Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 538 | Conversion Therapy & Canada’s Assault on Christianity | Guest: Dr. Joseph Boot

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

Today we're discussing Canada's recent ban on "conversion therapy" with theologian, pastor, and Founder & President of The Ezra Institute, Dr. Joseph Boot, who lives in Canada and has been speaking out against the ban. We discuss what the law actually says and how its vague wording can be used to restrict anyone from seeking help that's based in the biblical view of sex and gender. Incredibly, not a single conservative member of the Canadian Parliament voted against this bill, showing the depths of progressive corruption in that country. We also look at a story from the U.S. in which a dedicated mother rescued her daughter from gender confusion that was spiraling out of control. Under Canada's new law, that mother would be considered a criminal. --- Today's Sponsors: Annie's Kit Clubs have a new subscription — the Genius Box! Encourage your little scientist with three hands-on activities to explore an exciting STEM theme. Go to AnniesKitClubs.com/ALLIE to save 50% on your first box! Good Ranchers is the perfect gift for your individual & corporate gifts — a box of 100% American meat that's steakhouse quality. Go to GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE or use promo code 'ALLIE' at checkout to get $20 off & free express shipping! Dwell has a beautiful listening & reading experience for the Scriptures — with over a dozen new recordings of the Bible, with hand-picked voices that will engage & inspire you, plus their read-along experience so you can listen & read at the same time. To get started, go to DwellApp.io/RELATABLE to get 10% off a yearly subscription or 33% off Dwell for life! --- Show Links: Parliament of Canada: Bill C-4, An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Conversion Therapy) https://bit.ly/3IREk3V The Daily Signal: "What I've Learned Rescuing My Daughter From Her Transgender Fantasy" https://dailysign.al/3dSswjq --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

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. Hey, guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Tuesday. I hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far. Today, I am super, super excited for you to listen to this conversation that I just recorded with Dr. Joseph Boot. He is a pastor out of Canada. we're talking about Canada's new conversion therapy law, what it means, what the consequences are, what the theological issues are that are at play here, and how Christians, Christian parents, Christian pastors, Christian counselors can respond to this faithfully. And towards the end of our conversation, as he is talking about the gospel and the theological aspects of this,

I just felt just so fired up. And I just felt the Holy Spirit in our conversation truly because there is so much at stake, but there's just so much goodness in scripture. And I truly love talking about it, especially with someone who knows the word of God so well and is bold to apply it and speak it. So you're going to be blessed by this conversation, challenged by this conversation, particularly if you are on the other side of the aisle. But I encourage you to listen to this with an open heart.

and I will just pray that there is fertile soil in the hearts of the people who are listening to and watching this and that if you don't know and believe the gospel, that you will. All right, without further ado, here is our new friend, Dr. Joseph Boot. Dr. Boot, thank you so much for joining us. First, can you tell everyone who may not know who you are and what you do? Sure. I'm the founder and president of the Ezra Institute here in Canada, which is a Christian think tank philosophy seminar.

We do Christian worldview and cultural apologetics writing, teaching, training, and publishing. And I'm also the founding pastor of Westminster Chapel in Toronto. Got it. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about what I know has been a hotly debated, at least in some circles issue in Canada. and that is this what's referred to as a banning of conversion therapy. This law just passed unanimously as I read it. Can you tell us what this law is?

What do they say it is, politicians who advocate for it? And then what is it actually in your estimation? Well, they say it's a ban on a practice called conversion therapy. Actually, they say treatment, service, or practice called conversion therapy. The difficulty is they don't actually define what conversion therapy is. It clearly includes what we would call talk therapy, which is people talking, getting counseling, speaking to their pastor and so forth about issues of gender identity and orientation. So the bill, its first incarnation was Bill C6. When Parliament broke up, of course it died, and then it was reintroduced as Bill C4.

In its first incarnation, 62 members of Parliament voted against it. But in this second round, the big shock, and it was a big shock to many, was that it was the conservative members of the House that, actually proposed the fast-tracking of the bill, which then got fast-tracked through the Senate without discussion or debate. And one significant change between Bill C-6 and Bill C-4 is that the original Bill C-6 would have allowed an adult, a consenting adult, to take counseling, go to therapy, go and speak to their pastor for repeated discussions about gender identity, their sexual desires, unwanted sexual desires or unwanted same-sex attraction.

