The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Monday, January 27, 2025

Starting point is 00:00:04 It's Monday, January 27, 2025. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Plenty of headlines from all over the globe, but I want to come to Washington, D.C. first and to a headline that came out last Friday. And it was on that day that the annual March for Life was held in Washington, D.C. It's an event, a major event, perhaps the major event annually for the pro-life movement, and it has been held in January of every year since the first anniversary of Roe v. UAid in 1974. And at this particular event, in March for Life 2025, one of the most important speakers was none other than the vice president of the United States, J.D. Vance. Now, what's really significant here is that the vice president, speaking on behalf of the

Starting point is 00:00:53 Trump administration, gave very vocal support to the pro-life movement. Now, it was not so much in terms of specific policies, but it was a pledge that the administration would have the backs of those who are working to defend the sanctity of human life and the life of the unborn. And so having the vice president of the United States, J.D. Vance, who's been well positioned for the pro-life movement for a number of years, this was a very significant signal. This kind of event doesn't happen by accident. And by that, I mean the vice president appearing. In this context, the vice president would not have appeared without the absolute support of the White House, and that means of President Trump. Now, as you're looking at the statements made by the vice president very clearly in support of the pro-life movement and in support of the aims of the pro-life movement.

Starting point is 00:01:40 Now, you then have to shift to something else, and that is, so what? What will the administration do? That question was answered basically over the next 24 to 48 hours when the White House handed down executive actions signed by the president of the United States, two very significant dimensions of the action. one was the White House affirmation of what is called the Hyde Amendment. Now, that's a congressional measure whereby Congress makes clear in its funding authorizations that federal monies cannot go to pay for abortions. Now, just remember a footnote, a very important footnote in presidential history here. Even someone as pro-abortion as Joe Biden through the years supported the Hyde Amendment. It was very difficult for many Democrats, even though they supported abortion rights,

Starting point is 00:02:27 not to support the Hyde Amendment simply to prevent pro-life Americans from having their taxpayer monies confiscated and then to pay for abortion. But when Joe Biden was running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, the pro-abortion forces in the Democratic Party forced him to do a 180 turn, an absolute retreat. And he did that in just a matter of hours. Now, the Hyde Amendment was named for the late Republican Congressman Henry Hyde, a pro-life act. in the years he was in office, who moved to make certain that these tax monies would not pay for abortions. Now, as soon as the Biden administration went into office, they sought to reverse this logic. Now, they could not reverse a congressional action, but they had all kinds of areas in which they tested presidential power and executive discretion in terms of such funding. The second issue

Starting point is 00:03:20 is what's known as the Mexico City policy. This was put into place decades ago in a Republican administration in order to prevent international aid monies from the United States also being used for abortion. Now, here's what's really interesting. When an executive order like that comes down, you know, one of the things you have to wonder is, is this really a big deal? Now, pro-lifers understand, yes, this really is a big deal. But the logic I want to stress is this. You really find out how big a deal it is when the opposition and the complaints come from the other side. And that was something very, very interesting. You had recipients of international, foreign aid from the United States who understood that they were going to have to get out of the

Starting point is 00:04:01 abortion business or give up that federal aid from the United States. Interestingly, some of them did give up the money that shows you just how adamantly they were committed or are committed even now to the pro-abortion cause. And so we on the pro-life side knew this was important, but the howls from the other side have made it abundantly clear just how important it is. And it also underlines the fact that it really matters who is in the White House. It matters who is signing those executive orders, who is president of the United States. And as I said, during the campaign, even though I was disappointed in some of the statements made by former President Trump, now again President Trump, the reality is that there was and is light years of distance on the issue of the protection of

Starting point is 00:04:43 unborn life between the Biden administration and the Trump administration. The actions for which I'm very thankful taken just over the weekend by President Trump and his administration make that difference absolutely clear. One other issue here of worldview significance just in terms of our thinking about the issue, there is a moral dimension when it comes to taxation. But we also need to recognize there is an even more pressing moral dimension when it comes to the use of taxpayer monies for things that taxpayers find morally abhorrent. Now it would be a different moral equation if the taxpayers were donating their money to the federal government. It's quite different when the federal government confiscates that money. It is coerced payment of taxes, coerced with

