NHL Player Says No To Pride Night

Dr. Morse and Fr. Jack discuss the NHL player who refused to wear an LGBTQ jersey for Pride Night because it conflicted with his religious values. Also, they mention Japan’s population crisis and how their prime minister has spoken out about this problem.

Transcript:

Please note that transcripts are auto-generated and may contain errors.

Fr. Jack: With us now is Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, and she is the head of the Ruth Institute, which is an interfaith group seeking to fight the sexual revolution on all the different fronts that we face. Dr. Morse, thanks for being with us today.

Dr. Morse: Thanks for having me.

Fr. Jack: You know, I sent you a text about a new book that was coming out. Did you see that?

Dr. Morse: Yeah, but it’s slipped my mind. Father, I’ve had the flu here.

Fr. Jack: No, I understand. But I thought that was good. That another book on the history of the sexual revolution.

Dr. Morse: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Bishop Peter Elliott from Australia. Is that the one?

Fr. Jack: That’s right. 

Dr. Morse: Yes, yes, yes, yes. This is an Ignatius Press book that has been available in Australia for, I don’t know, going on two years now. And I am talking to him about getting him on my program and getting him on the Dr. J Show program. So now that it’s the books available in the United States, so I hope that comes through and I will certainly keep you guys posted about that.

Fr. Jack: Well, we need all the allies we can get. And so when I saw that, I had to post that to you on Facebook, I figured you might have known about it already, but it’s good to see someone else looking it up.

Dr. Morse: Well, I appreciate that. And he’s a very interesting guy. And I read the book in TypeScript, you know, so I have an idea of what all he has to say. And so that’s it’s going to be a good thing.

Fr. Jack: You know, one of the things, doctor, and you pointed this out in one of your press releases this week was sports used to be a way for us to get away from the goofiness, you know, all the politics and stuff. I mean, my gosh, you can’t even now get M&Ms because they got to get rid of the M&M characters.

You know, they had to find somebody else to take over because you can’t have little M&M characters running around for woke reasons. But this past week, you talked about basically an NHL star. Paul’s ears are perking up about this, about this Ivan Provorof, who is a defenseman for the Philadelphia Fliers. He declined to wear an LGBTQ jersey on the team’s Pride night last week.

He said the Russian Orthodox player explained he couldn’t stay true to himself and my religion by participating. And ironically, of course, all the cancel warriors jumped on him. But that doesn’t seem to have affected the fans, does it?

Dr. Morse: Well, you know, that’s the really interesting thing about this whole thing is that, you know, the usual suspects jumped on him and were very intolerant about him being intolerant. You know, and the mavens of inclusivity wanted to exclude him. And, you know, all of the usual ironies were there. Fortunately, his team didn’t. His coach didn’t jump on him.

And the league so far hasn’t done anything, although there are people saying, oh, he should be fined $1,000,000 and yadda, yadda, yadda. But the interesting thing is that the fans have bought out all of his jerseys. It’s like you can’t get his jerseys anymore because the fans have bought the jerseys for men, the jerseys for women.

Anything with his name on it has sold out now. And so it’s confirming what you and I have talked about many times, Father, which is that the whole sexual revolution is something from the top down and not something that the ordinary people want or embrace or are part of it. If you if all you had to rely on was let’s persuade people one by one, this thing would have ended a long time ago.

But they’ve got all sorts of heavy handed, top down type of tactics to intimidate people, and that’s why it’s gone on as long as it has.

Fr. Jack: I just you know, the question with all these sports groups because I know most Major League Baseball and basketball and hockey and all of the football even, you know, does all these is pandering to these groups. And this is what’s I mean, how can they be, especially when you think about sports, where they have such a strong fan base just based on their own local team?

Why do they think that embracing this little bit of idiocy is going to somehow help them or hurt them?

Dr. Morse: Well, that’s it. That, to me, that’s the million dollar question right there, is to explain why corporate America has gone completely woke. You know, because it’s not coming from the customers. It’s not the customers who want it. And, you know, as a free market economist, I look at it and go, what are they thinking? But it’s obvious to me now that in a certain way, the people from the left who said, oh, big business isn’t really based on the consumer, big business is really all out for itself and for power structures and all that.

The people who were talking like that they were right, whether they were on the right or on the left. That turned out to be more correct than a lot of us had hoped to see. But the fact is, sports is part of big business. It’s not kids playing sandlot baseball anymore. You know, it’s just it has nothing to do with that.

With what you and I grew up with, thinking sports was really all about. It’s part of big business now. And so whatever is going on with the rest of corporate America, that’s part of what’s going on with the sporting industry also.

Fr. Jack: I think a lot of it, though, has to do with the marketers because of course, these businesses go to marketers and come up with a marketing plan and who these people who want to argue, I have my pulse on the nation. Well, yeah, but you don’t own a football team or you don’t own a soccer team or, you know, a European football team.