And this bill now outlaws it for consenting adults as well. So the claim is that it's a bill to prevent harmful practices of conversion therapy. And what that brings to people's minds is sort of electric shock therapy and sort of coercive practices, which there's no evidence that anybody practices. Right. So the real target of the bill, and the reason there's been an unwillingness, I believe, to actually define conversion therapy, is actually conversion itself. I would argue that this is not an anti-conversion therapy bill, because therapy is not really defined. Well, it's defined so broadly as to be the practice, treatment or service, any practice treatment or service that changes.

a person's sexual orientation to heterosexual, change a person's gender identity to cisgender, change a person's gender expression so that it conforms to a sex assigned at birth or repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behavior. That would capture preaching, by the way, and repress a person's non-sistgender gender identity or to repress or reduce a person's gender expression. That does not conform to the sex, that does not conform to the sex assigned to them at birth. So it doesn't actually define conversion therapy. It just says that nobody can seek help counsel either parents for their children or a consenting adult with unwanted same-sex desire or gender dysphoria confusion about sexual orientation unless they are wanting to

pursue gender transition. That's okay. That's not conversion therapy. conversion therapy is not if you get counsel or therapy or guidance or treatment to transition, in inverted commas. It only covers those who would affirm the body that you were born with, the gender, the sex you're born with, and say that normative human sexuality is male and female, normative sexual relationships are man, woman, male and female for the Christian in the context of marriage. So C4, C6. C6 is actually harsher, it sounds like, than C4. Yet C4 had some conservative opposition to it. And C6 was expedited and passed unanimously. That's the other way around. Oh, other way around. Okay.

Yes. C4 was the new one passed unanimously. Yeah, that was actually toughened up. Okay. That's also a little bit confusing. So C4 is the latest version, expedited, passed unanimously without conservative opposition. without any debate. My question is, and maybe you don't know the answer to this, maybe no one does. What transpired between C6 and C4? I mean, typically in the states, that means that conservatives got something that they want in the bill. It was less harsh than what they were afraid of in the first place. And so that's why they decided to vote for it.

But it's actually the opposite. It sounds like progressives or liberals got more of what they want. And now conservatives don't oppose it. So what went on there? Well, your analysis is correct. And the difficulty in what's mystifying conservatives, social conservatives here, and of course people have even written to their MPs and senators to ask the question, what on earth happened?

How did we go from 62 MPs objecting to this first incarnation of the bill to a few weeks later, there being Bill C4 presented, well, when Parliament came back, and then within just a few weeks, the Conservatives themselves fast-tracking this bill past any kind of scrutiny, any kind of debate, any kind of discussion, any kind of amendment, which you would expect with a bill of this nature. And it's important to understand that the preamble to this bill, just so that, viewers are aware, the preamble to this bill, which sets up the bill of why it's supposedly necessary, says this, whereas conversion therapy causes harm to society, because among other things, it is based on and propagates myths and stereotypes about sexual orientation, gender identity,

and gender expression, including the myth that heterosexuality, cisgender identity, and gender expression that conforms to the sex assigned to a person at birth are to be preferred over other sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions. Whereas in light of those harms, it is important to discourage and denounce the provision of conversion therapy in order to protect the human dignity and equality of all Canadians. And yet, in fact, in the break,

not only does the bill harden to actually not present, protect the dignity and equality of all Canadians. Anybody who is struggling with one of these desires, dysphoria, or same-sex attractions that they don't want no longer has equality because they cannot actually seek out the help that they want. Nobody can advertise that kind of help. Nobody can provide any kind of service. And you can see the theological nature of this bill. This is a emphatic religious statement by the Canadian government that the traditional orthodox Christian and basically Western, actually one might even say global.

This is the first time this has happened in human history in terms of human civilization, to begin to criminalize people who hold to a normative understanding of human sexuality and identity that's not based in some neo-Marxist myth about fictive. gender and fictive sexuality, which perhaps we can discuss in a moment. But this is, nobody quite knows what happened. One can only say that in Canada, this is the result of immense progressive political pressure, both within the Liberal Party, the NDP and the Conservative Party, a large, powerful caucus of radical progressives within the Conservative Party itself, who have railroaded this through. And in fact, MPs, conservative MPs have said to me,

that to have opposed Bill C4 would have been personal political suicide. 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. I want to go back to something that you said that this ostensibly bans conversion therapy but actually affirms the true conversion of someone's gender. And of course, we don't believe that that's even possible. But insofar as someone can try to present as a different gender, what progressives call transitioning. It is affirming that kind of change,

but it won't affirm the affirmation of someone's biological sex. And as you just said, that is theological, philosophical in nature that says something about what these people believe about human beings and human nature, that it's actually the mind and feeling. And feelings that trump physical reality, that physical reality like biology must conform to someone's thoughts and feelings and never the other way around. That's what this really is about. It's a battle not just of the theological proportions, but teleological proportions and really battling against reality in general, battling against science, battling against biology. And what it's saying is that someone's even fleeting feelings because we know from science that a lot of kids who feel gender

confusion, they end up growing out of that by puberty just naturally. And so that's what this is a battle against. It's a battle against reality. It's a battle against all of the data and the science that we know. And it's not an affirmation of human dignity. But it does speak to what these people erroneously think human beings are and human nature is. and we're seeing the devastating effects of that. Yeah.

