American’s Are Not Accepting Woke Culture In Theater And More – Good news in the theater! The American people are not as accepting of woke culture in the theater, as two new LGBTQ movies are a complete failure at the box office. A recent George Barna poll shows the majority of teenagers in the world think positively of Jesus and more!

Air Date: 10/21/2022

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.

 

Rick:

Welcome to WallBuilders Live. This is the intersection of faith and the culture, and we’re glad you’re here with us. This is a place where we take on the hot topics of the day from biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective.

And we get to have that conversation with David Barton. Man, this guy is the premier historian in America. I’m telling you, he’s read more of the Founding Fathers than anybody alive. I’m talking original documents. He’s really been inside the head, inside the minds of the people that started this nation, which allows us to really dive into those original documents, but also get his perspective on what they would have thought about some of the things happening today and how to apply the principles that they put in place and where they got those principles. That is an incredibly valuable discussion, and you get to be along for the ride, as do I.

I’m Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach. So it truly is an honor for me to get to be here with David Barton learning these things. And with Tim Barton, he’s a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. You really ought to have him come speak at your church or at your dinner banquet, wherever you can get him in. Powerful, powerful speaker, I believe, a great voice for America and restoring our constitutional republic today. At wallbuilders.com is where you can book Tim to speak, or David as well. Wallbuilderslive.com, that’s where you go if you want archives of this program. In other words, if you missed some shows earlier this week or last week or whenever last couple of months actually is available there at our website, wallbuilderslive.com. So check that out there today.

Today is actually Good News Friday. So we always on Friday bringing good news. And I’m telling you, there’s a lot of good things happening. I realize there’s bad. I get it. There’s things that happen every day, and I go, whoa, how do we survive that? And yet we do. And there’s a lot of good stuff happening as well. And we want to use our Fridays to dive into that good news so that, you know, these principles work. As Bob McEwen says, the only problem with these founding principles is they only work every time they’re tried. So if we try them, if we put them in place, we get good results. And so we’re going to talk about good results today and some of the things that are happening out there in the culture here on this Good News Friday.

Alright, David and Tim. Good News Friday time, let’s jump into some good news. David starting us off. Are we staying in Texas? I just feel like we need some Texas good news, but I’m betting we’re not. I bet you found something outside of Texas

David:

Oh, definitely outside of Texas this time, and that may diminish the good news… Well, maybe not, that’s just the arrogance of Texas. Okay, I take that back. What I got is a lot of national good news, and I’ve just got this stack of stories about how the woke stuff is not working and people are not buying into it. And what I’ve observed recently with Congressmen, Democrats, Republicans, people get in their echo chambers and they hear loud voices in their echo chambers, and they think it’s a whole nation talking to them. And what they find out it was just their people and they thought, they assumed that the nation agreed with their people.

And so I’ve seen this a lot with legislators who get in a particular circle and hear from other legislators, and they think this is going to work, and they put it out and it just gets crushed or people don’t like it or whatever. And it looks like that’s what’s starting to happen with the woke stuff. So we’ve seen all this woke entertainment going out, and I’m just going to combine a couple together here that I think kind of go together.

The movie Bros was out, and Bros was supposed to be a comedy about a gay couple of guys. And it’s really interesting because I read the review from a very, very left leaning magazine, and the reviewer was clearly pro-LGBTQ, and so it was talking about Billy Egner, who not only helped do this and produce it, but is also himself an actor. And I’m just going to read some of the tone. It says “Billy Eichner responds after Bros underperforms in its opening weekend”. And it says “The movie is special and it’s a unique celebration of LGBTQ+culture on the big screen has earned rave reviews, and there were hopes to see a resurgence for R-rated comedies. But it’s hard to disguise the results as anything but disappointing.”

So right off the bat, they say, we were hoping to see R-rated comedies come back. This is supposed to be a real big winner for LGBTQ+, and it has rave reviews. I read some of the reviews. I mean, the reviews from the media folks who watch movies all the time thought this was the best movie ever, and the box office totally disagreed with it.

Way underperformed. It’s not going to come anywhere close to paying back what they put in expenses. But the guy that did it, Billy Eiser, has all these tweets about how great it was. He sat in the theater and listened to all the people laughing. They laughed how they cried. They thought it was the best comedy they’ve ever seen, and he’s just talking about how great it is. And again, it’s underperforming. It’s in 3,350 theaters, so it’s got massive availability, and people just aren’t going.