That’s the last thing these people care about, is that stuff. You don’t see a war starting. I mean, you see a war starting when two opposing teams who don’t like each other start. It has nothing to do with politics. And this is a it’s we have to get some new marketers out there and help these people. You help these owners say you need to start listening to a different group of people.

Dr. Morse: I wish that were true. I would hope that that’s true. But it increasingly seems like corporate America is further and further divorced from the from the pulse of ordinary America. You know, let’s put it that way. I mean, look at it this way, Father. If you go and I don’t recommend that you go, but if you go to any Pride parade, Pride celebration event in any of the big cities across America, you’ll see the big brand names, many big brands supporting pride.

Okay. So you’ll see Wells Fargo Bank, you’ll see a lot of the big banks and things like that, supporting gay pride, which is to say supporting the sexual revolution. Right. You’ll see them making big donations to Planned Parenthood. You’ll see them on the list of the human rights campaigns, corporate responsibility list, you know, because they’re doing all the things that the human rights campaigns wants them to do and so on.

But you don’t see any anything like that, anything comparable supporting pro-life causes. You don’t see anything comparable supporting pregnancy, pregnancy care centers. You don’t see anything comparable to that. So it’s and I have yet to see a completely satisfactory explanation for it. But it’s a fact. You know, you and I know that the businesses who go who show up to the pregnancy care center banquet and support them, they are local businesses.

Right. They are not big. Procter and Gamble is not they’re generally right. It’s the big brands are all in for the sexual revolution and it’s the small business, the local businesses who are holding the line against that stuff.

Fr. Jack: Well, you know, when you have like small market teams, you know, like Cincinnati or Buffalo or I’m thinking in terms of that and, you know, if it’s not a big thing for the people who are paying the bills and who are buying the stuff, then I think the key is, is these teams in terms of their sports, they just need to have the character to say no.

I mean, our guys are bigger than their guys. Okay. You want to take up you want to take a trouble with our offensive line well, I’ll introduce you to them, you know how these people come out and play an NFL game with us? Well, we’ll resolve this problem, you know, as men do. And of course, if that they understand who men are. We do. They might not, but they’ll find out in a hurry.

Now, in the process of all this just insanity going on, somehow these sports groups need to just take on their own, take on the bully. I mean, punch the bully down by ignoring them and go on. Oh, we don’t do this here. Okay. Well, it’s not affecting our bottom line because people are coming because we play football, not because we pander to different groups, you know?

If the people who support the sport or the team give them the permission to tell them, to tell the other group to go scratch, that might be a movement in the right direction.

Dr. Morse: Well, and that, I think, is the hopeful thing about what’s happening with this hockey player, whose name I can’t pronounce. I apologize. But Mr. Ivan, the Philadelphia flier, the people support him. It’s the people who support him. There’s no doubt about it that that’s the case. And, you know, hopefully somebody in the fliers office and somebody in the NHL will look at that and say, you know, this is our fan base. These are our people.

Fr. Jack: It would be interesting, Dr. Morse, if actually someone would have interviewed someone going in to buy a Provorov’s jersey says, why are you buying that jersey? What do you think about this? Well, because he’s a heck of a player, you know, and he knows how to how to move that puck around. It’s not because of his politics, that’s for sure.

Dr. Morse: Well, I think that’s partially true. But the other part of it is people are tired of being pushed around. And so he so he is now, you know, by taking a stand and not backing down. He he’s a beacon for people. Right? People are going to rally around him. He’s providing a kind of moral leadership that should be being provided by the president or the bishops or, you know, other people who have positions of responsibility and authority should be providing actual moral leadership.

But they aren’t. They’re all you know, they’re all either falling over themselves to go along with things or they are part of the problem themselves. And so you have a hockey player like this taking a stand for the right thing. And, you know, whether you’re Russian Orthodox or evangelical or just a good old boy who’s fed up, they’re going to support Ivan. You know?

Fr. Jack: Well, Dr. Morse, can you say with us over the break? And we’ll continue our discussion when we get back.

Dr. Morse: I’d love to. Sounds great.

Fr. Jack: Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse heads the Ruth Institute, which is an interfaith nonprofit organization to help defend the family and repair the damage of the sexual revolution, which goes everywhere from sports to demographics to any other thing you can imagine they have. The sexual revolution has had a very long reach, unfortunately, and sticks its nose in a lot of places that it doesn’t belong.

And Dr. Morse, we’ve been talking about how it fits into the NHL, but also another area which is worth talking about, and that is this upcoming demographic winter. People just aren’t having children.

Dr. Morse: It’s a big problem and it’s been, we’ve been trying to talk about it for years and we’ve been talking about it years, but trying to get people’s attention about it is really a challenge. Right? But in fact, there is not a single industrialized country in the world that has above replacement fertility. And what that means ultimately what it’s going to mean is declining population.

