Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 104 | Friday Roundup

Episode Date: April 26, 2019

Going through the biggest stories of the week: Biden's presidential campaign announcement, Bernie Sanders' support of prisoners voting, a Texas execution, and Buttigieg vs. Franklin Graham. Then, A Thing I Don't Get (or like). Copyright Blaze Media All Rights Reserved.

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hello, everyone. Happy Friday. I hope everyone's had a wonderful week. So typically we do interviews or a Q&A on Fridays. Today, I didn't have an interview lined up and I didn't know exactly which kind of questions I wanted to answer. I do have a lot of theological questions. that you guys have sent me that I still want to answer at some point, but it's Friday. I didn't want it to be too terribly heavy. So what I decided to do was kind of a hodgepodge of things. These are all things that have happened in the news this week, but it won't be exclusively political. It won't be exclusively cultural and it won't be exclusively theological.

We're kind of going to weave all of those things together and talking about some of the biggest things that happened over the past few days. Hey, this is Steve Deast. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over

hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Let's go ahead and get into what we're talking about. So the most recent thing that happened in the news was vice president, former vice president Biden announced his candidacy for president of the United States. Now, this has been a long time coming.

If you have watched the news at all over the past few weeks, you probably just assumed that he had already announced his candidacy for the Democratic ticket. but, or candidate to see for, for president to be nominated on the Democratic ticket, you probably thought that he was already officially in the running because we've been talking about him. The news has been talking about him like he had already announced it, but he hadn't. It was just assumed he had kind of toyed around with it. He had talked about that he and his family are talking through it. He has been leading in the polls for a long time. There was a recent poll that said that he was actually ahead of President Trump by about 11 points. Of course, we know from

2016 that polls especially at this point are not terribly accurate, but he officially made the announcement on YouTube posted on Twitter like a true baby boomer. Nothing wrong with that. I'm just saying on on Thursday morning at 6 a.m. I watched the video. I encourage you to and I'm actually going to play a clip here. I'll just play the clip now and then I'll give you my analysis. Folks America's an idea. An idea that's stronger than any army, bigger than any ocean, more powerful than any dictator or tyrant. It gives hope to the most desperate people on earth. It guarantees that everyone is treated with dignity

and gives hate no safe harbor. It instills in every person in this country the belief that no matter where you start in life, there's nothing you can achieve if you work at it. That's what we believe. And above all else, that's what's at stake in this election. So I didn't want to play you the whole thing, But here's my analysis of the part that I just played you.

This is a very make America great again type message. I was on Stuart Varni's show on Fox Business yesterday, and that's an analysis that he and I seem to share, that this is a very pro-America-America-first message. The language that he is using is certainly meant to attract people in the middle and attract people, even on the right, I think, saying that America was, founded on an idea, but that it was imperfectly implemented. He even used the name of Thomas Jefferson. I mean, any Democrat today, any far left Democrat today is never even going to say the name of Thomas Jefferson, but he invoked the name of a founder. He said that we were created

on a good idea that America is strong, that we have to keep her strong. And even though this great idea of equality, self-governance and all of, I'm kind of paraphrasing there, has been implemented imperfectly over, uh, throughout history that we still. need to maintain the strength and the dignity and the leadership that we have in the world. That is not today's common democratic message. That is a very strong pro-America, even America first, make America great again, keep America great type message without, of course, saying those words. I think he realizes that his base is not going to be the far left. It's probably not even going to be Obama's base. His base is probably going to be,

or the people who he wants to support him are going to be blue-collar white, working-class Americans, even people who like Trump's pro-America message, but just don't like Donald Trump. He is going to try to be the dignified, more mature, more experienced Donald Trump in the sense that he is going to exude some sort of strength that a lot of people liked about Donald Trump and a lot of people liked about his message without some of the craft. without some of the pettiness that people don't like about Donald Trump. I personally, as much as I don't agree with Joe Biden and I do not agree with his policies and we'll get into this in just a second, I also think that he was part of the worst and

