Rick Green: 0:12
Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and the Culture. Thanks for joining us today on WallBuilders. I'm Rick Green, america's Constitution Coach, here with David Barton and Tim Barton. Tim's a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. David, of Course, america's premier historian and all three of us are thankful for you in the audience joining us today, because we want you to learn and then we want you to go out and do something about it. Not only learn truth, but defend truth, stand for that truth. It's so important for you to do that in our culture today and we've always, you know every program we try to bring you good information, new information, commentary on what's going on in the culture, but then we expect you to go out and do something with it. That's our duty, every single one of us as citizens, to preserve what we've been given and honor those who came before us and the price that they paid so that we could have this freedom. Alright, it's my favorite day of the week. We get to do some good news today, so we're going to get through a pile of good news from David and Tim Barton. They've been working on this. Compiling these, David, let's roll.

David Barton: 1:05
This one starts with Oregon State University. Now, the good news is not Oregon State University or what it was doing, but it is how people responded to it. So what we've got going here is Oregon State University, which I guess that's, is that Woke State University? I don't know how much... How do you... how can a Woke University be woke? Whatever... this is, five degrees of woke, whatever this is. So you know, if Berkeley's woke, these guys are way above that, as this article is going to show. So what they were doing, they were doing a survey, their researchers were doing a survey on identity. So identity, gender, etc. And that, obviously, is about the only thing they care about and that's what their surveys tend to be about. So they're doing this. And after it was all over and done and they tabulated all the results, they had a lot of their researchers, and they talked about they had some real mental health issues with their researchers because they were so shocked and offended by what was said by the respondents and there were 349 respondents to the survey and about one out of seven just apparently, according to these guys attacked them, threatened their safety, security, and so these people... and I say that because their level of what triggered them to feel insecure and unsafe is so laughable that when I cover why these guys got bent out of shape and I'm explaining too much. So let me just go into what's happened. So the final name on the report was called Attack Helicopters and White Supremacy, Interpreting Malicious Responses to an Online Questionnaire about Transgender Undergraduate Engineering and Computer Science Student Experiences. Now, that's the name of their survey. So I mean it takes two breaths to say the name of the survey, but they're already talking about malicious responses. So here's what happened. They go through and they're doing this student survey, and when they asked about gender, 24% of respondents identified their gender with these kind of statements. They said what's your gender? And one out of four, these are the various answers they got: I'm a helicopter, I'm an Apache attack helicopter, I'm a pansexual attack helicopter, I'm an F-16 fighter jet. One student said there's only two genders or I'm a human being. Another kid wrote I'm just here for the gift card to finish the survey. So there's just these corny answers, and the kids had no interest in giving these woke people their viewpoints. And then, when they did get the viewpoint, here's what one of the kids said, what else do you want to know. Do you want to know what I ate for breakfast? This question is unnecessary. And another student said come on, man, these questions are stupid. So the kids just weren't particularly impressed with the questions and one of the answers says well, like all transgenders, my disability is the inability to come to terms with biological reality, in other words, there's only two genders. So he said this is madness. And another student said my country is run by communists, so they went through this and apparently had to treat the researchers for all sorts of mental health issues that this so threatened them to have to have these kind of answers came back. This is the response that the university put out. It says the malicious words and the slurs directed toward our research team had a profound impact on moral and mental health, particularly for one of our graduate student researchers who was the primary data analyst. As a transgender woman who was already in therapy for anxiety and depression regarding online anti-trans rhetoric, managing the study's data collection caused significant personal distress and time had to be taken off from the project to heal her from traumatic harm. Just getting answers back, like you know, just a stupid question. So let me give you stupid answers, but I love the fact that 24% of these folks are willing to say I'm not giving you a woke answer. This is ridiculous. It has nothing to do with my education and I just I love the fact that there were that percentage of young people willing to respond the way they did. Now it's... I don't know that you say it's good news to see the response to the researchers, but it's good news to see people at least getting fed up with this nonsense and be willing to push back, and that's at Oregon State University.

Rick Green: 5:37
Yeah, that's what I was going to say is don't forget where this was, right? So some people might say only 24 percent had a problem with it? Well, if it's 24 percent at that university, that that is good news for sure. Alright, Tim, where you going with our first piece of good news, or second piece of good news, your first piece of good news?