It talks at the end. It says “It’s almost definitely playing somewhere near you. You can purchase tickets and tell you how to get tickets as our own. They got a reviewer rights and Cinema Blend review of the film, “Billy Egner has made a movie that not only is a wonderful moment for LGBTQ+ representation on the big screen, but it’s also hilarious raunchy comedy that features a terrific cast and has a sweet romantic story to tell.” I don’t think America agreed with that. And so here the LGBTQ+ folks are talking to themselves so much that they’re convinced that this is where all of America is. And when they came out with this movie, it did not work.

And the other one that I’m just kind of throwing here with it, I love the headlines on this. It says “DC Comics Cancels Gay Superman: Gay Superman is officially dead”. DC Comics announced they are pulling the plug on the controversial comic book series, “The Man of Steel, whose motto was truth, justice, and the Rainbow Way was killed not by Kryptonite, but by disastrous sales.” And there it is again. They thought this was going to be a big hit. And this is supposedly the son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane. And this son has become gay and he’s the superhero.

And it just goes through all this stuff. And he’s standing up for climate change and he supports open borders and people just aren’t buying it. So to me, watching how people react with their dollars is a pretty good indication of what they believe. And this is something where I think our people have been really silent, we talked before. We’ve seen the polling results that 77% of traditional value Americans self censor rather than get into controversy by talking about this stuff. And so the fact that people are not talking about it leads the other side to believe that they’re the victims in this. But this is the challenge I see out of this.

At some point, we’re going to have to start talking and being out loud about this stuff rather than just waiting for the box office sales to show that this is a failure because we’re not talking to classes and classrooms like we should; we’re not talking to churches like we should, cultures. At some point, we’re going to have to say it before we go to the box office.

Tim:

Well, and guys, I think we’ve talked a lot too about voting with dollars. Dad, I don’t think this is a situation even where there was a victory because people didn’t go see it and they’re voting with their dollars. Though people didn’t go see it because if you go see romantic comedy, it’s usually because you can imagine yourself in that situation with that person, some kind of correlation or connection. And the vast majority of the population is not homosexual and doesn’t have a cute homosexual relationship. So there’s not the same level of relatability. So this wasn’t even a strategic marketing move. It could have been a little misleading for whoever is producing this to look at some of the numbers for rising generations, where you look at Gen Z and for Gen Z, it’s over 30% that identify as the LGBTQ+ alphabet soup, whatever.

But we’ve already talked about in this program, they’re not doing that because that is how they want to live sexually, they’re doing that because that’s how they want to show support. But showing support doesn’t mean you want to go see a movie about something that you can’t relate to or can’t connect to. It’s similar when you’re reading a comic book.

If you’re reading a fantasy comic book, and especially about a superhero, you want them to have some level of superhuman ability, superhuman strength, be able to ultimately engage in some kind of battle scenario. And if you’re making the storyline not about somebody being really strong or powerful, having a great superpower, or even being able to overcome some great foe, you’re making an estate about climate change or about promoting the homosexual issue. Those are not even strategically good decisions, even if you had a significant level of support, because those just aren’t the kind of stories that sell and that people are really in a place they want to go see.

Nonetheless, it is great that they flopped, and that is really good news because hopefully that will send a signal across all of Hollywood. This is not the direction that identifies or where most American people identify, it’s not that they can identify with that story. So it is really overall good news. But I don’t think in this situation, because people were voting with their dollars by not going to see it as far as Christians choosing that, I think it was just because the movie was so bad and it was so poorly thought out in the sense of connecting with American people and being stories that people want to see and hear.

It was not a surprise to me at Flop, but it is really good news. Dad, to your point, it’s great news that this did not do well, because hopefully it will send a bigger picture message to Hollywood as well.

David:

And I think that goes to the message these guys had, is the guys who produced it, the guys who marketed, the guys who reviewed it all thought that they were talking to the people, and it did flop, and they were not talking to people, and you said people didn’t connect with it. So they’re in their own chamber up here, whether it’s Hollywood or whatever it is. I don’t know where all the reviewers write from, but it did have rave reviews, and that’s supposed to mean something. And it just, again, shows to me how far out of touch that culture with the people.

