. Bush’s. That posture was disgracefully reflected at the speed and glee with which house Republicans barred transgender women from using women’s restrooms on Capitol Hill after the election of Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender member of Congress.” 

Let me just point out, that action undertaken quite sensibly by the Republican leadership in the house was taken even before the inauguration of President Trump. 

Okay, there’s another statement further in the editorial that demands some attention. The editors write, “It should be recognized that society is still grappling with the cultural and policy implications of the rapidly shifting understanding of gender.” That’s quite a concession. Society is still struggling with how to cope with. This insinuates that conservatives are having a coping problem. The problem is the conservatives, not those who are claiming this identity. The editors go on to say, “There are some issues, such as participation in sports and appropriate medical care for minors, that remain fiercely debated, even by those who broadly support trans rights.” The editors conclude in this statement, “There should be room for those conversations, but what shouldn’t be debated is whether the government should target a group of Americans to be stripped of their freedom and dignity to move through the world as they choose. This is a campaign in which cruelty and humiliation seem to be the fundamental point.”

I just want to point to this certain form of language here that may sound like something quasi poetic, but it is actually coming with quite an edge. It’s the statement about the effort by the government, as accused here, to target a group of Americans to be stripped of their freedom and dignity “to move through the world as they choose.” Now, is that what you’re doing? Are you moving through the world as you choose? It’s an interesting statement. It’s the kind of statement that probably makes a lot more sense on the campus of Berkeley, or in some neighborhood bar there in Manhattan, than it does in the rest of the country, but it is a statement that reflects the cosmopolitan worldview of those who are pushing for the transgender revolution. It’s just another way of moving through the world.

Part II

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Even More Radical Revolutionaries are Coming: The LGBTQ Revolution Seeks to Press Agenda Even Further, Which Includes Eating Their Own If Necessary

Before leaving that paragraph in the editorial board statement, I want to point to the reality that when you’re talking about surgery or medical treatments, and you’re talking about minors, that’s not a small issue that just needs to be worked out with niceties in the future.

When you talk about male bodies participating in female sports, you’re not talking about something that just needs to be better understood. You’re talking about a very genuine disagreement in this society, and quite honestly, the disagreement isn’t about numbers. It’s true that the number, at this point, of those who claim to be transgender, women and girls participating in any sporting events, it’s relatively small over against the total population, but that math is not the morality. The morality is a lot bigger than the math. There are very real girls and very real women losing their athletic slots and their athletic opportunity to boys and men, and furthermore, there’s an entire distortion of the athletic field, and furthermore, you have male bodies in female spaces where females, either girls or women, have every right to expect no male body will be present, and thus, you’re looking at a real conflict, a real collision of worldviews here. I’ll just point to the fact that the New York Times editorial board appears to be absolutely certain about the moral rectitude of the stamps they’ve taken. It’s pretty self-congratulatory.

Now, I’m not singling them out, quite honestly, on both sides of any of these debates either side, both sides, simultaneously, can be fairly self-congratulatory. That’s something we need, at least to try, to avoid, but in making a serious argument, it’s just really revelatory to understand the editorial board thinks it’s on the right side of history and is absolutely certain we’re on the wrong side of history. We need to have our thoughts clarified if we don’t go along with the LGBTQ revolution en toto, and the movement just needs to be considerate enough, maybe for a little bit, for the rest of us to be dragged along until we finally see the light. To make no mistake, that’s one of the most important reasons we need to look at this statement today, because it’s an underlining in neon. It’s a fluorescent statement of the fact that the cultural left is sure, not only that we’re wrong, but that their victory is inevitable, and those who resist it are just merely kicking up some dust, creating problems, and causing hurt along the way to their inevitable victory in the public square.

Now, you say that’s arrogant and unfounded. Well, it is arrogant. It’s not necessarily unfounded because as you look at the trajectory of so many of the liberation movements, whatever their basis, however they’ve been tied to identity politics, the fact is that they have increasingly won, and they have won in the courts, and they’ve won in legislation, and they have worn down school boards, and they have just basically redefined the issue so that Americans who saw the issue clearly at one point now say they don’t see the issue at all. Most glaring as an illustration of this phenomenon is the public acceptance of same-sex marriage. The vast majority of Americans, just a blink ago in human history, wouldn’t have even considered the question. The vast majority of Americans, just a generation ago, were absolutely clear that marriage could be only the union of a man and a woman, but now a lot of Americans, who want to be seen on the right side of history, have just decided to go along with the flow. It’s just private behavior.

Well, how are you going to all of a sudden draw the line, we have to ask, when that revolution goes in your view too far? Here’s the problem, one of the main lessons of the way revolutions work. Revolutions work in a revolutionary manner, and eventually they consume the revolutionaries who started the revolution because there are even more radical revolutionaries coming. Just ask the tenured radicals on America’s college and university campuses, particularly elite campuses, where the older faculty currently live in fear of the ever more leftist younger faculty, who begin to see the older, liberal, progressive faculty as just out of date. They need to resign, retire, and get out of the way or face charges. Well, all right. There’s much more to that editorial statement in the New York Times, but I wanted to point to at least those particular dimensions because I think they demand our attention, and quite honestly, they’re very useful and understanding the great cultural and moral challenge that we face in the collision of worldviews all around us.

Part III

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Books with ‘Nudity, Excessive Violence, and Sadomasochistic Behavior’ – Are These Categories You Want in the Library of Your Child’s Public School?

