The World and Everything in It: March 19, 2024
The United States healthcare system and cybersecurity attacks; Oregon reinstates penalties for drug possession; and a basketball referee encourages players.Plus, remembering the inventor of karaoke, Bethel McGrew on postmodern revolution, and the Tuesday morning news
PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us.I’m Gideon Smith.And I’m Sidney Seville with Logos Classical Academy in Northern Virginia.We listen to the program every week in Mrs.Craig’s logic class.We’re recording this message from WORLD’s Washington Bureau right across the street from the Supreme Court.
We hope you enjoy today’s program.
MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Oregon does a 180 on drug policy.But will reinstated penalties prompt addicts to seek help?
DAVIDSON: We need to meet people where they are, but not leave them where they’re at.Because there are people who are on the brink of death.
NICK EICHER, HOST: Also, a cyberattack that’s thrown U.S.healthcare into confusion.And another in our series What Do People Do All Day: a referee who walks the talk.
HINES: My prayer is always to be that light, and not let my bad side come out, you know, my competitive side.
And how postmodernism became a runaway train.
REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, March 19th.
This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio.I’m Mary Reichard.
EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher.
Good morning!
REICHARD: Time now for news with Kent Covington.
KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Biden calls Netanyahu / Israeli officials to Washington » Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to send a team of Israeli officials to Washington for a direct and frank conversation about the war in Gaza.
That announcement followed the prime minister’s first phone call with President Biden in more than a month.
National security advisor Jake Sullivan:
SULLIVAN: We really need to get down to brass tax.Everyone sitting around the same table, talking through the way forward.
The relationship between the Biden administration and Netanyahu’s government has chilled in recent weeks over tactics of war and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The White House is also wary of Israel’s planned ground operation in the city of Rafah.Netanyahu says it’s the last Hamas stronghold, and there’s no way to win the war without going into Rafah.
NETANYAHU: Unless we have that victory that I talked about, then we have a defeat.And a defeat spells terrible things for our future and for the future of the Middle East and beyond the Middle East.
But Sullivan said the White House hopes to change Netanyahu’s mind.
SULLIVAN: Our view is that there are ways for Israel to prevail in this conflict, to secure its long term future, to end the terror threat from Gaza and not smash into Rafah.That’s what we’re going to present.
Million displaced Palestinians are holed up in the city on the southern tip of Gaza.
Gaza food shortage » Sullivan also brought up a new U.N.report that warns of critical food shortages in the territory.
And Afrin Husain with the World Food Program said Monday …
HUSAIN: In northern Gaza, famine is imminent starting from now to May of this year.So it’s a very short window to act.
He said more than a million people are already suffering from a catastrophic level of hunger.
Jamie McGoldrick is U.N.
humanitarian coordinator for the region.He said while aid is being delivered by sea and by air drops every possible road must be open for supply trucks.
MCGOLDRICK: The only real way to get heavy loads of material, food and others, into all parts of Gaza is only by road.
Israel insists it is not blocking or limiting humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.
Putin setting agenda / Yulia, Zelenskyy remarks » Vladimir Putin was officially elected to a record sixth term as president in Russian elections over the weekend.
State Department spokesman Vedant Patel to reporters Monday:
PATEL: I was on the edge of my seat.It was such a nail-biter.
In all seriousness, to be very clear, the Russian people deserve a free and fair election and the ability to choose between a group of candidates representing a diverse set of views.
And access to a free press and impartial information.But the State Department said none of that happened in Russia.
Many other world leaders said the same, including Italy’s foreign minister Antonio Tajani:
ANTONIO TAJANI: [Speaking Italian]
who noted the recent death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
And Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, also spoke out, calling Putin a dictator.
NAVALNAYA: He’s a killer.He’s a gangster.He’s the person who brought my country to war and to everything.
Putin says one of his first priorities in his sixth term …will be to set up a buffer zone inside Ukraine…an act one senior Ukrainian official calls a sign of escalation.
SCOTUS: social media » The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in a case accusing the Biden administration of coordinating with Big Tech to censor some messages on social media, especially those of conservatives.
Some Republican states charge that the federal government has wrongly coerced social media platforms into censoring speech it doesn’t like.
In one exchange, Justice Samuel Alito seemed sympathetic to those complaints.
