The Ultimate Egalitarianism

Why Every Child Deserves a Mother and Father | Nathanael Blake on the Dr. J Show ep. 289

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In this conversation, Nathanael Blake discusses his book ‘Victims of the Revolution: How Sexual Liberation Hurts Us All,’ exploring the implications of the sexual revolution on society, particularly focusing on the harm it has caused to children and families. He argues for the superiority of Christian sexual ethics and critiques the notion of sexual liberation, emphasizing the need for authentic love and commitment in relationships. The discussion also touches on the political context surrounding transgender issues and the failures of modern political philosophy to address the needs of children.

Nathanael Blake, Ph.D., is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, focusing on American political theory, Christian political thought, and natural law. He holds a doctorate in political theory from the Catholic University of America, where he wrote on the relationship between natural law and history. Dr. Blake has taught political science and was a Richard M. Weaver Fellow. His commentary has appeared in Public Discourse, The Federalist, National Review, and more. His forthcoming book, Victims of the Revolution: How Sexual Liberation Hurts Us All, will be published by Ignatius Press in Spring 2025.

00:00 Children and Liberal Individualism

05:06 The Role of Consent in Family Dynamics

07:26 Children’s Rights and Parental Responsibilities

14:28 Transgenderism and the Sexual Revolution

29:42 Understanding Same-Sex Attraction

36:19 The Longing for Authentic Love

38:47 Closing Credits

Transcript

(Please note the transcript is auto-generated and likely contains errors)

Cleaned Transcript: Episode 290

Episode 290: The Ultimate Egalitarianism

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:30:04
Nathanael Blake
People look back at this with incomprehension that we could have ever, as a culture, been so foolish to think that a man could become a woman, or that a girl could have been born in a boy’s body. That will be the time when we’ve really wanting is when this is as unthinkable now is lobotomies, or it’s as unthinkable in the future as lobotomies are now.

00:00:30:07 – 00:00:54:22
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Yeah I agree with that. And we’re a long way from that for sure. But, but I do notice among some of the people who are freaked out over transgenderism, some of them are beginning to be willing to reconsider some of their earlier assumptions. And I feel like people like you and me and your colleagues at the EPC, that’s part of our role, is to help coax some of those people along, you know,

00:00:54:25 – 00:00:55:10
Nathanael Blake
Yeah.

00:00:55:12 – 00:01:18:13
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
If this is the kind of argument that you just made, you know, that transgenderism didn’t come out of nowhere, it was the ground for that was laid decades before, really. Oh, sex ed in the schools, you know, that’s another whole area that we could that we could go into. Let’s go, if we may, to one of the deeper issues that you raised in your book.

00:01:18:13 – 00:01:43:04
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
And I want to, I want to just quote something that you said, that you mentioned that the Christian understanding is embedded within an understanding of the universe is a cosmos, a created order. And I think that’s right. But I’d like you to tell people what you mean by that when you say that the Christian understanding of, of human sexuality is somehow related to or embedded within the larger picture of the cosmos.

00:01:43:06 – 00:01:56:19
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Tell us what you mean by that. And then let’s talk about what the revolutionaries, the revolutionaries also have a view of the cosmos. Right? And just put that out. Let’s put that on the table for people, because that’s a really interesting part of your book, I think.

00:01:56:22 – 00:02:27:07
Nathanael Blake
Okay. Well, so for the Christian, we are created for one, the ultimate purpose, as I mentioned earlier, to know God, to love and enjoy him forever, and then to within that be part of God’s kingdom. So in this life, that means most of us are called to the vocation of marriage and children. And sexuality therefore has to be understood within this framework of this is its purpose.

00:02:27:10 – 00:02:55:03
Nathanael Blake
It is meant, for the unity of aspect of a married couple, as well as the generative aspect, begetting of new human beings who also can love God and know him and enjoy him forever. So sex is part of this entire order of who we are, what we are made for, how we are to relate to others.

00:02:55:05 – 00:03:31:14
Nathanael Blake
And within it we also serve as co-creators or sub creators. Perhaps it’s a better way of putting it, whom God has given the capacity to generate new life now, not ex nihilo, the way that God created the universe, but within this university is created to bring new human beings into existence, new immortals, which is an incredible thought that our sex lives are designed to bring immortal people into existence.