Tim Barton: 5:52
Well, this one is in New and the title the article says pro-life advocates defeat New York Attorney General Leticia James restore right to save babies outside Planned Parenthood. The short of the article is that there was a man named Jim Havens and he was outside a Planned Parenthood abortion facility at University Avenue in Rochester. He is the founder of an organization, ROC Love Will End Abortion, and as he was there he was forbidden to share any information about abortion or other life affirming alternatives outside of the Planned Parenthood clinic or that facility, and so there was a lawsuit. In fact, the Thomas Moore Society is the one who represented and defended him in this and kind of cutting to the end of the chase, both the state and the county, both were shown to be wrong. Now, as it unfolds a little bit, a couple things worth notice. Initially, they lost the initial court decision. The federal court of the Western District of New York denied him his rights to be able to be on a public sidewalk and have a public conversation and engage in free speech, and what happened is the court actually dismissed Mr Havens case with prejudice. So definitely not an aside. The Thomas Moore Society appealed and went to the United States Court of Appeals for the second circuit and once it was there, at that point the court reversed the lower court's decision, they declared that Jim Havens and ROC who were not named parties in litigation, resulting in an earlier injunction which is what the attorney general saying, hey, we have injunctions, you people can't be there. Well there was a 2005 injunction that had nothing to do with him or his organization. They said see, this injunction says you can't be here. That was a decade plus maybe almost two decades before him. The injunction [had] nothing to do with him. Anyway, all that to say, the good news is that his rights were restored, and one of the things that we so often talk about on good news Friday, when we have these victories for the Constitution, these religious liberty wins, is the thing that we have been lacking for maybe several decades is people with the courage and willingness to stand up and the boldness to take and fight these cases. We saw just a year and a half ago at this point, coach Joe Kennedy, the football coach from Bermerton Washington who had been fired seven years ago for taking a knee after a football game and praying, and he was told you can't do that in public, even though the football games over, you're an employee of the school and that's government, and you can't pray where kids can see you. He ends up getting fired. Well, he wins his case the Supreme Court last summer, and the reason he was able to win the case is because he was willing to fight for six plus years to see this case won. And so when we see cases like this one where there's a pro-life advocate up in New York and you have the state attorney general who's not open, generally speaking, to free speech or religious liberty or the pro-life movement, and so they target pro-life advocates. When pro-life advocates have the courage to stand up, we so often see these victories, even though it can take a long time. Where he lost his first court case, they had to appeal. They finally went to the court of appeals. But this, to me, is continued good news, as we are seeing more and more people around the nation continue to stand up for their constitutional rights, for their God given rights, for religious liberty and things that are foundational to this nation. So that's good news coming out of New York.

Rick Green: 9:19
Good news, on both fronts, like you said. First, the people are willing to stand up for it. Secondly, that we're winning and seeing more and more of that across the country. Took a long time to get to this point. A lot of ground was tilled and and seeds planted and watered, and we're getting to see some of the results now. All right, David. Next piece of good news?

