The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in the U.S. v. Skrmetti to Loving v. Virginia case regarding minors having access to medical treatments that would physically alter their birth sex. “American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Chase Strangio—a female who says she identifies as male” is arguing “that Tennessee’s law banning Frankensteinian medical experiments on kids violates federal law by discriminating on the basis of sex.” Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who said she did not know what a woman is because “I’m not a biologist,” suggested that a Tennessee law banning puberty blockers for minors constitutes sex discrimination. If Justice Jackson can’t define what a woman is, how can she identify sexual discrimination?
Then there was this from Justice Sonia Sotomayor: “Every medical treatment has a risk, even taking aspirin. There’s always going to be a percentage of the population under any medical treatment that’s going to suffer a harm. So, the question in my mind is not, ‘do policymakers decide whether one person’s life is more valuable than the millions of others who get relief from this treatment?’”
The American justice system has lost its mind. Judges and lawyers do not have a basis on which to argue anything. We are so far removed from the day when cases like this would have been laughed out of court based on fundamental biblical creation realities. The theory of something-from-nothing origins has poisoned everything. First principles do not exist because the courts have banned anything related to religion generally and in particular biblical absolutes. Once God’s definitions of everything are dismissed at the presuppositional level, everything goes. The courts have repeatedly ruled that religion is excluded from jurisprudence. The ACLU lawyer should argue that since there is no God or no right to teach there is a god in our nation’s educational institution (which the ACLU has been at the forefront defending) or appeal to Him in the courts, to be consistent, no one should be permitted to tell anyone else what to do. The courts are in a quagmire of a moral free-for-all. Some of the justices are making rational arguments based on the remnants of a discarded world view. I cover this in my book Why It Might be OK to Eat Your Neighbor: If Atheism is Right Can Anything be Wrong?
Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor
Love your neighbor, or Eat your neighbor? The most damning assessment of a matter-only cosmos devoid of a Creator is that we got to this place in our evolutionary history by acts of violence whereby the strong conquered the weak with no one to support or condemn them. Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor repeatedly raises the issue of accounting for the conscience, good and evil, and loving our neighbor. It’s shocking to read what atheists say about a cosmos devoid of meaning and morality.
Buy NowWe’re seeing the consistency of what secularism has wrought among some (maybe many) young women. As reported in a Newsweek article, “several liberal women have gotten sterilized or plan to, blaming their decision to become infertile on Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election.” A 39-year-old from Washington state told Newsweek, “I am not happy that I felt forced into a surgery I did not want to alter my body, I feel like the election tied my hands and forced me to be sterilized—that is horrible.” Her husband had a vasectomy in 2021.
A few years ago, my wife and I watched the 1941 film The Little Foxes with the always delightful Teresa Wright. The title comes from the Bible:
Catch the foxes for us,
The little foxes that spoil the vines.
For our vines have tender grapes. (Song of Solomon 2:15)
The same passage inspired the 1945 film Our Vines Have Tender Grapes that has a different worldview perspective that counters and serves as a remedy to the outcome of the family in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes. Our Vines Have Tender Grapes was ignored for decades because Dalton Trumbo, who wrote the screenplay, refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
In a contemporary review [Our Vines Have Tender Grapes] for The New York Times, critic Thomas M. Pryor called the film “beautifully made” and wrote: “This is an eloquent and touchingly simple outpouring of the love in a little girl’s heart … If you can watch Margaret O’Brien’s ecstatic expression without emotion then “Our Vines Have Tender Grapes” was not meant for you. Pryor concluded his review by writing: “It is just unfortunate that this splendid entertainment had to arrive so near the end of the school vacation period, for the youngsters (not to overlook their elders) couldn’t have asked for anything better.”
Both stories are about families and legacies, the fifth point in the covenant model, and the ability to extend dominion.
Every generation faces the same problem: How does it transfer what’s been accomplished in one generation to the next generation and beyond? In The Little Foxes, it was by hook or crook. One reviewer wrote:
One of the most caustic, and yet, exceptionally engaging films ever made, THE LITTLE FOXES (1941) is the story of a family torn apart by greed. It features Bette Davis in one of the most villainous roles of her career, and exceptional performances by a host of first-rate supporting actors.
