Gay Leftists’ Outrage Is Negatively Impacting Freedom Of Speech: The Left is lashing out at all who hold different beliefs at the expense of having a civil culture. Tune in now to hear where we are in culture today.

Air Date: 05/20/2019

Guest: Rob Schwarzwalder

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith And The Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders Live! Where we’re talking about today’s hottest topics on policy, faith, and the culture, always doing that from a Biblical, historical, and Constitutional perspective.

We’re here with David Barton, America’s premier historian and the founder of WallBuilders. Tim Barton is with us. He is a national speaker, pastor, and President of WallBuilders.My name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas state legislator.

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The Tragic Rage of The Gay Left

David, Tim later in the program Rob Schwarzwalder will be back with us. He’s gonna be talking about the article called, The tragic rage of the gay left. His new article. In it, he talks about the things that are happening in terms of lashing out at guys like Mike Pence, and the impact that it has. Even Joe Biden is literally apologizing because he called Mike Pence a decent person.

So we can’t even call someone like Mike Pence who is very much a decent person, a decent person if we disagree with him on LGBT rights and those sorts of things.

David:

I thought Rob really hit a key idea when he pointed out that probably the adjective slash noun most associated with the gay left is the word rage. I mean they don’t just get mad or upset they go into a rage over all sorts of things.

Tim:

I guess it also depends on who you’re asking in the association. Certainly, from the outside looking in, you do see a lot of intolerance from the so claim tolerant left by the movement that’s going on. The idea that if you disagree with someone who is countering what was culturally accepted for thousands of years, to agree with what has been agreed upon for thousands of years, you are now hateful and intolerant.

If you don’t embrace the definition that was created in the last couple of years or weeks or months or decade or whatever it was, depending on what we’re talking about,  the lunacy of the other side to snap from saying we disagree on principle, we disagree on perspective to say that you are hateful, and you’re terrible, and you should die, and your kids should die. These are the things being said just because you might disagree with sexual activity or sexual behavior or relationship status.

It really is almost ludicrous, and yet that’s where we are in culture. As you guys mentioned, there’s a great article that really outlines and identifies a lot of this and gives some very specific examples.

Christians Are Being Attacked For Going To Church

David:

I was really struck with the fact, and Tim, you just hit it. You said this is a belief that we’ve had for a thousand years. But I think that even in America the belief that Mike Pence and Chris Pratt and others are being attacked for the belief that they hold is one of thousands of years. But the counter belief, those that are doing the attacking, their position is really only 6, 8, 10 years old and the culture.

Look how far we’ve gone in six or eight or 10 years. Now Chris Pratt because he goes to an evangelical church is being attacked in Hollywood simply for going to a church which by the way that’s the kind of church Americans have attended for 400 years and now in the last six to eight years, it’s totally inappropriate to go to that church.

Chris Pratt Has Been Criticised For Going To Hillsong Church

Tim:

And I’ll point out the church that he is going to is a Hillsong Church. Hillsong has not made a name for themselves as being super conservative when it comes to biblical doctrine. They made a name for themselves in worship, in loving and accepting. I mean, if you talk about being loving, accepting that’s what Hillsong has kind of been identified for.

They’ve been criticized by some of the Christian community as not taking a strong enough stand when it came to very doctrinal issues and positions. And so to say that because Chris Pratt goes to a church that says no we accept him, and want everybody to come because it is a Christian church, therefore he must be evil.

We Can’t Just Disagree About Something

This is where you see that rage and that hate and that intolerance coming out to say that we can’t just disagree about something. If you don’t agree with us, then you’re a terrible monster, and we will silence you even though it’s what’s been accepted in America since its origins. It was culturally accepted in the world for thousands of years.

Nope, we’re not gonna let you accept that anymore because we just made up new rules.

You Now Have To Apologize For Saying Someone Is A Class Act?

