The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Monday, June 8, 2026

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.On today’s edition of The Briefing, Dr. Mohler discusses the tragic death of Henry Nowak, the irrationality of public guidance on the trans issue in the UK, the trans lunacy in Australia, and our society’s low economic and moral cost to get high.Part I (00:14 – 10:19)Murdered by Woke Ideology: The Tragic Death of Henry NowakThe Woke Murder of Henry Nowak by The Wall Street Journal (The Editorial Board)Part II (10:19 – 16:27)The Irrationality of Public Guidance in the UK: On the One Hand, Biological Males are Banned from Female Toilets. On the Other Hand, You Can’t Challenge It When You See ItDon’t challenge trans women about their gender, says Phillipson’s new guidance by The Telegraph (Daniel Martin)Phillipson to ban trans women from female toilets by The Telegraph (Daniel Martin)Part III (16:27 – 21:15)Ideology Trumps Biology Down Under? ‘Trans Lunacy’ in Australia on DisplayTrans lunacy has made Australia a laughing stock by The Telegraph (Rocco Loiacono)Part IV (21:15 – 26:15)A Sane Society Doesn’t Subsidize Bad Behavior: Our Society Has Brought Low the Economic and Moral Cost of Getting HighIt Shouldn’t Be This Easy to Get High by The New York Times (German Lopez)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Monday, June 8, 2006. I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Christians understand that justice is a biblical imperative. We understand that it is a major theme in biblical theology. It is, after all, one of the most basic of the revealed attributes of God himself, who is absolute justice and who is absolutely just. We understand that human beings are called to justice, to do justice. as we read in the prophets, and also to represent justice, to execute justice. We are those who are supposed to know what justice is, not because it's merely a human intellectual construct or even a human moral or political imperative, but because it is actually a part of the display of God's glory in his creation. It is also one of the most basic of all moral mandates. We also

understand that in a fallen world, justice is always approximate, or proximate, as it's sometimes said. And so as you're thinking about human justice, it's never exactly right. And that's simply because in a fallen world, given human finitude, the best human beings can achieve is proximate justice. You might put it as approximate justice. But we are called to do our very best, to put together a system of laws and a system of courts, and a system just of human culture in such a way that justice is prized and dearly sought after. We also understand the moral scandal when justice is denied. And that's why you turn the word in the English language, and then we talk about not justice, but injustice. Now, these are often hotly contested issues. In a fallen world, and in today's

hotly politicized culture, you can count on many of these things, becoming very, very political. That's one of the reasons why we have to pay close attention to a major story coming from Britain. This has to do with the murder of an 18 or 19-year-old university student there in Britain. And the reason I have to say 18 or 19 is because there are credible news reports that say both. In any event, an extremely young man and a teenager. In December of 2025, he was stabbed to death in Southampton by a man by the name of Vikram Degwa, who is 23 years old. Okay, so here is what becomes very, very interesting. Degua is a sick. Now, just to hear that very carefully, that means S-I-K-H. It's often referred to erroneously as

Sikh. It is a Punjabi word. We are talking about an historic religion traditionally associated with India, and we're talking about a situation that became so highly politicized. A distortion of justice is what happened. There was then an approximation of justice, but behind all of this is a big story. The story has to do with the fact that in Southampton, they're in the United Kingdom, in December of 2025, Viram Degwa, that is, the Sikh man, he attacked Henry Nowak, stabbing him to death. Now, here's the thing. The teenager was still alive when police arrived. And when the police arrived, Mr. Digwa said that it was Mr. Noak who had attacked him. In other words, he claimed that the teenager he had stabbed, and we now know stabbed to death, had attacked him.

The police believed that man, even though the teenager was crying out that he had been stabbed. The police ignored him, actually placing him in handcuffs. He later bled out and died. The point is that he could have been saved had the police believed him when he said that it was he who had been attacked and that the other man was the attacker. Of course, the big story here is the fact that it was the man of South Asian descent who had attacked the white man there, and it was the white boy, a teenager who was bleeding out on the street. And eventually he did bleed out and he died. It was a horrible misrepresentation of the issue.

