LGBT and #MeToo Protest at Liberty University

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00:03

Welcome to the conversations that matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I've got a really exciting episode for you today because we're going to take some of the ideas that I talk about in this room into the real world.

00:16

We're going to hit the streets. But before I get to that, two important announcements. Number one, Shepard's Conference is going on right now in California.

00:23

There was a really important panel discussion yesterday that took place on social justice.

00:29

John MacArthur, Phil Johnson, Lincoln Duncan, Mark Dever, Al Mohler, Sinclair Ferguson, all part of this discussion.

00:35

Really eye -opening, revealing, important things were said, perhaps monumental things.

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And you can't find the video because it was taken down. All the other videos, as far as I know, are up. But this video was only available for a limited amount of time before it was taken down.

00:50

And I was up in the wee hours of the morning transcribing parts of it to bring it to you. So if you go to worldviewconversation .com,

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that's worldviewconversation .com, you can check out my analysis. But more than that, you can actually see some of the key statements that were made, that I think were key, in this discussion.

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And boy, you're not going to want to miss that. It won't take you long. It's a blog post. It's not a video. So you can get through it.

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But worldviewconversation .com, name of the blog is What Happened at Wednesday's Social Justice Q &A at the

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Shepherds Conference. Should be the second blog down right after this video. This should be the first one on the website.

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Posted on the 7th. So go check that out. Second quick announcement.

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Monday, there's going to be a live video chat with a few other

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Christian podcasters and myself. And I don't know if there will be an interactive element. There probably will be.

01:46

And I don't want to say who yet, but we're going to be talking about social justice. And I don't think it's going to be a debate, more think tank type thing.

01:55

But you don't want to miss that. I will have information posted soon, as soon as I get it, on Facebook, Gab, Mines, Twitter, however you're following me on social media.

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So you're going to want to check that out. On to the fun stuff. So I attended a protest yesterday at,

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I believe, the largest Christian university in the world, Liberty University. And the protest was put on by none other than the

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Me Too and LGBTQ groups on campus. Now I don't know if these are officially sponsored by the campus, but there is a presence there of both these movements.

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And what was essentially going on was CPAC happened last week, which is a political action conference.

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Donald Trump Jr. came and Jerry Falwell Jr. and two comments were made that upset both groups.

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First comment, a Me Too joke was made, which insinuated that the Me Too movement, kind of the witch hunt element of the

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Me Too movement, is not to be taken seriously. Well, this was interpreted as you don't care about people who are abused, who are rape victims.

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And I think either Donald Trump Jr. or Jerry Falwell Jr. made this comment. The other one was an insinuation that a child being raised doesn't necessarily need to pick their own gender, have a choice in that.

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Parents can choose that. And of course, I thought that was just a Christian fundamental principle, but apparently not to the

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LGBTQ movement. And by the way, LGBTQ +, I'm not sure, how are the bisexuals offended by that?

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I don't understand how all these folks hang together unless the thing that binds them is they just hate biblical morality.

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But this was the poster that went out. I downloaded it from a local paper this morning, but it was first posted on Facebook that I saw.

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I've since then found out that the person who organized it, which by the way, I interviewed, and you're going to see a video clip of me interviewing this person, but her name is

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Addison Garner. She posted it on her Twitter, so I don't know if she wrote it, or I don't assume so.

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But I'm not going to read through it. I'll just make a couple comments. If you want to read it, you can pause the screen and check it out.

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But a couple things about this. Number one, there's really no grace given to Jerry Falwell Jr.

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or Donald Trump Jr. They are pretty much raked over the coals for the things that they said.

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So all this wanting to support students and tolerance, love, no tolerance given to them, obviously.

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So a judgmental tone. The other thing is that they quote scripture. Now this is a

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Christian campus, so they quote the verse, I'm looking for it now, but it says,

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We are fearfully and wonderfully made. And there we go. So the insinuation is that Jerry Falwell Jr.,

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Donald Trump Jr., are somehow challenging this premise, I guess, when it comes to transgender people or women that they're not fearfully and wonderfully made.

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This is a straw man. This is shadow boxing. No one's saying this, but that's used.

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And then I think the last paragraph here is kind of the key. We believe our school should set an example for the world by offering unconditional love, inclusion, and acceptance to everyone.

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Unless your name is Jerry Falwell Jr., who's the president, I guess. But unconditional love.

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This is the buzzword, and this is where I actually think something very significant has taken place.