00:03:31:17 – 00:03:59:24
Nathanael Blake
It’s humbling. It’s amazing. And therefore, of course, our sex lives have to be regulated in accordance with God’s purposes, which is very difficult for us in this fallen world with our sin natures. But nonetheless, Christianity proclaims this, and it is good for us to live within this. It is an image again of Christ in his union with our church, of our eternal destiny.

00:03:59:27 – 00:04:21:23
Nathanael Blake
In contrast, the sexual revolutionaries would say, well, no, we don’t live it, and they come from different angles, but they would largely say, we don’t live in a cosmos, we live in a university. There is no God, or if there is a God, he does not care about what we do sexually. He wants us to enjoy ourselves.

00:04:21:26 – 00:04:43:29
Nathanael Blake
Maybe being nice. You know, one writer who has critiqued the sexual revolution but didn’t go far enough. Christine, Amber at the Washington Post, she almost ended up with a sort of moral therapeutic tome ism, ripping off of the idea of moral therapeutic deism. God wants you to be nice to people and to be happy yourself.

00:04:44:06 – 00:04:52:27
Nathanael Blake
Well, this is sort of what she’s proposed for. Our sex lives is just being nicer about it. And that isn’t, you know.

00:04:52:29 – 00:05:05:25
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Like, this kind of help. Wait a minute. Yeah. Her critique is so sound, but then she’s not. It’s not quite ready to take the next step because commitment to it would be the alternative. Yeah. But yeah.

00:05:05:28 – 00:05:29:22
Nathanael Blake
So that’s one thing is sort of that half way state. But for people who are really committed they would say, no, the universe is meaningless. The only meaning is that which we create for ourselves. So this also ties back in with transgenderism, our bodies or whatever. They don’t have a purpose. The only purpose they have is that which we decide they have, and we can alter them as we will.

00:05:29:24 – 00:06:09:22
Nathanael Blake
There’s a logic to that, and I type some of this into Nietzsche’s idea of the death of God, which for Nietzsche is not just the philosophical postulate of there is no God. Rather it is the sociological, the philosophical, the cultural unfolding of unbelief. And, Nietzsche was much more subtle about this and most of his subsequent followers. But the idea is that there we create our own meaning and do what you will within that.

00:06:09:25 – 00:06:40:19
Nathanael Blake
And so there’s a despair to it in the end, because we can’t create our own meaning, we can’t become the ubermensch that Nietzsche looked for. Instead, we become creatures driven by our basest desires. It’s the. Even the great pagan philosophers would say. They emphasize the importance of rational control of the self, and instead the sexual revolutionaries say, do what you want.

00:06:40:19 – 00:06:45:02
Nathanael Blake
You’re just a clever monkey.

00:06:45:05 – 00:07:03:29
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Or you could you can look at it this way, that, that we’re we’re random atoms bumping into each other for no particular reason at all, you know, so that’s their view of the cosmos, right? The universe is just a collection of random things that bump into each other, and maybe something meaningful happens and maybe it doesn’t.

00:07:03:29 – 00:07:23:23
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
But basically that there’s no purpose to any of the random atoms. Well, that’s how we’re treating each other sexually. You know, we bump into each other for no particular reason at all, you know, and then we and the way fling off into space and find another atom to bump into and stuff and, and whereas the Christian view is the human person is meant for love.

00:07:23:26 – 00:07:44:12
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
The, the I think the word you are looking for is procreative. That’s what that was, was always the traditional word that we have the procreative capacity. So we’re cooperating with God in creation. God’s contribution is always love. Oh, I come back to this all the time because I deal with so many people who have been wounded by their parents in one way or another.

00:07:44:12 – 00:08:11:03
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
You know, whether it’s the IVF babies or, the people whose parents have been divorced and remarried multiple times, you know, look, you guys, God loves you. You exist because God loves you. That’s the real cause of your existence. And what God wants for all of us is that we come into existence because of the participation, the loving participation of our mother and father, the act of love between our mother and father.

00:08:11:03 – 00:08:29:15
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
And that’s that’s your birthright as a human being, that you should come into existence as a result of an act of love between your mother and father, you know, and and at one time, you know, if you look at it, I, I’ve been collecting these photos, actually, photos from the depression. There’s all these historic photos of the depression showing how poor everybody was.