the most progressive presidency in recent history, if not all of history, even though I dislike everything that he stands for, at least what I know that he stands for, this is a good move. This is a very smart move by Joe Biden to use this kind of language to kind of signal to people in the center and in the center right, maybe even someone staunchly on the right. This is a really smart strategy because what people did like about Donald Trump, people like me who didn't like his personality, maybe didn't like his tweets, had contentions with his morality. what we did like about him was that he said, no, no, no, none of this, America is going around to apologize to other countries. None of this. America needs to apologize for our weaknesses.

No, America is going to be great again. America is going to be strong. He made it okay again to be a patriot and to be proud of your country and to be proud of American greatness and strength. That was something that really appealed to a lot of people that didn't like him. And so Joe Biden is latching on to that, latching on to that popular message and saying, yeah, well, I'm for that too. Now, the question is whether or not it's going to work. Because the other person who has been up in the polls, also a white male, funnily enough, is Bernie Sanders.

Now, his message is not one of American strength. It's not one of American greatness. His message, just like Elizabeth Warren's message, who, of course, is not polling nearly as well as either Biden nor Bernie Sanders, but their message is going to be one of fairness. Their message is going to be one of rich people paying their fair share. They are going to be talking about free college. They're going to be talking about free health care. They're going to be talking about universal basic income. They're even going to be talking about racial inequality. I'm not sure if Biden, how Biden is going to confront those issues, how Biden is going to be able to answer those questions if he is trying to

reach white people in the middle. But that's certainly not his initial message. That's certainly not what he's going out there and talking about first. He knows who he's trying to reach. So I will be interested to see kind of how he walks that line. If you remember, he said something positive about Mike Pence a couple months ago and said, you know, Mike Pence and I have our disagreements, but we are, you know, he's a good guy. We're on the same page as far as, you know, him being a decent man. And then Cynthia Nixon, the socialist from New York, said, are you kidding me? How can you possibly say that this guy is a decent man, this homophobic, whatever? And Joe Biden walked back his compliment of Mike Pence. You can't even say that someone's a decent man who disagrees with you politically

anymore. And he totally acquiesced to the tyranny of the far left. He couldn't even say that he liked him as a person. And so is that what his campaign is going to be, going out there, saying something that kind of shows him as a middle of the road guy who shows him as, shows himself as someone who is not a socialist, who is really a centrist, who is trying to reach across the aisle and get things done. He's going to say these things and then he's going to have leftist intersectionalists come after him and he's going to have to apologize. If that is going to be his strategy moving forward, I don't think that's going to work very well. I do think what people like about Bernie Sanders is that he is very unapologetic about

being a socialist. He really doesn't care what you think about socialism. To his credit, the ideas that he has had that I think are absolutely crazy and that a lot of people think are absolutely crazy. He's been holding for a really long time. Like he was a socialist before being a socialist was cool. Like he was praising Soviet Russia. He was praising breadlines. Like the guy's been cuckoo for a long time. It's just that America's cuckoo-ness is just now catching up to his. So we'll see that that to me is going to be a very interesting battle because it's actually going to be a battle of ideas, not just a battle of race and a battle of gender. If you haven't noticed Swalwell, who is currently polling at 0%, Corey Booker, who might be polling at 1%. Both of them have pledged to

have women on their ticket because they think that this intersectionality is going to help. Well, according to USA Today, 77% of voters who were polled don't care about the gender of the person who's on the ticket. And so I don't really think that's going to help them go from zero percent to any kind of formidable percentage of support whatsoever. But they apparently think it is. That to me is very boring. Like this whole intersectional conversation of who has more oppression points than the other. Like that's not interesting to me. At least when it's Biden against Bernie, there's going to be this back and forth of who is going to make better policies that's better for America or who is going to advocate for better policies that are better for America.