David Barton: 9:35
This one comes... I talked about Oregon State University and how liberal they are. Oregon State University apparently has a branch university in Texas. I think we call it the University of Texas at Austin. I think, okay, so it's not Oregon State, but it's as crazy as Oregon State. That's Texas's version of Oregon State University, is the University of Texas at Austin, now also in the state. One of the rival universities is Texas A&M University and they are... they have their own problems with wokeness, but not at the level that University of Texas has. So Texas A&M recently needed to hire a journalism director. They've got a new journalism program there at Texas A&M and they wanted to hire someone with good credentials and lots of experience and great resume, and so they reached over to a tenured professor over at the University of Texas, and this tenured professor over at the University of Texas was a former New York Times senior editor. So that's a lot of journalism experience, but also a big proponent of DEI and DEI is diversity, equity and inclusion. And this is the big woke thing. And this is, man, this is really bad stuff. This is where everything is framed in terms of it's all about race and every institution is racist and you need to have all this, this woke viewpoint. So she's been really big over at the University of Texas in their journalism program, tenured professor there, and they're looking to bring her over to Texas A&M University. So as that process started, people over at Texas A&M University said no, no, wait a minute. You, do realize that she is a huge advocate for DEI, which is framing everything in context of its racist institutions, and her emphasis was the intersection of race with journalism. And so it was all about this race-colored lens that she sees the world through. And so as the people over at Texas A&M started finding out more about where she was on DEI, they started kind of changing her... the offer that they made to her to come over and head the school, and they kind of started reducing some of the perks that were going to get and ended up to where they said look, we can give you a one year deal as a professor, but we're not going to tenure you, and we can give you a three year deal as the head of the Journalism Department, but you got to understand that we could fire you at any time. You get absolutely no protection. And the reason is, is Texas A&M University is trying to follow through what the Texas Legislature passed in a bill last year that goes into effect next year. That says our Universities in Texas cannot teach DEI, cannot teach the woke stuff. You've got to actually teach history and teach things straight up and down, not on the basis of race or anything else. And so you actually have professors over at Texas A&M who were anti DEI, who kind of really Raised the alarm about this prof they we're trying to hire from University of Texas, and I just think that's really good news that you have even a fairly woke University of Texas A&M which is not pure woke like University of Texas is. But even at that point they're standing up and saying, no, we're going to follow the state law and we're not going to teach this kind of bad stuff at our university, even if they happen to believe that. And so that's just really good to see that kind of integrity come out at that level at a university of that size with such national standing actually stand up and say we're not going to overtly do DEI and we're going to try to stop it from coming in. Good news out of Texas A&M.

Rick Green: 13:10
Good news from Oregon. Good news from New York. Good news from Texas. We'll see what's next when we come back from the break. You're listening to wall builders. Have you noticed the vacuum of leadership in America? We're looking around for leaders of principle to step up, and too often no one is there. God is raising up a generation of young leaders with a passion for impacting the world around them. They're crying out for the mentorship and leadership training they need. Patriot Academy was created to meet that need. Patriot Academy graduates now serve in state capitals around America, in the halls of Congress, in business, in the film industry, in the pulpit, and every area of the culture. They're leading effectively and impacting the world around them. Patriot Academy is now expanding across the nation and now's your chance to experience this life changing week that trains champions to change the world. Visit Patriot Academy. com for dates and locations. Our core program is still for young leaders 16 to 25 years old, but we also now have a citizen track for adults. So visit the website today to learn more. Help us fill the void of leadership in America. Join us in training champions to change the world at Patriot Academy. com . We're back here on wall builders. It's good news friday. We're back over to Tim for the next piece of good news. Wait, let's see, Oregon, new York, Texas. Should we ban Tim from going to those three states so that we get a new one, or do we need to? I bet he's got a new one, let's just see what happens. All right, Tim, where are we going?