And as you point out, you know, the over inflated numbers for Gen Z, I mean, just because they’re identifying doesn’t mean they’re going to support. And I think these guys have really overestimated the support they have in a lot of ways. And particularly now that we’re seeing school boards doing what they’re doing, I think we’re seeing the numbers drive back the other direction. I think the support for LGBTQIA+; even those who just support and not identify, I think that’s going to start coming down, too, because this has gotten really aggressive and really ugly. The cases are going in Texas now and the lawsuits that are going, I can’t see this thing really gaining strength from where it’s been. I think it’s actually headed the other direction. I think that’s probably good news for conservatives and constitutionalists in the culture.

Rick:

Yes, I think you guys are exactly right about them not actually reading the market well and being so used to their echo chamber. Even I was really surprised when this came out; they advertised almost at every break during the UFC fights. So for those that aren’t familiar with that, that’s fighting. It’s like the kind of people that watch UFC fights are typically not LGBTQ whatever crowd, there are some. But I mean, it just seems so out of place to watch those ads. And it was pretty in your face homosexual kissing and everything in the ads. And I thought, man, they’re going to turn people off, not bring them into the fold.

But then again, I started thinking, you know, they’ve always marketed this way to try to make it normal and make people that wouldn’t normally accept or be part of their affirming of their lifestyle, they just try to keep pushing into your life. And maybe that’s what they were thinking was, we don’t have anybody watching UFC that’s in our group, we need to get this in front of those UFC people and make them start paying attention to us too. Who knows? Who knows? But I think you’re right. Good news that the movie flop, for sure. Alright, Tim, good news from your end. What do you got?

Tim:

Alright, well, this one is going to Nashville, Tennessee, is where the article came from. But it’s highlighting that on September 30th, governor Bill Lee signed a proclamation dedicated or actually, the proclamation was for September 30th, but he marked it as a day of prayer, humility and fasting for the Volunteer State. And the proclamation has some great words, some great thoughts and ideas in it. One of the phrases I identified was that “God’s sovereignty and the need for God’s grace over our state and nation.”

But what’s great we’ve so often talked about in early America, the Founding Fathers were very open about faith and prayer. Part of the legacy going back even to the days of Plymouth and the Pilgrims would have every fall day of Thanksgiving; and they started a tradition that every spring they’d have a day of prayer and fasting. And this was something that was common in the early colonies, the early states in America, a tradition that has continued on inconsistently in the last several decades. But there even have been some more modern governors doing this. This is a really great example of a modern governor doing this, recognizing the reality that there is a God, that we do have some level of duty, a reliance and even dependence on that God, where he identified God’s sovereignty, the need for God’s grace in his state and nation.

And so overall, guys, to me it’s very encouraging. We’ve talked on the road over the last couple of years where we are seeing God wake people up, that we believe there’s an awakening happening in the culture of the nation right now. And part of the awakening that sometimes happens in a culture, in a nation, historically, it’s often happened outside of the church. And when you’re seeing something like this, this isn’t just a church calling on people to pray; this is the governor of a state calling on people to pray, which for any of the secular, anti-Christian people, this is totally constitutional, totally allowed to happen, right. This is something that you can get offended, you can challenge it, but literally, this is legal. He can do this.

However, it is really great news that we do have some governors, we do have some courage and backbone in some places where people are still bold enough to acknowledge there is a God and to even challenge their state to have a day of prayer and humility and fasting, to remember God and put God first. So congratulations. Great job, Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee, and just a really neat example of something more governors should be doing.

David:

And by the way, let me add into this, and I think he did a very wise move here. I’ve got to be careful, I say this, but I think he did a wise move because of how poor our education system is. If you recall, it was a year or two ago that one of the legislators in Kansas wanted to do something similar. And this goes back to the Founding Father tradition, the Pilgrim tradition, of having a day of humiliation, fasting and prayer. Humiliation is humble ourselves before God. Look up the term, ‘humiliation’. So it’s a humiliation, fasting, prayer. And when a legislator in Kansas introduced that, the media and the people chewed his head off. How dare you try to humiliate us? We don’t want to be humiliated. No, no, it means to humble yourself.

And so our language understanding is so crazy that here in Tennessee, governor didn’t use the word humiliation, that’s the historical correct term. That’s the right term, definition-wise, Western dictionary. But it’s just so misunderstood by people today that the governor did a great thing by saying a day of humility, fasting and prayer which gets the same message across.