David:

There goes to the point; that you can’t even call someone a decent guy now. Biden has to apologize? By the way, we’ve known Mike Pence for a long time before he ever got to Congress.  When he was back on the circuit in Indiana doing radio news as a radio host. He has always been a decent guy. He is a class act, and now you have to apologize for saying that someone is a class act? Rob’s got a great perspective on this, but that just the irony of where we are.

Rick:

Let’s not forget: for having the same position that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had just a few short years.

When we come back from the break, Rob Schwarzwalder will be with us. He’s a senior contributor at The Stream and a senior lecturer at Regent University. He used to be Senior Vice-President at the Family Research Council, and a great friend of the program. We’ll be right back with Rob Schwarzwalder.

We Want To Hear Your Vet Story

Rick:

Hey friends! If you have been listening to WallBuilders Live for very long at all, you know how much we respect our veterans and how appreciative we are of the sacrifice they make to make our freedoms possible. One of the ways that we love to honor those veterans is to tell their stories here on WallBuilders Live.  Once in a while, we get an opportunity to interview veterans that have served on those front lines that have made incredible sacrifices have amazing stories that we want to share with the American people.

One of the very special things we get to do is interview World War II veterans. You’ve heard those interviews here on WallBuilders Live, from folks that were in the Band of Brothers, to folks like Edgar Harrell that survived the Indianapolis to so many other great stories you heard on WallBuilders Live.

You have friends and family that also served.  If you have World War II veterans in your family that you would like to have their story shared here on WallBuilders Live, please e-mail us at [email protected]. Give us a brief summary of the story, and we’ll set up an interview. Thanks so much for sharing here on WallBuilders Live!

Rick:

Welcome back. Thanks for staying with us here on WallBuilder’s Live. Rob Schwarzwalder is back with us from The Stream. Rob always good to have you, man.

Rob:

It’s great to be with you Rick, thanks so much.

It’s Not About Tolerance Anymore, It’s About A Demand For Affirmation Or Silence

Rick:

Hey, you guys are putting out some great material there, and this particular article caught our attention a few weeks ago. I just want to get some comments from you about it.

You call it the Tragic rage of the gay left. It is so true. You’ve pointed out several examples in here where they have just gone after people like Pence, like Chris Pratt, the actor. It’s never about hey you know we just want tolerance anymore. It’s hey you’re going to affirm what we’re doing or else, so we’re gonna try to destroy your career.

Rob:

Yeah, I think that that’s exactly right. It’s not about tolerance anymore it’s about the demand for affirmation, or if not affirmation, silence.

I think there’s no question, that the gay activists who are pushing don’t want just to be a part of American society.

Look, Rick, nobody is going in anybody’s home banging down a door, and examining the things they do in private. There is tolerance. What we don’t have are Christians who are willing to say sexual intimacy outside of marriage, or outside of man-woman marriage is a good thing. We don’t have churches in the evangelical tradition as well as Catholic churches for that matter, Greek Orthodox churches, Orthodox Jewish synagogues, Muslim mosques; they’re unwilling to perform same-sex ceremonies. So this is somehow outrageous to many people on the gay left.

Rick:

Say you woke up and your only memories were of the last ten years, you wouldn’t realize it if you just picked up the news today. You wouldn’t realize that was the norm and the definition of marriage throughout history. This is a new concept.

We’ve redefined this literally in the last decade or so. I mean that’s a short time.

We Did Not Want Gay Marriages in the 1990s

Rob:

That’s absolutely true. I don’t know if you, and your listeners are familiar with Rosaria Butterfield. She’s now the wife of a pastor. She is a wonderful Christian woman. She had been a lesbian activist, and she was also a tenured professor at Syracuse University.

She said in a meeting that I hosted for her with some students a few years ago, look when I was a gay, lesbian activist in the 1990’s we did not want gay marriage. We were opposed to it because we were afraid that would be a bridge too far. So just in recent years, there has been this substantial sea change.

You and David have talked about this at length. The profoundly unconstitutional ruling in 2015 with Obergefell in which then Justice Kennedy essentially said, if you desire to be married to someone, and you both claim to love each other, you should be allowed to. Well on its face, if you extend that outward if love and volition are the only criteria for marriage, then that means any number of people can get married. There’s no limit to it. But beyond that, where in the Constitution is it not only stated that even in the wildest way implied that two people of the same gender have a right to marry?