JUSTICE ALITO: There is constant pestering of Facebook and some of the other platforms.They want to have regular meetings, and they suggest rules that should be applied, and why don’t you tell us everything that you’re going to do.
But Justice Amy Coney Barrett seemingly expressed that at least some of those interactions may be appropriate.
She specifically spoke to law enforcement contacting social media companies when someone maliciously releases someone’s personal information, a practice known as doxxing.
JUSTICE BARRETT: So the FBI can’t make — Do you know how often the FBI makes those calls?
BENJAMIN AGUINAGA: And that’s why I have my backup answer, your honor, which is, if you think there needs to be more, the FBI absolutely can identify certain troubling situations like that and let the platforms take action.
Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguinaga heard there.
But multiple justices did seem concerned that ruling in favor of the states could affect common interactions between the government and the platforms.
Multiple lower courts did side with the states, but their decisions are on hold pending the high court’s ruling which is expected by early summer.
AGUINAGA: I think they absolutely can call and say this is a problem; it’s gone rampant on your platforms.But the moment that the government tries to use its stature as the government to pressure them to take it down, that is when you’re interfering with third party speech rights.
EPA bans asbestos » The EPA is entirely banning a substance once popular with U.S.manufacturers.
AUDIO (1950s asbestos commercial): It was natural that the scientists would turn to asbestos, for this is a remarkable mineral.
An ad heard there from the 1950s long before scientists learned that it causes cancer.
But some forms of chrysotile asbestos are still used to this day in some chlorine bleach, brake pads, and other products.
The EPA says no more, though it will take some time to entirely remove it from the marketplace.
The decision marks a major expansion of EPA rules under a 2016 law that overhauled regulations governing thousands of chemicals and substances.
Homeland Security AI » The Department of Homeland Security is rolling out a test program to determine how artificial intelligence can help to detect threats.WORLD’s Christina Grube reports.
CHRISTINA GRUBE: Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says DHS is piloting multiple AI based projects.
One is testing how AI can recognize patterns and trends to help identify drug networks and child exploitation.
Emergency Management and Immigration are also running pilot programs designed to “improve officer training.”
Majorkas says the department aims to make sure that its use of AI “fully respects” the privacy and civil rights of Americans.
For WORLD, I’m Christina Grube.
I’m Kent Covington.
Straight ahead: Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure.
Plus, Making the calls as a referee.
This is The World and Everything in It.
NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 19th of March, 2024.This is WORLD Radio and we thank you for listening.Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.
MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.
First up on The World and Everything in It: cyberattacks.
Last month, cyber thieves broke into the systems of Change Healthcare, the nation’s largest medical payment system.Thieves stole massive amounts of data and demanded ransom payments in crypto currencies.
Change Healthcare and its parent company UnitedHealth Group have not confirmed they paid the ransom, but they did pull the plug on their own servers to prevent more loss.
EICHER: That worked, but it also meant pharmacies, hospitals, and other medical entities across the country couldn’t process insurance claims, and not just for a few hours.It went on for weeks, putting patients and providers at risk.
UnitedHealth
says it brought claims-processing for pharmacies back online earlier this month.And this week plans to reconnect its medical claims-processing.
But what needs to happen to deter attacks like this?
REICHARD: Joining us now to talk about it is retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery.He leads the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.Admiral, good morning!
MARK MONTGOMERY: Good morning, and thank you for having me today.
REICHARD: What do we know about “BlackCat,” the group that’s claimed responsibility for attacking Change Healthcare’s systems?
MONTGOMERY: Sure, so Black Cat is a ransomware-as-a-service provider.Like many they originate with a Russian background.
It does have a lineage back to DarkSide, which was the ransomware-as-a-service provider that conducted the Colonial Pipeline attacks.So these guys have been on our radar scope for free for years now.And obviously, this is a pretty, this is their largest, most successful ransomware event in terms of impact as, under the name Black Cat.
REICHARD: Well, why go after a healthcare company, though?
MONTGOMERY: Well, it’s interesting, you know, what’s happened is, you know, if you’ve gone back 30 years ago, malicious cyber activity is being conducted against banks, because that’s where the money was.But what’s happened since is that the monetization of data has meant that ransomware strikes where business operations or field operations can be most rapidly impacted.Well, the healthcare industry brings that together all in one.Right there, you can go after their business operation, stop them from being able to do billing, you can go off to the field operations, where you stop MRI results from being shared or going to the surgical floor, things like that.