Well, the reality is that what this bill is a war on, as you've rightly pointed out, is creation itself and any form of normative structure that would transcend personal innate feelings. Your chromosomes don't matter. Your birth certificate. doesn't matter and history and society don't matter. You will probably recall it was Karl Marx who said that the key to the holy family by which he meant the Christian God is the earthly family. And he said to destroy the former, we must get rid of the latter in theory and in practice. And this is fundamentally what this bill is about. It is, as you've said, a war on.

science but it's interesting the way that the way in which even the sciences have been co-opted into this because of their willingness to pump teenagers full of and even children a younger children full of hormones and even pressure them into radical surgeries that mutilate the body and of course this bill denies the stories and the the reality of those who are detransitioning, who have recognized they made a terrible mistake, you point out there that to the vast majority of young people grow out of these dysphoric conditions, well over 80%, without any sort of intervention. And yet, this is a law that requires you can only preach, teach, counsel, affirm a transition away

far from creational norms from basically common sense from science you can only go in the opposite direction and it was neo-Marxist

Americans actually like Judith Butler the lesbian Jewish feminist philosopher who wrote a book called Gender Trouble in which she basically gave us she was one of several but she was highly influential

who gave us this idea of fictive sex, that man, woman, male, female, the normative structure of marriage, that these are merely social constructions that are created by a language regime. And that's why we're seeing this war on language and pronouns with respect to all of this, because she said that basically, the only reason that we recognize a distinction between male, female, man, woman, the normative understanding of heterosexual relationship between male and female, is it because it serves the interests of power, in particular cultural Christian power of white males? And it's a kind of hegemony. And it's through a language regime that we use. And if we alter the language regime,

we will alter social reality. Biology, our societal understanding of human relationships will be radically we will alter them the fiction of sex of male and female of marriage of man and woman by changing the language regime. And what this law does is basically now enforces through criminal sanctions a new theological, political language regime that prevents you from even speaking clearly and talking with people about these issues on a repeat basis and prevents anybody who should wish to conform themselves to the traditional understanding and the Christian norm,

they are criminalized. And the incredible danger of this bill, especially for a Christian like myself, and those who hold to a traditional understanding of male and female and marriage, is that it essentially is criminalizing the Christian faith. It's criminalizing. the call to conversion because the bill requires that any sort of advertising or promotion

or even the attempt to lessen somebody's homosexual desires or gender dysphoric orientation or desire to cross-dress or whatever it may be is itself criminal. And if you would permit me 30 seconds to read what the Apostle Paul says about this, just says you know how serious this is for the Christian. Yes. In 1 Corinthians 6, he says, don't you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God's kingdom, do not be deceived, no sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or males who have sex with males, no thieves, greedy people, drunkers, verbally abusive people or swindlers will

inherit God's kingdom. And such, some of you used to be like this. And some of you used to be like this. but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. He goes on to say, flee sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body. Don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own. You are bought at a price. So glorify God with your body. So this is central to

the Christian message, to Christian teaching, to the preaching of the gospel, and it's being criminalized. So under this law, would it be illegal for a pastor to exposit that passage from the pulpit? Or are we only talking about paid services here that are banned? Well, is any practice or treatment or service? And of course, you can, the problem is, is the ambiguity. you can drive a bus, a freight train through the definition. There is no real definition. And you can drive a freight train through practice, service, or treatment. You are certainly forbidden in this law to, in any way, profit from the provision or the

advertising or the promotion of conversion therapy. It's actually unclear whether, let's say, a pastor was doing a sermon series on biblical sexuality for the congregation and was involved in praying for people after the service about those issues. There's nothing in this law which would say that a pastor is protected in such an instance. And certainly if somebody after a series of sermons like that would say, can I come and see you about my struggles with my sexuality and my sexual identity and the pastor agreed to that and counseled in terms of the biblical understanding, that would be the provision of conversion therapy and would carry up to five years in prison.

Wow. So the problem is, is the ambiguity here. Would just a sermon be covered? The truth of the issue is, we don't know. Could that be counted as talk therapy? There's nothing which specifically says that conversion therapy is only a paid service. It says any treatment service or therapy. So that's an unknown.