00:08:29:20 – 00:08:54:21
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
But you will see these photos taken of families that all had a father. You know, even poor children got to have their mom and their dad, you know. And that seems to me that’s the ultimate commercial for the Christian sexual ethics today, that it’s a luxury. Good to have your mother and your father. I mean, that’s considered, you know, you know, one’s and nobody’s entitled to that.

00:08:54:21 – 00:09:15:17
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
And and we’re like, no, everybody’s entitled to it. That’s the ultimate egalitarianism, you know, is for even poor children to come into existence as a result of an act of love between their mother and father. We could have that. Why why can’t, why can’t we have that? What? What are we? What are we even thinking? That we. That we take that off the table as being impossible?

00:09:15:20 – 00:09:20:00
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Sorry, that was not on my list of questions, but I.

00:09:20:02 – 00:09:48:03
Nathanael Blake
That was great though. But I, I, I think the point is about egalitarianism is correct. And I’m going to riff on that briefly because I think one of the things that the Christian sexual ethic then provides is most people, if it is followed in a culture, hey, most men and women will end up with the companionship, both relational and emotional.

00:09:48:03 – 00:10:17:26
Nathanael Blake
India sexual of marriage, which is something we’re seeing decline or people are living alone now, and most children will have that benefit of a natural mother and natural father. And yes, accidents happen. Sin still exists. All of that, all those caveats apply. But there is a genuine egalitarianism in Christian sexual teaching. The men at the top do not get a haram.

00:10:17:28 – 00:10:34:29
Nathanael Blake
They don’t, you know, they don’t get 500 wives and even more concubines. Children, I think, really think you’re on to something with making a point of even poor children. Get a mother and father in a Christian society, right?

00:10:34:29 – 00:10:56:11
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Right. It’s the ultimate egalitarianism, you know, another another, point you mentioned in your, in your book that that jumped out at me. How did you say you say children, quote, unsettle the ideal of liberal individualism when you said that, that just junk that just jumped off the page at me, tell people, what do you mean by that?

00:10:56:11 – 00:11:08:24
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
The children unsettle the idea of liberal individualism. First of all, for those of you who aren’t political philosophers, explain what you’re meaning when you say liberal individualism. What do you mean by that? Let’s start with that.

00:11:08:27 – 00:11:31:06
Nathanael Blake
Well, so it’s sort of that liberal political tradition in the broad sense, but not liberal in the sense of the current policies of the Democratic Party per se, or whatever. But liberal in the sense that we tend to think of individual rights, limited government and so on. And there are good parts of that. But there is something that has snuck in with that.

00:11:31:06 – 00:12:07:18
Nathanael Blake
And I pick on John Block, although you could certainly pick on many others. So John Stuart Mill, but the assumption is that normative, the normative human being, the standard human being, is a rational, independent adult presumptively male. And when we make that assumption, the basis for our political system, both in the realm of ideas and then in the realm of practice, it hurts people.

00:12:07:20 – 00:12:42:23
Nathanael Blake
It hurts women who what? The truth is, human reproduction is not equal. It’s a lot harder on women than it is on men. And this is why we need that solidarity between mother and father and then their offspring, because otherwise it looks incredibly unequal for women to have to carry children in their wombs, to have to breastfeed them, and usually to be the ones getting up in the middle of the night more to care for them and so on.

00:12:42:23 – 00:13:10:03
Nathanael Blake
It it is unequal in the solution. The response is solidarity. But if we instead if you well know this dependencies vulnerability is somehow he stepped down from what it means to be human. What this actually suggests either that women are less than fully human because they have a more intensive role in the, freedom children into the world.

00:13:10:03 – 00:13:41:27
Nathanael Blake
Or it suggests that, well, they’re fully human, but the child that they have to bring into the world with their own body in this intensive way for nine months is a burden on them, an infringement on them and their rights. And so this then is used to justify abortion, the dependance of the child in utero becomes an excuse to kill that child, because that dependance makes a mother dependent.

00:13:42:00 – 00:14:06:27
Nathanael Blake
In a way it infringes on her. And the solution to this is to recognize that our natural state is not independent, rational, fully formed adults able to go about our business independently of other people. Rather, our natural state is dependance. It’s how we’re born. It’s how most of us are going to die.