Tim Barton: 14:42
It is a new one. This one is Kentucky and this is pertaining to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. They had a decision allowing another state to shield minors from cross sex procedures. Now, as you hear, cross sex procedures, what you need to know is that means when a boy identifies as a girl and doesn't want to be a boy anymore and they give him whether it be hormone therapy or puberty blockers or surgical procedures, there are states saying yeah, we're not going to do that to kids, which is the correct thing. Well, this state is Kentucky and in Kentucky a little background on this when Kentucky originally passed this law, the governor in Kentucky, democrat governor Andy Beshears, vetoed that law, saying nope, we're not going to do that. The Senate overrode the veto, but then the ACLU and seven families brought their lawsuit against Kentucky in May. It was right before the law was supposed to take effect and actually US District Judge David Hale blocked the law the day before it was supposed to go into effect. Apparently, these seven cities, The ACLU said, hey, it's appropriate for little children to have their puberty interrupted with these different therapies, aka medicine, etc. etc. And instantly, at that point, Attorney General Daniel Cameron appealed in the Sixth Circuit last month and so that's some of the background. Now let me catch you up to the Sixth Circuit. So at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals it was actually in Cincinnati they ruled two to one that Kentucky's ban on minor access for cross sex procedures like administering puberty blockers and cross sex hormones can continue, meaning Kentucky said we're not going to do that. There was a lawsuit saying you can't stop us. And then the Sixth Circuit said actually they can. In their state they can say we're not going to do that. It's worth noting the Sixth Circuit had already upheld Tennessee's law that was a ban on cross sex procedures for minors in Tennessee. They already said Tennessee could do it, so it's not surprising they then said Kentucky can now do it. It's also, kind of a little context for this, both of the state laws had been blocked by lower courts before they were appealed to the Sixth Circuit and the Sixth Circuit lifted those blocks, leading into the official ruling coming down on September 30th. But here's also a little more background on that Kentucky law. On the Kentucky law, it has not just limitations on what you can give to kids. There was also part of the law that addressed schools and I think to me, this is such an important part of the law. It's something that I don't even understand how this is controversial. Every parent out there, I think, would agree with this, but the law required schools and school counselors to disclose to families when it comes to sex and gender issues, with an emphasis on parental rights. They required schools at the beginning of the school year to alert parents to health or mental services or referrals related to sexuality, contraception and family planning that the school makes available to the students and let me pause right here as I'm reading this article the idea that the school makes these available to students. Notice it said sexuality, contraception and family planning. What kind of family planning is there for a 14 or 15 year old kid? Well, what they're referring to is abortion. That's what they call family planning, right? When Planned Parenthood talks about family planning, they're talking about murdering an unborn child and there are school saying, hey, we offer these services, we help kids. Family planning. That's not how family planning works. Nonetheless, the law says that anything the school quote unquote offers to students they have to make the parents aware of before they offer or before they give any of those things to the students as well as any changes to these offerings, and require schools to let parents have the final say over whether these services should be available to their children. So the school says, hey, parents, just heads up, your kids came in, we're going to offer them this. And the parents can say, yeah, nope, we're not going to offer them contraception, we're not going to offer them abortion, and parents get the final say. Again, this should be a no brainer. However, apparently this is controversial for many Democrats. The law also prevents schools from withholding educational or health records from parents. Some schools said, sorry, right, patient confidentiality. Parents, we can't tell you what your kids came in to get help for. We can't discuss the medical condition of students with adults, even if you were the parent of the child. Again, I mean, these are crazy things. Guys, We have had these conversations before. I'm just continue to be a little flabbergasted by some of the positions, some of these schools, some of these liberal, secular, democrat individuals take when it comes to these position to go further, as further statements on parental consent, where parents have to be involved. But then it also included in the law that, when it comes to school curriculum on sexuality, that it has to include the idea that abstinence from sexual activity is the desirable goal for all school age children and that abstinence and later a permanent, mutually faithful monogamous relationship are the only certain ways to avoid unintended pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and other associated health problems. All of this is super basic stuff that has become controversial in more recent years, should not have been controversial, but these are all things that are part of the Kentucky law that was initially vetoed by the Democrat governor and then was struck down by lower court judges. Finally, the Sixth Circuit upheld it and said look, you can't tell them they can't do this. There is a final ruling coming September 30th. We will certainly track this. We will see what happens, but the fact that they allow the law to stay in place at least in my mind and Rick, Dad, you guys can speak this a little bit more, but if the Sixth Circuit is saying that they're going to allow this stay in place and their official ruling comes out September 30th, to me the indication is that they think this is totally permissible, that they're restoring the application and the effects of the law to this point, which again is really good news that in Kentucky, in Tennessee, there are some states working actively to protect kids. In fact, I think I just saw just last week the governor of Montana signed another one of these bans on some of these child sex transition issues happening. So we are seeing states take action to protect kids, which is really good news.

Rick Green: 21:01
Yeah, I was thinking that, as you were describing Kentucky, I was thinking, man, there's so many states now that have done, they've passed, good legislation. They're moving in the right direction on this, and then also on the boys and girls sports. I mean, how many signing ceremonies have I seen Riley Gaines at with Texas and other governors? These are really really big victories, that a couple years ago, man, you were shouted down if you even talked about our side of this particular position. Okay, David, your last piece of good news for the day?

David Barton: 21:32
Well, guys, mine deal is with some good things I'm seeing in the culture, but I wish we'd seen it earlier. One of the things I've lamented is that so many conservatives, who hold strong positions, have not been good at articulating that, and we saw that from just before COVID all the way through the last three years, that there's a self-censorship. We don't want to say controversial things or things that are out of step with the culture because we don't want to get attacked, and so we self-censor. But we saw people really start weighing in with their dollars. We saw it with Bud Light. You know that they wouldn't talk about transgender stuff publicly very much, didn't show up in polling, but man did it show up with dollars. You know, when Bud Light did their little Transgender thing. And then we saw it with Target. And did Target take a beating. And then even Ben and Jerry's I mean Ben and Jerry's, already liberal, everybody knows they're liberal and they went too far and they took a beating. And so we've seen really...