And then the police just went with the story as the attacker. Now, formerly the murderer told the story. And it's because they read a certain social dynamic into the situation. When they got there, they simply read onto the situation a context of racism. We now know, and a British court has formally determined that that was not the case. It was the opposite of the case. And as a matter of fact, this sick adherent had stabbed the 19-year-old, or the 18-year-old, depending on his age, with a ceremonial knife associated with his own religion.

and thus the police should have been able to figure this out pretty quickly, but they didn't. Now, on both sides of the Atlantic, this is making huge, huge waves. For example, the New York Times ran a headline story. British Home Secretary backs investigation a politicized murder case. It was the Wall Street Journal editorial page that got right to the heart of the issue with a headline editorial, The Woke Murder of Henry Nowak. Here's how the editors of the Wall Street Journal described the situation. quote, Britain's political class is in an uproar over the murder of Henry Nowak, as it should be.

The facts of the case are appalling, and the inadequate response of so much officialdom is an example of how woke progressive politics has corrupted institutions, including law enforcement in Western democracies. They go on to put the story this way. Quote, Noak, a white 19-year-old university student, was stabbed to death while walking home from a night out with friends on December 3rd. That's 2025. Vickram Degwa, who was convicted of murder last week, used an eight-inch knife purported to be a sick religious ceremonial item in the attack. Continued. Quote, Mr. Degwa then called the police with a fabricated story that Noak had assaulted him while using a racial slur. On this basis, officers handcuffed Noak as he lay dying on the ground.

They ignored him when he repeatedly tried to tell them he had been stabbed and couldn't breathe. They only administered medical aid once he passed out, at which point it was to live. late. Now, why are we talking about this now? It's because of the way the British criminal justice system works. In the British system, the press does not report on the details of these crimes until the case has been adjudicated in court. And in this case, even the sentence handed down. In this case, the man received a life sentence. And you might look at that and say, well, eventually justice prevailed. And indeed, this was at least in part a correction after the fact that this young man had been murdered. The point is, the police, misdemeanor.

read the situation because they were following a certain political script. And in misreading the situation, the teenage boy died, even though medical authorities are basically very much united in saying his life could have been saved. If the police had called an ambulance, if they had administered first aid, if they had not let him bleed out on the ground, this young man would likely be alive today. And so this is one of those stories that in Great Britain just exploded, and it's continuing to explode with reverberations. And one of the most interesting things to watch here is the fact that the ruling Labor Party government under Prime Minister Kier-Starmer, it is basically so committed to this kind of

woke ideology that it can't even speak directly to this. It has to speak indirectly in euphemisms and just imprecise statements. It is also clear that the British people understand that a basic miscarriage of justice is at the very heart of this story. And so it's going to be very interesting to see, where this goes. I can tell you on both sides of the Atlantic, there's a great deal of attention given to this story. And, you know, if you just take everything in terms of any kind of racial or ethnic identity out of this, it shouldn't at least say that when you have a situation in which there are two young men and one

of them is bleeding out on the ground, give medical attention to the one bleeding out on the ground. That would seem to be just normal, commonsensical law enforcement and public order. But that's not what is happening in so many cases in Great Britain. And quite frankly, what we see there is a basic distortion of the entire justice system because so many of these woke ideologies have taken deep root. And then we can look at the United States and we can recognize that one of the reasons this rings so powerfully here is because some of the same ideologies have been pushed very much in American law schools, for example, and in the legal profession, and even in terms of legislation coming from the progressive left.

So just understand this is one of those situations in which now you have the justice system, after a teenage boy is dead, come to the conclusion that police had fundamentally misread the situation. One of the big questions is what effect this will have on British policing. And there are many in Britain who believe that, sadly, the answer to that is perhaps not much. I have in my hand something like 30 articles

from British and American newspapers debating this issue I want to set that aside, and let's just talk about some of the biblical and theological issues at stake here. And here's where you have a lot of material in the Old Testament that's really helpful to us. You have a lot of attention in the law to the fact that justice has to be worked out in a process. And one of the principles in Scripture is that there is to be no favoritism. There is to be no loading of the dice. And instead, it is justice in terms of that which comports to. to the truth and that which fits a system of understanding proportional and righteous justice,

all of this has to work without partiality. That's a big issue. It shows up in the law very clearly. It also shows up in the preaching of the prophets in the Old Testament. There should be no corruption, no partiality. Here's the thing. We understand that there have been times when there has been partiality in the laws, and sometimes that has been directed negatively at racial and ethnic minorities. Now we have a situation in which that script has been flipped when you look at this story in England. And here's where Christians have to understand

if indeed justice requires no partiality, then that means no partiality. That runs in the face, directly in the face of so many modern woke ideologies who say in the name of history, you have to low the dice. Loaded dice means no justice. And in this very sad case from London,