Or you can go after all that personal data.And it’s the most sensitive data.
And by the way, medical data is worth much more for sale on the dark web than say, credit card data.So really, the healthcare industry is ground zero for ransomware and the cybersecurity attacks on our national critical infrastructure today.
REICHARD: Two questions: what options do companies have when ransomware attacks happen? And then secondly, what’s your assessment of how Change Healthcare responded to it?
MONTGOMERY: Well, listen, I mean, your first option is one you take before the ransomware event, and that’s where you spend enough money on cybersecurity.Someone like Change who is really a systemically important entity, in other words, one of those top four or 500 companies in the country, that you know, needs to be maintaining a higher level of cybersecurity, obviously didn’t pass that big test in this event.And look, I’ll be honest, if you’d asked me to list the systemically important entities two months ago, Change Healthcare wouldn’t have made my list.Now, once it happens, it’s the individual companies that are impacted by this.
You know, some of these pharmacies and smaller offices and health care facilities and retirement homes, having to lay people off or suspend operations.
This is a significant health care event for the United States, because this one systemically important entity couldn’t protect itself.
10:05 REICHARD: So Admiral, are these attacks private sector problems, to be fixed with private sector solutions, or is there a role for the federal government.…What do you think needs to happen?
MONTGOMERY: That’s a great question about whose responsibility is this, because I’ve said a lot about the private sector.But let’s be clear, the government has a role to play in this.HHS, Health and Human Services, the federal agency, is called a Sector Risk Management Agency.
They’re supposed to be providing really good support to the healthcare industry in terms of, you know, what type what things to look for best practices, but beyond that time sensitive information about what’s going on.And HHS is like many of our sector risk management agencies in that it is underperforming.You know, there’s a lot that can be done, and we can invest a lot more in them.The President just announced the FY25 budget.
Now, he announced a big great, you know, increase in Health and Human Services.But when I look dug into the details, it’s like future money in 2027, and you know, it’s four or five years away.What really has to happen now is the Congress needs to grab the federal budgets, and then the HHS one, increase their investment, and their performance as a Sector Risk Management Agency, so they can do a better job supporting the private sector, so when the private sector spends the right amount of money, they’re doing it in the right place.
REICHARD: Do you think Plan B ought to be paper systems like we used to have?
MONTGOMERY: So actually, I think Plan B is having resilience.Paper would be an option.
I think the option I’d pick beforehand, there’s an expensive one called redundancy, where I build separate server networks and things that run and mirror the primary network every 6, 12, 24 hours, whatever it is, and you bring it back online if you lose the primary to ransomware.But an even better thing would be if we developed better software for recovery, where there’s a software system constantly running inside and says, here’s what “right” looked like just before the attack, so you can get yourself back in a good position.
REICHARD: Final question here.And this is kind of an open floor question.Is there some aspect of this story you think warrants more attention than it’s getting?
MONTGOMERY: You know, it’s the real impact on rural health care, right? We think a lot about healthcare service, you think about big hospitals downtown and I get it.
But rural health care, almost by definition is 60 to 100 miles between hospitals, so that when a hospital’s significantly impacted by a cyber incident, and it can no longer provide services, now an ambulance has to go maybe 100 miles or 70 miles.That, that is a life threatening condition for the person in that ambulance.That’s number one, you know, that really worries me, is the impact that these kinds of events are having.We’ve long gone from 7,000 hospitals and clinics in America down to 6,000 over the last six or seven years.That many of these rural ones are running on very tight margins, this cybersecurity is just enough to tip many of them over into the red in a way that they shut down.We cannot allow that to happen in our very fragile, rural healthcare ecosystem.
REICHARD: Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery leads the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.Thanks so much.Appreciate your time.
MONTGOMERY: Thank you for having me.
NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the failure of permissive drug laws.
Just weeks ago, Oregon Gov.
Tina Kotek promised to sign legislation to re-establish penalties for possessing hard drugs.
About four years ago, nearly six in 10 Oregonians approved a measure that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of fentanyl and methamphetamine.
MARY REICHARD, HOST: But fatal overdoses have skyrocketed in Oregon and state leaders are under intense public pressure to crack down.
Here’s WORLD Radio’s Mary Muncy.