And I think the big concern is that it's going to be the perception of the person who's exposed to the counseling or the preaching or the teaching in any of these given environments that's probably going to determine whether they were undergoing conversion therapy or not. So I don't know too much about the Canadian system. I know in the United States this would very likely be considered a violation. of the First Amendment. It would probably make its way to the Supreme Court. And there's just no way that a law like this, at least right now with the court that we have would last. What about in Canada? Is there any hope that the courts will say, no, this violates our Constitution? I thought that Canada had a guaranteed right to free speech, but maybe I'm wrong on that. Well, yes. I mean, that's an interesting question itself right now with Section 1 in Canada,

with everything that's been going on the last 18 months, our charter seems to be in indefinite suspension when the government deems it justified. But there are guarantees of fundamental freedoms in Section 2 of the Canadian Charter, and of course those include things like freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and so on. There is also a provision for bodily integrity

and of the person, freedom of the person, integrity and certainly it could be argued that this this this criminalization of getting help don't forget this this prevents people anybody struggling with these issues from seeking out the kind of council therapy help that any other Canadian would be allowed and permitted so there's definite discrimination it's fundamentally discriminatory it is a denial now of religious freedom. And with it really is a freedom of speech violation as well and expression because the Christian parents and Christian pastors who want to counsel and help those struggling in this

area of their speech, that kind of speech. And also publication. So anything that might be online, anything written, any recordings, anything at all that might promote or advertise or actually be considered conducting this conversion therapy falls under this law. So I expect there will be some form of constitutional challenge, Ali, but I am based on recent decisions by the Canadian Supreme Court with regard to religious freedom, for example, the Trinity Western University case with their lifestyle document for their university, which concerned sexual issues, the lifestyle document in terms of Christian sexual behavior, that case was lost in the Supreme Court. And so I am not holding my breath, let's say. I'm not especially

optimistic that a constitutional challenge in this regard with a law that got unanimously passed without any single person standing up to object in both the lower and the upper house, I very much doubt our very progressive Supreme Court will uphold a constitutional challenge to this totalitarian law. I mean, in many respects, what you saw with the House and the Senate is reminiscent of an almost fascistic practice. It's almost like we have a one-party, a one-party state. And when it wants to railroad a piece of criminal legislation through that will discriminate against certain people, everybody's on board. And that's a pretty terrifying place to be.

Do you know, you mentioned detransitioners. Do you know if this law would prevent someone from counseling a person through detransition who wants to again present as their sex? Is that allowed? Are you allowed to, I guess, probably not encourage, but simply help someone who, you know, so-called transitioned into a man, but now realizes, okay, I want to present is my biological sex. It does this law allow for the help through that process? No, as this bill is written, no, you would not be able to counsel somebody through a detransition process. That would be

forbidden as I've certainly read this law. I'm not a lawyer, but the lawyers that I have spoken to in the, and I've got the bill in front of me, and I've read it many times, would not permit you to counsel somebody to conform their body, their own biology to to the sex of their birth and to reduce or transit or de-transition, no, that would be against the law. Wow. So as a you said earlier, this is only allowing the affirmation of transitioning away from someone's sex, away from heterosexuality, never the other direction, even if this is a consenting adult or a teenager who says, wow, I made a mistake or I don't want to live this way anymore. I want to conform to heterosexuality or my biology. You're not even allowed to encourage someone who is

voluntarily doing that, which like you said, this is not then an anti-conversion therapy bill. This is truly anti-conversion. I mean, this is simply an affirmation of anti-reality and makes an effort actually to deny people even access to help to conform to reality. And that brings me to a conversation that I want to have about parents and what this could mean for Christian parents. And I read a really interesting, sad, also in some ways encouraging article last night in The Daily Signal. And I want to read some of that. This is in the United States, but it obviously has implications for what parents will be going through in Canada. And this is kind of what will sound like to some people, certainly on the left,

a scandalous sounding or maybe a mean, harsh sound. headline, but it's a very interesting article. What I've learned rescuing my daughter from her transgender fantasy and the daily signal, this is written by a mom, and I'll just kind of summarize it, maybe read some quotes from it. But basically, this young daughter, she says, was, you know, she acted like a girl, liked traditionally girly feminine things from the time that she was little. She always liked wearing dresses. She refused to even play with her brother.

toys. And then as she became a teenager, as she got into middle school, she started getting involved with different communities online. And that encouraged or that included things like anime, like the so-called furry cosplay community that this mother didn't know actually has aspects to it that are predatory, that are pedophilic, that can include encouragement to transition, and encouragement towards sexual and gender fluidity. And she became a part of this community. And this young girl decided that she was transgender, that she was really born a boy.

She started wearing more masculine clothes. And on top of that, she became very isolated. She became a recluse. She became very mean and hostile to her family. Her mom decided, okay, this is too much. She logged into all of her daughter's social media. accounts and she found not just this confusing propaganda about gender and sexuality, but actually found that she was talking to predatory people, that she was looking at pornography as a young

girl, and that she was involved in a community that was really encouraging this kind of predation, encouraging this kind of self-harm, and her daughter changed for the worst into almost a totally different person, a different person than the daughter that she had raised. there's a lot more to this, but she eventually, the mom said, you know what, this is enough. This is enough. I'm not dealing with this anymore. Or this is, we're not going this direction. And so she took away her daughters, all of her devices, her social media accounts.