That's a much more interesting conversation. I think that's a much more interesting cultural dialogue as well. Okay, do we want this person who says he's going to be middle of the road who says he cares about American greatness and American strength? Or do we want this person who's going to take the country in a fundamentally new direction? Fundamentally changing what America is and how we function economically and socially. And social. Now, speaking of that, speaking of fundamentally changing America, that's one thing that Joe Biden said in his video and his announcement video that I just had to laugh at. He said, of course, that if we elect Donald Trump again and he is president for four more years, if we have Donald Trump for eight years of his presidency, then it's going to

fundamentally change the character of America. Well, what's funny about that is that he was a part of the presidency that did fundamentally change the character of America. And that's not just me saying that as a conservative. That is polls saying that. If you look at the study that I've cited so many times on this podcast, polarization and politics from Pew Research in 2017, and you look at just how much Republicans and Democrats began to disagree over the eight years of Obama's presidency, they always disagree, almost always have disagreed on everything to some degree, but not to the degree to which they disagree now and started to disagree under Barack Obama. This is mostly due to the dramatic changes in the Democratic line of thought.

Republicans, if you look at this study, really didn't change all that much in our ideology. We didn't really change all that much in what we thought about immigration, guns, welfare, but Democrats did. They moved to the left on everything. I mean, why do you think that it was feasible and it is feasible for a socialist to almost, or was feasible for a socialist to almost win the Democratic primary in 2016 and why he is still so popular today. That would have been impossible before Barack Obama. That would have been impossible without Barack Obama. I guarantee you if we had had John McCain and Mitt Romney become president or even Barack Obama for just four years of his presidency, Bernie Sanders wouldn't

even be a possibility. But Barack Obama warmed us all up to collectivism. He warmed us all up to identity politics. And that warms everyone. one up to socialism in this class warfare, this gospel of grievance that we've talked about so many times on this podcast. So if you look at this particular study from Pew Research and you look at how Democrats change their minds and move to the left, you can look at abortion, you can look at race, you can look at immigration, you can look at welfare, you can look at guns, you can look at health care. They've all moved dramatically, not just a little bit, but dramatically to the left while Barack Obama was president. It's not that they were moving.

moving steadily to the left before that, and then they just kept on moving steadily to the left while Barack Obama was in office. No, they moved dramatically to the left. And if you even look at their rhetoric and how their rhetoric has changed just over the past 10 years, I mean, think about abortion. Democrats used to say that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. And now it's glorified. Through all nine months, it's supposed to be a woman's choice. And New York has passed a law saying that an unborn child is not a child or is not a person. inside the womb and has no legal rights whatsoever and that is being celebrated. It's not even just pro-choice anymore. It is pro-abortion. It is pro-bottily autonomy. So they say it's no longer just

safe legal and rare. It is whenever, wherever, on demand through all nine months. If you look at race, in 2008, the majority of both parties, Republicans and Democrats, they saw that personal choices, or they agreed that personal choices were mostly to blame for problems within the black community. from that study. Now the vast majority of Democrats, the vast majority of Democrats, like more than two-thirds of Democrats blame systemic racism rather than personal choices. If you look at immigration, as recently as 2013, Democrats were saying, we need to curb illegal immigration, that this is a big deal, that we need border security. Obama himself said this during his presidency. You've probably seen that clip floating around. Now that's no longer the case. Democrats don't have any kind of

plan whatsoever that they have verbalized that says we want to secure the border and ensure the sovereignty of our nation. Instead, they say they want to abolish ice. They demonize border patrol. They conflate constantly in their rhetoric, asylum seekers with illegal aliens. They want to create sanctuary cities, which of course they've already done. They want to exclude any questions about citizenship from the census. A lot of Democrats, plain and simple, just fundamentally disagree with the importance of citizenship. They think it's not a necessary qualification for being a legitimate part of this country for living here, for working here, receiving benefits, whatever. Now, I do want to go off on a side note here and just talk about why for a second this is so