00:14:07:18 – 00:14:08:16
Nathanael Blake
And children.

00:14:08:22 – 00:14:43:10
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Yeah. Totally totally totally. And children you can’t avoid that with children. You know. And it occurred to me I had a colleague at George Mason University, James Buchanan, who was a contractor, and he was a modern kind of rewriting the social contract theory in an updated political economy kind of way. But, you know, if you think about guys like Locke or Hobbes or Rousseau, all these contract guys, you know, their idea of creating a social contract, it never survives the first contact with a new baby because the baby, you know, hey, what about me?

00:14:43:12 – 00:15:01:19
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
I didn’t agree to any of this stuff. What about me? You know, and you know, and they’re all just. They don’t know what to do with that. You know? It’s like it completely disrupts the the idea of, you know, that the, the, the ultimate social bond is consent. And so that’s another aspect, you know, the dependance aspect.

00:15:01:20 – 00:15:24:29
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Totally. You’re totally right on about that. But, but, but it’s come into my mind lately, you know, that the whole consent idea goes away as well. And that has been I mean, as people in modern democracies, we can’t even we can’t even imagine a world without the consent of the governed being the core idea. Well, nobody consents to be born, you know, nobody consents to their choice of parent.

00:15:25:07 – 00:15:32:21
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
You know, none of that. You know, there’s a whole realm, there’s a whole, let’s put it that way. There’s a whole realm that’s unintelligible.

00:15:32:23 – 00:15:33:21
Nathanael Blake
You know.

00:15:33:23 – 00:15:35:25
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
With that, with that paradigm.

00:15:35:28 – 00:15:46:07
Nathanael Blake
You know, one of my favorite quotes from Kirkegaard made into the book, it’s basically, how can I complain to the manager? I didn’t ask for this existence.

00:15:46:09 – 00:16:21:24
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Right, right, right. Yeah. But yeah, I think that’s right. Yeah. The other aspect of it is that if you think about it in some way, those those contract theorists, where were whether it’s Locke or, you know, Rousseau, of course, completely off the reservation with anything having to do with children, obviously clueless guy. They were all along assuming that the that the adult making thing was going to be going on in the background undisturbed, that somehow babies were going to come into existence, and then babies were going to somehow make it to adulthood.

00:16:21:26 – 00:16:41:19
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
And they never they were not interested in how that happened. Well, now we have to be interested in that because that’s what we’ve had. We have no idea how to do it. You know, we don’t understand childhood. We’ve redefined childhood completely. As you I’m sure you know, the the transgender, campaigned in some of the most radical blue states.

00:16:41:19 – 00:17:02:15
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
If you are not sufficient affirming of your child and your child’s chosen gender identity, you can lose custody of your child. The government will take over the child so that. What is that doing? It’s saying that the child is an independent, rational being. We should trust the child, and the parent is not really a legitimate protector of the child.

00:17:02:15 – 00:17:24:00
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Child doesn’t need a protector anymore, right? So the whole balance between vulnerability and what you what you rightly called solidarity, that’s like that’s not even visible. It’s not even on the horizon. And that’s that’s one of our problems, I think. What do you think about that? Just react I that wasn’t even a question. I just want to hear what you have to say about that.

00:17:24:02 – 00:17:46:26
Nathanael Blake
I think that what we see there is you addressed. You mentioned one response to the problem of children, which is treat children like they’re miniature, independent, rational adults. And that resolves the problem. The other way of resolving the problem is what we see with abortion, which is treat children like they’re disposable subhumans because they’re in the way. And of course, both of those are wrong.

00:17:46:28 – 00:18:23:18
Nathanael Blake
Children are the human beings. They’re entitled to the dignity and respect and so on that all human beings are entitled to and part of that dignity and respect is recognizing that they are not fully formed yet and instead need to be formed in character with love and so on. So, yeah, it is an abandonment, either way, of our duties to our children and then our duties as a culture to the broader population of children to make sure that, adults are doing their duty by their children.

