The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Tuesday, October 13, 2006. I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Here is one of the most important headlines I have seen in a long time. Listen to this from the Washington Post. Quote, number of teens who identify themselves as gay or bisexual is in free fall. Scare quotes put around free fall. Casey Parks is the reporter. He tells us, quote, young teenagers are less likely to identify as lesbian, gay, are bisexual than they were a few years ago, according to a new analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Data. The decline, he goes on to say, and I'm quoting here, the decline is particularly striking among ninth grade girls, according to Gene Twinge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, who published her analysis of the 2025

Starting point is 00:00:54 data on her substack Generation Tech. In 2021, 30 percent of ninth grade girls identified as lesbian or bisexual last year, 17% did. So that's almost a 50% cut. Now, this is one of the most predictable headlines of our recent times. And that is because we have known that these numbers have been wildly inflated. But there's more going on here than just inflated figures. What's going on here is the distorted reality. So let's just keep in mind what we're talking about here. We're talking about teenagers who identify as LGBTQ. We're talking about data. It's not coming from an activist organization. It's coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is being interpreted as a major problem, a major question that demands an answer. The question is this. How could there be

Starting point is 00:01:42 such a free fall in these numbers? We're talking about numbers that are now a cut of about 50 percent. They're cut in about half. In particular, it says, particularly striking among ninth grade girls. Okay. So there are a lot of issues going on here. First of all, one of the major issues behind the LGBTQ activism, one of their major methodological aims, part of their core strategy is to exaggerate the number of Americans who are involved. And so one of the things they've been trying to argue for decades now is the heterosexuality, heteronormativity is what they call it ideologically, is not as normative as people want to think. Instead, it goes back to the Kinsey spectrum as well. You know, there are all these potential positions on a spectrum from heterosexual to homosexual, exclusiv.

Starting point is 00:02:30 and most people, Kinsey had argued, you know, a generation, two generations ago, were somewhere on that spectrum. Well, yeah, most people are somewhere on that spectrum. There are largely, the vast majority, clearly heterosexual, heteronormative. There has always been, at least this side of Genesis 3 in the fall, there's always been some evidence of the distortion of human sexuality and gender identity and all the rest. but what we have seen over the course of the last generation is LGBTQ activism saying these are huge numbers. We're talking about all kinds of people. And especially when it comes to young people, they've been making the argument, look, look how once you start to speak openly about LGBTQ issues, once this becomes a part of the culture and it's affirmed rather than condemned, you're going to discover that vast numbers, a vast percentage of young people are actually not going to be identified as. strictly heterosexual, they're going to be somewhere on a spectrum. Okay, now we are told that in the course of just a few years that the number of ninth grade girls, here's a crucial category,

Starting point is 00:03:37 we're not just talking about teenagers, we're not just talking about teenage boys and teenage girls, we're talking about teenage girls in particular, and even more specifically, ninth grade teenage girls, we're being told that the number self-reporting as anything other than just, well, straight heterosexual, it has fallen from 30% to 17%. So that's almost half. And honestly, I think that 17% number is going to fall even further. You look at the distribution in the larger population. There is no way that number is above three or four or five percent at the maximum.

Starting point is 00:04:11 When you're just talking about the ceiling, when you're talking about what the LGBTQ activists have been pressing for years, they've been saying, look, we just need to explode the very idea of heteronormativity. We need to deserate. We need to decentralize, well, as a Christian I would say, they want to decentralize creation order. They want to decentralize even the physical reality of male and female among human beings. The article's focus on the data concerning ninth grade girls is in the second paragraph of the articles. That tells you something. Journalistically, when something is cited

Starting point is 00:04:44 that early in the article, then it is, it's a whopper. It's a big thing. It's explosive. And this is. Once again, I just read to you the line, quote, the decline is particularly striking among ninth grade girls. In 2021, 30% of ninth grade girls identified as lesbian or bisexual last year, 17% did. End quote. Okay, if you've been listening to the briefing, I have talked about how moral change happens, how the sexual revolution has furthered its aims. And one of the key things we have been looking at is the fact that there is a reality of social contagion when it comes to identifying as bisexual. or non-binary, you just go down the entire list. It tends to happen in rather predictable patterns.