wrong and why it really is the opposite of compassion. The problem with not caring about citizenship and the problem with just saying legal immigration is fine, everyone's asylum seekers, they should be able to come here no matter what. The problem is as a country loses sovereignty, it also loses its legitimacy and it loses its ability to account for and protect those who live here. It makes it difficult, if not impossible, to adequately, to properly, to appropriately, to accurately enact justice. As we know, especially as conservatives, problems are always better solved and laws are better enacted and people are better cared for by the government, not by the government period, but by the government on a local level when it is as close to the

people as humanly possible. So therefore, if we have a country that is open borders that doesn't have any sovereignty, that doesn't have any control over who comes in, we would have an international government in essence. We don't really have a national government at that point. Can you imagine the bureaucracy, the inefficiency, the ineffectiveness of an international government? I mean, when you think about the VA, when you think about the things now that are run by bureaucracy, how well did they typically go? Not well. You don't get cared for well because it's, it's impossible to care for the needs of a local community nationally when you are so far away from what those needs actually are. And so when you don't have an ability to maintain your borders,

when you don't have an ability to protect your sovereignty, you are not able to actually enact justice in a way that is righteous, in a way that is good, in a way that is effective for the people who actually live in your country. Of course, we should be able to account for who comes into our country. And of course, there should be some kind of system that says this person can come in and this person cannot come in. That is a right of every country that's not bigoted, that's not racist, that's not wrong. That should be true for any country that someone is coming from. We should have standards for who comes in and who doesn't come in. And once someone does come in, they should, of course, be accounted for. That is called justice. That is called efficiency,

something I know that many people who advocate for big government are completely allergic to, but it's the best thing that we can possibly do for the people who actually live here for the citizens of this country. They've also changed their minds, like I said, on welfare, on crime, on health care. And speaking of health care, Obamacare, if you want to talk, Joe Biden, about a fundamental change to the character of the country. Let's talk about Obamacare. I mean, it was such a change to the American system that the government is going to take care of you. And here's the kicker. And if you do not allow the government to take care of you by providing your health care coverage,

you will be punished by paying a tax. That's what the Obamacare mandate is. That was a huge shift in what Americans expect from the government, that you will be punished if you do not allow the government to take care of you. So you have to, or else you get to pay this penalty. That is a fundamental shift in how the American system works. And so I really don't want to hear from Joe Biden that, President Trump doing a lot of really good things that have put America first and have helped the

economy so much. I mean, we've got seven million open jobs right now. Our country is doing really well. Minorities, women are doing really well economically. To say that he is fundamentally changing our country for the worst. It doesn't make a lot of sense. Sure, you can say that he's not really helping public discourse. I would probably agree with that. That he has said some things that you don't like, yeah, sure, I agree with that. Obama said a lot of things that I didn't like, too. And quite frankly, I think Obama really ruined discourse because everything became about race and identity politics and intersectionality.

And so that didn't help either. But this argument that he is making the country so much worse and Joe Biden is going to be some kind of savior, the guy that was part of Obama's presidency, I'm just not really buying it. So we'll see if this works for Joe Biden. I'm really interested. I think that he is an interesting contender. And I also think that Bernie Sanders is an interesting contender.

I don't want either one of them to be president. But I think that they can make for some interesting debates. Now, I have a hard time picturing Bernie Sanders against Donald Trump in a debate. It just, I don't, I don't know. That kind of just makes me uncomfortable. But I do think Bernie, or Joe Biden could actually take him on in a debate. and maybe out with him, I just think that Bernie Sanders gets all flustered.

He just gets all flustered. And I'm not sure that that would actually be a good debate. Speaking of Bernie Sanders, there was a town hall on CNN, a bunch of the day, or I think it was all the Democratic candidates. They talked about their positions. They were asked a bunch of questions.