Our Vines Have Tender Grapes is “about a Norwegian immigrant farmer in Wisconsin, Martinius Jacobson (Edward G. Robinson), his wife Bruna (Agnes Moorehead) and their seven-year-old daughter Selma (Margaret O’Brien), who is often bedeviled by her playmate and five-year-old cousin Arnold (Jackie ‘Butch’ Jenkins). Martinius simply wants to work his land and be a loving husband and father to his family.”
There are many little foxes that can spoil the vines and affect the legacy of a worldview. The most insidious “little foxes” began with the sexual revolution. It’s become more than free and uninhibited sex, although it was that. Today, sex has been redefined in numerous ways that end up being legacy killers.
First, having few or no children will literally kill off a family’s legacy. You don’t need to have a Dugger-size family, but size does matter. It’s great to see many young couples in our church having so many children. It makes me hopeful. While my wife and I only had two sons, we have nine grandchildren.
Second, I was sad to read about a Hollywood family embracing their child’s “gender” transition.
Gabrielle Union [one of the biggest supporters of abortion from Hollywood] and Dwyane Wade were the pictures of proud parents when recently, their 13-year-old daughter Zaya had a one-on-one Zoom with none other than Michelle Obama. “We were all bawling!” recalls Union, 48. “She was so amazing and dynamic, and to be able to hold your own with Michelle Obama, it was so impactful.”
Zaya has been impactful in more ways than one since she came out as transgender last year, a positive voice for youths living their authentic lives. (People)
This is sick. It’s a form of self-malediction, a self-curse that this family wants to spread to vulnerable and impressionable young people. “Authentic lives”? I don’t think so. Nothing could be more unauthentic than mutilating a person’s future.
Ellen Page is another example of self-malediction, literally cutting off her future. Here’s how Wikipedia describes her: “Elliot Page (formerly Ellen Page; born February 21, 1987) is a Canadian actor and producer.” First, she came out as a lesbian and then as transgender. Like Union and Wade’s child, Page is celebrated as a role model for young people. Then in “In March 2021, Page became the first openly trans man [sic] to appear on the cover of Time magazine.” She’s had “top surgery,” the surgical removal of her breasts.
Thinking Straight in a Crooked World
The nursery rhyme "There Was a Crooked Man" is an appropriate description of how sin affects us and our world. We live in a crooked world of ideas evaluated by crooked people. Left to our crooked nature, we can never fully understand what God has planned for us and His world. God has not left us without a corrective solution. He has given us a reliable reference point in the Bible so we can identify the crookedness and straighten it.
Buy NowHere’s the pay off, point four of the covenant model: sanctions (positive and negative)”
[F]or the past 30 years or so, conservatives — particularly those of the right-wing red-state Christian strain — have been out-breeding liberals by a margin of at least 20 percent, if not far more…. One theory goes like this: Libs are generally more socially conscious and hence tend to actually give a modicum of thought to what it means to pop out a brood of children in this modern overstuffed age. Also, many other liberal bohos [Bohemians] are (admittedly) happy selfish suckwads who want all the modern booty for themselves and won’t want to give up the Ducati [motorcycle] and the plasma [television] and the biannual trip to Cinque Terre [Five Lands on the Italian Riviera] for the sake of a pod of rug rats and 15 grand a year (each) for private kindergarten. Translation: Libs just aren’t procreating like they could/should be.[1]
Childlessness, abortion, homosexuality, and now sexual mutilation are hallmarks of the destructive worldview of the Left.
Here’s something from Vogue UK:
Is having a child an act of environmental vandalism or an investment in the future? Is it possible to live an ecologically responsible life while adding yet another person to our overstretched planet? Can I get away with it if I just never learn to drive, never get a dog and keep wearing the same three pairs of jeans for the rest of my life?… While gestating my son, and probably every day since, I have wondered whether having children is, in itself, an ecologically sound or unsound decision.
Liberal columnist Josh Barro said what I was thinking: “These people are completely insane.” But they are becoming more consistent with the inevitability of their God-denying worldview. There’s a Bible verse for that: “But he who sins against Me injures himself; All those who hate Me love death” (Prov. 8:36).
[1] Mark Morford, “When Liberals Rule the World: Stats say the GOP is dying. But red-staters are breeding like drunken ferrets. Who wins?,” SFGate (March 28, 2007).