It's not only no justice, it's a dead boy on the ground. I want to switch to a very different topic, but I'm going to stay in England for a minute. I mentioned the labor government. That's a leftist government. It's sometimes described as center-left because it's not as far left as some of the political parties there in Britain's multi-party system. But when it comes to the labor government, you are talking about a party that's been historically committed to socialism and is now very committed to leftist ideologies. Kier Starrmer, the current prime minister, is under all.

all kinds of criticism for various positions, and not only that, the situation in the economy, but it's also interesting that it's a government in the parliamentary system in which if the majority party decides this is going to be the law, it will be the law, particularly if it's a party-line vote, which almost all are, at least in terms of substance. Here's the big headline. I want us to look at it. From the Telegraph in London, quote, don't challenge trans women about their gender, says Philipson's new guidance.

Okay, so what are we talking about here? We are talking about Bridget Philipson, who is the UK's Minister for Women and Equality. You know, what could go wrong when that's a cabinet position that tells you just how the government there is addressing these issues, or at least the general direction. Daniel Martin's the reporter, and he tells us, quote, new government guidance has said that transgender people should not be asked what sex they are before they use toilets or changing rooms. Okay, I want to give attention to this story because I find it fascinating. One story published in the Telegraph, one news report is dated May the 20th, 2006. A second is dated May 21st, 2006.

And I've been looking into the issue ever since then. Here's the first headline. Now remember, they're just separated by 24 hours. The Telegraph, by the way, is a major newspaper, generally a conservative newspaper, certainly leaning that way, in London. Here's the first headline, quote, Phillipson, remember, that is the Women and Equality's Minister. there in the British government, quote,

Philipson to ban trans women from female toilets. Okay, so that headline would appear to be rather promising in terms of common sense, right? So we are told that the labor government is going to issue this policy. It's an official guidance, and it's going to say that biological males should not be in female spaces.

And in this case, trans women are to be banned from female toilets. Now, this is in keeping with recent court decisions in the UK, and for one thing, saying that there are two and only two genders in the United Kingdom and in its laws. There are biological males and biological females, and you think that would be just a clear statement of common sense, not to mention biological reality. But here's the thing. It appeared to be promising on May the 20th when the Labor government came out and said there are going to be new policies put in place, new official public guidance, and trans women are to be banned from female toilets. Okay, so that was May the 20th. On May the 21st, here's the next headline. Don't challenge trans women about their gender, says, Philipson, that's the same cabinet minister's new guidance. Okay, so we're talking about 24 hours. What's different? Well, here's the difference. Quote, new government guidance has said that transgender people should not be asked what sex they are before they use toilets or changing rooms. The long-awaited updated code of practice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission confirms that single-sex space facilities and businesses and public. buildings must be used based on biological sex. Okay, I'm going to stop here. In other words, the policy is that single-sex space facilities in businesses and public buildings, quote,

must be based on biological sex. That's clear enough, right? Here's the next sentence, quote. However, it also warns firms that it would not be practical or appropriate for staff to challenge individuals they suspected were using the wrong lavatory or changing room, end quote. In other words, only biological females can be in female spaces, and if you think that a biological male has gone in one of these spaces, you can't say anything because that would be discriminatory. So here is exactly what a leftist government, driven by this kind of progressivist ideology, does with the common sense judicial order, that the sex has come down to two, biological males and biological females. No, officially no biological males in female designated spaces. But if a biological male is there, you can't even say anything because that would violate the same public guidance. Now, honestly, this sounds like something out of George Orwell's 1984.

It's the kind of double speak. You say something, and then you immediately say it's reverse, and you don't even blink. You act like you have just said two things that are absolutely consistent. This is the essence of irrationality, and this is what results when this kind of ideology is set loose in a society. Oh, yes, no biological males in female spaces. On the other hand, if a biological male does go in female spaces, which violates the public guidance, you can't even say anything because that would also violate the public guidance.