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And I noticed this when I went out and talked to the protesters. The concept of love just doesn't seem to be there anymore.

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The Christian concept of love. Love is tolerance now. Love is just tolerating the perversion that's in front of you.

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And that's of course not love. There is an element to love that, love is not tolerance, but there can be an element to love that has a tolerating element to it.

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I guess that's the best way I can really say it. But love is of course biblically understood, is self -sacrifice.

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Jesus obviously exemplified it. And it tells the truth. You can't separate the two of them. So this is the poster that goes out there.

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Now, I go out to campus, and this is what I see when

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I arrive somewhere towards maybe an hour into this.

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You can see LGBTQ lives matter. Very interesting. I made this point before.

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Many have. Social justice comes in waves. And if the first wave is race, and Black Lives Matter, they're going to use the same rhetoric to push, in this case,

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LGBTQ. So that's what I first saw when

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I arrived. And I did notice there were some protesters who were being more the boisterous kind, if you will, those holding the flag especially.

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I did start to engage them at one point, and then actually the person who was running the event came and talked to me.

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Not because I was starting to engage them, but just saying hi to everyone. And I asked her if she would do an interview, and she was very gracious to let me do that, which you'll see in a couple minutes.

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So I did not go toe -to -toe with the most loud, obnoxious elements in the group.

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But I did watch them for a little bit. And definitely pro -homosexuality, pro -transgenderism.

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I did have the privilege of talking for about 40 minutes with someone who was holding a sign, but they were more from the

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Me Too side of it. And they were there, in their own words, also to support those who struggle, in their words, with transgenderism.

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Or gender dysphoria, I guess is the buzzword now, and I think that's what they said. So I talked to them for about 40 minutes.

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And if you are a supporter of mine on Patreon, you can see that full 40 minutes, because I'm going to give you the key.

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If you are not a supporter, well, you're going to have to make do with the clip I'm about to give you, which is about four minutes. So if you want an extra 36 minutes, then become a supporter on Patreon.

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There's my little plug. How was that? I don't know. But I think this is a significant clip that I'm giving you.

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And I'm just going to roll the tape, I guess, and then give you some comments on it. So without further ado, here we go.

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So let's say, hypothetically, like there was a group of students here that said, you know what? We love homosexuals.

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We love transgender people. We want to show them hope. So we're going to get signs that say, repent of your sin.

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There is hope in the Lord. You know, talk to us. We can help you. We'd love to meet with you.

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But turn from your sin. Well, we're talking pragmatism then. So for pragmatic reasons, you're saying that you wouldn't like to do that.

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But you would agree with their message, though. Even if you don't like the tactic, you would agree with that message? I would agree with the message.

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I just don't think that it's very effective, and I don't do it. So you wouldn't stand with them? No. But you would stand with people who are advocating right now that homosexuality is okay and not a sin?

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That's not funny to me. Because you're doing it. Well, I'm doing it, so. But you think homosexuality is a sin, though.

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So, I don't know. I hope you think about that. I'll think about that. Because it sounds like, from what you're saying, you actually, even though you don't like the tactics, you actually agree with the message of, there is hope in the cross, and you can turn from this.

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And I don't, I think that when it comes to the whole message, though, that I'm trying to say, and I totally get what you're saying about what everything is looking like and everything.

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I think the whole message needs to be that everybody in this community needs to be shown love in a

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Christian community, for anything to be effective. That's my root thing.

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So that's why I think I wouldn't stand with those people, because nobody's going to pay attention to that.

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Especially if they're not Christian. If they are Christian, they might see that, and then what? I don't think that's effective at all.

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I don't think that's loving, either. And so that's the only reason as to why I wouldn't stand with those people.

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I would rather stand with a group like this, and then be more effective in saying, I love you, and I want you to come talk to us, and be a part of this, and then we'll talk about the good relationship.

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I respect that, and I think you're well, you sound like you're well -intentioned, and you legitimately want to get across a message of caring, and you want to help.

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The pushback that I would give is, if the model is Christ, and the apostles, if we look at their example of how they treated sin, of which these things are categories.

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Homosexuality is the one that I've been focusing on. I haven't wanted to quite get too deep into the transgender thing.

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I do believe that's sinful as well. But when they confronted sin from the beginning,

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John the Baptist, repent. Jesus, repent. The apostles, repent. They didn't look at the pragmatic like, well, how many people am

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I going to attract? Will people find my message hateful? Eleven out of twelve of them basically died for their faith.

