The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Thursday, August 28, 2025

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

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 President Trump’s threats to remove sex education funding for sex ed that affirms transgender ideologies, the parental responsibility of sex education, and the dangers of A.I. chatbots for teenagers.Part I (00:14 – 12:07)Trump Goes After Gender Ideology in Sex Education: The Trump Administration Releases Executive Order to Remove Gender Identity from Sex EducationTrump Administration Puts 46 States and Territories on Notice to Remove Gender Ideology Content from Sex Ed Materials by U.S. Department of Health and Human ServicesPart II (12:07 – 14:55)Sex Education is a Parental Responsibility: Christian Faithfulness Requires that Christian Parents Do Not Relinquish Sex Education to a Secular CulturePart III (14:55 – 25:18)The Danger of A.I. Chatbots for Teenagers: Teenagers are Turning to A.I. Chatbots for Therapy, and It Has Turned into a Four-Alarm FireTeens Are Using Chatbots as Therapists. That’s Alarming. by The New York Times (Ryan K. McBain)A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In. by The New York Times (Kashmir Hill)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 Thursday, August 28, 2025. I'm Albert Moeller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Well, sex education's back in the headlines. It's never far from the headlines. In this case, the headlines have to do with a directive from the Trump administration that states remove any transgender ideology from sex education materials. Now, these are for programs funded by the federal government or in cooperating. a mix of federal and state funding. It's very interesting to see what's going on here. This is the Trump administration furthering what it announced, going all the way back to the beginning of this second term, President Trump in his inaugural address made very clear that his administration would recognize two and only two genders, male and female.

And he specified what that meant. And the issue, the challenge of transgender ideology is something the president referenced on the campaign trail as well. this is a major fault line in the culture. And eventually it does come down to something as fundamental as the public schools. Now, when you look at this specific policy, it is a directive in executive order coming from the Trump administration. It covers 40 states and six territories plus D.C. So 46 units, six of them territories, one of them, D.C. and then 40 states. Now, why those 40 states? It's because those 40 states have sex education materials.

the administration believes are on the wrong side of this transgender ideology question. The state of California, no surprise, is kind of on the leading edge of this, and $12.3 million of sex education funding from the federal government is at stake. The Trump administration has already canceled a sex education grant of that amount to California because it included, quote, radical gender ideology after the advisement had been given to the state to remove the materials. U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary of Education Andrew Grayison said, quote, California's refusal to comply with federal law and remove egregious gender ideology from federally funded sex ed materials is unacceptable. He went on to say the Trump administration

will not allow taxpayer dollars to be used to indoctrinate children. Accountability is coming for every state that uses federal funds to teach children delusional gender ideology. All right. The state of California is hitting down. back. A statement coming from the Department of Public Health said, quote, California students deserve access to educational information and materials that help them make healthy decisions about sexual activity, including the decision to delay sexual activity while honoring and respecting their dignity, including gender identity, end quote. I wanted to read that in full because the battle is just made very evident there, what we're really facing. I want you to notice three

items in that statement from the California Department. of Public Health. Number one, there's a reference to sex education. Educational information and materials that help them make healthy decisions about sexual activity. Okay, notice sexual activity, healthy decisions about sexual activity. That's laden with ideology. Next, in just another phrase in the statement they said, including the decision to delay sexual activity. So in other words, they're acknowledging, if not abstinently, some kind of delay in sexual activity. And then it goes on to refer to gender identity. So we go from sex education and sex activity, sexual activity,

to the decision to delay sexual activity and then sexual identity. Well, those are huge jumps. It's absolutely huge jumps. When you look at that little phrase about including the decision to delay sexual activity, that goes back to efforts undertaken in previous administrations, particularly Republican administrations, to try to advance the idea of sexual action. abstinence as a part of sex education. The resistance to that from the sexual revolutionaries,

and they're largely in charge of the sex education programs, the response and reaction to that has basically been to just dole down the language and set it aside as something of an option. And I'll just note that if you're talking about something of this kind of moral importance and you set everything out and just say, these are options. And by the way, the pro-sexual activity option comes with all kinds of suggestions and even more. I mean, the fact is, this is just window dressing, and I think everybody knows it. But the big two things that are included here would be sexual activity on the one hand, and then gender identity and sexual identity, all of those things on the other hand.

So now everything is under sex education. That's one of the things we need to know. In the state of California, by the way, there have been other controversies, including the fact that the state government at one point adopted a policy that, parents had to have advance notice and an opt-out provision for their children for sex education. So one of the things that some school districts did was simply to re-identify, redefine all of this, repackage it as so-called health education, so parents didn't have to know, didn't have the opportunity for the opt-out.