Checkmate. Now, here's the thing. This is coming from the labor government that is the government in power and parliament in the United Kingdom, but you can count on the fact that this kind of logic. is going to show up in progressivist-influenced places here in the United States. Legislators and policymakers may say no biological males in female spaces, but then they follow it up with the catch-22, which is you can't say anything if you see a biological male in female spaces, because that would be also discriminatory.

Again, checkmate. And what you see here is exactly how so many basic barriers when it comes to moral and even biological truth are just torn down by ideological nonsense. What they can't get in plain English, they will get by coming back and making nonsense out of the clarity that was just expressed. Again, just watch this kind of thing. This logic is hardly limited to the United Kingdom. You're going to find the same kind of thing on college and university campuses and corporate contexts with other kinds of, quote, public guidance being issued on this side of the Atlantic as well. I want to give the Telegraph credit for some really good reporting on this issue. Just days ago, the telegraph

and an article, quote, trans lunacy has made Australia a laughing stock. Here's what we're told. Quote, quote, ever since last year's Supreme Court ruling, Britain's left-wing activists have been struggling to come to terms with the confirmation that the terms man, woman, and sex in the Equality Act refer to biological sex. In other words, men who identify as women do not become women in the eyes of the law. The judgment was a victory for common sense and reality, as we've known it, for millennia. Okay, so again, so good so far. Quote, but here in Australia, the law in the curious case of Giggle versus Tickle, that is actually the name of the case. You can't make this up. In this case, truth is really stranger than fiction. But in this case, quote, the government has done the opposite.

It has confirmed that ideology trumps reality two weeks ago, the full federal court, that's the equivalent of the Court of Appeal in the United Kingdom, of similarly the circuit courts of appeal in the United States upheld a claim of, quote, deliberate discrimination by a transgender woman who was banned from a female only app called Giggle, which is run by businesswoman and former Hollywood screenwriter Sal Grover. The trans woman, whose name is Roxanne Tickle, made the claim based on provisions in the Australian version of the Equality Act, quote, what we called the Sex Discrimination Act was originally enacted to enable women to participate in public life on an equal footing to men. It was also intended to protect women from discriminatory.

such as in workplaces, when they became pregnant, or when they were breastfeeding. But in 2013, an Australian government removed the definitions of man and woman and instead inserted gender identity. There's the ideology. And by the way, the ideology really shows up in the fact that in order to press this kind of argument, you have to get rid of the terms man and woman. So in other words, you can't just redefine them. If you're going to press this gender non-binary, you're eventually just going to have to get rid of words like man and woman. It's going to be person A and person B, whatever they had identified themselves to be. As the Telegraph report tells us, the Australian court, quote, chose not to rule in favor of sanity.

Now the view that a person's gender is a matter of personal preference prevails over common sense and biology. As the report says, quote, such a decision makes Australia the laughing stock of the world, end quote. But it's not just that decision. It is also the fact that there was an exchange that involved Anna Cody. is Australia's, quote, sex discrimination commissioner. Again, what could go wrong? Just look at that title. We're told that this commissioner, quote, defended the notion that trans women face being discriminated against based on potential pregnancy, end quote. Okay, so let's just pause for a moment. We're talking about individuals here identified as trans women. That means they're not women. That means that they're

biologically male. And thus, they cannot, under any circumstances, be defined as being in the condition of being pregnant. That's not a matter of legal discrimination. That's just a matter of fact. As the telegraph summarizes the same point, quote, this is not discrimination. It is biology, end quote. The telegraph report goes on to say this, quote, the consequences of ideology trumping biology are dire. In Australia, if someone who looks like a man but identifies as a woman goes into the woman's toilet, it is illegal to challenge or exclude them, end quote. So you see the similarity here between the Australian story and the news account coming from Britain. And then we read this, quote, if the question, what is a woman were put to the Australian people,

no doubt it would return a different answer than that put forward by government bureaucrats. And that definition, the paper rightly described, is untethered from reality, end quote. I just want to point out that this would be interesting if it were something of debate in a law school classroom somewhere. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about public policy in two of the major countries in the English-speaking world in Great Britain and in Australia. We'll be talking more about some of these issues because they are unfolding not only they're in the Pacific and they're in Britain, but also in the United States as well. Some of this has shown up on college campuses. Some of it's shown up in business context.