Starting point is 00:05:28 the power of law that raises the moral stakes. It also raises the stakes of who is in the White House. All right, something else to watch just over the course of the last several days. And remember, President Trump was inaugurated just a week ago. In a flurry of executive orders, one of the big issues included was a set of executive orders and a set of proposals in terms of White House policies related to the transgender movement. And even as you're looking at this, you recognize that President Trump, in his inaugural address, very clearly said there are two and only two genders, or sexes, male and female. Now, we'd have to go further than that, and that means male at birth, and male in terms of genetic structure, and female in terms of birth, and female in terms of

Starting point is 00:06:15 genetic structure, but that was clearly implied in what the president said. And we know that so, because it was backed up with definitions in the policies in the executive orders that made that abundantly clear. But the New York Times also came out over the weekend with a major article about the state level, proposed new limits on transgender identity or transgender procedures or policies related to the various states. Now, the interesting thing here is that even as you have many conservative states taking such actions, the liberal states are not exactly settled on a exactly what to do when it comes to the transgender revolution. Once again, I just have to point out from a Christian worldview that when you run in this kind of movement directly counter to the order of

Starting point is 00:07:01 creation, it becomes not only wrong, but frankly implausible. And that's why when it comes to sports, when it comes to, say, even prisons, we're going to talk more about that in just a moment. When it comes to many arenas of life, when it comes to looking at a boy and saying it's a girl, or looking at a woman and saying that's a man, that is just a bridge too far for many Americans, even for many Americans who, frankly, are morally confused on other LGBTQ issues. And so even as you've had Americans just collapse and compromise in terms of vast numbers on the issue of same-sex marriage, the same thing has not happened on the transgender revolution. As a matter of fact, by some polling, Americans are more conservative on the issue of the transgender revolution than they were a matter

Starting point is 00:07:46 of, say, five or six years ago. I think, the answer as to why that would be true becomes apparent when you understand that the visibility of the transgender movement has not helped its cause. There has also been a bit of a retreat on the part of some Democrats on this issue. So this is a New York Times article. It's about developments mostly in the states, but listen to this part of the report. Quote, while many Democrats in state houses say they continue to support transgender rights, some Democrats have newly spoken out in favor of limits. Here's a one Democratic State Senator Paul Sarlow from New Jersey. He said in an interview with PBS, quote,

Starting point is 00:08:24 males should not be participating in women's sports. He went on to say, quote, I think if we just talked a little bit more straight up, have a little more practical common sense, we could have done better at the polls, and quote, meaning the November election. But in response to this state legislator in New Jersey, I have to say, I don't think the finessing the issue is going to go over with the American people. You tried that. It didn't work. But I also want to do that. to note that this Democratic State Senator accidentally gave away the whole store. I don't even know if he realizes he gave away the whole store. Now, remember when it comes to the current transgender ideology and the transgender argument, it is that a man who declares himself to be a woman is a woman.

Starting point is 00:09:05 And a woman who declares herself to be a man is a man. And that's just the inviolate, inflexible logic and demand of the transgender revolution. So this man could have stated it differently. He could stated that trans women shouldn't compete with women in women's sports. I would say as a Christian, that's nonsense, but that would at least be consistent with the ideology. But instead, he said something far more clear and frankly, far more accurate. He said, males should not be participating in women's sports. Did you notice how he accidentally gave away the store? He referred to those who would identify as transgender women. He referred to them as males. I'm not going to say he's wrong. I want to emphatically say, he's right. I just wonder what does Democratic colleagues have to say.