She forbade her from hanging out with a lot of the people that were influencing her in this direction. And she basically detoxed her daughter from all of these different avenues that were encouraging her daughter to transition and take part in this. awful gross behavior and ensured that she didn't have any access to the pornography that she was being sent, all of this awful stuff. And basically, long story short, her daughter changed for the better. Her daughter turned into the young girl that her mother had raised and she's much happier. She's much healthier now. She doesn't hang out with the same people. She's doing much better in school. She doesn't have that same attitude of hostility and just self-loathing that her mother had seen when her daughter had gone down these rabbit holes online.

But this mother had the freedom to do this here still. She had the freedom to take this strong approach in her daughter's life and her daughter is better off for it. My question is, and somewhere like Canada, under this law, is this even allowed this mom just being a good mom and stepping up for the well-being of her daughter? Is that even allowed under this law? or could a parent potentially see jail time for doing what this mother did for the sake of her daughter in Canada?

Well, Ali, the truth is we've already seen in British Columbia a case where a husband and father who would not affirm the revised identity of his daughter, who was a minor at the time, forbidden from speaking about the issue public. and by the courts and parents losing control in this situation. In fact, in Ontario, you can already have your children seized by the state if you do not affirm their path that they want to go on in this area of human identity and sexuality. This law only reinforces that. So what needs to be understood by people outside of Canada is that there are sleeper laws around that exist already in various provinces

that were already going down this path of forbidding conversion therapy. And here in Ontario, the legal necessity to affirm the desires of minors and a failure to do that can, as a parent, can lend you, can get you into trouble with the law. This bill will only further that direction. And alongside of that, we have a radicalized education, government education system here in Canada. It's governed provincially education,

so I'm in Ontario, but it's the same right across the country. You have a radical LGBTQ plus progressive agenda in schools. So queer theory basically now dominates the classroom, whether it's with books, whether it's with curriculum materials right through the curriculum, in fact, right into kindergarten, this radical agenda is being promoted. And so the story that you've talked about of what's happening actually in our schools is that this conversion is already happening in the other way. So it's going on socially and culturally. It's going on through the curriculum.

It's going on through education. And parents are, there's a legislative environment which is increasingly forbidding parents from insisting on my house, my rules, my family, my domain. And this bill, Bill C4, would basically criminalize any parent who takes their child, under 18 years of age, but don't forget adults can't have this service either, but any child that's taken by a parent, even outside of the country, if somebody were to travel to the United States on vacation with their family, with a child struggling in this area who has got unwanted desires or attraction,

and you were to take them to an American pastor or counselor, that's a crime, even outside of Canada. And to do so in Canada, for a parent, would be a crime. So this is firming up, this is hardening a legislative environment that already exists and an educational environment that already drills queer theory into the minds of children from kindergarten upwards. Wow. So it doesn't even allow parents to be parents. The reality is that certainly transition in particular, so-called transition when a child is given hormone blockers when they're going through puberty, their stories, of course, here in the United States of young girls being able to get

double mastectomies and hormone blockers when they are teenagers without parental consent in some states in the United States. And that causes not only physical harm, but it just exacerbates the psychological distress that a lot of young people have. The numbers of post-transition suicide are astronomical, this idea that so-called transition to conform to how someone feels, is the solution to people's distress, it just doesn't hold up with the numbers. And really what you see, you see this manipulation tactic of saying, well, we have to ban conversion therapy or we have to simply affirm someone's feelings about their so-called gender identity because if you don't, they'll commit suicide.

Actually, this mom in the article that I read, she said that her daughter would start using this manipulation tactic to her, that if you don't let me do what I want, if you don't let me transition, If you don't let me talk to this furry community, whatever that is online and talk to these older people online, then I'll just, I'll just kill myself. And this mom recognized this as a tactic and said that she just responded in love and compassion, but was unrelenting in her commitment to reality. And thankfully here, in most places, you can still do that. It sounds like in Canada, that's not possible.

but the state is not going to be there when your daughter who decided to get a double mastectomy at 15 years old is still contemplating suicide. Like the state is not going to be there holding your child's hand when they realize they've made that mistake. Or the state is not going to be there to care for your child as they are continuing through the distress of life trying to reconcile reality with what's going on in their mind. The state wasn't there when your child was born, when they laid that baby on your chest. The state wasn't there when you were waking up in the middle of the night to comfort your child because they're crying and they need their mom or dad. The state doesn't care about your child. The state doesn't care about your child's well-being. Does it care about your child's health?

You as the parent do. And this to me seems not only, it doesn't seem like only an LGBTQ agenda in this sense that it is trying to, you know, you know, encourage or, you know, encourage or preserve LGBTQ identity or anything. It seems also specifically anti-parent and anti-family. And it just seems like it goes back to kind of what you were saying about the neo-Marxist, you know, attack on what they see as any kind of hegemony or any kind of hierarchy. And that includes the family, this attempt to try to liberate all people. from any kind of authority.