Even Barack Obama in 2008, when he was asked about gay marriage said he was against it because this is his phrase, God is in the mix. Well, did God walk out of the mix in the intervening decade?

You and I don’t think so, and that’s why we’re being called all kinds of names. Frankly, we should profoundly count that as a blessing that we are being counted worthy to suffer in a very small way of standing for the truth of God’s word.

Pastors Can’t Handle The Onslaught Of The Issue

Rick:

Well, that in and of itself, as you even mentioned at the beginning of the interview, is something we don’t see much of these days. Do you think churches and really pastors I should say, have just been cowered? They’ve just been threatened to the point where now they’re just, I don’t want to deal with that issue.

I got people in my church that are hurting, I want to help that you know there’s all these different things we’re trying to deal with in our community, and I just can’t handle the onslaught that I’ve seen other pastors have had to go through. I mean that is the mentality that I see in here, and the other side has done that on purpose.

Rob:

Well, you know it’s interesting that you’d bring that up. I used to be on the executive committee of the elders at Emmanuel Bible Church in Springfield, Virginia, which is where the Pence family attends. Karen Pence for many years taught and is now teaching. Our Christian school has a simple standard – that you have to abide by biblical conduct when it comes to human sexuality. So, we do not employ people who are in adulterous relationships, premarital relationships, extramarital affairs, and homosexual relationships.

This is the position as you said that’s been upheld by scripture and upheld by secular society since recorded time. But because Karen Pence is now teaching at an institution that upholds that standard, she is being called all kinds of names. The mayor of South Bend Indiana, Pete (Buttigieg) I think it’s pronounced, is it Boot-ti-guy? I don’t know how exactly to say the least name.

Episcopal Church Attendance Is Record Low

In any event, he’s saying Mike Pence is hateful. He has a misunderstanding of Christianity. What’s really interesting is Pete Buttigieg goes to an Episcopal Church. A church which now affirms pretty much everything but the biblical understanding of Christianity, and I’m talking here about the denomination itself.

It’s estimated that fewer than 400,000 people in the United States may be as few as 200,000 attend to Episcopal churches nationwide. The downfall of that denomination has been that over the last 25 years, it has abandoned any vestige of allegiance to the Bible’s teaching on sexuality. And here’s a guy who’s going to this dying denomination, who accuses Mike Pence who is doing nothing but standing for historic Christian teaching of all kinds of evil things, and being harmful and hateful. They use this rhetoric because immediately it puts you on the defensive.

Nobody wants to be called hateful, and then immediately invites you to want to say oh I’m not like that I’m not hateful. I think, as Christians, we need to be able to say you know you can call me these names, that’s your privilege. But the reality is you’re abandoning what’s obvious from human biology, you’re abandoning tradition, you’re abandoning truth.

Children Need A Female Mother And A Male Father

You’re really in a deep way abandoning the best interests of children who don’t just need two adults. They need a female mother and a male father. Men and women are complementary. We know that apart from scripture from neuroscience the way men and women react to things think about things, their emotional responses are all documented in the secular scientific literature. They affirm what scripture says, that for this cause a man shall leave his mother and his father and cleave not to a partner but to a wife.

Rick:

You know, Rob they’re just listening to you state those facts. That guys like us that we understand that is common. We were taught that our whole life. We realized that as students of history, and of culture; who would you point to that’s making that argument well in our culture, and our society right now? Because, it’s like our side in many ways after Obergefell, and some of the other losses just laid down and said, I just not going to fight that fight anymore. But we need to be fighting that fight, we need to be stating the case.

If We Truly Love People, We Speak Truth

In my opinion, if you truly love people, then you speak truth to try to keep them from going down a path that you know is going to end up in pain.  

What are you seeing on that?