Starting point is 00:05:30 And when I say social contagion, what I mean is this. One of the things we've been observing, and we've been talking about it repeatedly on the briefing, we come back to it when this issue arises, it is the fact that the numbers aren't evenly distributed. So as you're looking at, say, ninth grade girls, it turns out that there are, I'll just use a lay term for it. They're pods where you have this increased identification. And one of the things you know about adolescence, and in particular, the female socialization and adolescence, is that there tend to be social contagions. It's not just about gender and sexuality, you know, non-binary identity or even lesbian or bisexual, you just name it. I mean, this is something that has been noted for a long time. And it is also related to

Starting point is 00:06:20 even some other kinds of issues and behaviors where, well, let's just look at it this way. If you're looking at a very tight social structure, it is hard to imagine a tighter social structure than the social structure of ninth grade girls. Now, just to be honest, there are a lot of us that at least half of us who have never been ninth grade girls. But we have been around ninth grade girls. And some of us have parented ninth grade girls. It is such a sweet thing. But it is also a time in which there is maximum vulnerability. And you know, you could say, well, why is it not ninth grade boys? It's because they tend to be two things that are absolutely crucial here. Number one, they tend not to be a part of a socialized pod in the same way that

Starting point is 00:07:04 girls do. That's just not the typical adolescent male behavior. It's frankly not the typical adult male behavior either. But there is something else beyond that. And that is that even just, without going into biology and anatomy, it is really difficult for most adolescent boys to be confused about this. It just is far less a social or a personal reality. There's more to it even than that. The social distance between, let's just say, straight adolescent males and other identified adolescent males, that's a greater social space than between heterosexual girls, adolescent girls and non-heterosexual-identified adolescent girls, at least in something like a public school setting. So that's something that's been pretty well documented in the literature. And I think

Starting point is 00:07:55 anyone who was in high school probably understands exactly what I'm talking about. Now, Gene Twinge has mentioned in this, and she's been a guest on thinking in public. She's offered a lot in terms of these kinds of conversations. Her Substack article, Generation Tech, about this is really interesting. I want you to see what she said. She says, quote, it really does look like a free fall, but what's causing it is unclear, okay? So both of those, both of those causes, both of those phrases are important. It really does look like a free fall. Yes, it certainly does. You're talking about just a few years. You're talking about plunging numbers. And I think even the 17% is probably pretty radically inflated. But then she says what's causing it is unclear. Now, she's operating out of her own, you know, professional expertise here. And so I guess she's not. yet clear with a hypothesis as to what's causing it. But I can simply say, I think once a social contagion happens, it doesn't last forever. And I think you see this with various other patterns related to social contagion. You saw this in medieval France in certain kinds of things where there would all of a sudden be a contagion, you know, witchcraft scares and all kinds of things.

Starting point is 00:09:02 A lot of these are detected by historians as being something like a social contagion. The article states write out, quote, the rate of boys who identify as gay or bisexual has remained roughly the same over the past decade. End quote. Again, pretty much predictable. Here's what follows, quote. But a few years ago, after the pandemic shutdowns, the CDC data showed big upticks in the percentage of high school girls identifying as lesbian or bisexual. Within a few years, those rates began to drop, but only by a few percentage points. Though the overall numbers have continued to decline, older teenagers' sexual orientation is held relatively stable. they are still more likely to identify as lesbian or bisexual than teenagers were before the pandemic.

