Oh, the gospel will overcome in a world full of sorrow, by evil over all. You're listening to The Dean's List, an analysis of news, culture and theological trends from a Biblical worldview. This is your place for intelligent conversation on the relevant issues of our day. And now, here's the host of The Dean's List, Dr. Paul Dean. All right, Mary Dean, we haven't broadcast in a while. We took a little time off, just like a lot of other folk. Of course, ours was not for vacation, it's just summer. stuff our summer schedule but we're back ah yes glad to record a new show yes i'm uh glad to be back too and it's been exciting not only the time off but uh first day back in the saddle has been exciting okay remember governor haley came by this morning oh she did yeah yeah nicky haley we uh broadcast from south carolina the governor came by where we were actually working. We do some early morning coaching. And by early morning, I mean like I'm on deck 5.30 in the morning. Yes. Now, I don't know about other folk, but that's early for me. I'm just saying. I'm just telling you. Yes. When your alarm rings at 4.50, that's a little early. Yeah. Yeah. I don't like it, but, you know, got to do it. But here's the deal. Uh, Sid, we all had to use the same bathroom. Yes. I saw the faces. One of the guys was like, oh no, I know they were like freaking out You know why cuz these are good folks from South Carolina Now, Nikki Haley didn't come by. She didn't tell us we had to use the same bathroom. The particular location we were at, the men's room was out of order. We'll just put it that way. Alright? So, anyway, we didn't share. We found another one open. I made the men hike a good piece. Well, they didn't want to share. Well, I know it. I know it. You know, it was great. None of them wanted to share. So, they went around and up and found another But anyway, it's all good, I don't want to talk about that all day. Here's what I want to talk about. I mentioned that because in Iowa, there's some crazy stuff going on. I don't know if our governor's been out there or who or what, but anyway, listen, I'm slamming Nikki too much. She just didn't turn out to be what she campaigned, but that's beside the point. We're not even going to go down that road, okay? You sort of did, but okay, we'll stop. Yeah, well, okay, let's do a U-turn. Iowa cannot have, now this is a ruling here, Iowa cannot have sex segregated bathrooms and even the churches can't have sex segregated bathrooms. Did you know this? Well, what about like the YMCA, who has age-segregated bathrooms? I thought that was a protected thing, too. Yeah, well, I don't know. I don't know. Don't know what's going on at the YMCA. But here, this is from the Christian Post. Now, you can find more information about this in other outlets, but churches are required to base bathroom use upon gender identity, not biological sex, Now that's bad, that's bad, bad, bad, but listen to this. Churches could be barred from making statements that make a transgender person feel unwelcome, and that, of course, is not defined by the Bible or defined by, you know, us being kind. That's defined by, well, quite frankly, the Civil Rights Commission of Iowa. So essentially, let me read that one more time, Iowa churches are required to base bathroom use, gender identity, not biological sex, and could be barred from making statements that make a transgender person feel unwelcome unless services are closed to the public, the Iowa Civil Rights Commission has stated. So you got to put a members only sign. Members only. Nobody welcome. This is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Get out of here. Not welcome. That's what Iowa wants the churches to do. Now, should the churches put up a sign that says not welcome? Course not. I'm going to quote, if I don't quote him, you know, in the next five minutes, remind me, um, trying to think what his name is. Oh my goodness. The old independent Baptist preacher 50, 60 years ago, Lester, was it Lester? I don't know. I got him. Got it. I'm not independent Baptist. Listen, I believe every word of the Bible. Yes. And I'm putting on my thickest southern accent when I do this radio broadcast. I don't know why I do that. Why do I do that? I don't know, but yeah. You know I sound a little different from the pulpit than I do in a theological lecture, than I do in a conversation, than I do right here on the broadcast. I don't know, I guess I'm just trying to be... It's your radio hat, I guess. It's my radio hat. Yeah. On the radio, on the podcast, just having a little fun. Poking a little fun at myself. You might think you were from Gray Court. Yeah. Got some friends down in Gray Court. One of them actually, originally from Barnwell. Now the rest of the folk in South Carolina call it Barnwell, but if you're from there, it's Barnwell. It's like Clinton. Yeah. Clinton. Yeah. Not Clinton, but Clinton. And you know what? If you're from, uh, Chiraul, if you're actually from Chiraul, South Carolina, it's Chiraul. Are you serious? I am dead serious. It is Chiraul. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, back to the bathroom. Of course, we're from Greenville. No, actually, grr. Grr. That's right. Not greer, but grr. Now look, there are people all over the world listening to this. They have no idea what we're talking about, but we're just giving you an education. A language, linguistic. Yeah. Yeah. Area, I don't know what you call that. Yeah. You know, I shouldn't say this because I don't want to sound like I'm bragging because I'm not, but I do want people to listen because we do study up on this stuff. But you're educated. Yeah. I mean, I got like four earned degrees, two masters and a doctorate. But none of them was in linguistics, I guess. No. Got a BA in philosophy. You know why I did a bachelor's in philosophy? I do. I guess you didn't like 8 o'clock accounting class. Didn't like 8 o'clock accounting, didn't like econ at the time. I do now. Didn't like anything. Except thinking about the cheeriness of the chair. That's it. I went to philosophy 101 class at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. That's why you liked it. Well, that's the first reason. I told you I'm not a morning person. This 5.30 stuff on deck is killing me. And not only was it the one o'clock in the afternoon issue, but you never had to really work any problems or, you know, I don't know, you just sat around and thought about stuff. And wrote about the thoughts you thought. Yeah, what'd you think about that? What'd you think about that? Well, let me tell you what I think about that. I mean, you know, it was pretty good. Now you had to memorize all what all kind of people thought about all kind of stuff. Well, I guess. I guess there was a little work involved, but not too much. I think that was the Lord preparing you for what you're doing. Well, I have no doubt in His providence He's preparing me, but I did go to the College of Charleston, and for those who are unaware of the geography of South Carolina. He went there for the beach. Yeah, that's on the coast. A lot of time I skipped philosophy class, thought about things out on the beach. All right, now let's... All right, look, back to it. Back to some information. This is serious stuff. I agree. I was just commenting on my accent, and here we went off down this road. All right. The Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit on Monday against members of the Iowa Civil Rights Commission. Now remember, it's the Iowa Civil Rights Commission that's handed down this ludicrous statement that churches... If they're open to the public, must have non-segregated bathrooms. Exactly, and can't say anything to make the transgenders feel uncomfortable. And again, we don't offend people unnecessarily, but, you know, again, they're defining what makes them feel uncomfortable or not. So basically, again, the Alliance Defending Freedom filed this lawsuit against the Iowa Civil Rights Commission in order to stop censorship of sermons on sexuality and marriage ethics. So they've been censoring the sermons, or at least, you know, that's what they want to do with the statement. So the Senior Counsel and Director for the Center for Christian Ministries, this ADF, okay, Eric Stanley, told the Christian Post that the government, quote, is acting unconstitutionally in attempting to apply the Civil Rights Act against churches. Let's hope so. Yeah, well, no, he's right. I know he's right. He's acting unconstitutionally in attempting to apply the Civil Rights Act against churches. See, what you're doing is destroying the First Amendment. What you're doing is destroying religious liberty. But here's the problem, and I'm just gonna say this, now look, we're gonna say some things that a lot of folk have probably never even thought, never even heard, they're gonna think we're nuts. So that's why I do my best South Carolina accent when I talk about these things. But the reality is we're not nuts, and if you think it through, and that's why I put the qualifiers on that I'm going to. we're going to talk about some other things afterwards so just hang in as we say. The problem is I want to suggest to you that the Civil Rights Act in and of itself is unconstitutional. I would agree with that. Okay. Now that is not a racist statement. That's right. It's just a fact. But are you going to have to explain it? Well, I'm going to explain it. It's also not a racist sentiment. If there's anybody that should hate racism more than anyone else, it's Christians. And look, I was born in South Carolina, raised in the sixties and seventies, know all about what happened back then. But I can tell you, I mean, I'm a sinner saved by grace, but I'm not a racist, but we have a theological problem to force. See, see when you, let's just say a man owns, um, let's just say owns a bakery. Somebody wants to come in and buy a cake. Well, by law, he has to sell that cake to anybody who walks in. Red, yellow, black, or white. And see, what we Christians are up in arms about is, well, if the homosexual couple walks in, the same-sex marriage couple walks in, they want the baker to sell them a cake for their same-sex marriage, and the baker refuses, we want to defend his right to refuse based on religious grounds. And I agree with that. That's good. And what most of these Christian bakers do, you walk in, you're homosexual, and they'll sell you a cake if you're just buying a cake. And you know what? I agree. I would too. I don't care who I sell to if I own a bakery. Now I might not sell if I know they're gonna, you know, use it