Rick Green: 22:28
And I just have to say, since you brought up Ben and Jerry, I just want to brag on myself for having incredible restraint, because every time I walk by the Ben and Jerry section, those look so good because of all... I love all those mixed up flavors and everything, but I never buy Ben and Jerry's. I'm just saying I... That's the one thing I do right on the boycott thing, because I will admit to being a sinner sometimes I still, when I'm cornered and can't get my caffeine, I have bought a Starbucks once or twice in the last five years, so I know I need forgiveness for that, but with Ben and Jerry's, I'm clean, brother, I'm clean. I'm sorry, David, go ahead, I just had to...

Tim Barton: 23:05
Shouldn't it be, because you're a Texan and we have Bluebell, like

Rick Green: 23:08
Yeah, but you know they just... we don't do as good on all the mix. They just... just look at those labels, Tim!

Tim Barton: 23:13
No, no, no. Now you're becoming the Disney Apologist, you're like yes, but the movies. The old movies are so good!

Rick Green: 23:23
But I don't actually go right, so I don't actually eat the Ben and Jerry's, I just, I just covet the Ben and... Oh wait, I guess I am sinning after all. I'm coveting the Ben and Jerry... Okay, David, I'm so sorry, man, you had a piece of good news and I got totally distracted there.

David Barton: 23:37
Well, you're actually safe on this because you are one of those that actually do speak out about other things. So you're not in that group that speaks only with their money. So you're okay in this one. But what I find interesting is there is a lot more folks out there who hold the right values, who are not sharing them, not talking about them, etc. And so for a while, man, I was real concerned that maybe the whole value system of America has shifted in wrong direction, and certainly there's been wrong shifts. But there's been a good base out there and they've just been silent. And I'm seeing an article here that kind of tells me the same thing. This is, I guess, a different way of kind of boycotting, but it's looking at all the late night TV programs and the viewership on the late night TV programs and so what we're seeing here is it looks like there's six major late night TV programs. I knew several, I didn't know there were six, but Stephen Colbert is tanking, Jimmy Kimmel is tanking, Jimmy Fallon is tanking, Seth Meyers tanking. All the liberal ones are going down, and man the analysis was pretty interesting. They've had 47 guests on in the last quarter and all 47 guests on those programs were a hundred percent liberal. They had 21 elected officials on. They were all liberal Democrats. I mean, they're just really hardcore evangelists for that liberal progressive view. And the only one that is not tanking and the one that is climbing is actually Gutfeld over on Fox and I can't say that I'm a fan of any late night program. But the people who watch it, we're seeing them move away from that liberal progressive and being drawn toward that more conservative one. And I think that's another good sign for America is in the late night ratings is just that these others are just tanking and they're having to go to reruns and other things, so they're not doing well. I hope that's a good indication that the heart of America is starting to shift and maybe we'll see that come out other ways, but there's certainly some good indications there.

Rick Green: 25:28
Well, that's it for good news today, folks. We'll have some more for you next week. Make sure you tune in every Friday. Good News Friday. We think it's important to highlight some of these victories out there in the culture, especially when you see so many things falling apart, the culture crumbling around us. Let's look at where people are picking up the pieces, rebuilding, getting good results. Every single one of us can be a part of that. We encourage you to do the same. I mentioned earlier this week just the fact that every single one of us can do something. But encourage you to become a Constitution coach before the Constitution Day celebration, september 17th, and get a class started so that you can plug in and get folks in your community becoming part of the solution as well. Don't forget celebration of Constitution Day, september 17th, that Sunday in Fredericksburg, texas, coming to town early into a Constitutional Defense Course and then enjoy that wonderful event with Kirk Cameron and Brad Stine and myself. Or stay over and do a Constitutional Defense Course, but get ready to spend Constitution Day getting prepared to say I'm going to commit to helping to preserve the Constitution. I'm going to do my part in my community. I'm going to be a Constitution Coach. Check that out at ConstitutionCoach. com and you'll have a good news story that we can share here on WallBuilders. Thanks for listening to WallBuilders.