It seems like this also has to do with an attempt to what they would say is liberate children from the authority and the oppression of their family so they can just express themselves however they want to. The problem is we know practically where that leads. It leads to personal destruction. It leads to societal destruction. And that just, I just don't even know. I can't even, I don't even think we can quantify or really fathom what's going to be the long-term

consequence of this. I think my mind won't even let me go there. But to you, like, how do you encourage people in Canada, Christians who are bound by the authority of the Word of God to push back on this? I mean, what can they do? This is such a travesty. I can't even really wrap my mind around it, honestly. Well, it is a, it's a, it's a wicked ideology. And I think that is the, the thing absolutely to keep in mind front and center that this is a religious assault. It's an ideological assault on the family, upon the church, specifically upon the Christian faith, and upon the society and the social order that has created the Western world.

There is no social revolution without sexual revolution. And so the ultimate agenda here is to totally revolutionize society. The claim is utterly radical. And of course, there were those who in the 60s and 70s warned us about this. Many people did not see it. But the claim is radical that there is no normative human identity at all. And the goal here is a kind of sexual utopia, a sort of imaginary. Of course, utopia means no place.

But it's an imaginary world in which human dignity is defined as the most radical kind of autonomy, where there is no such thing as a normative family. Already in the legal structure in Ontario here, there is a legislation that allows for totally unrelated individuals to enter into a contract before a baby is even born to be the parents. of that child. And so these laws and Bill C4, which reinforces it all, have a revolutionary motivation to remake society. And I like the way you put it about, you know, liberating people or freeing people from their, their creational condition, from the norms of creation itself. I mean, if you free a lemur of his tale or a case, camel of his humps or a man of his testicles, you destroy the very thing you are claiming to

liberate. And so this liberation is no liberation at all. It's a new form of slavery. And like all utopias, it's totalitarian. And it will brook no dissent. And so my encouragement to Christians and my encouragement already to pastors across the country is that we need to have a biblical Sexuality Sunday where churches across the country agree to preach and speak on the biblical understanding of sexuality the Sunday after this bill on the anniversary of the Sunday following the passage of this bill. We need to defend the family. Totalitarianism, of course, in our minds, we see, you know, jackboots and powerful authoritarian dictators and so forth. But that's not the meaning of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is the attempt of.

the state, and you talked about the state there a lot, because you're absolutely right, where were they when your children were being born? Where were they when you were doing the night feeds? Where were they when you were instructing and raising your children in the home? But the state here, totalitarianism means the effort to treat the family, the church and other societal institutions in a parts to whole fashion. And we're seeing now the state treating family and church and other institutions as merely lesser parts of the state. They get to dictate in totalitarian terms the kind of teaching, the kind of help, the kind of counsel that even the family or the church can give and offer to its own children, even to its own adult members.

And so this is make no mistake, a totalitarian bill. And the only way to resist to stand against totalitarianism is to resist it, to continue to speak. speak, to continue to act faithfully in the Christian family, to continue to push back. It's been very interesting, Ali, that while Canada is doing this, other nations around the world have been having robust debate about transgenderism and the fact that there is absolutely zero science behind this and are pushing back against laws that would allow minors to transition, even in the United Kingdom, that's been happening. So the fact that Canada is plowing this course, you can see that what's going on here is we've got a social experiment happening.

And the first requirement of any experiment is a controlled environment. You can't do a legitimate experiment unless you have a controlled environment. So it requires these totalizing controls. And so this is a totalitarian bill. It's a religious bill. And it militates at the most fundamental and foundational level. the Christian foundations of the country. When you think that the Bible begins with a marriage,

the relationship of God to his people, Israel, is described as a marriage, and Israel is an adulterous people. You move on to the New Testament, and you have the Holy Family, and then the father and the son, the very description of the Godhead, is in familial terms.

fatherhood, sonship, Jesus' first miracle is performed at a wedding. The relationship of Christ to his church is described as a marriage and history ends, according to Scripture, in the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. So marriage and normative human sexuality and identity, he made the male and female,

is a cosmological key to the universe. It's a cosmological key to meaning. It's the beginning of disdainting. of distinguishing and God drawing distinctions within creation and within human relationships. And what we're seeing now in Canada and beyond is an attempt to join what God has separated and separate what God has joined. And that is the ideological character of this bill and other pieces of legislation in Canada. And this is a totalitarian attempt now to freeze all freedom of speech.