Starting point is 00:09:44 End quote. Once again, I'm not going to dismiss that as a continued part of the social contagion. We don't know. We're not able really to look at these figures and say, well, we know what the correct number would be. The big point here is that the numbers that have been offered by the LGBTQ activists and touted by people in government, politicians, and others, they turned out to be as false as you thought they were and as falsifiable as they turned out. to be. All right, free fall again. That's an amazingly candid term. It's going to be interesting to see where we go from here. It is also interesting to note that LGBT activists are trying to respond to this saying, you know, part of this is predictable and a part of this is just the kind of prejudice that comes against LGBTQ people. This is something we're going to have to continue to watch. But the very

Starting point is 00:10:32 fact that the Washington Post ran an article with the headline number of teens who identify themselves as gay or bisexual is in free fall. The very fact that headline happened is something we need to notice. All right, now we're going to shift to the trans issue in the Democratic Party, because this is now a really interesting test case. Headline in the New York Times, Democrats try to shift attention off trans issue. Headline, coming from Reuters, this one in USA Today, swing state Democrats split on trans rights. Headline from the Guardian in the United Kingdom, Marcy Capter, longest serving Congresswoman

Starting point is 00:11:08 bid for another House term roiled by anti-trans ad. Headline from the Washington Post, Tala Rico, struggles to clarify positions on transgender rights amid GOP attacks. Every one of these turns out to be important. Let's look at that New York Times front page article first on Democrats trying to shift attention. We've talked about this, and it's very hard for the Democrats to shift attention off this issue. It is because so many of them don't have any kind of clear answer. Just a matter of days ago, we talked about the sandwiching plan that some public relations and political analysts have been suggesting to the Democrats. You just make a very positive statement about loving everybody. You make a middle statement

Starting point is 00:11:48 in which you avoid answering the question and then you come back to just affirming everybody and hope America forgets you or asked the question. Okay. But then you have this kind of article. It's an interesting analysis by Tim Bulk of the New York Times. And it points out that the Democrats are in a particular position because the Democratic Party is so committed to the LGBTQ agenda and quite frankly has given the activist community in the LGBTQ plus, plus plus plus world, has given them control over so much of the Democratic Party's policies and procedures. But as this article says in several of the country's most competitive congressional battlegrounds, well, you've got candidates who are being very much addressed with the question.

Starting point is 00:12:33 Now, there's another part of the background here, and that is that in the 2024, presidential election, the Republican strategy, the Trump campaign's strategy, was to identify Democrats with the transgender issue. And it was stunningly successful. And so there are Democrats who say, well, now we're on to that. We're onto that strategy. So we're going to counter it. Well, the whole point of this article is it's really hard to counter the transgender controversy if you have no clear answer. Not only that statistics show that the vast majority of Americans are actually pretty clear-minded on this. And that includes even what we are told by many pollsters and people doing the research is a majority of those who vote

Starting point is 00:13:14 Democratic. But certainly you take the electorate as a whole. You know, most of them have enough moral sense. Thanks be to God. Even today, that boys should not be on girls' teams, that boys should not be in girls' locker rooms, you know, et cetera, et cetera. One of the things we need to note here, and this shows up both in the Reuters piece and in the New York Times piece, is that some Democrats are trying to just say, well, let's minimize the territory. we're talking about. And so some of them are saying, well, you know, I don't think boys should be in girls' spaces. In other words, they're going to talk about this just when it comes maybe to certain well-identified contexts. But there are others who can't even go that far. They can't even say,

Starting point is 00:13:53 when you're talking about, say, middle school or high school, you shouldn't have biological males in female spaces. So instead, they're trying to come up with all kinds of ways to handle this. You also have at least some candidates who are trying to clarify, without clarifying. And that, by the way, is a political trick. Now, I want to give you a clear example, and you're not going to be surprised by this. It's James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in the Senate race there in Texas, who's been getting away with this. But even the liberal press, even the secular press, beginning to notice, he's really not answering the question. So here's a tricky thing. I want you to hear what he said, because he previously was just pro-LGBQ in every way

Starting point is 00:14:32 imaginable, even saying, you know, there's a, there are all these multiplicities of human gender identities and all the rest, he had given absolutely no support for policies that would say only biological males in biological spaces, biological females in female spaces. So even the New York Times notices his slipperiness. We are told that he told Fox News in September, quote, I oppose trans athletes playing in girl sports if it endanger safety or fairness, end quote. Okay, okay. Notice everything really hinges on an if. And so he appears almost to be saying something.