for the same-sex wedding, you know, and do all the decorations, put two gay men on top. I'm not gonna do that. I'm with the Christian bakers. But here's the point. If I own the bakery and I own the cake, the government should not be able to force me to sell that cake to anyone that I don't want to sell it to for any reason. Even if the reason is despicable. Right? So if I don't want to sell my cake to, you know, the fat guy, I don't have to. If I don't want to sell it to the skinny guy, I don't have to. I'm just saying in general. I'm not criticizing folk. The black guy, the white guy. The consequence should be loss of business. You would lose business. Well, of course. Let the market decide though, not the government. The government has no right. And when the government steps in and forces me to, forces, let me put it this way, when the government steps in and forcibly separates me from my property, i.e. makes me sell the cake to somebody I don't want to, that's called stealing. They might compensate me, but it's still called stealing and tyranny. And I don't, it's just unbiblical. And what I'm urging Christians to do is think biblically. and the Constitution is rooted in that concept. But what's happened is over time we've changed all of that. Now we're going to deal with a little history here in just a moment. But we need to be arguing for big picture, otherwise it just seems like we're arguing for ourselves. So we got a theological problem to forcibly separate a man from his property that's stealing. We've got a civil problem. Same thing. You're not allowed to steal in a civil society. If you let one person steal from another, even if the government forces it, guess what? Stealing. It's stealing and you don't have a civil society. You have anarchy. I'm talking about the chaotic kind of anarchy. The bad kind of anarchy. And everybody might think, well, you don't have anarchy because the government is forcing you. Yeah, well, see, if I force somebody at gunpoint to sell, let's just say I walk into the bakery and Mr. Baker doesn't want to do this or that, and I force him at gunpoint to do it, and even if I pay him $100, they're going to put me in jail. Am I right or wrong? You're right. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. So why is it that the government gets to do that and not suffer any consequences? I'm just saying. Well, that's the government, Romans 13. Now, wait a minute. Romans 13 doesn't say the government has the right to do that. It just says they have the sword. Exactly. And that's where Christians need to get it right. Romans 13 simply says they have the sword. They have that authority. God has ordained it, but it doesn't say they have the right. Any more than a husband has the right to boss his wife around. He doesn't have that right. Oh yeah, I agree with that one. I know you do. But you also agree that the wife is supposed to submit. I do agree. Even if it seems weird if he's not asking her to do something unbiblical. That is true. That's why I have to wear red every day. I'm joking. It's a joke. Because you like red. No. I don't. I know. You don't. It's a total joke. And we need to do a whole broadcast on that to flesh that one out because I know there's lots of questions that just went up. But I'm just using that as an illustration. Now, we also have a cultural problem. See, what's happened is the Civil Rights Act has become sacrosanct. This whole Civil Rights thing is sacrosanct. See, what we're doing, because of the multiculturalism, I'm talking about philosophical multiculturalism that splinters our society. Because of that, the Civil Rights Act is, first off, unbiblical and unconstitutional to start with, not a racist statement, just a fact. But because it's being twisted by every constituency group and identity group out there, we've got chaos on our hands. The problem is that it's sacrosanct and it shouldn't be. And it's because we have a historical problem. And Americans, not just Christians, well, Americans, but Christians, more than that, are woefully ignorant of history. I will agree with that. I know a history major that is woefully ignorant of history. Yes, we've got a problem. More than one. Here's part of the historical problem. We don't have time to get into it because we've got some other things we want to get to. But do you realize that, let's just talk about the days of the Civil War briefly. It's not that whites and blacks hated one another during those days. Now, were there slaves and was that evil? Yeah. Was there abuse here and there? Yeah. Of course, any slavery, any chattel slavery is abuse, but I'm talking about even abuse of the slaves, and you know, physically, whatever. Yeah, absolutely. Of course. Why? Sinners. Sinners, total depravity. All right, everybody's been doing that throughout history. Following. Wasn't a special thing for, you know, America. We've been, you know, human beings have been doing that throughout history. It's terrible. It's horrible. God hates it. But it wasn't like that all the blacks and whites hated one another in those days. That's just not the way it was. But you had a lot of hatred and a lot of animosity that built up, and it was primarily built up because of government inducement, government intervention. During the days of Reconstruction, when