Starting point is 00:09:53 Meanwhile, on the same page of the New York Times is another headline, quote, Trump directive bars transgender women from prisons for females. So there you see the party line, transgender women. But when you read the article, it is really clear that the issue is human beings with male bodies in a prison for female inmates. And who could think that could be a problem. Honestly, who could think it wouldn't be a problem? And state by state, it has proved to be a problem, even in a state like California. And President Trump has signed an executive order in which he has ordered the federal prison system. As the Times reports, quote, President Trump has ordered federal prisons to house inmates who are transgender women in men's facilities and halt medical

Starting point is 00:10:38 treatments related to gender transition, end quote. Now, I want to tell you, this is just common sense, and it's just common order when it comes to, say, running a prison system. You have different prisons for men and women for very good reasons. You have men in men's prisons. You have women in women's prisons. Men means male. Women means female. And you are also looking at the fact that one of the central claims made by the transgender

Starting point is 00:11:02 activists is that it is an invasion of their privacy if a so-called transgender woman is put in a male prison. And you look at this and you recognize they're saying that's an individual. infringement of that prisoner's right to privacy. But what about the obvious fact that the right to privacy of the women in a women's facility, it vastly outweighs the so-called artificial right to privacy of a man declaring himself to be a woman who demands to be housed in a women's prison? That's simply nonsense. Now, I want to tell you something I think that's very interesting that's going on here. President Trump has issued these executive orders and he's made these statements.

Starting point is 00:11:39 As I said, to his credit, he made the statement about man and woman, male and female, even in his inaugural address. As I said at the time, who a matter of decades ago could have believed that a president of the United States would have to speak such a thing. But he did speak the words. Now, here's what I think is really interesting. I think there are an awful lot of people in the so-called mushy middle of politics. And there are a lot of people, even perhaps who are registered Democrats, and consider themselves in many ways respectable liberals. I think they see the transgender claims as a step too far. And I think the lack of pushback from some of those circles on the Trump announcement means that they're not about to come out and say there are only two genders, male and female, a man is a man, and a woman is a woman.

Starting point is 00:12:26 They're not going to say that. Indeed, they're going to say, listen to President Trump, listen to him, say that. But even as they don't say what the president said and, frankly, what creation order demands, they're not exactly going to push back on it either. I think that's a very interesting development. And I'll just say, I think there are many people who say they are absolutely sold out for the LGBT agenda. I'll just say they may be honestly, tremendously supportive of L and G and B. T, a bridge too far. Now, when you look at the liberalization of the culture and you look at moral change in the culture, it could be that the transgender revolutionaries eventually win. But it is incredibly significant

Starting point is 00:13:08 to note they're not winning as they expected to win. And my argument is, that the closer you get to creation order in terms of defying creation order, the more your eyes simply reveal the truth. It's also very interesting to note that traditional feminists are in support of President Trump's order. Quote, The Women's Liberation Front, which defines women based on sex at birth and advocates single-sex prisons, called the directive that is the directive issued by President Trump, a major victory. Quote, the group is challenging a California law that allows prisoners

Starting point is 00:13:42 to request housing that aligns with their gender identity. It argues that the law violates the constitutional rights of female inmates who are not transgender, including the Eighth Amendment right to protection from cruel and unusual punishment. End quote. So there's the odd turn of events. Even the radical feminists of a few years ago, they're not going to cross the bridge when it comes to the transgender issue. They're going to push back, even in the name of the Women's Liberation Front,

Starting point is 00:14:10 because after all, there's no fun whatsoever to be had in having a women's liberation front if you don't know who a woman is. Okay, meanwhile, the New York Times, other mainstream media, entirely for the transgender revolution. Sunday's edition of the New York Times had a major article, a half page in the print edition, practically, headline, surreal first days for a transgender lawmaker. Here's the subhead. Delaware's voters were ready for Sarah McBride, but some Republicans in Congress.

Starting point is 00:14:40 were not. Annie Carney's the reporter on the story, and you'll recall that there was a lot of news about Sarah McBride being the, quote, first openly transgender member of Congress, end quote. Then you'll recall there was a good deal of controversy about which bathroom, that is to say, the men's room or the women's room, this member of Congress should use. There were Republicans who actually went to the floor and established a policy saying that only women may use the women's bathroom, and that means biological women, and you also had this member of Congress stating that the intention of the member was not to use any of the bathrooms in the area because the congressperson did not feel safe. And so we're talking about a man here, elected as a transgender woman claiming that identity, and you do have a bathroom