00:18:23:18 – 00:18:53:28
Nathanael Blake
And of course, the reason we don’t like that back to the sexual revolution is this interferes with our sex lives. So if but it’s true. If we want social justice, we cannot exempt our sex lives from that. Rather, our sex lives have to be ordered in by the demands of justice, starting with the demands of justice to our existing children and to the children whom we might be get through our sexuality.

00:18:54:00 – 00:19:14:29
Nathanael Blake
And then, additionally, our sex lives have been ordered by the justice of forming a culture that is good for children, and that raises them to be adults who are able to flourish and who are not harmed by all the many things that we’ve just been discussing in this culture of ours.

00:19:15:02 – 00:19:41:26
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Right, right. I think honestly, the the disregard of children by modern political theory is one of the biggest problems that we’re dealing with. It’s like we we could get away with it in the 17th century, but we can’t get away with it anymore, you know, because it it’s been it’s been implemented. It’s been put into institutions, it’s been acted upon, you know, and now you can see the full result of it.

00:19:42:01 – 00:19:57:10
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
I don’t know if you’re familiar with this book. This is a friend of my my buddy Scott Yeager. He wrote this book, I want to say 2012. You know, this is like a ten year old book, but in this book, he goes through all the modern political philosophers, starting with Locke and goes to Hegel and John Stuart Mill and all these guys.

00:19:57:10 – 00:20:14:16
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
And basically as what what do they think about marriage? Do they have anything sensible to say? And he’s basically coming to conclusion that you and I are now coming to, which is, no, they have nothing sensible to say, and they don’t have a clue. They don’t know what it’s about. You know, they can’t really quite grasp what it’s about until they get to the last chapter.

00:20:14:16 – 00:20:31:29
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
There’s this Polish philosopher you might have heard of called Carol witty. Well, you might know him by his other name. John Paul the second, right? Yeah. Oh, no. Now, that guy knows something about marriage. According to her, I read this book and him go. Is he Catholic? How do I how I how do I not know this guy?

00:20:31:29 – 00:20:59:11
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
You know, how do I do? Because I read the book before I met the guy is Missouri Synod Lutheran, it turns out. But but but anyway, the point is that that if you’re operating within this tradition, however you want to describe it, the modern political tradition of political thought, you can’t really see these problems. Exactly. You know, they’re sort of they’re surfacing because they’ve been neglected, I suppose I should say, and because we constructed an idea of ourselves that doesn’t really include them, I don’t know.

00:20:59:13 – 00:21:07:10
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Do you have a chicken or an egg? You know, kind of theory about how this worked or works or is working?

00:21:07:13 – 00:21:33:17
Nathanael Blake
I mean, I think you’re certainly right. And, you have not read your first book, but he’s right. That political philosophy has neglected this for centuries. Really? And again, it’s back to that problem of origins. So you have Hobbes or Locke, and they have these people in the state of nature who somehow reason, like well trained British barristers, and they sit around as well.

00:21:33:17 – 00:21:39:00
Nathanael Blake
We all. You know.

00:21:39:02 – 00:21:49:16
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
How does that even happen? That’s an issue, right? That’s exactly right. And they have servants. I think they have servants to who bring them stuff, whether. Well they’re deliberating.

00:21:49:18 – 00:22:23:03
Nathanael Blake
Yeah. I mean where did that was, where did the independent adults come from is always the problem. It. Right. You know, runs through to, you know, harbormaster someone more recent. Okay. Well, all these wonderful theories about communication and such, but you’re still presuming rational adults to a large extent, trying to communicate. I would say one of the few exceptions to this, outside of a particularly Christian tradition, are some passages in Hannah Arendt.

00:22:23:06 – 00:22:49:15
Nathanael Blake
And I certainly don’t want to praise everything she says. But some of her discussion of both forgiveness and promise making she on a very Christian note about, well, the birth of a child is the beginning of something new, and it she only hints in this direction, but I wonder if part of it is she was a woman. Any there’s.

00:22:49:16 – 00:22:49:29
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Right.

00:22:50:06 – 00:23:18:26
Nathanael Blake
There’s a sort of blindness in a lot of male political philosophers, especially since, well, I don’t know about it, especially since you see it in antiquity, too. But certainly this modern liberal edition of. Well, of course, people are independent, rational, you know, beings you can look after themselves. And that’s the perspective of someone who you said is not dealing with children.