the government restructured things, when the U.S. government, the North, restructured things in the South in an unfair way, in a tyrannical way. I mean, I'm not going to get into all the details. They took what they wanted. They did what they wanted. All of a sudden, you've got a lot of animosity and hatred that's brewing under the surface. And then guess what? Along comes a little bit later, the Jim Crow laws. And everybody wants to talk about the Jim Crow laws of the South. Now, wait a minute. These are U.S. government laws. These are laws enacted by the U.S. government, not just the South. And it's Jim Crow that talked about separate but equal. And you have a lot of hate and animosity building up there. Jim Crow laws evil? Well, of course they are. Of course they are! But here's the reality. Yes, you can look at the depravity of man, and no, I'm not defending Southerners of the 1860s and 1960s when they were evil. I'm a Christian! Yeah, there were a lot of evil things going on. There were people that did think they were superior. Yeah, well, and that was in the minds, and you fomented all this hatred and all the white supremacy groups and all that. So there are a lot of factors. It wasn't just the government, but a lot of factors. But I'm simply saying, here's what happens. When the government intervenes and tries to engage in social engineering, whatever form, or when they try to stick their nose in where it doesn't belong, when they try to experiment with society or force something that they think is good, that's anti-liberty, there are always, listen to this, do not ever forget it, there are always, always, always unforeseen consequences. When the government tries to manipulate the environment, unforeseen consequences. You want to talk about wetlands disappearing, you want to talk about erosion, you want to talk about all kinds of things. Forests, the way we deal with forestry, I mean I could go on and on. And the way we deal with economics, look at the Fed. Listen, inflation is the result of government intervention. If we were doing a theological lecture, a series of lectures, you know, we'd have the stats, we'd have the charts, we'd have everything. And it's not that I'm some anti-government nut, it's just that, you know what, the information is out there. And so what happens is when the government intervenes, there are always unforeseen consequences, and most of them are bad, to put it in the vernacular. The U.S. government doesn't get human nature, for example. They don't know what they're doing when they try these social experiments. People aren't going to tolerate it. Wrongly? Well, you're not wrong to resist government, but you're wrong to be evil towards your fellow man. And when I say you're not wrong to resist government, you're wrong to resist if they're not asking you to violate a biblical principle. But if they're asking you to violate a biblical principle, then you need to resist. But the government doesn't get human nature. The government is not in control. The government is not God. The government cannot see the future. The government cannot see the consequences. That's why we call them unforeseen consequences. So you have the Civil Rights Act. So what is this? This is government trying to fix what it broke. Got Jim Crow. Bad. They undo that. Okay. Well now they're going to go the opposite because, you know, you got this separate but equal deal, which is bad. So they come up with the Civil Rights Act. Well, guess what? They're unforeseen consequences to the Civil Rights Act. Now you're destroying liberty. See, if you don't have reconstruction, if you don't have the Civil Rights Act, I'm sorry, not the Civil Rights Act. If you don't have the Jim Crow laws. Sure. Sure. People hate people. And that manifests in a lot of ways, but you know what people like money to white people like green black people like green. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? So we're trying to fix what we broke. That is the U S government. And now there are other unforeseen consequences. Here we are. And now you got the Iowa civil rights commission telling churches, they can't have segregated bathrooms and they can't say anything that will make a transgender person feel uncomfortable. And guess what? That is not an erroneous, despite what we said at the top of the show, and I saved this for effect, that is not an erroneous application of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, was it four or eight, whatever it was. I want to say eight, but it's probably four. It's 64. It's 64. It's not an erroneous application. Now it's unconstitutional. It is. It's a violation of the first amendment. But it is, it is an exactly right application of civil rights. And it's, it's the chickens coming home to roost is what it is. And look, if you would have never had Jim Crow, you wouldn't have the animosity. You wouldn't have had, you know, black water fountains, white water. I'm not saying you, I don't listen. I don't know every detail of history. I'm simply saying unforeseen consequences and the government's part of the problem. But I'll tell you this, you get rid of that Civil Rights Act right now, I don't know of anybody who wouldn't sell a hamburger to anybody who walks in the restaurant. I just don't, if you