JUANITA SWARTWOOD: My name is Juanita Swartwood and I live in the Lin neighborhood in southeast Portland and I urge you to approve HB 4002 for my family, for my neighborhood, and for the state we all love.
MARY MUNCY: Back in February, Oregon lawmakers heard about four hours of public testimony from residents, nonprofits, and law enforcement organizations.The topic at hand? A bill that would reverse course on a law that decriminalized some drugs about three years ago.
SWARTWOOD: I am the grandmother of a beautiful young woman who is working hard as we speak to overcome her addiction to drugs.Measure 110 didn’t cause her addiction but decriminalizing hard drugs, normalizing their use, and acceptance didn’t help.
So what went wrong with Measure 110?
Well, under the policy, individuals cited for possessing drugs like fentanyl or heroin could choose between two options: pay a $100 fine or call a hotline to get connected with a recovery center for an evaluation and treatment referral.The goal was to get addicts the help they need, instead of sending them to jail.
But in the first year after voters approved the measure, less than 1 percent of people ticketed by police
accessed treatment services.Most chose to pay the fine and continue using drugs.And that had serious consequences.
MATT SCALES: Our communities are crying out for help.
The president of the Oregon Association of Chiefs of Police Matt Scales testified at the Senate hearing in February.
SCALES: Oregon’s drug addiction and fentanyl overdose crisis is destroying lives, devastating families, and eroding the safety and livability of our communities.
According to the CDC, fatal overdoses in Oregon
jumped by more than 70 percent between 2020 and 2022.Meanwhile, nationwide overdose deaths rose less than 20 percent.
SCALES: There isn’t a community anywhere in the state that isn’t significantly impacted by the crisis and Oregonians are angry about what they see …1,650 Oregonians tragically lost their lives to drug overdoses between September 2022 and September 2023.These are our family members, our friends, our community members.
As overdoses climbed, support for decriminalizing drugs plummeted.
A poll commissioned last year by the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions
found nearly two-thirds of Oregonians wanted to repeal parts of Measure 110.They also blamed the initiative for increases in homelessness and violent crime.
DAVIDSON: When you’re creating a culture where people are just allowed to use drugs freely, with really no consequences, you have to think from the perspective of an active drug addict.
Jordan Davidson is the foundation’s government affairs manager.He says until a user hits rock bottom, they’re not thinking about getting better, they’re thinking about where to get their next hit.
DAVIDSON: We need to meet people where they are, but not leave them where they’re at.Because there are people who are on the brink of death.And we need to do whatever we can to kind of pull them back.
Lawmakers say this new bill would do that by putting the decision of whether a user should get rehabilitation or jail time back in the hands of the court.
If the governor signs it, the new law will make possessing small amounts of illicit drugs an unclassified misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail.Counties can decide whether to prosecute offenders or divert them to a program involving probation and treatment.
If an offender completes one of these diversion programs, they can expunge or remove the misdemeanor from their record.So far 23 out of 36 counties have
indicated they will adopt diversion programs.
Here’s Davidson again:
DAVIDSON: I think there are some things in the bill that maybe we wouldn’t think could go far enough.But this is a compromise bill, right.
It’s something that legislators were able to agree on.And I think it’s an extraordinary and necessary step in the right direction.
But some Oregon lawmakers worry that the bill is a half-measure that spends too much on Democrat priorities.That includes State Rep.Dwayne Yunker… one of three Republicans who voted against the bill in the House.
YUNKER: The Republicans had 18 amendments for this bill, and not one of those 18 amendments were ever considered.
People read the top line: re-criminalization of drugs.But what they don’t read is the other 80 pages of where this money is going and who they’re supporting.
Republican Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp wasn’t completely satisfied with the final product either, but he says it’s a necessary step in a long journey.
KNOPP: At some point you need to turn the tide and I think we have hope now that the tide has turned and the public is now with us on re-criminalization and making sure that this drug experiment of decriminalizing drugs is over in Oregon.
With reporting from WORLD’s Addie Offereins, I’m Mary Muncy.
NICK EICHER, HOST: I doubt you know the name Shigeichi Negishi, who died recently at age 100.But you’re no doubt familiar with his invention.
Maybe you’ve even used it.
The karaoke.