All kinds of huge worldview issues here, public schools on the one hand, but sex education is a huge issue that ought to have our attention here. We need to note that this has been controversial from the start. if you go back to the 20th century, arguments about whether or not the public schools would be the arena of sex education. This was huge controversial territory in the 20th century. It began to gain ground for a couple of reasons. Number one, the sexual revolution itself, the revolution in sex and sexual morality being pushed by the left. It made a lot of advances.

The other thing is that you had this development of what was known as public health. And one of the points I've tried to make on the briefing over and over again is that, public health and medicine are not the same thing. Public health as a profession is hugely ideological and massively leftist in terms of its ideology. And some Americans, by the way, saw something of that during the COVID-19 pandemic, where public health, it took on an authority that quickly advanced all kinds of leftist ideas. And at least some Americans began to detect what was going on there. And just to be blunt, a lot of what's covered there in terms of public health is really sociology. It's a very broad, very broad curriculum.

That's one of the reasons why you have graduate schools of public health that are separated from schools of medicine, but it's confused in the public mind. All right. But sex education is just a part of that as well. Early in the 20th century, those who wanted to get sex education in the schools often rebranded it as health or hygiene. As a matter of fact, the word hygiene takes on its own ideological implication in the middle of the 20th century, even earlier, by the way, in the 1920s and 30s, where hygiene also came with an ideology. And the sex education proponents were overwhelmingly from the left. And at least a part of what they wanted to do, they said, was just do what parents aren't doing. That was one of the arguments.

Parents aren't teaching children and teenagers' appropriate sex education. And you would think that would be the assignment of parents, and I'm going to profoundly affirm that. But the argument was, and it came from a lot of the public health people, that what parents are doing is not enough. It's insufficient. Sometimes parents don't know enough. That's a condescending argument. They don't know enough. Here's the thing.

If you come from the ideology that this really is a part of a larger sexual project, in society. It's true most parents don't know much about that because they don't want to know about that and they don't want their kids to know about that. But nonetheless, this began to really gain ground and there were successive presidential administrations that began to put effort behind it as well. Another impetus to this in the 20th century was the rise of teenage pregnancies, say the 1950s, 60s, and 70s in which you had government officials say, look, this is another justification for bringing sex education in schools. Of course, the huge question when it comes to sex education is, who's defining it, who's teaching it? Those are massive issues. Who's defining what sex education

is? Who's teaching it? And what are they teaching? What is the content? Because one of the most essential things Christians understand is that it is impossible to use the word sex education without explicit moral argument and content. Sex education isn't something you can just print out as if it's, you know, a mathematical equation. It is laden and has been laden since creation with moral importance. And thus somebody's morality is going to be taught in sex education. It's not just going to be about anatomy. It's not just going to be about reproductive anatomy and processes and systems.

It's going to be about morality in a big way. And it's one of the reasons why the sexual revolutionary seized upon it as a golden opportunity to get to kids and to separate kids from their parents on these issues. And that is explicitly what was undertaken in many ways. One of the most influential groups in this is known as S-I-E-C-U-S. It began as the Sex-Information Educational Council of the United States. It was formed by a woman by the name of Dr. Mary Calderon, who was the medical director of Planned Parenthood, of course. Now, just put all of this together. Planned Parenthood Medical Director, establishing a council, Sikhis, sex information educational council of the United States. United States, and then understand that it would change its name from sex to sexuality. Okay. Now, that tells you a whole lot. So even as it began, as a very liberal approach to sex education, you saw a movement

to broaden all of this in terms of sexuality education. Sexuality education would include the entire array of things, of course, that are now summarized with LGBTQ. Now, the Trump administration's directive goes right at the T in LGBTQ. So let's just get this straight. If this began as an argument that boys and girls, young people, need the public schools to give them an education and anatomy and physiology, what it means to be male, what it means to be female, how babies come about. You go from that to sexuality. Well, now you are talking about who does what, when, and where with whom.

It's a completely different equation. And now you're talking about identity. Let me to state the obvious, and it really comes out in the response from California here. When you put gender identity in the same categories, just basic sex education, it just reveals the fact you have all along been just expanding all of this into a way to push your moral revolution, to push your revolution and sexual morality, to push the agendas, and yes, the sexual ideology. do I think the Trump administration is right to have sent this executive order? Oh, you bet I do. I just wish the executive order basically ended any federal funding for so-called sex and sexuality education in the public schools. I don't expect to win on that argument, but I can just tell you that you are also looking at the challenge of what is now packaged as comprehensive sex education or comprehensive sexuality education. This is being held up by groups like Sikhists and others, and you have the public school, teacher unions and others, they're all into this.