More and more of it is showing up in discussions. And I want to tell why I find this so ominous. And it's because if you look to the presidential election in 2008 and you look at the possibility of a fundamentally reshuffled political structure, you could imagine, that a government from the left, and look at some of the people who are now running in terms of the party identification with the Democratic Party, you look at where this could be going. And you can see that this kind of policy, this kind of nonsense, could become established public policy here very quickly. The ideas are not limited to the UK and Australia. They're already found in American classrooms and elsewhere. Okay, finally for today, a sane society understands that it has to put together. structures in which it encourages the right things and discourages the wrong things.

And so you can put it in a moral category where certainly a government, any kind of society, has to incentivize doing what is righteous rather than what is unrighteous, what is honest rather than dishonest. You just go down the list of moral imperatives. But it's also clear that you should have in a sane society a situation in which bad behaviors are not subsidized. They're not encouraged. Now, another way to put it is that you should make bad things expensive rather than cheap.

And this gets to a very interesting article that appeared in the New York Times. So this is not coming in some kind of right-wing periodical. This was an opinion piece in the New York Times. It's by German Lopez. And the headline is it shouldn't be this easy to get high. Listen to the kind of data that Mr. Lopez brings to this article. Quote, in 1950, the typical American would have had to spend 75% of his or her daily pay after taxes to buy a bottle of vodka. Today, that number is less than 5%. Atrophing alcohol taxes and

growing incomes have effectively brought the cost down to 1.15th of what it once was, end quote. So you look at the last, say, half century, a little bit more, you could even say 75 years, the actual cost of a bottle of vodka, just to give one example in a beverage, often abused, you can look at this and understand that the decrease in price has been remarkable. It's now one-fifteenth of what it once was. The next point. Quote, the legalization of marijuana made it much easier for anyone to buy the drug. It also has made the drug cheaper. In Oregon, the average price of marijuana per gram is down more than 60% since legalization.

Now, by the way, there are other news reports indicating that buying it illegally is even cheaper than buying it legally. Again, a distortion field. The next point, quote, powerful synthetic drugs such as fentanyl and meth have taken over illegal drug markets. These drugs went from cheap to cheaper with the price of fentanyl drop. by 50% over five years. They can also be made much more potent than non-synthetic drugs, meaning users have to buy less to obtain the same high, end quote. The last bullet point he offers is really interesting in moral terms. Listen to this, quote, other costs are lower too. Drug use no longer carries the threat of incarceration that it once did. In some progressive

cities, people often use drugs in public and face zero legal consequences. Some drug use has also become more culturally acceptable, including marijuana consumption and the microcontractive. of psychedelics. The next line, Americans may be struggling to afford food gas and a visit to the doctor, but drugs and alcohol are more affordable than ever, end quote. Now, that last point, I said there is something embedded in it. And that's the statement, quote, other costs are lower too. Other costs meaning what? This means other than dollar costs, other than monetary costs. This means moral cost, health cost. I think the concept of moral costs is just really, really important for Christians. We understand that there is a moral cost. And so what we're being told here is that

as society has lowered barriers to using all these kinds of substances and misusing all these kinds of substances, basically we've discounted our own moral code as a society. We've made it easier even in moral terms, not just monetary terms, for people to basically bring great harm into their lives by the use of so many of these substances. And so in some of these cases, we're talking about things that are illegal in every single context, such as these synthetic drugs. We're talking about some other things that, that frankly are available legally and are in a different category. But it still tells us when you consider problems in our society, we basically have found a way to make all kinds of dangerous things very cheap.

And cheap not only when it comes to money, but cheap when it comes to public morality. The person down on the urban street corner using these drugs and people, puffing away at whatever, is basically flaunting an entire civilizational code and routinely getting away with it. You know, from a Christian perspective, it is very interesting to see a newspaper like the New York Times running this kind of article by one of its opinion writers in order to look at this situation honestly and say, you know, maybe this isn't really a smart way for society to be organized. I appreciate at least the honesty of the information and the honest acknowledgement, this is a big moral question. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information,

go to my website at Albertmohler.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to SBTS.org. For information on Boyce College, just go to Boisecollege.com. I'm speaking to you from Orlando, Florida, and I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.