And here was the question that was asked by a lot of people, or asked to, I think, all of them. And that was, should felons in prison be able to vote? Bernie Sanders says, yes, all felons, they are, if they are citizens, if they are above the age 18 or they're 18 or older, they should be able to vote. We should not revoke that right. Kamala Harris, you know, former prosecutor said, well, we'll have that conversation, which is basically what she says on anything controversial. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor from South Bend that we've talked about on this podcast, he said, no, they should not be able to vote for prison, but they should be able to vote after. I agree with Buttigieg. on this. No prisoners should not be able to vote from prison. That is a part of your punishment. You do not get a say in civic matters because you were a threat to society at one point, especially violent offenders. You violated the law. I do believe that after you are released, if you are released, so this doesn't count murderers, by the way, if you are released that part of the reintroduction to society,

part of the rehabilitation that we really should be doing a lot better could possibly be. reinstating the right to vote. I think that can be conditional and dependent on a lot of different factors. I mean, it's really hard for me to say, yes, a rapist or a child molester should have the right to vote. But it depends on so much. I mean, say you committed a crime when you were 18 years old, you were convicted of something that you really did do, but you served in prison for 25 years. You come out and you're a grown man now and you've completely changed your life. You don't get any in the society that you live in, I'm just not sure. Maybe I haven't completely made my mind up on that.

I certainly don't think felons from in prison should be able to vote. But after, once you're reinstated back in society, I definitely think that's a conversation, in the words of Kamala Harris, that we should have. Now, I do think that we as a society can do a lot more to help those who are exiting prison to rehabilitate them. there is an organization called prison fellowship. I encourage you to go to prison fellowship.org. They actually have, it's a nonprofit organization, it's a ministry. They actually have

programs that help rehabilitate criminals after they're released from prison. They do a lot of good work. And so I encourage you to check them out. That's something, of course, that Christians are called to do. And I'm talking to myself because currently there's not really anything that I do besides give to my church who might help. But there's not currently anything that I do personally to help those who are in prison and that quite frankly is something that we are all called to do. We are called to have compassion for the criminal. That doesn't mean that we don't believe in justice, but we are called to have compassion for them.

So that was just kind of a side note. So speaking of criminals, a Texas executed John William King in a racist dragging death of James Bird Jr. This was back, I think, in 1998, just a terrible, terrible crime. The description, if you have kids in the car, you might want to just fast forward through. this part. So John King and in addition to two other guys were convicted back in the late 90s for dragging James Bird Jr. who was black. James William King and his two friends were white. Dragging Bird from the back of his truck for miles while Bird was still alive until his body was

torn to pieces. He was decapitated by this by this dragging behind the truck. Horrible, horrible violent crime makes my skin crawl, gives me chills, gives me all. a lump in my throat when I even think about this. Bird was a father. He has family who is still mourning over this loss. I mean, I cannot even fathom the evil, the hatred, the depravity that you have to have in your heart to do something like this. And the fact of the matter is we're all depraved. We're all capable of gross evil. We're all capable of heinous crimes. We are all capable of doing things that we thought that we would never do. Every single one of us is capable of that. but I just can't imagine the hatred that someone has to have,

the racism that someone has to have to do this to someone. Police found cigarette butts and hats of King and his two other friends at the scene of the crime. So that's why he was convicted. One of the other guys, Lawrence Brewer, was put to death in 2011 for the crime. Sean Barry is serving a life sentence. I do hope, I do hope for his sake. and just I guess for because I'm a believer, I do hope that he repented before he died.

And before he was put to death, I do hope that he repented and that he came to know Christ is his savior because Christ can save the worst of sinners. He can save anyone who is far off. He is, can be indiscriminatory in the sense that it doesn't matter what you have done. Christ can still save you. And I hope that that was the case for him. I do. If not, he is living in eternal torment in hell right now.