00:23:18:28 – 00:23:42:28
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Right? Right. Or if it if he is dealing with children, he’s dealing with them in the sense of almost like property. I mean, that would be the Roman paterfamilias had the right to, to expose the child. And, Rodney Stark points out, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Rodney Stark, who is a great sociologist of religion. He points out that one reason Christianity grew in the Roman Empire is because women were drawn to it.

00:23:42:28 – 00:24:00:08
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Women knew if they married a Christian man that he would not make them kill their babies if they if he didn’t, well, if they if they weren’t strong enough or they didn’t suit him for some reason, they knew they could count on a Christian man to not do that. And that was, that was attractive. In that particular cultural context.

00:24:00:08 – 00:24:18:23
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
So. Well, well, we’ve we’ve lost a lot of the sense of the wonder of Christianity. And I think that’s one of the things that your book does well is to sort of bring back that sense that the Christian understanding of these things is is worth preserving and is worth, embracing. It’s not just to like you said earlier, it’s not a killjoy.

00:24:19:00 – 00:24:44:15
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
It’s something that has a positive contribution to make to the to the building up of society. I’d like to go back, though, to this, to this idea that our current moment where transgender is seems to be a thing, you know, where some people find it plausible to think that you can change the sex of the body, that that is built in certain ways on earlier steps of the sexual revolution?

00:24:44:17 – 00:24:56:17
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Could you take a few minutes and and just share with us your thoughts about how transgenderism built upon earlier stages of the sexual revolution? Anything you care to say about that?

00:24:56:20 – 00:25:32:23
Nathanael Blake
Certainly. So I, we mentioned already that same sex marriage was the immediate precursor, and proclaiming that marriage has nothing to do with men and women is an obvious and very clearly wasn’t obvious way of doing this. Because guess what? As soon as Obergefell came down, all the groups pivoted to transgenderism. So getting making male and female female no longer matter of marriage very obvious.

00:25:32:23 – 00:26:09:21
Nathanael Blake
But before that, you can still see elements, if male and female don’t matter in marriage, well, that is plausible to the extent that marriage has been separated from procreation and that procreation is now optional, it is a lifestyle choice as opposed to what is expected as the normal result of a marriage between two healthy adults, so that driven by contraception and changing cultural norms also helped set the stage for that.

00:26:09:21 – 00:26:40:28
Nathanael Blake
And of course, if marriage, if sex can be divorced from procreation, sex doesn’t need to be tied to marriage in the same way. So we see those connections, between, contraceptive culture and a culture that rejects marriage as necessary for sex and rejects marriage as a lifelong union. Instead, it can be dissolved. It. Well, it’s a contract.

00:26:40:28 – 00:27:11:27
Nathanael Blake
Back to contract theory here. And walk actually floated ideas about. Well, marriage doesn’t have to be permanent as long as the children are taken care of. So you can see that liberal contract theory idea already at work. I don’t think he expected it to come out nearly as much as it has now. But once you start to create both the idea and the material conditions for the idea to be plausible, then we think, I can.

00:27:11:29 – 00:27:40:12
Nathanael Blake
I really wish I’d put this in the book because it was a great line for me, but we think we can get away with it. But we do. And so it’s. Yeah, if sex is separate from marriage, sex is separate from procreation. It is instead simply what you do because you want to do it as long as you can find a willing partner, or as long as the, pornography site or whatever else will provide you with stimulus.

00:27:40:15 – 00:28:13:22
Nathanael Blake
Okay, once we’ve established that, then no long, we lose all these other steps and eventually you end up saying, well, if my body doesn’t matter, if it has no purpose that is fulfilled sexually in marriage, then does it have any purpose at all in terms of being male or female, or is it just a meat? You go to use Marie Harrington’s phrase that I love, you know, you can just take it apart, put it back together as best as you can, however you feel like.

00:28:13:25 – 00:28:44:00
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Well, that’s a very interesting answer. And some of those elements, well, you put the elements together in a, in an interesting and helpful way. And, and the pivot from Obergefell, from the redefinition of marriage that the immediate turn towards transgenderism that I didn’t notice while it was happening. It’s only in retrospect, when you look back on it, that you realize, oh, Bruce Jenner was on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine the same weekend that Obergefell was handed down.