And when you have declining population, you’re not going to be able to sustain the complex society that we’re used to living in. And we’re certainly not going to be able to take care of all the old people, you know. And so it’s a problem. It’s like a slow moving train wreck that nobody wants to look at.

Fr. Jack: Well, and that’s the case, as you pointed out, with your news release today, which is Japanese prime minister about the dire consequences of demographic winter. We think because Japan’s a series of islands, we think that there was a huge population there. But what’s clear is that there is a de- population of Japan for I don’t know what reason.

Dr. Morse: Well, there’s a number of things going on in the Japanese case. But let’s just get let’s just establish baseline facts for people so people understand it is the second oldest population in the world. So if you look at the average age of the population, their average age is 48, okay? There’s only one country older and that’s Monaco, which kind of is a city state.

It’s a city state, right. That hardly counts. Right. The fact is they’re their total fertility rate is about 1.36 babies per woman. And what you need for replacement is 2.1 babies per woman. That’s enough for the woman and the man to replace themselves. Basically, what it amounts to right. And Japan is well below that. All right.

And so their population is aging and they’re finding it increasingly difficult to talk people into having kids. There’s no panache to having kids. Their work ethic is very intense. And so people feel like they have to work hard and they can’t get started on their families until they’ve been through until they’re into their older, you know, kind of like what we have here, right?

You know, in a way, they’re giving us a forecast of what we’re going to look like if we don’t do something about it. You know, that’s the thing. And one of the special things about Japan, Father, is that you’re right, we have this image of Tokyo being crowded with masses of people and so on and so forth. But people don’t realize right after World War Two, the United States allowed Margaret Sanger to go over there and talk to them about overpopulation.

And she talked them into not, you know, birth control, basically, you know, that too many people’s a bad things and so forth. What that means is that Japan did not have a postwar baby boom the way the United States and a number of other countries had. Right. That’s not part of their story. So that just historically is a historical tidbit.

Fr. Jack: Yeah I don’t know there was documentation about actually them sending Margaret Sanger to Japan. I thought, Dear Lord.

Dr. Morse: I can’t remember how I know that. You know, I was thinking about that when I was reading this thing today is like, you know, that’s you know, how you have a little factoid on the back of your head. And I can’t remember how I know that, but I’m quite certain that that’s the case. You know, after World War Two, American policymakers were freaked out that if there were too many people, there would therefore be too much poverty.

And if there’s too much poverty, then the communists are going to take over. Then the countries are ripe for communist takeover. That was the thinking of a lot of people and that guided people like Henry Kissinger and Robert McNamara and Richard Nixon, you know, kind of that whole postwar generation, Democrat and Republican. Okay. Interestingly enough, this is a bipartisan kind of thought process, all egged on by people like Paul Erlich and the other prophets of doom, you could say.

Fr. Jack: Oh, yeah. Yeah.  

Dr. Morse: You know, now here we are with Japan looking at itself, going, you know, we can’t how are we going to maintain our complex technological society when it requires growth in order to have technological innovation and our growth is in part dependent on having people, people who know what they’re doing, people who are well-trained and so on and so forth.

So it’s a serious problem. And like I said, it’s hard to get people’s attention, people, the population control freaks. And I’m going to just call them that. The population control freaks have convinced everybody that there are too many people on the planet, and they’ve spent billions of dollars convincing people of that.

And that thought is at the root of a lot of very bad fruit, in my opinion.

Fr. Jack: Well, and, you know, they talk about this one world order stuff. But one of the things that’s interesting to me, I never paid much attention to this World Economic Forum in Davos, but you do know that they meet every year and it’s almost like they’re dividing up the world. And how do you know the money can pull it out of this and cause this to crash, put it into that, to cause that to flourish.

And they have all these they seem to have found every eccentric and doomsayer and put them in front of these millionaires and in the process are scaring the daylights out of people. Maybe that’s something you and I should talk about some time.

Dr. Morse: I’d be happy to. I can’t say I’m any big expert on the World Economic Forum, but I do know that that’s where a lot of the population control people gather every year.

Fr. Jack: I said they keep bringing all these people to talk and it’s in economics and the sexual revolution, people often don’t see as a connection. But it’s clear that it is. But anyway, Dr. Morse, I’m sorry, we’re out of time. If people want to again subscribe to the Ruth Institute and see all the great things you have and see your Dr. J Show, where can we send our listeners?

Dr. Morse: You should go to Ruth Institute dot org or you should go to the Ruth Institute’s YouTube channel and you’ll find a lot of great material there.

Fr. Jack: Well, thanks for being with us today.

Dr. Morse: Thanks for having me, Father. Always a pleasure.

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.

To schedule an interview with Dr. Morse, contact media@ruthinstitute.org.

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