But I’m speaking to you today from Nashville, Tennessee, and I want to make reference to a local story here, the front page of the Nashville, Tennesseean, and over the weekend, the Sunday edition, it has a stack of books, multicolored, looks strangely like a pride flag. Do you think that’s an accident? And the word banned is written, so this is an article, the front cover of the Sunday edition of the Nashville, Tennessee, about banned books. Here’s the statement under the word banned. “Tennessee’s Public School saw a record number of book removals over the past year. What’s been banned, and what do students and advocates have to say about it?” Well, let’s turn to the article and find out. Rachel Wegner writing for the Tennessean begins this way, “Book Removals in Public Schools, under a controversial Tennessee law, hit a new high in 2024 with nearly 1400 books, spanning 1155 unique titles, pulled from school library shelves across the state.”

The article continues, “The Age Appropriate Materials Act, passed in 2022, has spurred heated debates that has spilled over from the State House into school board meetings over the last two years, and expansion of the law last year means school libraries are now barred from having books with,” listen to this, “Nudity or descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual content, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse.” Okay, I’ll admit, I’m hard to surprise on some of these things, hard to shock, but I’m shocked by this. The state of Tennessee had to pass legislation stating that school libraries and the public schools should not include materials that feature “excess violence or sadomasochistic abuse”? Seriously? Yes, I’m absolutely serious, and what’s even more serious, and a far greater concern, is the fact that the Nashville Tennesseean is running this, and supposedly right-minded people throughout the establishment are supposed to look at this and recoil and horror.

Who are these backward people who would ban such books or raise concerns about them? I’ll simply say, I’ve been observing politics and culture for a very long time, and it’s just hard for me to imagine a state legislator, honestly, in Tennessee or anyone else, saying, “You look at the list of the criteria that are being applied here to books that shouldn’t be in front of children and teenagers in the public schools in Tennessee. I’m going to look at this list that, again, includes such things as “nudity descriptions or depictions of,” I’ll just say sexual themes. It goes on. Even abuse, and that politician says, “I look at that list, and I figure I’m not going to ban those books from those schools. I think those schoolchildren ought to have access to those written materials.” Sadly, evidently, there is a large number of legislators and political leaders who would make exactly that argument. “I look at that list and I say, let the kids read about it.”

Also, as we’re thinking about this with worldview analysis, I want to point to the fact that this entire article, published in the Nashville, Tennesseean, and that’s the most influential newspaper in Tennessee, here in the capital city of the state, it’s really interesting to see that the newspaper went to teenagers to ask them what they think about this law and these policies. Yeah, that’s exactly where you should go, and by the way, they are of course selecting the teenagers to be interviewed. Listen to this. “The Tennessean interviewed more than a dozen high schoolers about book bans. Some had little to no knowledge of the issue, while others shrugged it off because they hadn’t read the books banned in the districts or didn’t feel personally affected by the removals.” Listen to this, “But several were surprised at the push to ban books, whether in their districts or others. Those students largely agreed that books with explicit sexual content or violence may be inappropriate for younger students, still somewhat leery of schools banning books altogether.”

I have a certain moral sense, not only about the issues I should talk about on The Briefing, but how I should talk about them, so I have to be careful here. Honestly, there is the temptation just to go back to that list and remind ourselves of what we’re talking about here. I’m not going to do that, but just remember what we’re talking about here, and this newspaper seriously cites, as a serious argument, the fact that these high schoolers say, “This material might be inappropriate for younger children.” Now, understand exactly what that implies. It’s not necessarily inappropriate for themselves. Now, perhaps that’s just teenage logic at work, but you can’t blame the policies on teenagers. Adolescents didn’t come up with these policies. Librarians, school leaders, and others did, and there has been, we need to recognize a concerted effort on the part of the progressive Left, the sexual revolutionaries and others, to push these kinds of books, books exposing children and teenagers to these themes and coming with an explicit moral message. There’s been a push to put these into schools. That’s the first thing we need to recognize.

They’re not there by accident, and we also need to recognize that librarians choose the argument of the library profession, very much in liberal hands, extremely liberal hands. Those professional organizations of librarians claim that only they have the expertise, and of course, again, you just look at the books they defend and you look at the choices they make, it’s all over the piece. No real surprise here, but I’m not going to give primary attention to the teenagers cited in this article. It’s pretty much what you would expect. I want to go, in fact, to a deeper level issue, and that is this. Have we really reached the point in this country where we can openly admit that rival worldviews can’t exist in a limited space, such as the public schools? Regardless of a basic fundamental question about the public schools, which I’ve spoken to before and will again, let’s just ask ourselves about the limited space of the public schools and ask ourselves, do we really have space for those who believe these kinds of books must be in the libraries accessible to students and those who, I’ll just say, do not?

It’s increasingly implausible to believe that these two worldviews can coexist in this space. You can call it the public schools, but one sector of the public’s going to win here. So I do want to congratulate the state government here in Tennessee for adopting this law, because no doubt it is well advised, it is morally legitimate. Indeed, the argument stronger than that, and quite honestly, as is the case in so many of the most contentious cultural issues, the law is completely validated by the response from the Left to the law. I’m going to end by citing a statement from one of the students you’re going to love. This student complained, and I quote, “There’s not enough kids in these meetings where they’re talking about whether they want to remove books.” The students say, “I feel like the students should have a bigger part in the conversation.”

Oh, yeah. That’s what’s missing here, teenagers having a greater voice in what teenagers should be able to read in the public school library. This newspaper presents these voices from teenagers, as what’s implied would be a necessary correction to the actions of local school boards. After all, what do they know?