And while we should never rejoice in criminals going to hell or anyone going to hell, we should never rejoice in someone enduring the wrath of God for all of eternity, there is comfort for us. There is comfort for Christians and knowing that God is a God of justice, that he cares about justice, that he cares about crimes that happen here on earth. And he has appointed a day, according to the Bible, that every single human, every single one of us who has ever lived will be judged through Jesus Christ and will give an account for every word that we have spoken and every action we have taken.

So no matter what happens here on earth when it seems like the evil man goes free, when it seems like the punishment doesn't fit the crime, whatever it is, justice will be served one day once and for all and no one will escape it. Now, here on earth, here's a question that I've gotten a lot. Here on earth, are Christians supposed to support the death penalty? Well, there is an interesting piece called a call to dialogue on capital punishment by Dan Van Ness that was written a while ago. And there are really three arguments that Christians make for that, make four or about the death penalty. One, the Bible mandates capital punishment is one position. two, the Bible permits it, and three, the Bible prohibits it. So those who say that the Bible actually

mandates capital punishment, they're looking at the Old Testament, mostly. They're looking at particularly one verse, Genesis 96, that says, whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for the image of God, has God made man? So that just shows you how much God cares about innocent life that he demands there be equal payment for it. And then, of course, they go to Romans 13, 1 through 7, which doesn't mandate the death penalty, but does say to submit to earthly authorities who bear, quote, the sword. And then some people say that the Bible permits it, that it is not, it's not something that we have to stand against as Christians, kind of citing some of the same verses. And then some people say that the Bible actually prohibits it. They say that Jesus replaced the

sacrifice of animals. So there's no more requirement of the shedding of blood for crimes committed that used to solicit the shedding of blood. And they say, okay, we can't look. look at something like Genesis 96 or other Old Testament laws, Israel was a theocracy, these people would say, so we don't operate in the same way that they did. We don't stone people for committing adultery, for example, just as Jesus refused to do so for the woman caught in the New Testament. And so we also should not support the death penalty. That's what these people would say, who say that the Bible actually prohibits it. Now, I don't think that the Bible prohibits it. I think that the best argument is probably that the Bible permits it. Obviously,

God takes the shedding of blood very seriously. I do understand the argument of the Bible prohibiting it. And I think it could be a perfectly legitimate position to be against it yourself. But I do think it's wrong when people say that Christians have to be against the death penalty because there are, there's a good reason to think that the Bible at the very least permits it. But, But I also think that it is a legitimate perspective to say, well, that's just not what I think is the best example of God's justice here on earth. Because there are also a lot of different problems with that. In that, there are people who have been wrongly convicted.

I mean, since 1973, and this is from an email that I get every day by Nick Pitts called The Briefing. Since 1973, 151 people have been released from death rose. here in the United States due to evidence of their wrongful convictions. And so a lot of people have a problem with or have concerns with the truth of these convictions that ends in the death penalty. And I think that that's a very good point to make. And I think that's something that should all concern us if we truly do care about truth and we truly do care about justice. And so I think that there is support for both positions. I don't think it's accurate when people say,

well, you can't be pro-life and pro-death penalty. Come on, guys. The abortion, or the abortion, abortion and the death penalty are not the same thing. Abortion is the deliberate murder of an unborn child who is helpless in the womb, who has done nothing except for live. Of course, if you want to get into the theological terminology or theological thoughts into that, you could talk about taking apart an original sin, whatever. But that's not what we're talking about. They haven't committed any conscious sense. this point. They are in the womb. They have done nothing but exist. They have done nothing but survive. And they are completely helpless. They are babies. It is not the same thing as taking the

life of a brutal murder. That's not the same thing. One could be seen by many as a form of justice. One is murder, plain and simple. And so I don't think we should be conflating the two. I think that takes away from the seriousness of abortion and the black and whiteness of abortion, whereas the death penalty could really be argued biblically either way, abortion cannot. And so I don't think that you can take away someone's pro-life credits just because they think murderers should still be placed on death row. Now, speaking of the Bible, I did just want to mention this briefly. We only have two more little topics left, but I do want to mention this since we were just talking about the Bible. So Franklin Graham, this is Billy Graham's son. He tweeted something that is catching a lot