Rick:

Very good news. Guys, let’s take a quick break, we’ll be right back with more good news. Folks today we’ll you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

THE AMERICAN STORY

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called The American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today.

And we would say very providentially in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil, and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things, like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America.

Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America not as the story of a perfect nation of a perfect people. But the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out, wallbuilders.com, The American Story.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us on this Good News Friday. A lot more good news at the website as well, so check that out today at wallbuilderslive.com. But let’s get into some new good news and we’re back over to David. David, where are we headed?

David:

Well, this is a worldwide poll that was done by George Barna and it’s done by Barna for a whole bunch of different religious and Christian organizations and different groups that work across the world. You’ve got World Vision and Christian Vision, Bible Study Fellowship and the Association of Christian Schools International and Biblical and all these different ones. They asked young people, they asked teenagers, what do you think about Jesus? How do you see Jesus worldwide?

And it’s interesting, they went to 26 different countries, 17 different language groups and asked about Jesus. And what’s really interesting is by a large margin, youth across the world see Jesus as a really positive thing. Only 6% see Jesus as irrelevant. So I was looking at the poll numbers and those who don’t like Jesus don’t like what he stands for, the common complaints they had were such small percentages. For example, 10% said they don’t like Him because of what he’s against, 10% say Jesus is detached from today’s real issues, 7% say he’s judgmental, and 4% say he’s hypocritical, which I’m not sure they even know who Jesus is. But nonetheless, only 6% said he’s irrelevant.

So you compare that to the 49 or so percent that said he really is positive, he really is good. 43% say he personally cares for people, 46% say Jesus offers hope to people, 38% say he’s trustworthy, 37% say he’s generous and 49% say he’s loving. I mean, I just love the differential numbers there. You’re talking half the teens in the world see Jesus as loving and only 4, 6, 7% seem as really negative. So that’s really positive.

Now I looked at the numbers, I don’t think it’s a very accurate reflection of where America is right now because we just don’t portray Jesus in the same positive manner on the polling we see in America. But globally, Jesus is doing really, really well and there’s just a lot of good things to say about that. So I was really pleased to see that. And maybe some of those foreign nations will send some missionaries to American schools and American education and get some of that positive Jesus stuff back in here. It has sure been beat up in media and in education and so many other places in general. It’d be really nice to get it back and you see what the Justice Department is starting to do and how they’re even playing around with placing Christian groups on terrorism watch list. It’s just a whole different thing.

And by the way, talking about international stuff and good things internationally, we’ve got a trip coming up with WallBuilders in April for those who might have any interest in going to see the seven churches covered in the Book of Revelation, those seven cities where that John talks to the different churches and says to this church or that church or whatever, here’s what the Lord sees, the angel of the Church of Sardus and the angel of the Church of Laodicea etc. We’re actually taking a trip over there. I’ve been over there on that trip. We’ve got great, great, great guide, Omar Ashel, the Bible Comes to Life. But I’ve been on this trip and it really was revolutionary for me, it really changed me to see and stand in the places where the Apostle Paul was in the group where he spoke at Ephesus when we were in Ephesus, it was amazing.

If you read Acts 19, there’s a big riot there in Episodes because Paul’s there and they’re trying to save their God, Diana, and they think Paul’s a threat. And there were 250 people in a theater just calling for his execution essentially. We stood in that theater, and it was the most amazing thing. It holds 25,000 house, and it’s a stone theater. And when we were down on the floor just talking to each other in normal talking tones, people in the top row could hear everything we were saying. Just the architecture, just seeing and the stuff there at Ephesus is part of one of the seven great wonders of the world. It’s just phenomenal to see. And we stand there and read the scripture related to that, where Paul was or where the church was, or how fast the church spread in the book of Acts.

So those that want a real first hand view to understand much of the book of Acts, the missionary journey of Paul, particularly the seven churches talked about there in Revelation, you can go to the website wallbuilders.com, it’s there on the front page. You can get information about the trip, see if you want to sign up. But we would really highly recommend the trip. And if you want to go with this to Turkey, this is a great opportunity to do so. And the Bible definitely comes to life on this trip. So there’s another piece of international good news, there’s a trip to Turkey for those who want to take it.

Rick:

Alright, David, so if you go to wallbuilders.com, you can learn more. That’s where you can get your registration in. You have to do a fairly small deposit to go ahead and hold your spot, and you can learn all about the different costs, the dates, the deadlines, all of those things. So check that out today at wallbuilders.com right there at the top, you’ll see the trip to Turkey, click on that link and you can learn more. Tim, what’s your next piece of good news, man?