00:28:44:02 – 00:29:08:28
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
You know, the The Jazz Jennings TV program, the reality TV program with the with the boy whose mother thought he was a girl. And we were week after week watching this family drama unfold. And now it’s a disaster that came out within two weeks of the gay marriage decision. So you can’t tell me that the activist groups were unaware of what they were doing?

00:29:09:00 – 00:29:21:05
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
You know what I mean? In their mind, it mattered, right? And so I think it behooves us as onlookers to what they’re doing to put to put two and two together and see how it see how it fits together.

00:29:21:07 – 00:29:41:24
Nathanael Blake
Now they were ready. They were waiting, and they went too far. But that going too far is something that we have to use to show all those connections. And back to the problem of abandoning a Christian sexual understanding of the human person.

00:29:41:26 – 00:30:10:14
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Right, right. Now, you know, there was a point in your book and this was kind of this is not a central point, but it interests me because of work that we do here at the Ruth Institute. So if you’d like to comment on, I’m sure our listeners would be interested in it. You had kind of a veiled critique of Pray Away the Gay, the idea of praying away the gay, that, that some groups, were telling people or teaching people that it would be possible to convert away from homosexuality.

00:30:10:16 – 00:30:29:04
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
I if you don’t mind, did you have somebody particular in mind when you were talking about that or some particular. Yeah. Instance of that. And, and do you have your own theory about the origins of persistent same sex attraction that you think is more correct?

00:30:29:06 – 00:30:59:12
Nathanael Blake
Well, so this the context for this was that I was I spent a section of the chapter addressing the misconception that we were born this way, which was a popular slogan for saying, you know, same sex marriage, gay rights. There was a Lady Gaga song. So that is incorrect. We are not born this way. Nature released a large study a few years back saying there is no gay gene or genes.

00:30:59:14 – 00:31:28:17
Nathanael Blake
They still haven’t found one. And the best theories for the well, one same sex attraction is multi causal and will vary from individual to individual. So we’re between it is immutable and intrinsic and the core of your identity and the idea that it’s simply a choice because people have unwanted sexual attractions or sexual inclinations, including same sex attraction.

00:31:28:21 – 00:31:56:25
Nathanael Blake
So trying to strike that balance, and what I had in mind in my critique was incidence. And I did not dig them up. But from when I was younger, particularly in the evangelical Christian world, where there were some prominent ex gays who were then discovered in compromising situations after having proclaimed that they had been cured of their same sex attraction.

00:31:56:27 – 00:32:22:21
Nathanael Blake
And what I’m trying to do is throughout this section is argue not that, it’s impossible for sexual attraction to change because it can. And I say that and I give examples of that, including some people who say, actually, I used to be straight and now I’m gay. But to say that it is complicated, my main point is simply that we should not to make promises that we can’t keep.

00:32:22:21 – 00:32:53:07
Nathanael Blake
So therapy can be effective in addressing people’s sexual inclinations and helping them understand them. Prayer, of course, as Christians it can be tremendously powerful. God really can’t change who you are at very fundamental level. That is the promise of sanctification. At the same time, we also know that we will continue to be beset by temptation in this life.

00:32:53:09 – 00:33:28:05
Nathanael Blake
So it’s striking that balance of gender sexuality, not gender sexuality, can be fluid. I mean, anyone who reads about ancient Athens knows that, you know, come on. This sudden interest in pederasty was just natural. Now, it was a cultural thing that people were inculcated into. But once you have a particular sexual, temptation, it doesn’t mean that it will always be something that can be cured or taken away from you in this life.

00:33:28:05 – 00:33:57:02
Nathanael Blake
So I’m trying to strike that balance of recognizing that there is benefit and I defend Christian therapists who help people understand their sexual desires and try to help them deal with unwanted sexual desires and the power of prayer, while also recognizing that sometimes we will just have temptations that will be with us in this life. So that is my attempt to balance these factors.

00:33:57:05 – 00:34:29:03
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Yeah, the part of the reason I wanted to clarify that is that the Ruth Institute has been involved in the debate over so-called conversion therapy bans, and you probably aware that there are many jurisdictions that are trying to ban any kind of therapy, including prayer, that if somebody says, I’m going to help you lessen your feelings of attraction, I’m going to help you, change your sexual identity or your sexual orientation, that in some jurisdictions that’s criminal and you can lose your license.