of flack about Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who like we said, is running for president. He tweeted, Mayor Buttigieg says he is a gay Christian. As a Christian, I believe the Bible, which defines homosexuality as sin, something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised, or politicized. The Bible says marriage is between a man and a woman, not two men, not two women. That was part of a tweet thread. We don't need to read the whole thing. As you can imagine, he is getting a whole lot of flack for this.

People are really mad. And I think some people have good reason to be mad over this. And some people don't have good reason. to be mad over this, or at least there are some reasons to be frustrated by this statement and some reasons not to legitimately be frustrated by this statement. I think that a legitimate reason to be frustrated by this statement or to say, this statement is a little hypocritical is because Franklin Graham has been so openly supportive of President Trump. And President Trump has his own moral problems. We know that he paid off a porn star, at least I guess we don't know for

sure for sure, but we pretty much do that he has been unfaithful to his wives multiple times, that he is also engaged in divorce. Now, maybe Franklin Graham just assumes that President Trump has repented of these things. I hope that President Trump has repented of these things and that he's given his life to Christ. That would be a wonderful thing. But Franklin Graham hasn't, as far as I know, called these things out. And again, maybe it's because this is part of his past and that's not what President Trump does anymore. And so he doesn't feel like he needs to call out his behavior, but it does seem a little duplicitous. When the Bible defines marriage between a man and a woman, which it does, the Bible also says that God hates divorce and really doesn't permit divorce,

except for in a few instances like marital unfaithfulness, that probably deserves to be called out, too, if you are going to talk about biblical definitions of marriage and what God says about marriage. So for him to only call out Buttigieg because he is gay, well, I think that gives a lot of fuel to the fire of some people on the left to say that, well, the religious right doesn't really care about the sanctity of marriage. They only care about being homophobic, whatever. Now, the wrong reason to criticize what Franklin Graham said is for biblical reasons, for Christians to say, well, he's wrong. He's a bigot. He's hate. Well, he is biblically correct about marriage. We've talked about that many times on this podcast. If you saw my interview with Dave Rubin, I explained the biblical perspective on this, which is that yes, in the Old Testament, it does define marriage as between a man and a woman. The only sexual relations that are explicitly condoned by God are the sexual relations between a husband and a wife, one husband and one wife. and in the New Testament as well, if you look at Romans 127 as well as a couple other verses, it explicitly says homosexuality is a sin.

But we've also talked about on this podcast that beyond that, it's not just a physical mandate, that it is also a spiritual metaphor, that marriage has spiritual gospel implications that make it necessary for it to be between a man and a woman. If you look at Ephesians 5 or Colossians 3, specifically Ephesians 5, the man is the head the wife as Christ is the head of the church. A wife is to submit to her husband as to the Lord. A husband is supposed to take care of his wife just as Christ nourishes the church. There is a gospel implication there.

There is really no way to obfuscate that. There's really no theological way to get around that. That the relationship between a man and a woman in a Christian marriage is not egalitarian. We do not have the same roles. we do not have the same responsibility. We don't even have the same position before God when it comes to marriage. In that a husband is to account for his wife and to account for his household before God. That doesn't mean that the woman is also going to stand before God in judgment because she will as well.

