Why Strengthening Marriage And Parental Rights Changes A Nation

Headlines move fast, but good policy starts with first principles. We open the toolbox—biblical clarity, historical evidence, and constitutional guardrails—to make sense of today’s most charged debates and to chart a path that actually improves lives. With Matt Staver of Liberty Counsel, we map how culture drifted from strong families to fragile norms, and then we show how to reverse course with compassion, courage, and strategy.

We dig into the post-Dobbs reality: fewer clinics but more chemical abortions, and what that means for public health, wastewater systems, and environmental stewardship. The conversation goes beyond slogans, explaining how mifepristone works, why metabolites matter, and where state and local regulators can step in. On gender medicine, we talk about caring for hurting kids without rushing to irreversible treatments, and how pastors, parents, and policymakers can hold fast to truth while offering real help and hope.

Marriage takes center stage as a uniquely unitive, procreative, and spiritual covenant—and we unpack why that makes it a cultural flashpoint. From Kinsey’s ripple effects to no-fault divorce and Obergefell, we trace the steps that reshaped law and norms, then outline practical ways to strengthen marriage, parental rights, and conscience protections without falling into all-or-nothing thinking. Matt shares a proven approach: set a clear objective, take small wins, learn from setbacks, and never lose sight of the destination.

If you care about life, family, freedom, and the rule of law, this conversation gives you a roadmap and tools to act. Listen, share with a friend, and then subscribe and leave a review so more people can find the show and join the work.

Chapters

• 0:07 Setting The Faith-Culture Framework
• 2:14 Introducing Matt Staver And Context
• 3:16 Gender Medicine And Pastoral Response
• 5:32 Life Ethics After Dobbs
• 7:01 Marriage’s Unitive, Procreative, Spiritual Design
• 11:35 From Kinsey To Cultural Upheaval
• 13:21 Chemical Abortion And Water Systems
• 18:08 Strategy: Long Game For Policy Change
• 21:13 Parental Rights And Education Opt-Out
• 24:48 Final Takeaways And Listener Actions

Transcript

Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. This is the WallBuilders Show where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. That very simply means whatever the topic is, we're going to say, what's the Bible say about it? Let's get some truth on this. And then let's look into history. Let's look at times where this has been tried before and see what works and what doesn't work. There's nothing new under the sun. Solomon was right about that. So even when you hear all these socialist utopia ideas, that's not new. There's been efforts at that forever. And what we have to do is recognize that it has never worked, and we can do that by simply studying history. Well, it's the same with any topic. We can see what actually works. Capitalism works. We can see what works in terms of marriage. One man, one woman. The idea that you're going to have the nuclear political unit in the country be the family, the husband and the wife and the children, and that that's going to be the smallest form of government, and that's going to be what you build communities on. We know from history how well that works. We know from just looking at the data, what works and what doesn't work, and how when you destroy marriage, when you cheapen marriage, when you make anything something you would call marriage, then the culture falls apart. And it actually ends up costing everybody more. It ends up creating more crime, more fatherlessness, all of those things lead to a bad society. So that's how you look into history and learn. Same as you're looking into the Bible, what’s true and what what is God's law say, what's the laws of nature and nature's God say, then look into history and see what works, what doesn't work, and then. How does it work under our constitution? Is it constitutional under our laws in this country? So that's why we always say on this program biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. Well, a great expert on all three of those things is a guy named Matt Staver. And yesterday we got the first half of his presentation at the Pro Family Legislators Conference. We're going to jump right back in where he left off yesterday. This is Matt Staver from Liberty Council. LC.org is their website. Matt Staver of Liberty Council at the Pro Family Legislators Conference. When we return, we're going to take a quick break. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:03:16] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Let's jump in with Matt Staver at the Pro Family Legislators Conference. 