Rob:

Well, I’ll make a quick comment and then about who’s speaking to it. You just made an important point Rick: which is if we love people, if you saw somebody about to get hit by a bus, you wouldn’t say I don’t want to offend them I better let that hit. You would step in, and grab him and say I know I just inconvenienced you, I’m sorry if I hurt your arm, but I saved your life.

The kind of sexual activity that we’re now seeing rampant in our society that is so destructive, it needs to be confronted among other things in other ways at that level.

If you look at what’s taking place throughout our culture with the elevation even the celebration of sexual behaviors, that are clearly not only unhealthy but are debasing to one’s very image bearing of God, it does people no favor for us to be silent about that.

That doesn’t mean we speak aggressively or with hostility, but it does mean that graciously and consistently and firmly all taken together. Remember, Jesus was full of both grace and truth. We come alongside and say you know there’s a better way and you can tell me whatever names you want.

Family Research Council

As far as who’s making the argument, I don’t want to sound too personal about this: my friends at the Family Research Council are doing a wonderful and brave job of making these arguments.

Dr. Pat Fagan, who used to be a Family Research Council social scientist, now at the Catholic University of America, has documented extensively on these issues. This gets into the weeds a bit, but there is a retired professor named Paul Sullins.

He submitted a brilliant brief to the Supreme Court regarding the Obergefell ruling. Documenting in study after study how children who are raised by same-sex couples have weaker outcomes on things, like education, stability, a whole host of things.

Of course, it didn’t persuade the court, but for people who really want to find out, this is the effect of homosexual parenting. It doesn’t mean that all homosexual parents are evil. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that the ideal that God presents in his word, which is that a child needs a loving mother, and a loving father is clearly documented in the social science.

Crazy Stuff Is Happening Right Now

Rick:

Well, Robin if you go back a decade or two, when you know guys like you and us were warning about where the social norms would go when you take away any norms and anything, and everything goes.

People would laugh at us, and they would say, oh that’s crazy you’ll never go that far. Now we’re watching you know here in my home state a young boy like seven years old, being turned into a girl by the mom, and dad’s trying to stop it and can’t. The courts not even letting the guy call his son a boy.

I mean it’s just crazy stuff that’s happening now. This isn’t with just adults deciding to go do something crazy. Now, it’s being forced on our children. I think seeing child abuse happened in some horrific ways.

In some ways, we saw some of that coming out. We hoped it would never happen but now it’s here, and sorry for my monologue, all of that to ask you this: do you think the pain that comes from those decisions, that is inevitable, that people will feel, their families will feel, the children will feel, that society eventually has to recognize it? Does that help push us back to say what you said earlier – there’s a better way.

Rob:

You know I really hope so. I think what we’re going to see in coming years is how children who have been force fed this agenda of really the violation of human sexuality. It cannot help but adversely affect them.

Just the other day, you might have seen this too, there is a research facility in Great Britain where five researchers have just resigned. It’s dealing with the issue of transgenderism.

They’re giving children drugs that have not been adequately tested. These researchers said this is essentially child abuse. We’re taking these young kids, we’re giving them drugs whose side effects we don’t know to try to change them biologically in some way from their natural biological sex into something different.

They said this, we can’t continue this. And as you know, Paul McCue, who was the founder of sex-change surgery at Johns Hopkins University, has now come completely away from that point of view saying it doesn’t work. It’s ineffective. Not only does it mutilate the body, but it distorts the soul. And he wrote a major piece in The Wall Street Journal on this a couple of years ago. Of course, he has been attacked viciously. This is the man who founded the surgery that’s done. And he says it’s wrong. It’s anti-biology.

Rick, I wanted to say one other thing too about pastors who are speaking out. Family Research Council has a consortium of roughly 30,000 pastors nationwide who have agreed to stand with us. Bishop Harry Jackson who’s in Maryland. Others have a very prominent role in the evangelical community who have taken a stand, and we honor them for that. It would be helpful if some of our friends, and our brothers and sisters in Christ who write for major evangelical publications,  and so forth if they would be far more forthright.

They’re so afraid of being accused of being unloving that I think they go to the other extreme of being tepid and frankly kind of weak.