But there's a different spiritual responsibility. And so it's not just about, well, the Bible says the homosexuality is a sin. It's that, okay, marriage is actually much bigger. than just a physical relationship. It is a spiritual relationship. And the dichotomy between a Christian woman and a Christian man in the context of marriage reflects a beautiful truth about the gospel that I personally am not willing to mess with. I'm just not. And I don't think that any Bible believing Christians should either. It's not just some archaic law. It is a dynamic truth that has presented, that has been presented to us in scripture and is just as relevant today as it has

ever been. And so for any Christians to say that Franklin Graham is wrong in that, now maybe he didn't explain it very well. I don't think he explained the spiritual aspect of it. But for any Christian to say that he's wrong in that, well, no, he's not. He's not biblically wrong. He might be wrong for being a hypocrite, not calling out President Trump and other people for not maintaining the sanctity of marriage in other ways, but he's not wrong biblically. So that's my thought on that. Now I have one more thing to talk about. And this is something that I've been thinking about recently. And I posted a story a couple weeks ago. Last week, it was before Easter. I was trying to say Easter, April the same time came out April, but I meant to say Easter. And I was in the Atlanta airport with my husband. And we were

on the shuttle to go and to go to the parking lot, whatever. And there were these two guys, adult men sitting on the bench. And here I am, obviously seven months pregnant, holding on to my husband trying to, you know, stay stable as the train is moving. And these two men, comfortable as ever, standing or sitting two feet away from me, didn't offer their seat. Now, to me, that's craziness. That's stupid. If I, as a woman, were sitting there on the bench and I saw a pregnant woman sitting in front of me. If I saw an older woman standing in front of me, if I saw an old man standing in front of me, yes, of course,

I'm going to get up and I'm going to give them my seat. That's just the right thing to do. There's kind of this hierarchy of ability and that relates to chivalry and relates to decency, I think. And so I posted about it and a lot of you messaged me and were like, oh my gosh, you're

absolutely right. Gosh, people are so dumb. But I got a lot of messages from guys in particular saying, well, that's what you get for equality. That's where feminist got us. Thanks, feminism. And I'm seeing this attitude a lot, particularly from embittered men on the right, who used the excuse of feminism for their own impoliteness and for their own lack of chivalry

and for their own indecency. And I got this reaction as well when I did the Prager You video that make men masculine again, talking about how guys open doors for women. they fight wars, in a way that women cannot fight wars, how they use and supplement or they complement us with their physical strength and with unique talents that women don't have. Women do the same, but we just have different strengths, different responsibilities, and men typically have been the ones to be able to defend, provide, and protect. And they are very good at that in their own unique ways.

Part of that has also been chivalry. I have never been someone. First of all, I've never been a feminist. but I've never been someone who has said, no, chivalry makes me feel weak. No, I would love for you to open the door for me. Actually, man or woman, I would love for you to open the door for me and I'll open the door for you too. But yes, I expect a man to open the door for me. I expect a man to give up his seats really for any woman, but for, especially for a pregnant woman. Now, I can already envision that I'm going to be getting YouTube comments saying, well, it shouldn't be that way.

Well, I disagree with you. Men and women are different. We have different roles. We have different responsibilities. And I personally think there cannot be a weaker argument for your laziness and your weakness as a man that feminists made you like this. Really? You think so? You think feminist made you passive? Or do they just give you an excuse to be passive? That's a sad excuse. That is a sad excuse for being lazy and being small. I say, stand up, take responsibility. be chivalrous, be respectful to women, and realize that you have a different role, a different strength, and a different responsibility that should be stewarded in a respectful way. And part of that is giving up your seat for a pregnant woman. Now, if you don't do that, that's fine. I'm sure you're a

good person in other ways. But the excuse of feminism for your ineptness is really sad. It's really sad. I personally don't think a lot of people blame male weakness nowadays on feminist. I'm like, well, if women were really able to take away male strength, how strong were you in the first place? I don't agree with that. I think that overbearing women come in when men start out being passive. That's what I think. I think everything rises and falls on leadership. And I just, I guess I have a higher expectation and a higher view of men than a lot of you guys do. All of you blaming feminism for your laziness. It just, it ticks me off.

Anyway, that's my pregnant ranting for today. I hope that you guys have a great weekend and I will see you back here on Monday. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. on the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles,

faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch the Steve Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.