Starting point is 00:15:11 And indeed, if he didn't say the words that followed, if he just said, I oppose trans athletes playing in girls sports, well, that would be a morally significant statement. But he comes back after that and says, if it endangers safety or fairness, you know, he's just left himself a barn door wide open. Because in his judgment, he can just say, I don't think this is a safety issue. I don't think this is a fairness issue. And you can see exactly where this is headed. Now, I mentioned Marcy Kaptur, who's been the longest serving woman in Congress now for some time. She's a pretty liberal Democrat. But on this issue, she has now come out and said, no, I don't think biological males should be in female spaces.

Starting point is 00:15:50 She actually said, quote, here's the truth. I voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools because parents know what's best for their kids. And boys should not play in girl sports, end quote. Okay. Now, she's in a very tight race because of redistricting. So she was in a pretty safe race for a very long time, but she's facing some headwinds now. There's no way she's going to get elected on a pro-trans agenda when it comes to, you know, when it comes to children and adolescents, etc. So she really did give a clear statement.

Starting point is 00:16:22 Let's compare that to the Talrico statement who said, you know, if it impairs safety or fairness. Here you have a very clear statement. Here's the truth. Parents know what's best for their kids and boys should not play in girl sports, period. Okay, now here's the interesting thing. She's been kind of, you know, the favorite candidate of the Democratic left. But now there are some of the Democratic left who are saying, you know, that is an unacceptable surrender. And so she may actually have a fall off in support coming from the far left.

Starting point is 00:16:51 It's also interesting that in the article in the Guardian and in other major media about her situation, it's very interesting to see people who are basically looking at this and saying, you know, she came right out and said it, but she also sort of said she said it because she has to say it. So what does it mean if she said it when she said she had to say it? Does she mean it? I just think it's really interesting that she makes the Guardian all the way across the Atlantic just for saying it, even in an article that says no one actually knows if she means it. The article in the Guardian, which again is a left-wing newspaper. That's what makes this interesting. The article in the Guardian points to other Democratic candidates. who they see basically as surrendering on the issue. This includes Annie Andrews, the Democratic Senate candidate running against Darlene Graham, and she's not been particularly effective. That is, Darlene Graham's not been particularly effective on the stump and in debates. The big thing here is that South Carolina is a very conservative state. So this is where things are set up for a very interesting possibility. Okay, so let's just say Annie Andrews, who's a pediatrician, she ran for Congress before. Now she's running for the Senate. She was running for the Senate against Lindsey Graham was her

Starting point is 00:18:00 expectation. You know, long-term Republican incumbent, massively influential. There was very little chance she was going to defeat Senator Lindsey Graham. But once the senator died and his sister was appointed to that position and then President Trump encouraged her to run, now she's running. The fact is that Annie Andrews now has a real possibility of winning the race. And that, of course, would be a giant issue in the U.S. Senate in terms of the battle for control. But here's the thing. The voters in South Carolina who now hear Annie Andrews speak to this issue are going to remember what she said. So here's what has happened. She broke with her party and says she supports this kind of ban. It's going to be really interesting because her party, if she's elected, if she's elected

Starting point is 00:18:47 if it comes one of the two U.S. senators in South Carolina, she's eventually going to have to vote on these issues. And guess what? The voters of South Carolina are not pro-trans. The overwhelming majority are real clear on this issue. And so that means it's not so much the Republicans who are in a vice on this issue because the Republicans actually are very clear. It's the Democrats who are in a real problematic position here. And once again, let's just remember, they put themselves in this position by selling out to the LGBTQ agenda. Once you sell out, it's pretty hard to unsell. Is this all interesting? As I said, by the way, the LGBTQ community, which really has had a vice grip on the Democratic Party, they've been walking in lockstep.