Matt Staver [00:03:21] One of the things that is very problematic is when children are having issues, hormonal issues, maybe inflammation issues, psychological issues, other kinds of issues, and they're having real problems. And their parents take them to a counselor seeking help. And the counselor, instead of addressing the underlying issue to help that hurting child, says, you know what, I know what's wrong. You're in the wrong body. God made a mistake. They may not say that last part, but that's what they're saying. God made a mistake; you're in the wrong body. Here's how we fix it. Well, they want to have a fix. They are seeking some kind of relief. And the relief that they're told is, we'll give you puberty blockers, cross-x hormones, and then we'll go through some surgeries and you'll be okay. And that's what they did to Chloe Cole. And before she even turned age 18, she not only had puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, but she had a total mastectomy. Then she regrets it. And now what do you do? You've mutilated your body. You possibly have sterilized yourself for life. You may not more than likely have children. And so it is killing our kids. We have to, on the one hand, speak truth in this issue. It's urgent. And on the other hand, we have to understand that there are hurting people behind this issue that are caught up and wrapped up in this agenda. So pastors and others, we need to speak on this. We can't be silent on it because if you are silent on it, people will die, people will be hurt. This is a critical issue because I just read yesterday, ironically, I was going, I was reading yesterday, Mark 9 before the oral argument. It happened to be the passage where Jesus brings a little child into his arms and he says, you need to become a child like this to enter into the kingdom of heaven. And he also says, whoever offends and makes one of these little children stumble, it is better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and be thrown into the depths of the sea. How ironic it was. I was arguing the case a few hours later. But that's the compassion of Jesus that we also need to have as well. The sanctity of human life. Historic, you know, since Dobbs there were a lot of people that said Roe vs Wade wouldn't be overturned Or Roe versus Wade would never be overturned. I was not one of those. I always believed, like I do with Obergefell, and I'm strongly of that opinion, that it wasn't just if it was when Roe versus Wade would be overturned. Other people didn't see that, but I believe with God all things are possible, and Roe versus Wade indeed was overturned in 2022. But what it did was it revealed, I think, the face of evil. Because instead of just the rhetoric of choice and reproductive freedom, you actually had people celebrating how many abortions they had. You have people actually talking about how they love to kill children, something that you would never see. Or imagine it was the face of evil that the mask had actually come off. You also had lukewarm pastors and politicians. You had a lot of Republicans that ran on a lot of issues, and one of them was pro-life, and they were pro-life, and you would elect them thinking they're pro-life. And then when Dobbs came down, where were they? Particularly on the national level or even on the state level. They were silent. And so, a revealed pastors who really may not be the called shepherds that we need. And it was politicians who were just politicians, and it didn't resonate as to why this is so important. And they were silent on the issue when they should have been shouting from a megaphone. And why this is so critical? It intersects with the LGBTQ issue. Marriage is very unique in its relationship. It's the only unique relationship that has no peer. It has a unitive component. The two become one flesh. In fact, I was just reading that this morning in Mark chapter 10. He says the two become one flesh. They're no longer two, but they're one. There's no other human relationship, father, son, mother, daughter, doesn't really matter that has that component. Only marriage between a man and a woman where the two become one. It's a unitive component. The second thing it has that's totally unique is it's a procreative component. No other relationship has that procreative component except a man and a woman. And it's the procreation, the ability to create another human being in the very image of God at the highest created order. And then the third thing is a spiritual, Ephesians chapter five. Husbands love your wives, wives your husbands. It goes back and forth. He says this is a great mystery. What I'm really speaking about is Christ and the church, about the incarnation, where he indissolubly connected to us, humanity, but also how he loved us and gave himself for us. So, it has a pro it has a unitive or procreative and a spiritual component. And no wonder why it's under attack. It's under attack in terms of destroying marriage. There are sections in the natural family, and the section about how can we strengthen marriage. We have to, and there's ways, and there's different ideas and proposed legislation about strengthening marriage. Covenant marriage is one way to do that as well. But there's a lot of ways that we need to strengthen marriage. And it's marriage that has been under attack, where now when we attack marriage, and then you have sex outside of marriage, and it doesn't really matter anymore, you ultimately lead up to a burger fill, you lead up to the abolition of the notion of gender. And all of that was started back with Kinsey back in 1948 in his book Sexuality in the Human Male, in 1953, his book, Sexuality in the Human Female. He hated God. He wanted to abolish the concept of God. So how do you do that? You remove all the moral parameters regarding human sexuality. And when you do that, you destroy the notion that there is a God. And it was funded by Rockefeller, and that's how we got Playboy. That's how that started. It was because when Hugh Hefner was in college a virgin, he read these books from Alfred Kinsey, and he became the pamphleteer of Kinsey through Playboy. When you start to actually abolish this very sacred notion of marriage, it is ultimately an assault on God. That's what the LGBTQ agenda does. It is human sexuality without the consequence of procreation. And abortion is human sexuality without the consequence of well, abortion is human sexuality without the consequences of procreation. LGBTQ agenda or same-sex is human sexuality without the possibility of procreation. 

Rick Green [00:10:19] All right, folks, got to interrupt for just a second. You've been listening to Matt Stavers teaching at the Pro Family Legislators Conference, but we got to take a break. We'll be right back. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show. 

[00:11:35] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Jumping right back in with Matt Staver, teaching at the Pro Family Legislators Conference. 