We Have To Stand For The Word Of God

We have to stand for the word of God, not just because it’s something that the Lord calls us to do but because his word is good. His plan for us is good and in every aspect of life, including the way that we function as sexual beings man.

Rick:

Amen. No doubt about it. I mean it seems to me this is the example of our day, of what salt and light actually do. I mean that salt truly does preserve, and bring out the flavor and all of those things. By not doing it, we’re allowing the culture to spoil.

And so I agree with you 1,000 percent. I’m thankful for you. I’m thankful for those that do speak up.

My prayer is that within all that kind of cowering down, because of some pretty rabid intimidation that as they see a few standing when you raise that banner, that say I’m willing, that others will rally as well.

Like you were saying, more pastors and writers and folks that have a realm of influence will not be afraid to speak the truth and just like you said I mean, and we’re gonna have to say it every time is, of course, speaking it in love. Granted, we meaning the church did, drop the ball on how we communicated on this issue for a while there a few decades ago. It created this stereotype and you know that’s caused us to run the other direction instead of correcting the way that we communicated.

I’m going on a monologue again. Anyway, I appreciate you, and I thank you for writing on this topic. I didn’t mention in the interview, and I really want people to read your article, so we’re gonna link it today on the website.

You saw where this leads; this intolerance and hate that is spoken out there by the left and by the gay left right now. You were there in the building at Family Research Council when Corkins came in and wanted to kill as many of you guys as he possibly could over this. This hate speech he was riled up by this hate that the left foments towards folks like you. So you know it firsthand and even in spite of that you’re still standing, so God bless you brother. Keep it up and can’t wait to get you back.

Rob:

Well, thank you. That’s very kind. Thank you for what you and David are doing. Just for raising these issues and having the courage to do it in a national form. I honor you guys for that.

Rick:

Well right back at your brother. That’s right. Rob Schwarzwalder there. We’ll have a link to his article on our website today at WallBuildersLive.com. Stay with us folks we’ll be back in one minute with David and Tim Barton.

Comedy And The Constitution at Front Site

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Rick:

Thanks for staying with us. David, Tim I mean he’s right. Just to be able to discuss this on a national program definitely opens you up to a lot of criticism but that’s we are supposed to do in a free speech environment of America where we should be able to reason about topics this important.

The First Amendment Allows Us To Have These Conversations With Reason And Logic

Tim:

Well, and this is where I would argue that that’s part of why this show is so important to help present people the biblical, the historical, and the constitutional perspective. Most Americans today if you talk to the average American on the street, they couldn’t tell you the reason we have the First Amendment. The First Amendment exists so we can have these hard conversations without having somebody censor us, without having the government saying, whoa you can’t say that, you can’t talk about that.

We’re supposed to be able to have reason and logic and guide us in these conversations. That’s it’s OK to have disagreements about fundamental issues. And this one is a maybe as fundamental as it gets when it comes to biblical ideas of sexuality or loving people, and expressing love, and communication with people.

Why The WallBuilders Live Program Exists

There are some very basic values, but this is the reason the First Amendment exists is so that we can have these kinds of discussions. That’s why we do so much what we do with this program presenting the biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective to help people remember why we do what we do, why the founding fathers established things the way they did, why was the First Amendment written.

Well, this is part of why – to have some of these conversations.

Rick:

If you get frustrated when you see logical, and reasonable conversations and voices being shouted down and people backing away from, and not being willing to have those conversations you need to contribute to WallBuilders Live.

We are not going to back away, we’re going to speak the truth. We got to speak it in love, but you can count on this program taking that biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective just as Tim said.

To do that it takes funds to have programs that can be broadcast across the nation to train pastors and young people on how to do the exact same thing. So if you want to defend the First Amendment, and make sure that it’s being lived out in our country contribute to WallBuilders Live. Go to WallBuildersLive.com today, click on that donate button. Make it possible for us to bring this truth to light across our nation. Thanks so much for listening to WallBuilders Live.