Negishi got the idea back in 1967.Someone overheard him singing to himself and said, “Shigeichi, you’re not very good.” Or words to that effect.He must’ve had the same thought every karaoke singer had: If only they could hear me as I hear me.
And the rest was history.
Do you wonder the literal meaning of karaoke? There’s a not-very-nice theory out there that it means “tone deaf” in Japanese.
Not true!
MARY REICHARD, HOST: “Can’t sing?”
Not that, either.It’s literally “empty orchestra” from the Japanese, according to Websters.
Nagishi never patented his karaoke machine.His daughter said his compensation was simply to enjoy people having fun with it.
It’s The World and Everything in It.
NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, March 19.Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.Good morning.I’m Nick Eicher.
MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.
Coming next on The World and Everything in It: another in our occasional series, “What Do People Do All Day.”
With March Madness in college basketball starting this week, millions of fans will tune in to cheer on the nation’s best players.
EICHER: And plenty of them will have opinions about the refs, too.Been there, done that.
Certainly refereeing can be thankless work, especially at the lower levels.
Those who officiate for our kids or grandkids.
But have you ever sprinted up and down the court in a referee’s shoes?
One ref in San Antonio let us mic him up during games, so that we could get a sense of what it’s like to call ’em as you see ’em.
WORLD reporter Todd Vician has the story.
TODD VICIAN: Tommy Hines is a self-professed basketball junkie.He’s refereeing his third game of the morning on a recent Saturday – a middle school boys tournament.He and one other referee control the court and the sidelines for 28 minutes of playing time.
AUDIO: [Dribbling ball, crowd noise, whistle, “Red, 23”]
He’s already refereed six high school games in just five days, in addition to teaching history to middle schoolers.
By the end of the third game this morning, he’s probably run more than 9 miles this week.
That’s probably why he’s been walking with a slight limp in his step lately.
The 53-year old husband and father grew up watching his dad play, coach, and referee games.
TOMMY HINES: He was a fireman, but he coached all the teams at the church.So he coached the men’s league and he coached my older brothers, you know, high school teenage team at the church as well.
Hines donned his first basketball uniform in a church league when he was about 10.He played in school and college before getting injured.That’s when he started refereeing to earn extra money.
Now he does it because it keeps him in the game, where he follows Christ’s admonition to be salt and light.
HINES: It’s just been my life.My prayer is always to be that light.Right? I’m constantly thinking about that, and not letting my bad side come, you know, my competitive side.
Hines usually seeks out players who appear to be on-court leaders and talks with them in between the action on the court.
HINES: You try to build a little bit of a rapport with the kids, the game flows better, and as a referee, that’s all you want.If you can kind of help that process out with talking to them here and there and encouraging them sometimes and sometimes encouraging them to not do the wrong things, it makes the game better.
Much of his interactions on court go unnoticed by fans and even the coaches.
HINES: Fifteen, you know what you just did was a lane violation, right.Once he has the ball, you cannot come in here.If he had missed, they would have gotten another one.Okay? Don’t make dumb mistakes.
Hines knows what it’s like to be on the other side of the whistle.He coached for 20 years at middle school and high school levels, even winning a state championship.
All told, Hines won about 275 games as a varsity coach, including 153 wins and only 29 losses while leading one of San Antonio’s best boys’ basketball programs.And those stress-filled years coaching helped him become a better referee.
HINES: I would not say I was a calm coach.Neither would any referee that ever had me.I was blessed to coach at very high level schools.And so I kind of know what the pressure cooker feels like.And so I have, I think I have a little bit more sympathy for those guys, you know, in tight games.
Hines knows that a coach can have an oversized effect on the game.
HINES: The players are going to feed off of the coach, either positively or negatively.And, you know, also the fans feed off of the coach.The coaches that complain a whole lot, normally it rubs off onto their players.
And then it also rubs off into the stands, and you hear more from parents in the stands from teams with coaches that are constantly complaining.
Calling fouls is not always black and white.In a recent high school game, a player swore after a foul, earning a quick rebuke and warning from Hines.
HINES: It’s all about the flow of the game, letting the kid know that’s not OK.
But if you can do that without having to call a technical, and, you know, totally disrupt his team, the game, you know, at the end of the day, that’s what you want, right? You want the kid to stop the bad behavior, however you can get that to happen.
And Hines is fine with the instant feedback when he makes a call.