Tim:

Well, guys, this one’s coming from Florida. And earlier this year in Florida, Governor DeSantis signed the Parental Rights and Education Bill, that the idea was to protect children and allow parents to be involved in the process in education. Well, last month, the Miami Dade county public schools board voted regarding looking at designating October as LGBTQ history month in their public school system.

Interestingly enough, of the nine board members of that public school board, only one of them was in favor, and that was the individual that proposed this motion. The other eight voted against it and said, no, we can’t do that. Interestingly. And giving the explanation, they said, “It was clear today that we were going to follow the law. And the Parental Rights Bill is very clear that this type of imposition should not be imposed on our children, especially in our elementary schools in an endorsement district wide, was in direct violation of the Parental Rights Bill.”

Now, what’s interesting about this, doing a little more digging into it, the Parental Rights Bill that Governor DeSantis signed literally only related to Lower elementary in this regard to kind of the sexual orientation stuff. So we’re talking about the youngest of the young kids, and there was a school board member who thought, nope, it’s not right what the governor did. We should go against the governor because the youngest kids in our school should be getting this LGBTQ+ agenda in their educational settings; every October, they had a focus on this, etc. Well, the great news is, the majority of the board recognized we should not be doing that. We should protect our kids.

However, it does indicate this is the reason that we need to start paying more attention in some of these school settings to who’s on the board, to the ideas they’re promoting, when you’re trying to sexualize children and like, legitimately, we’re talking about kindergarten through third grade, when you are trying to promote and sexualize those things for kids and promote this idea of human sexuality and this gender fluidity or however you identify whatever it is, this is very dangerous, damaging, destructive behavior, certainly something the Bible identifies as even being not only sinful, but evil, wicked and abominable. The good news is, the majority of the board recognize that this is not the right policy.

And even harkening back to earlier this year, we did identify the great news from Governor Ron DeSantis when he said that we’re going to make sure we are protecting the kids in our schools by doing this Parental Rights Bill. So we’re now seeing kind of fulfillment of that bill that was initially done. So overall, really good news, really encouraging some of the stuff we’re seeing come out of Florida in the midst of the battles that we’re having to fight. We’re seeing a lot of great victories and positive results after this really good piece of legislation.

David:

You know, Tim, what struck me is really interesting about this story, too, was this came just days after down in Miami Dade County, and there’s a lot of school boards and others down there, but Moms for Liberty went in and got involved in 30 races down there, endorsed 30 candidates in that Miami Dade County area, and they won 25 of the 30 races. And DeSantis endorsed school board candidates all over. I don’t know that I’ve heard of a governor endorsing school board candidates, they do state reps or whatever, but he endorsed school board candidates and they just mopped up.

And so right after they mop up down in Miami Dade County and get all these conservatives elected, it’s like the other school boards looked around and said, oh, have we been off the page here? Yeah, that’s right, 8-1, that’s what the vote should be. And so I thought it was humorous the fact that in Miami Dade County where they’ve had so much craziness that the school board voted overwhelmingly the way they did not to have LGBTQ month recognized at the school, not just for Kindergarten to third, but at anywhere at the school. I mean, that’s a big step and I think that’s a direct reflection of the elections they had down there.

Rick:

Well, there is never enough time to get all the good news in. So the good news is we will have more good news at our website wallbuilderslive.com. You can go back and listen to previous weeks and then of course next Friday we’ll be piling it on again and try to get in as many stories as we possibly can.

The best thing you can do though is create some good news. Actually be a part of the solution as we talked about at the top of the program. Do that by signing up today as a Constitution coach, by sharing the program with friends and family. That makes you a force multiplier by donating at wallbuilderslive.com. But do something. Don’t just sit back and look at the American culture crumbling and say I can’t do anything about it. You absolutely can. You can rebuild the wall right there close to your home; right there in your community, you can be part of rebuilding just like Nehemiah did. It can happen and it should happen. We have everything at our fingertips to do this and we have the numbers. There’s enough people in America that share our values, that still believe in biblical worldview, that still believe in the Constitution, that still want to fight for freedom if we’ll just get them off the sidelines onto the field and engaged in the process and you can lead the way in your community.

Thanks so much for listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.