to put fear and terror into people for being parents, for being pastors, for being counselors, and to advance a social revolution via a radical sexual revolution in the service of some radical and neo-Marxist thinkers who want to deny created reality because ultimately of a hatred of God. I believe that's what's behind all of this. One thing that you mentioned just the significance of marriage, male-female marriage, only legitimate marriage that God says exists. God who created marriage defines it as male and female. Something that we talk a lot about on this podcast is that we don't just read the Bible to look at what God tells us not to do. You hear that a lot from the progressive side of the aisle that says, well,

you know, Jesus never mentioned abortion or Jesus never mentioned transgenderism. Jesus never mentioned marriage or homosexuality, which is not exactly true. Obviously, if you look at Matthew 19, He does define marriage and gender very clearly. But we say you don't just read the Bible to look for all of the things that God tells us not to do. You also look at the Bible to say, to look at what God says to do and what God is. And so what God says is and is good and right and true. And I came up with, I love alliterations because it helps me remember things and what you were talking about, about scripture, starting with a marriage and ending with a marriage,

relationship in marriage being a reflection of Christ and the church in Ephesians 5. I like to say that the definition of marriage is rooted in creation. It's reiterated throughout scripture. It's repeated by Jesus himself in Matthew 19. And it is therefore reflective of the gospel itself as we read in Ephesians 5. And so it's not just about what the Bible specifically says about homosexuality, although we do read that homosexuality is forbidden. It's also about what God says marriage is and what that looks like and what it reflects and what it represents.

And if you miss that, kind of as you said in the beginning when you were reading 1st Corinthians 6, like you actually do miss the gospel. You miss the gospel because if earthly marriage is a reflection of Christ and the church, and if we get the earthly part wrong, we're also going to get. get the spiritual part wrong as well. So this is a big deal. When people tell me, you know, especially millennials or Generation Z younger than me, they say, you know, what's the big deal with this? Why can't we just love people? Why can't we just be empathetic? What's wrong? I even get professing Christians saying, what's wrong with stating my pronouns or saying that someone who feels

like they're a woman while they're a man that they can transition? What's wrong with that? That's just loving. Jesus told us to love. They don't realize that this is essentially a gospel issue. Yes, it's a scriptural authority issue, but it's a gospel issue. You don't understand the gospel if you can't define marriage. And that is what is on the line. Even though we know that God is sovereign and that the gates of hell will not prevail against God's church, so no law that Canada passes or America passes is going to stop that. We still realize that the stakes are really high here and that there is a lot on the line. There's a lot of spiritual things that are on the line with a law like this. Absolutely. I mean, you make an incredibly important point that anybody who says, well, this is not a gospel issue, doesn't understand the gospel, doesn't understand the significance of the teaching of scripture or the meaning of the relationship of Christ and his church. This is at the heart of the meaning of the gospel. As I said, even the revelation of the character and nature of God himself is given to us in familial terms. And you rightly mentioned,

that Jesus does in fact deal with these issues. And of course in Matthew 5, Jesus makes crystal clear that he upholds the entirety of the law. And these issues are dealt with in the Torah, in the instruction that God gives throughout the Old Testament as well, which is reiterated by Jesus and the Apostle Paul. So Jesus upholds every punctuation mark of his law. So he does deal with it.

And these are, and I'm, I mean, what you've pointed out essentially is that these are pre-political realities. The state does not exist to redefine marriage, redefine human identity, redefine human sexuality, and so on. The state exists to recognize and protect those things, which are created realities and which are ordained by God. And it doesn't, it is not there. It's so far beyond, and this is, the state overreach in all of this is so,

tyrannical. It's it beggars belief really. It's hard to describe the extent to which this violates everything that the state is meant to be as a ministry of justice. And it is, instead of protecting our pre-political rights, marriage, family, and so on and so forth, it's destroying them. The state doesn't get to redefine reality in these terms. And that's why, you know, it's so critical that at this juncture we affirm that this is central to the gospel. God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. And we have the centrality of the church as Christ's bride. And the most fundamental distinction in the Bible is the male and female distinction.

And Ali, once that distinction has gone, then there are no possible creational distinctions left. you know, forget good and evil, right and wrong. These things disappear with the most fundamental distinction the Bible makes at the beginning of creation, male and female, which reflects the distinction that exists in the being of God himself. So this is absolutely a gospel issue, as you've pointed out. It's central to the call of the gospel, which is that we leave sin and rebellion against God behind, and we conform ourselves to God's order, to His creation and order.

to his law word. And that's what it means to be a Christian. Jesus says, if you love me, you'll obey my commandments. And Paul says, such were some of you. You did live like this. But you've been washed. You've been justified. You've been sanctified.