own a hamburger restaurant. Come one, come all. If I own a hamburger restaurant, I don't care what you are, come in and buy my hamburger. Of course, we did do a radio broadcast on the fact that One owner was losing business because people weren't coming because a group decided to make that their hangout on a particular night. Do you remember that? Well, yeah. Okay. But you always have little things that happen, but you don't make a law. No, no, no. You don't get government intervention. And see, but what happened there, let's see, we don't even have time. Yeah, I know. We're getting on track. Go ahead. Well, no, I mean, I guess we can talk about it. Because we're not even going to get to the solution here. Well, go to the solution. All right, we'll come back to that. Anyway, I'm just saying that was a point. You know, what about, you know, they say, well, what about people who won't serve, you know, transgenders? We're talking about churches. The churches want the transgenders to come in. Real churches do. They want the homosexuals to come in. And they want to preach the gospel to them. They want to be nice to them. But they're going to tell them the truth. But you know what? They're not going to... They're not going to say we're going to have a transgender bathroom. They're not going to do away with men and women's bathrooms. Or they might do, like a lot of people are doing, just have one bathroom in one room. Well, they should not do that in this context, and that's what we're getting to. That's what we need to talk about with reference to where we're going as a church. Here's the deal. I want to just make this point. If the government would just get out, you're not going to have wholesale discrimination rampant in the land. You're just not. You really aren't, because our culture's where it's at. And it's not just our culture now, but also the market, the free market. But what if you do have discrimination here and there? Listen, there is discrimination that is despicable. I've already said that. If I own a hamburger restaurant and won't serve somebody a hamburger because he's black or because he's homosexual, because he's white, or because he's straight, or because he's transgender, or she's transgender, if I won't serve, that's despicable. You want to serve people from a biblical perspective. But at the same time, that's not the real issue in civil society. The real issue in civil society is freedom, because if you don't have freedom, then you got discrimination all the time. People are being discriminated against because they're not allowed to do what they want with their property. But it's not just discrimination, which it is, but it's a lack of freedom, which means you don't have a civil society, which means the rest of our freedoms are going out the window and pretty soon the whole culture is going to be like the USSR. I think it's going to be worse. It's going to implode. Now listen to this. Advocating on behalf of Fort Des Moines Church of Christ, the ADF complaint argues that the church should not be mandated to communicate messages it objects to, nor should it be forced to open their restrooms, locker rooms, and shower facilities to members of the opposite sex. In an email statement, Eric Stanley said, exemption for religious institutions is unconstitutionally vague. He's talking about the Iowa civil rights statement. Churches have always been protected from government intrusion and they still are. They have a firmly established freedom to teach their beliefs and set internal policies that reflect their biblical teachings about marriage and human sexuality. One can hardly imagine a more obvious unconstitutional invasion of the state into the internal affairs of the church. And that's exactly right. But there again, they're talking about religious exemptions. Public accommodations. Oh, they're good with these public accommodations over here, but they don't want these public accommodations over there. This is where I'm saying Christians are being inconsistent. No public accommodations, freedom, freedom, freedom. What's wrong with you people? Do you not read your Bible? Do you not understand? You're part of the problem. Listen, I agree. I want to protect this church, but don't give me public accommodations. Give me freedom! Or give me death! Somebody once said that. Said, give me liberty or give me death. Who was that? Payne? Thomas? Where you at? Or was it somebody else? I don't know. Got a bone up on my history. I'm a theology major, amen? That wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't made the comment about the... Yeah, I know it. Well, that's a detail. Patrick Henry, maybe. Patrick Henry! Yeah, Thomas Paine was like this wicked philosopher, anyway. See, I was asleep during that one. I don't know, I'm just kidding. I should take that back. Look, we gotta do part two, because we never got to the solution, and the solution is better than all this ranting I've been doing. So tomorrow, we're going to clear up Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, everything else. The opinions expressed on today's program are those of the announcers, their guests, and callers, and do not necessarily represent those of the staff and management of His Radio Network, the Radio Training Network, or iHeart Media.