John Stonestreet – Page 14

Guest Column: Chromosomes Have Consequences

Jan 23, 2024John StonestreetTransgenderFairness in Women's Sports, Transgender

A recent study highlighted by King’s College London suggests that, wait for it, sex is a greater predictor of athletic performance than gender identity. The study found that in the “nonbinary” category of races, men outperformed women.

The researchers were careful to note that not much research has been done in this area … unless I’d add, you consider the history of sport.

That we need this study reveals much more about our cultural moment than it does about runners. To say that men and women are different is to say something that was universally obvious until just yesterday.

The created differences between men and women aren’t a bug of our humanity but a feature, beautifully leading to differences in many areas of life. Women’s sports should be protected because, if they aren’t, men will continue to steal the place of women, not only on the winner’s podium but in other areas of life too.

Chromosomes, like ideas, have consequences.

Guest Column: Why Abortion is a (the?) Priority Issue for the Political Left

Jan 17, 2024John StonestreetAbortionAbortion, Life, Pro-life, Sanctity of Human Life

Last week on NBC’s Meet the Press, Joe Biden’s deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, was asked what the president’s top priority would be if reelected. His reply: “First of all: Roe. … The president has been adamant that we need to restore Roe. It is unfathomable that women today wake up in a country with less rights than their ancestors had years ago.”

According to Politico, President Biden’s pro-choice agenda is “the strongest abortion rights platform of any general election candidate,” and the president seems to sense that this is among the very few issues trending in his favor. Of a recent Texas Supreme Court case in which a woman was denied a medical exception for an abortion, the president declared: “No woman should be forced to go to court or flee her home state just to receive the health care she needs. … This should never happen in America, period.”

Judging by the string of pro-life legislative defeats, most recently in the otherwise red Ohio and Virginia, many Americans agree with the president. One Politico analysis concluded, “When abortion rights are on the ballot, they win with voters across the political spectrum—though they don’t always boost Democratic candidates on ballots advocating for them.” In an imminent presidential election that promises to be especially contentious, the received wisdom among progressive candidates is this: Vow to preserve, at all costs, the so-called “right to choose,” and it’s likely that voters will choose me.

Of course, this reveals as much about the rest of the progressive agenda as it does about “reproductive rights.” Immigration and the southern border? Ukraine and Israel? Housing prices? Inflation? LGBTQ issues? The mental health crisis? These pressing issues are political liabilities for the president right now, so all the attention is on abortion.

It is more than a little ironic to see the heightened emphasis on abortion, considering how often Christians were accused of being “one-issue” voters. Post-Roe, left-wing politicians are forced to be more honest about abortion’s central role in their political project.

And make no mistake, abortion is central not only to a progressive political agenda, but to the vision of “freedom” and selfhood this agenda has enshrined in American law and culture. In so many ways, abortion symbolizes the worldview in which autonomy and self-expression are the highest possible values. It’s the logical endpoint of the pursuit of freedom from constraints, devoid of any notion of freedom for a created purpose.

In this view, connections to other human beings—including the most intimate and dependent connection of all—are only worthwhile insofar as they help citizens achieve that vision of limitless autonomy. If such connections get in the way of our freedoms, we should be free to sever them, no matter who suffers.

This deadly logic has become increasingly obvious in recent years as imaging technology in neo-natal care has made the humanity of preborn babies undeniable. Quite a few pro-abortion activists have responded by swallowing the proverbial poison pill and giving up on pretending children in the womb are “clumps of cells.” So what if they’re human? These activists retort. Their death is an acceptable price for women to maintain absolute control over their own bodies and futures! If our vision of freedom requires people to die, so be it.

Still, abortion is heavily restricted or banned in 24 states, mostly as a direct result of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, and there are a few hopeful signs that the public hasn’t fully bought the logic of the extreme activists. For example, pro-abortion candidates, at least on the national level, still feel the need to pretend they find abortion distasteful. Last year, President Biden prefaced his support of abortion by saying, “I’m a practicing Catholic. I’m not big on abortion.” Also, abortion is still typically defended in public, not as an absolute, on-demand right, but as a necessary accommodation in sad but rare circumstances like rape, incest, and the life of the mother. These “wedge” arguments are deeply flawed and do not change the fact that intentionally taking an innocent human life is always wrong. However, their continued use indicates that Americans aren’t quite ready to stomach the unrestricted killing of little people we find inconvenient.