00:34:29:03 – 00:34:47:22
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
And, you know, even if you’re just praying, that can be, that can be, you know, criminal offense. So we’ve been involved in those debates really around the world. And so I didn’t know how committed you were to that or how important that was for your main point. But but what you said is not inconsistent with what we’ve been saying.

00:34:47:29 – 00:35:09:00
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
You know, that the the causes of same sex attraction, and we try not to use the word gay or lesbian, because that suggests that it’s that, that it’s a trait. And we want to move away from the trait idea and more toward the the confluence of behaviors, thoughts and feelings, which I think is more realistic, understanding of what it is that people can change.

00:35:09:02 – 00:35:29:09
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
They change. It happens all the time. You know, and in our series of interviews that we’ve done with people, one of the things we’ve encountered is a lot of these people have been traumatized in various ways. And as they come to understand the trauma, the feelings change, you know? And so there’s a there’s the there’s like you said, it’s a complex thing.

00:35:29:09 – 00:35:49:06
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
And the slogans really don’t help. Whether it’s you’re born that way or pray away the gay or, you know, the slogans just don’t cut it. Because it’s a much, much too complicated thing. And it’s an injustice to people to just blow it off with one line, you know, kind of thing. So I really wanted to get your take on, you know, what you were saying.

00:35:49:10 – 00:36:07:04
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
I know some of those cases that you’re talking about. Ten years ago, there were a couple of very celebrated such cases. And then all the other cases that, you know, where people have changed sexual orientation, have been married for 40 years to an opposite sex partner. We never hear about those people. Right on the people who have done it successfully.

00:36:07:04 – 00:36:30:24
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
You never you know, they don’t get any airtime, which is part of how the sexual revolution operates. So, you know, is by controlling access to information, are there are there any further topics in your book? Nathaniel, that you’d like to bring out? Things that we haven’t mentioned yet or, things that you think would be important for Ruth Institute followers to be aware of that are that are, topics within your book.

00:36:30:26 – 00:37:12:21
Nathanael Blake
That I’m trying to work through, the sort of a mental table of contents we have. We’ve covered a lot of it. There are other points in there, but I don’t know exactly how well some of them would just drop into this. Outside of the context of the book, I think the main summary that I have is simply the argument that what we are seeing in our culture, just reiterate, is a longing for a frantic love for an authentic connection and commitment that is protected by Christian sexual mores.

00:37:12:23 – 00:37:54:11
Nathanael Blake
The protection of human life. We’ve covered most of the subjects. I would simply summarize that. I think what we are seeing in the argument of the book is that as our culture imbibed the poison of the sexual revolution, it becomes more apparent that it is harmful and that there is therefore an opportunity for Christians to present Christian truths about the human person and human sexuality that may then be received in our culture, because the goodness of what God has designed for us will become more apparent.

00:37:54:11 – 00:38:37:04
Nathanael Blake
In contrast to the evils of a culture that is increasingly lonely, that treats people as disposable, that treats people as objects to be used for one’s pleasure, instead of subjects to be loved in themselves, and that all of these harms of the sexual revolution may therefore prepare the soil for presenting people with both the truth of Christian morality and then ultimately the truth, the deeper truth that this is based in, which is God’s love for us, his redemptive purpose for our lives, and ultimately the union with him that we are meant for in eternity.

00:38:37:06 – 00:38:47:28
Nathanael Blake
Which marriage itself is an image of that full union between us in Christ, in which we are loved and will love forever.

00:38:48:01 – 00:38:58:15
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Well, Nathaniel Blake, that is a beautiful ending to this very fascinating conversation. I want to thank you so much for being my guest on today’s episode of The Doctor J show.

00:38:58:17 – 00:39:02:06
Nathanael Blake
Thank you very much for having me. I’ve really enjoyed this.

00:39:02:09 – 00:39:29:23
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
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About the Ruth Institute

The Ruth Institute is a global non-profit organization, leading an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love.

Jennifer Roback Morse has a Ph.D. in economics and has taught at Yale and George Mason University. She is the author of The Sexual State and Love and Economics – It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.

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