AUDIO: [Whistle] No, he’s standing under the basket.It’s not a charge when he’s actually underneath the basket.
He prays for a calm spirit before the game so he’s ready when the critics roar.
HINES: You just try to just try to move on; the last thing you want to do is give them any type of acknowledgement at all.
No eye contact and no gestures, no anything towards them.Because once they know they have an audience or a greater audience, the worse they’re going to be.Just keep that game face.
As players and coaches shake hands on the court, Hines makes his way to a makeshift locker-room near the gym.He’s thankful he’s still healthy enough to run the court and witness through his actions.
And glad he wasn’t in the spotlight.
HINES: It’s not about the referee.
That’s my philosophy.If I can go unnoticed, that’s a good day.After the game, you don’t want anybody to have to talk about you.Good or bad.Right? Make it about the kids and you’re good.
So that’s what we try to do.
SOUND: [Final buzzer sounds, crowd cheers]
Reporting for WORLD, I’m Todd Vician in San Antonio, Texas.
MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday March 19.Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio.I’m Mary Reichard.
NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.Up next: WORLD Opinions commentator Bethel McGrew on how pro-LGBT activists today are turning against same-sex marriage proponents of previous generations.
BETHEL MCGREW: Twelve years ago, a young Harvard student named Matthew Vines went viral with
an hour-long YouTube lecture in which he tried to convince his old church that they were wrong about homosexuality and the Bible.You could be Christian and support gay marriage, Vines argued, sharing that he himself was same-sex attracted and no longer believed it was a sin to pursue romance.
This presentation quickly established Vines as the progressive poster boy in the evangelical so-called “gay wars.” He would go on to publish a popular book and found a non-profit called The Reformation Project, drawing attention from big mainstream media outlets like the
New York Times and TIME magazine.
But is Vines still the “it” boy in progressive “Christian” circles? The answer might surprise you.
Recently, the Reformation Project put out
an article called “Reform vs.Revolution,” summarizing a lecture where Vines makes a sharp distinction between “affirming theology” and “queer theology.” He still believes we should affirm gay romance, but that doesn’t mean we need to “queer” the church or the Bible.
Rather, he says, “we just need to interpret [the Bible] more accurately and faithfully.” By contrast, queer theorists want to do away with sexual norms altogether, as blasphemously as possible.This really worries Vines.
But Vines’ lecture was not received well at all by his erstwhile fans, who widely denounced it on social media.One young lesbian woman
attacked it as “just purity culture repackaged.” Another critic—someone who calls himself a woman and a “queer theologian”— complained at length that Vines is engaging in “respectability politics.” Where he is working for reformation, his critics from the left are working for revolution.
Watching this backlash, I’m reminded of similar denunciations around former gay marriage activist Andrew Sullivan.Sullivan was once an impassioned young man like Vines, insisting that “LGB” people deserved to be included in the institution of marriage.
But as the “TQ+” people have made progressively more outrageous demands, Sullivan is also very worried.In
a recent video, he warns that “they don’t believe in truth…about biology or anything else.”
Similarly, Vines affirms his commitment to “objective truth” against queer theorists who think all sexual morality is relative.Of course, he’s in no hurry to re-embrace traditional evangelicalism, just as Sullivan is in no hurry to re-embrace the traditional Catholicism of his youth.But both of them are now peering into the abyss of postmodernism, and they don’t like what they see.
They’re not alone.Prominent gay writer Douglas Murray will say that after the victories of feminism and gay rights, it was as if the West was on a train just pulling nicely into the station, when suddenly, that train went off the rails and crashed.But any good crash investigator will ask questions about what happened before the train set out for its destination.Questions like “Was gay marriage really the gently inclusive social reformation Sullivan and Vines think it was? Or was it a revolution in itself?
Vines claims to be deeply concerned about preserving truth.But the truth is that his own project began with a lie—about the law written not only in Scripture, but on our hearts.
With that lie, Vines sowed the wind.
Now, he is reaping the whirlwind.
I’m Bethel McGrew.
NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: impeachment hearings.What have they turned up on President Biden and the family business? We’ll talk about it on Washington Wednesday.And, a family who cares for children stuck in Australia’s foster care program.That and more tomorrow.
I’m Nick Eicher.
MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.
The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.
Jesus said: “I am the vine; you are the branches.Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” —
John 15:5
Go now in grace and peace.
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