They're all in it together. The education, the public health officials, they're all in it together to try to say, okay, now we're supposed to teach comprehensive sex or sexuality education. And that means they can put anything in it they want to put in it. And I can just guarantee you, they put everything in it they want to put in it. Be scared, be very scared. But now I want to step back from the Trump administration, from the 40 states, six territories, D.C., etc.

I want to step back and just speak to Christian churches, parents, pastors, Christians. This is our responsibility. But by our, I don't mean ours as in, first of all, Christians in general. I'm speaking of parents specifically. This gets back to the responsibility of parents in the home and the authority of parents in the home and the privilege of parents in the home. And the unique authority of parents in the home to decide what will and will not be presented to their children, when and how and what will be presented to their children in terms of sex education. Now, I do want to assert this is a parental responsibility. This is a part of being a

parent. And this is nonetheless, I think, a family-centered issue, and Christians need to understand that. Even the principle of subsidiarity plays into this. That's the Christian moral principle that tells us the most basic units should take the greatest authority. And that is, to say the family can do things, only the family can do. And the family needs to be privileged and recognized and honored proving the context in which these things will take place. Now, even if you're teaching biology in the schools, and you're going to have some crossover in terms of basic reproductive issues that's very different than sex education. It's extremely different than sexuality education. It's light years from comprehensive sex or sexuality

education. And, you know, I think Christian churches do have a role here too. And for one thing, that would be helping parents, assisting families in producing materials, talking about how parents can encourage one another in this, and hopefully also creating something of a common front in Christian Bible-focused, gospel-committed congregations to know, yeah, we're pretty much in agreement that parents should take this responsibility, and here are some things that might help. And here are some truths just based in God's word. And that comes all the way back to the pulpit and the teaching and preaching ministry of the church. We're not against sex education as Christians. We're all for parents taking this responsibility with their children, and we're all

for equipping them in every way that we can, consistent with biblical truth in the Christian worldview. We should be against and we shouldn't be embarrassed to be against the revolution being pressed by the ideologues of sex education in the schools. And quite frankly, when someone tells you it is just this or just that, just remember, they love the word comprehensive. And remember, the word comprehensive means comprehensive. Folks, comprehend that. Well, all right, while we're thinking about some of these issues, I want to shift to something

that's related. It's not the same thing, but it is related. yesterday's edition of the New York Times ran a piece with the headline, The dangers of chatbot therapy for teenagers. It's by Ryan K. McBain at the Harvard Medical School. He is also a senior policy researcher at Rand, so high technology dimension to this as well. And the subhead in the article says young people are particularly susceptible to bad advice online.

All right, I think all of us looking at this from a Christian perspective would say, this is a big issue. And the very fact that it appears, a half-page article in the New York Times tells us that, yeah, it's a big issue. Harvard Medical School professor tells us, yeah, it's a big issue. I think just looking at the headline and the subhead, we know it's a big issue.

Chatbot therapy for teenagers? My heavens. Yes, that's exactly what's going on. And it turns out that there are platforms such as chat GPT. that teenagers are using through chatbots, and they're developing relationships with these chatbots, and these chatbots are being sought out for therapy. Now, the obvious first thought we have is this is nuts. What could possibly go wrong?

And the answer to that is everything. And the assumption of this article is that young people are going to have access to this technology. They're going to have the time and the privacy, I presume, with access to this technology to a Sikh chatbot therapy. but the research is already coming in and the evidence is coming in and unfortunately the headlines are coming in telling us that this is a recipe for disaster. Ryan Kay McBain, the author of the article, tells us, quote, on any given night, countless teenagers confide in artificial intelligence chatbots sharing their loneliness, anxiety, and despair with a digital companion who was always there and never judgmental. Okay, that tells you a lot right there. I'm not even sure if this professor

to medical school, put that in in order to prompt a moral alert, or if he just thought that was just part of the context. I think Christians should hear that as a moral alert. The next sentence is this. A survey by common sense media published last month found that 72% of American teenagers

said they'd used AI chatbots as companions. Now, again, the math, 72%. That's almost three quarters. nearly one-eighth has sought emotional or mental health support from them, a share that if scaled to the U.S. population would equal 5.2 million adolescents. In another recent study by Stanford researchers almost a quarter of student users of replica, an AI chatbot designed for companionship, reported turning to it for mental health support. Okay, so what could go wrong, according to the New York Times piece? What could go wrong, according to this Harvard Medical School professor? What could go wrong

is that these chatbots, these platforms are often giving what we would consider to be unwholesome, unhealthy, unhelpful advice. You'll notice that the word non-judgmental came in, never judgmental in the beginning. So what if a young person communicating with a chatbot, and I'm using the word communicating there in a way I'm not even sure is right, because I'm not sure we communicate with a chatbot, but that's how the word is used here. Whatever one does in relationship to a chatbot, however you're going to define it, that chatbot is not a trustworthy authority.