Starting point is 00:15:27 problem. And, you know, there may be some politicians who will grandstand on this kind of issue, but let's be honest, this was teed up for the grandstanding, and it's not just grandstanding. It's also common sense, it's obvious truth. Now, what I want to point to in this article is that the statement made by Representative McBride is that this member of Congress doesn't feel safe because of this conversation and because of opposition and criticism in terms of transgender identity. Representative McBride said, quote, the more I thought about it, I realized that it would not be safe for me to use the restrooms, end quote. Now, let's be honest about this. Let's just be candid. this member of Congress is not worried about being physically assaulted. In this sense, you have

Starting point is 00:16:12 how the ideology of wokeism, the ideology of the therapeutic age has utterly transformed the word safe. And so whereas safety for most of human experience and use of the English language referred primarily to physical safety, this doesn't mean physical safety. It doesn't even particularly mean psychological safety. It means the safety of self-esteem and the safety of being constantly affirmed. And when you do not have the affirmation of transgender identity, now you have persons who turn around and they may be freshmen and some kind of elite high school, they may be a neighbor down the street. It could be a co-worker, in this case, a member of Congress who says, if this comes up and I am not affirmed in my transgender claim, then I'm going to declare the

Starting point is 00:16:56 situation to be unsafe. Now, all of us understand that safety is a huge issue. It's a moral issue, but we also understand that language is a moral issue. And when language is contorted it, in this way, we need to call it out for what it is. But next we need to shift to a huge set of actions taken by President Trump last week and the ripple effects that are even now going through the culture and through major corporations in the United States. And beyond corporations, even major institutions like universities, even prestigious universities. What am I talking about? I'm talking about the raft of executive orders and directives signed by President Trump instructing federal agencies to eliminate DEI or diversity, equity, and inclusion programs,

Starting point is 00:17:40 and all the attendant ideology from their departments. He even put on leave DEI officers, and quite frankly intends to go through the entire federal administration, through the entire bureaucracy, and rid it of DEI ideology and policies and practices. And furthermore, it's not just when it comes to the federal bureaucracy. Because of the way the federal budget works, the federal government can tell all corporations,

Starting point is 00:18:05 corporations who are vendors, which are vendors to the federal government, that they must also follow these policies. In reverse, you had liberal administrations, use the DEI policies to say to to corporate America, you have to develop your own DEI policies or you're going to lose this federal contract. Now, President Trump is reversing the logic. It is a huge move. Now, when you look at DEI, we need to understand that it does come from an ideology that is basically rooted in identity politics. Now, the biggest problem with identity politics is not that the identities exist. The identities exist to the extent we even understand what it means when people use racial categories or ethnic categories or any number of other categories. And by the way,

Starting point is 00:18:48 this would include male and female. But identity politics reduces an individual made in the image of God to that designation of an identity marker. And then there is the demand based upon what is argued was previous discrimination, that there be now another form of discrimination used in favor of those who were disfavored. That's what the DEI programs come down to. Major American corporations went head over heels for them. Major American colleges and universities, they practiced them long before there was a name for them. They institutionalized it in a big way. But even before President Trump was elected, the signaling in the society was really a pushback or a blowback against DEI policies. The reason is basic fairness. It is unfair to tell someone as a potential employee

Starting point is 00:19:36 or a potential applicant to a prestigious university, you can't have this slot, even though you're more qualified than another. You have higher scores than another. You have greater experience and aptitude than another because we need a DEI score. And so we're going to put this person in that place because of an identity politics marker. There's a basic injustice in that. That's not to say that injustices did not exist in the past. It is to say that injustices in the past cannot be corrected by injustices in the present, certainly institutionalized. Now, the reversal on these DEI policies is just huge. It's massive news. And it's also something that's visible, even visible when you look at the Titans of Silicon Valley, many of whom have been driving these DEI initiatives, sitting at