Matt Staver [00:11:42] We need to strengthen marriage and we need to strengthen the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death. Let me back up for a moment. You know, post-Dobbs, the brick-and-mortar abortion clinics are closing. Hundreds of them have closed, and that's a good thing. But post-Dobbs, what's happened while the brick and mortar are closing, the chemical abortions are rising. So, we actually launched abortioninourwater.org, abortioninourwater.org. There's a lot of resources there. Abortioninourwater.org. And there's a lot of resources. There's power points, there's talking points, there's a lot of information. What happened is Mifepristone is a progesterone blocker. It starves the baby and thus kills the baby. And it blocks progesterone. Then the second drug causes the labor and expels the baby. Well, where are these abortions taking place? They're taking place over the toilet in homes or in hotels. So, they're not taking place in brick and mortar. So, the human remains are not being disposed of like you would in, for example, other areas of human disposal of waste. They're being disposed in the toilet. So, what's going into the wastewater system is Mifepristone, which has long lasting metabolites. It's an endocrine blocker. It's blocks progesterone. So, it's going into the water. Our water system, our water plants are not. Designed to filter out that kind of drug. We know from studies that this kind of drug, Mifepristone, these progesterone blockers, are getting into some of the natural water systems, causing DNA abnormality in certain kinds of fish and other animals as well. So, the question is how much of that is getting into our consumable drinking water. But also, what's going into that is human remains of the baby. And obviously, that was never designed to be filtered out in our drinking water. So, we've been having a lot of meetings with members in the Trump administration in Washington, DC. There's actually a MAHA report, the second one that just came out, that actually lists something that is in there because of certain meetings that we've had with regards to this particular issue. But that's a big issue. It's not only something that the EPA can regulate, states and local bodies can also regulate abortion or the chemical things that are going into your water. So, there are things in your document in your policy briefing book that you can take back, and there's a lot of resource information at abortioninourwater.org. But we have to stop that chemical abortion, essentially, especially from going into our water system because that affects everyone. And once you raise the attention, if you just say you want to stop mifepristone, somebody says, well, that doesn't bother me. Well, you know what? You drink water, right? That does bother you. You actually have fish and you eat the fish. That does that now affects everybody. So, this abortion issue is affecting everyone, whether you know it, whether you like it or not. So, I encourage you to go to abortioninourwater.org. The family, I'll just spend briefly a few moments on this. We've already basically talked about this very matter, but it's really going back to the creature versus the creator, the creator versus the creature. And I've already mentioned this before. God created us in His image, male and female. And what this whole destruction or assault on the family, whether it's boys’ and girls' sports or private places or multiple pronouns, we're representing pastors who are part-time pastors that actually have worked either as realtors. We represent two pastors who are part-time realtors, one pastor who was a part-time librarian. They lost the realtor license. The other one lost his job as the librarian because of the pronoun issue. These issues, I think, are so critically important because it goes at the very heart of our faith. Do we believe in a Creator who created us and designed us in His image? Or are we going to be creating ourselves in our own image? That I think is the ultimate agenda. And I think there's a lot of opportunities for us as legislators to go back and enact policy. And have strategy meetings about how do we strengthen the family. Think about this. Let me just suggest this. If you wanted to come to the point where you get to same-sex marriage, how do you get to that point in 2015? We defended like 60 cases and won everyone except for one we lost at the California Supreme Court four to three, but we overturned it by Prop 22 a few months later that we worked on. So, we were unanimous until the Obergefell opinion, 5-4 opinion in 2015. So how do you get to that place? When it was previously rejected by the courts, and we won over and over and over again. How do we get to that? Well, let's ratchet back. Let's go back, let's go back to Ronald Reagan, as great as he was, he signed the first no-fault divorce law in the country. Now he regretted doing that. And he was told by the experts, well, you know, it's messy, you don't want to prove cause, it's kind of messy to do that. Let's just do no fault divorce. Well, that means you get a divorce for anything. You don't have to have any cause, no waiting periods, no nothing. So, America now becomes the most liberal nation on the planet with regards to divorce. May surprise you, but if you look at Europe, they have it's more difficult to get a divorce in various European countries. America is the most liberal in the world. And it started in California with then governor Ronald Reagan signing this bill. So now what you do is you move a little bit forward. You actually look at a Supreme Court decision. 

Rick Green [00:17:39] Alright folks, one more break today. Stay with us, you're listening to the WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:19:53] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show, jumping in for the conclusion of Matt Staver teaching at the Pro Family Legislators Conference. 