Ultimately, the pro-life argument remains unchanged. The preborn are innocent human beings, made in God’s image, and no one should be able to take their lives without cause. In fact, the most basic purpose of government is to protect its citizens’ right to life, and if the government fails to do this, it is failing in the most basic way. Simply put, if killing babies in the womb is not wrong, the very concept of “rights” is a joke.

The president’s eagerness to make abortion his top reelection priority is deeply significant, and it would be a mistake to dismiss the statement as mere politics. This issue has taken on symbolic, moral, and spiritual weight for our nation, and it will continue to be a bitterly fought battleground. Despite setbacks and disappointments, we can agree with the president on one thing. De-prioritizing this issue is not an option. The stakes—for our society and its most vulnerable members—are simply too high.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.

Dr. Martin Luther King and the Nature of Law

Jan 15, 2024John StonestreetHistoryMartin Luther King Jr.

Back in 2009, Chuck Colson, Robert George, and Timothy George offered a robust defense of life, marriage, and religious liberty. The statement of conscience for Christians was called the Manhattan Declaration. In it, the authors made this bold statement: “There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

Although there have been recent revelations about Dr. King that point to significant moral failings, his explanation about the nature of law, what constitutes an unjust law, and how we should respond to unjust laws is a masterpiece of applied theology.

Today, on Martin Luther King Day, here is Chuck Colson with a commentary on Dr. King and his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” originally aired in January of 2000.

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is out of harmony with the moral law.”

It was with these very words, in his memorable “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” that Martin Luther King Jr. threw down the gauntlet in his great Civil Rights crusade. King refused to obey what he regarded as an immoral law that did not square with the law of God.

All across America today, millions of people are celebrating the birthday of this courageous man, and deservedly so. He was a fearless battler for truth, and all of us are in his debt because he remedied past wrongs and brought millions of Americans into the full riches of citizenship.

In schools and on courthouse steps, people will be quoting his “I Have a Dream” speech today. It is an elegant and powerful classic. But I would suggest that one of Dr. King’s greatest accomplishments, one which will be little mentioned today because it has suddenly become “politically incorrect,” is his advocacy of the true moral foundations of law.

King defended the transcendent source of the law’s authority. In doing so he took a conservative Christian view of law. In fact, he was perhaps the most eloquent advocate of this viewpoint in his time, as, interestingly, Justice Clarence Thomas may be today.

Writing from a jail cell, King declared that the code of justice is not man’s law: It is God’s law. Imagine a politician making such a comment today. We all remember the controversy that erupted weeks ago when George W. Bush made reference to his Christian faith in a televised national debate.

But King built his whole case on the argument, set forth by St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, that “An unjust law is no law at all.” To be just, King argued, our laws must always reflect God’s Law.

This is the great issue today in the public square: Is the law rooted in truth? Is it transcendent, immutable, and morally binding? Or is it, as liberal interpreters have suggested, simply what courts say it is? Do we discover the law, or do we create it?

Ever since Dr. King’s day, the United States Supreme Court has been moving us step-by-step away from the positions of this great civil rights leader. To continue in this direction, as I have written, can only lead to disastrous consequences—indeed, the loss of self-governing democracy.

So, I would challenge each of us today to use this occasion to reflect not just on his great crusade for civil rights but also on Martin Luther King’s wisdom in bringing law back to its moral foundations.

Many think of King as some kind of liberal firebrand, but when it comes to the law he was a great conservative who stood on the shoulders of Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, striving without apology to restore our heritage of justice.

This is a story I tell in my book, How Now Shall We Live?: a great moment in history when a courageous man applied the law of God to the unjust laws of our time, and made a difference. And that is the lesson we should teach our kids on this holiday. It is not just another day off from school or a day to go to the mall.

Read through King’s letter with your kids: It’s the most important civics lesson they’ll ever get.

This Breakpoint was originally published on January 20, 2020.