You've been changed. You've been converted. And you now live a new life. And that life, as you've pointed out, is for the blessing, for the good, for the prosperity, for the flourishing of the individual, the family and human. society. God instituted these things for our good and for our blessing. And that's why only destruction, as you pointed out, is going to follow in the wake of these things. Because in the end, you cannot violate God's laws and norms and there not be consequences. You jump out of an aircraft

thinking you can violate the law of gravity without a parachute and you are going to come unstuck. There is always a consequence for the violation of God's laws and norms. And there will be a terrible social consequences from this. And it will be families, parents, churches that are left picking up the pieces when this all falls apart, which it most certainly will. It will certainly be disproportionately a consequence that children have to bear, as is true with all anti-creational order issues, the redefinition of the family, wombs and children becoming commodities for the redefinition of the family to try to mimic the

natural family children are always the unconsenting subjects of progressive experiments. They have been literally laid on the altar in the form of child sacrifice throughout history. Now they are figuratively laid on the altar and are being used as sacrifices in different ways. But the end result, as you said, in both ways, is death and is destruction. And for Christians listening to this, amazingly, there are, you know, professing Christians who seem to be on the fence, I like to say this is a Genesis 1 issue. You, as you mentioned, being made male and female is what it means to be made in God's image. That is in the first chapter of the Bible.

And I just don't believe someone when they say that they don't affirm Genesis 1, but that they will continue to affirm John 146 that Jesus is the way the truth in the life. That is a far more scandalous statement in today's age that Jesus is the only way to God than Genesis 1, we are made male and female. I just don't believe you when you say that you don't affirm Genesis 1, but you do affirm John 146. It doesn't happen like that. Maybe it's a slow fade. I do see this happen with people who profess to be Christians, they start to wiggle on the, you know, gender sexuality stuff in the name of so-called nuance and empathy. But it always slides. It always slides in the direction of apostasy. Of course, repentance is absolutely possible by the grace of God. But this is such a central issue. And I think

there was Katie, Katie Faust was a guest that I had on. And she has an amazing organization. But she pointed out to me something that I hadn't thought about when it comes to the definition of of the family and the definition of right sexuality and God is that when you redefine the family and sexuality, you are forbidding the children who are the products of that from obeying the First Commandment with a promise, honor your father and mother. We create fatherlessness, which is a category of helplessness and vulnerability in the Bible. We are told to help the fatherless, not create fatherlessness. And there wasn't even really a category for motherlessness, which we see in the

redefinition of the family now, because that is such an aberration historically. And so, as you said, just to reiterate, like, there's so, there's so much. There are so many biblical issues, theological issues at stake here, so many practical ones as well, since parents are basically going to be forbidden from shepherding their kids and pastors forbidden from shepherding their own flocks in the right way. Is there any, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, you mentioned John 14, and I was thinking when you said that of also,

of John chapter one because of course the gospel of John opens with a deliberate echo of Genesis chapter one in the beginning was the word the word was with God the word was God he was with God in the beginning all things were made through him without him nothing was made that was made and him was life and that life was the light of men so the word the Christ is also the creator so any attempt to sever the Bible you know Genesis and John divide it up into pieces and say, well, I can't affirm Genesis 1, but I can affirm the rest is, of course, well, it's nonsense, Ellie. It's a complete myth. You can't do it. There is a complete continuity as a historical continuity. There's a historical continuum between creation and redemption in

scripture. And so the attempt to compromise and to synthesize these things is, well, it's fundamentally impossible. It's totally inadequate. It doesn't make any sense. And as you point out, the ones that ultimately suffer in all of this are children. And they have to bear the consequences of our dereliction and apostasy as a culture. And so we have a very important responsibility now at this juncture to make sure we fight for the truth of the gospel, and all that flows from it, including the freedom of the family. Yes, and amen. Now, you mentioned that the Sunday after this law goes into a fact, you were calling for pastors in Canada to preach about biblical marriage and sexuality, correct?

That's right. And is this an official invitation that you've extended? like, is this something that American pastors can take part of? Because I think it would be wonderful if there were American pastors who decided to do the same thing on the same Sunday that their Canadian counterparts did it as well. That's a good thought. So I'm not sure exactly when this will broadcast,

but I'm working with a group of pastors and leaders right now in Canada and we'll be announcing the details of this shortly. and at which point, certainly we can be in touch. And actually, I think I will suggest that excellent idea that we invite our American brothers and sisters in the churches there to perhaps do the same and take that Sunday and make it a biblical sexuality Sunday so that the church can make a firm and positive stand on this

because the more we can work together because the challenges are the same right over the West the more of an impact we're going to have. Yes, and amen. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Where can people find you if they want to read your books, your writings, and things like that? Yeah, thank you, Ali. So they can find me at Ezrainstitute.ca.

That's the website. And there you can link to Ezra Press for all of our books and resources. We have a podcast, which you can, the podcast for Cultural Reformation, which you can find wherever you get your podcast from. And of course, you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and you can follow me on Twitter at Dr. Joe Boot. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Boot. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.

Thank you very much, Alie. God bless you. 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.

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