Starting point is 00:19:31 They're concerned about this. The Reuters article says, quote, LGBTQ plus advocates have criticized such language, saying misgendering transgender women as men represents a betrayal of the party's LGBT plus supporters at a vulnerable moment, end quote. I want us to note something here that I don't think the major media have noticed at all. This isn't just a political issue. It's not even what you might say is just a moral issue. It's not even just a biological issue. It's a huge worldview issue because the position you come to on this kind of issue, it's got to be tied to a lot of other basic convictions.

Starting point is 00:20:08 It's got to be tied to other basic truths that frame your worldview. And if you are a Democrat and you really are comfortable in the modern Democratic Party right down to its movement towards the DSA and all the rest, If that's who you are, it's really hard to understand how you can come out with a statement like this. And at very least, it's a very interesting clash of worldviews that we as Christians need to note. Because you just look at it and you go, this is a real political predicament. But you know, it's a lot more than that. And it's really incumbent upon Christians, pun intended, to notice how much more there is to it than the mainstream media are noticing.

Starting point is 00:20:48 Okay. Speaking of creation order, and yes, that's exactly what we've been speaking of. I want to tell you sometimes the glory of God in creation order just comes out in a big, highly visible, undeniable way. And I want to offer you a headline, this will make you happy. Here's a headline, U.S. sailors meet newborn children after nearly a year away. This is about all the sailors on the aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, as it has now returned to its home port, and more than 100 children born while parents were on that ship. They met their parent for the very first time. And there are just these glorious photographs. Maybe you've seen some of the videos. You talk about

Starting point is 00:21:31 creation order. How sweet is it to see a mother with a baby holding the baby up when dad comes off the ship. And then you see that dad break order and just run across that pavement to meet that baby and that mother for the first time. And, you know, given the modern Navy, there are moms and dads involved in this, but the overwhelming majority are dads. It's just so sweet. How can the secular world look at that and see nothing more than an interesting, you know, relationship of multicellular organisms, you know, reproducing?

Starting point is 00:22:03 It's so much more than that. It is so sweet. How you can look at it and not be tremendously moved. I can't explain that. I think indeed the fact that, well, you know, one of the articles I have here, in which you have attention to these newborn children. You're reunited with the sailors off the ship. It comes from the telegraph in London.

Starting point is 00:22:22 The glory of God and creation order, the happiness of these parents, the rightness of all of this, the sweetness of these babies, the wonder of a parent's love, a mother and a father's love for a baby, their love for each other, and then that little tiny life,

Starting point is 00:22:38 by definition, not one of them could be more than a year old. You just look at that and you say, something, something is right in this picture. It's undeniably right. It's gloriously right. And the reason why I wanted to talk about that today is because I think it's important for Christians that we not only recognize the grave danger of violations of creation order, but also that we praise God and don't fail to see the glory of God in creation order in something as basic as this. seeing those parents meet their babies for the first time after serving nobly the cause of their nation in the course of the service with the U.S. Navy, you just look at that and you go, this is so sweet.

Starting point is 00:23:22 This is something we ought not to miss. And I just look at it and say, you know, I just think a lot of people are looking at this and they see everything, but what we as Christians just have to see explicitly, and that is not only the sweetness of all of this, but the glory of God. But I want to close today with an invitation to those who are considering a call to ministry and concerning what it means to prepare for ministry. Southern Seminary is going to be holding a very important preview day on October the 23rd. So it's coming up just days from now. Southern Seminary is committed to providing a theological education that is trusted for truth, grounded in the Word of God, led by trusted faculty, taught by that faculty designed to prepare you for a

Starting point is 00:24:05 lifetime of faithfulness. If you're sensing God's call to minister or you know someone who is, make plans to join us for Preview Day at Southern Seminary, October 23rd. You'll be able to meet the faculty. I'm looking forward to meeting those who come will let you tour the campus, experience firsthand what it means to be committed to answer the call and then to prepare for that call. Your registration includes two nights of complementary meals and lodging. Your registration fee is waived. If you use the promo code, you're going to know this one of the briefing. Just one word the briefing. Make plans to join us, register at sbtsd.edu forward slash preview. I'll hope to see you there. Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com.

Starting point is 00:24:47 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 sbtz.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.

The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Tuesday, October 13, 2026

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