Matt Staver [00:20:00] In 1962, the Supreme Court decision said, well, there's a constitutional right to have contraception if you're married. So a state can't prohibit contraception to married people. And then the Supreme Court came back in 1972, just before Roe, and said, well, there's a constitutional right now to have contraception if you're not married. So, in other words, you're separating sex from procreation. And a state can't do that. State can't have that policy. So now you have the contraception cases for married, then you have the contraception case for unmarried. Then in 73, you have Roe versus Wade, then you have Ronald Reagan signing the no-fault divorce, and then you have this assault going on and on. Think from your standpoint as a legislature. What your objective wants to be. What is your objective? Where do you want to take family? How do you want to strengthen family? How do you want to secure religious freedom? How do you want to secure parental rights? How do you want to secure these other issues that we've talked about? What's your ultimate objective? Think backwards. How do we get there? How do you build the brick? How do you build the wall, the house, one brick at a time? You can't do it all in one fell swoop. So, what we've done with our litigation since 1989 is we've been very strategic and are willing to take off small bites of the apple. That's ultimately led to the overturning of The Lemon test in 2022, having one little bite at the apple and another bite at the apple. And now we have more freedom than we did for the past 51 years before 2022. We have to be strategic. So, look at what your objective is. Sit down, maybe take some time here. What do you want to do? What's the ultimate end game? And then how do we build the platform bit by bit, little by little, to actually get to that objective. And that's in fact; I think an easy way to look at it when you look at how did we get to same-sex marriage? It didn't pop out of nowhere. It had a decades-long process. And we need to have this not only a short game agenda and strategy, but also a long game objective in strategy. And if you have a setback, as we have setbacks, we never consider them to be defeats. They're temporary setbacks. So, if you have a setback, you lose, maybe somebody doesn't support what you're doing. You just reset, you have to go forward, you try it again, and you never, ever, ever, ever give up. And by that persistence, God will ultimately honor you. These are just a number of things I won't have time to talk about, but we've talked about a number of these things. I will say that parental choice is also here, parental rights. There's a case that came out of the United States Supreme Court this year, that's Mahmoud. Came out of Montgomery County, Maryland, and they wanted to, they had sex ed in the higher grades, but you had the right to opt out. But they didn't want to opt out, so they put it in literature and other kinds of things that are not sex ed, and they started it in kindergarten and went all the way K through twelve. And you it was mandatory that you had to take these courses. You had to take a literature course that was filled with, say, LGBTQ indoctrination. There was one girl, she had a 4. I think six GPA. They would not allow her to graduate unless she took one of these courses. She had been for two years asking them to be able to take an alternative course at a community college and they refused to do it. She had a 4.6 or 4.3 GPA and they refused to allow her to graduate. Thank God the Supreme Court ruled that religious freedom and parental rights trump the LGBTQ indoctrination, and that these parents have a right to opt their kids out of this indoctrination. So, with that, you know, we have in parental rights a lot of different options that you can actually bring back to your states to implement, you know, that's the law of the land. But like, for example, we're getting ready to litigate in Oregon where they think who cares about the Supreme Court. They're going to find out about the Supreme Court pretty soon. It's going to be expensive for them, but they're pushing this LGBTQ indoctrination in kindergarten, and it's mandatory. We're about ready to file suit against the school district in Oregon and other places as well. But from a state legislative policy Position, you can pass legislation, and there's some examples of that that actually affirms in legislative enactment what the Supreme Court has already said and already confirmed. Never ever get discouraged, never give up, because with God, all things are possible. 

Rick Green [00:24:48] All right, folks, we're out of time, and that's the end of Matt Stavers' presentation at the Pro Family Legislators Conference. Hope you enjoyed it. If you joined us halfway through the program today, or maybe you missed yesterday's program completely, then Matt Stavers' entire presentation is available right now at wallbuilders.show. That's wallbuilders.show. That's our radio website. You can catch up on programs from the last few weeks and months, wallbuilders.show, and you can share today's program and yesterday's, of course, if you want to get the full presentation. Share it with your friends and family. Get get the word out there. Get people to understand these arguments before the Supreme Court. Get people to understand what Matt Staver's been working on all these years, all these victories in terms of overturning Roe v. Wade, but now the battles that we had to fight at the state level throughout the country. This is a very important presentation to share with as many folks as you possibly can. So go to WallBuilders.show, grab today's program and yesterday's program, and share it. And then last thing is make sure that your legislator friends know about this conference and they put start planning now for next November to be a part of the Pro Family Legislators Conference. Actually, I said lastly. Lastly would be your actions. So, if you're not a legislator, you might be saying, well, Rick, what can I do about these issues? I can't overturn our Supreme Court decision. I can't call for a Convention of States to do a constitutional amendment to do these things. I'm not in the legislature. I'm not in Congress. No, but you are a biblical citizen. And you can go to wallbuilders.com right now. You can get biblical citizenship in modern America, and you can start hosting that class in your home or at your church. And by doing so, you're gonna raise the civic and biblical literacy in your community. That's gonna ultimately result in better city councilmen, better congressmen, better commissioners, all of those things, because more and more people will understand the principles of liberty. So, you can be the catalyst for restoring biblical values and constitutional principles. Go to wallbuilders.com today, get biblical citizenship, and get your class started. Thanks so much for listening to the WallBuilders Show.