Now, of course, Christians have to start out by saying that chatbot's not a person. And so we're also talking about moral response here. So to put the issue bluntly, what if a young person, what if a teenager ask about self-destructive behavior? Well, the fact is, these chatbots are not necessarily going to respond in any way that anyone would consider sane or helpful. The article says, quote, for vulnerable teenagers, even fleeting exposure to unsafe guidance can make harmful behavior seem normal or provide dangerous how-to instructions. Let's just hear that again, dangerous how-to instructions. The New York Times also ran a news story in recent days, so I just mentioned that because it's just one newspaper that's evidently alert to these things and,

concerned about these things. Kashmir Hills, the reporter in this article, the headline is, a teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in. Turns out that this boy who had reached some point of despair over time, father found on his phone that he had been communicating with an AI chatbot, and this just took him deeper and deeper. And by the way, the chatbot supposedly had some protections against this kind of material being discussed, but, you know, teenagers are smart. This 16-year-old boy found a way around that by

suggesting that he was writing a fictional story about something rather than struggling with this himself. The chat bot just provided the material. Going back to the piece by the Harvard Medical School professor, you know, his assumption is teenagers are going to have access to AI and they're going to use AI, so we need to make it safer. That's the very first thing he argued. That's the very first thing he argues here. First, we need large-scale clinical trials focused on teenagers that evaluate AI chatbots both the standalone supports and adjuncts to human therapists. I just want to draw a line in this end and speak to Christian parents and say, I think that kind of language should scare you to death. I think the reality of this should have your attention front line. And a very idea, by the way,

that someone's going to do clinical, large-scale trials in order to try to make it safer? If that offers you reassurance, I think we're all fooling ourselves here. This is a huge problem. AI is a huge challenge. We're going to have to be talking about that, thinking about that as Christian, certainly more and more and with greater urgency. And I think also just the digital access of teenagers to this in privacy, where a father can, after tragedy, go back and reconstruct

ongoing so-called chats, engagements between a teenager and a chat bot that fueled destructive behavior. I can just assure you that reading these things is absolutely heartbreaking. It's also difficult to know exactly how to talk about them in a context like this, but I do feel the moral responsibility, and that's why I want to spend this time today. I think it would be irresponsible for Christians not to know about this and think about this and talk about this. as hard as it is to think about this, I think Christian parents need to hear about this with frontline urgency and frankly need to translate this kind of concern and your rightful concern about this into two things. Number one, you taking parental responsibility not just to come up with

a safer way for teenagers to engage these things, but to understand this has a front line for alarm emergency here, in which case a teenager along with a chatbot can end up not only in places that are all kinds of morally confusing and worse, but in places that are deadly. And let's just state that matter, frankly. The second thing is the parents take the responsibility to understand, you know, teenagers are looking for this kind of conversation. This is perhaps one of the most heartbreaking things to me. The teenagers whose chats are found after a tragedy, the teenagers who are appearing in these articles,

they clearly have huge questions on their mind. They have huge issues they're struggling with. They have huge needs, even huge needs for conversation. How heartbreaking is it that they turn to a chatbot? You can also understand that what the chatbot offers is non-judgmentalism. That's the first sentence in this article, as if that's a good thing. The other thing the chatbot offers is anonymity in a bit of distance. You know, this is different than talking to mom or talking to dad.

or talking to both of them together or talking to a brother. You know, it's just different. Talking to a youth pastor, all this is just very, very different. But I think addressing the issue of access is first, but also we need to surround young people. We need to absolutely inundate young people with not only opportunities for meaningful conversation, but frankly, opportunities that may even annoy them. but opportunities they need that could make the difference between life and death. The distance between parents and adolescents at this stage of life is something that, you know,

emotionally is a reality. It's a socially, it's a reality, far more a reality than it should be in many cases. But when it comes to dealing with the innermost thoughts of their hearts, this is something, I just want to say to Christian parents, this is where you lean in over against the spirit of the age. against the technologies at hand, you lean in without apology. And I think Christian churches, once again, as in sex education, need to do everything we can to have conversations with parents in order to equip Christian families to deal with these things and to do so, evidently, with some very needed urgency.

Let's face it, sometimes it would be easier not to talk about these things. I think we know it would be dangerous not to talk about these things. I think for Christians, I think we understand it's even wrong not to talk about these things. Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.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 sbtsk.org. For information on Boyce College, go to voicecollege.com.

I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.