Starting point is 00:20:21 the inauguration of President Trump, and some of them quite publicly reversing their policies. You had major American businesses. And that would include tractor supply company on the one hand, or even more recently, Target, the Target Department Store company that has reversed its DEI policies or announced that it's going to. And remember how hard Target was pushing this. It's also interesting that one of the specific angles that is included in this blowback against DEI is the fact that so many of these corporations, and for that matter, government agencies were seeking the approval of the LGBT movement, and certainly organizations such as the human rights campaign, which is an LGBTQ activist organization. Many of these corporations have announced they're not going to report to the human rights

Starting point is 00:21:07 campaign any longer for their scorecard. Now, this is really good news. Indeed, it could be a big change in the culture. Indeed, I don't want to minimize this in any way. I think this is some of the best news. It's one of the best results that could come out of the election of Donald Trump. As president and J.D. Vance's vice president, it could represent a sea change in the culture and one that's vastly urgently needed. I also want to say that we have to be very careful because there is the danger that many of these corporations and institutions or even federal agencies would change the nomenclature and then do the same thing. It's one of the ways bureaucracies work. You can change the language. Okay, we'll change the language. But we're going to do the same thing. We're just going to call it

Starting point is 00:21:50 something else. And so on college campuses and in federal agencies and especially, in major American corporate life, we're going to have to watch very carefully that they don't merely change the initials. We're already seeing that take place, by the way, that mere changing of initials on many elite college and university campuses. All right, the state legislature says we can't have DEI programs. We'll call it something else. Indeed, in an almost Orwellian sense, they can name it something that is the opposite of what it actually is. They're seeking to get away with it. We're going to have to catch them at it, call them out for it, and make certain that substantial change in the right direction takes place.

Starting point is 00:22:30 One other pattern to watch here, something we ought to observe, is that many of these corporations who are gung-ho for DEI until all of a sudden now they're not, they've announced this reversal at shareholder meetings, they've announced these new policies, they've announced these changes in DEI or reversals of DEI logic in different settings. What I want to point to right now is the fact that many of these institutions and corporations are saying, You know, we were going to do this anyway. You know, we were looking at these policies, and on the one hand, we feel like we've already succeeded at meeting our goals.

Starting point is 00:23:02 Or they come back and say, you know, we've just decided that in the interest of our shareholders, et cetera, et cetera, we were already planning to scale back these efforts or to bring them to a conclusion. I'll just say that's a very convenient thing to say now. I will also predict this. If the election had gone differently in November of 2024, I don't think you would hear the same people saying, oh, we were going to reverse this anyway. Oh, you know, we were looking at the effectiveness of this kind of program. No, when you look at the impact of the election in November, you understand it comes right down to whether the company says yes or no to this kind of specific policy. That comes right down to who's employed, who's hired, who's advanced. It comes right down to shareholder policies, corporate policies. It comes right down to who gains admission to universities and colleges and who does not. And frankly, it comes right down to who gets to keep score. and who now is not going to be given the information to keep the score, such as the human rights campaign. It's also interesting to note that the human rights campaign, LGBTQ activist organization,

Starting point is 00:24:04 just as symbolic of that entire movement, says, well, we're going to continue to report the data, even if you don't give it because we'll find another way to get it. Well, you know, they might. The question then becomes, who's listening to them when they offer their reports and analysis? In order to make my point, I want to quote one of the business executives, cited in the New York Times report. This man said, quote, if you'd ask me a year ago,

Starting point is 00:24:29 I would have probably said don't change it, meaning the DEI policies. He then went on to say, over time, I've become a little bit more convinced that the acronym might be unhelpful because empty terms make easy targets, end quote. Yeah, well, whatever. It's interesting to find the evasive statements

Starting point is 00:24:45 many executives are going to use now to explain why, after President Trump has signed these executive orders, they have all of a sudden seen the light, they either said they didn't see before or didn't exist before. In light of that, conservatives in this culture watching all that's going on now are going to have to see that kind of statement and understand it as another form of what can only be called victory or progress in a long-term effort that's going to have to be fought

Starting point is 00:25:12 is going to have to be waged for the rest of our lives. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com. You can follow me on Twitter or X by going to Twitter.com forward slash Albert Mueller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to Boisecollege.com. I'm speaking to you from Jacksonville, Florida, and I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.

The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Monday, January 27, 2025

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