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Obviously, people were angry at them. Jesus was crucified. There was a lot of people that got angry at them, but they didn't look at that as a negative.

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They went out, and they proclaimed the truth, and they lived for the few, the narrow way, those who would be saved.

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Even Paul at Mars Hill, they're laughing at them. They call him a seed picker, which is basically a gutter sparrow.

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They say, who's this babbler up here? What he's talking about a resurrection, that's ridiculous, but it says there were some who were convinced.

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I don't know who the elect are. I don't know who's going to be saved, but I would proclaim the truth of God, understanding that he knows, and he's going to use that message.

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It's going to be offensive, and I guess that's my point. It is. The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.

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They're going to hate it. They're going to revile, because they love their sin. That will never be a popular message.

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That would be my pushback. I totally see that. I think that's where we have to agree to disagree.

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I think that there are more effective ways than what the apostles did. I'm not trying to say anything like that.

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That's very telling. What I'm saying is, I think that this day and age, with the

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LGBT community on the media, being blasted everywhere, right? Not blasted in a bad way.

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There needs to be, in a church community, there needs to be more, again, what

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I would go back to, is more of a loving standpoint first, and then... I hear you.

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Would you look at love and equivocate that with tolerance? When you say love, are you talking about a tolerant attitude?

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It sounds like... Okay. We have different ideas than of love. I would go back to the self -sacrificial love.

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I'm willing to sacrifice the agape type of love. I'll even sacrifice my reputation, my comfort, to come out here and tell you the truth.

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That's part of love, in my opinion. I think the modern concept of tolerance being equivocated with love is this kind of like,

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I just kind of accept you where you're at, and I'm not going to confront those things. That's kind of where our conversation has been, is how to approach it.

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I do think we disagree, but you've been extremely gracious, and I appreciate that.

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Alright. Well, two things.

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Brief things to mention about this. Number one, she agrees with my message as far as homosexuality being a sin.

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She gives lip service to it. It took a little while to get there, if you watched the full video, but she doesn't have a problem getting there.

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But she's willing to stand next to someone with a rainbow flag who's promoting that message, and somehow, in the name of love, tolerance, support them in that way.

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Now, she is not comfortable supporting other types of sins.

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I give more examples of that in other parts of the video, but she is comfortable with that.

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And this is really interesting to me. I think it's very telling, because this idea of love has so permeated the millennial generation and those coming up behind them, so my generation, millennial, that the greatest thing that would be offensive is hurting someone's feelings.

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And so standing next to someone who is advocating something you even disagree with, it's seen as a good thing as long as everyone feels good about it.

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That seems to be what's going on. It was very telling, and I mentioned this in the clip

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I just showed, that when I brought forth what the Apostles did and set that up as the example that I want to follow, she said, well,

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I don't agree with how the Apostles did it. Well, there's a woman who claims to be a Christian, and so I thought that was very interesting.

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Now, a third thing I will say, we had a very good discussion, and it ended with prayer, and I think she had some things to think about, but I think a lot of it is ignorance.

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And we do need people who are going to go out there, make the case, be direct, be firm, uncompromising with truth, and be loving.

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Loving, though, in the sense of being patient with someone who could be ignorant, and certainly a lot of people are, and we're dealing with that more and more, even on a

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Christian campus. I'm going to just mention this as well. Some of the more boisterous elements of this protest, two of them

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I heard say, you know, you show me in Scripture where it says you can't be Christian and homosexual, and this is when

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I was about to get involved with them, because I thought, okay, well, 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1, Leviticus 18,

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I mean, the whole understanding of the man -woman, male -female, husband -wife relationship, and the responsibilities that go with that in raising children throughout

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Scripture, that's what the Bible's about.

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It reminds me of something that I read in a Michael Brown book years ago. It said it's like the gluten -free cookbook.

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You could read it, let's say, and well, there's not a lot of gluten in here. That's right, because it's the gluten -free cookbook, and the

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Bible is the heterosexual book. That's who it's designed for. So I started to go that direction, and then the next clip that you're about to see, actually, the person

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I interviewed came up to me and was just introducing herself, and it was a very nice interview,

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I think. Addison Gardner is her name, and she is the senior class president at Liberty University, but I said, kid, we have an interview.

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Can I talk to you about these things? You organized the event, and I'll ask you what's going on. She said, sure. So we did, and I'm going to show you that clip, and I'm going to actually end with that clip.

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I'm going to give you a couple things to look for while that clip is rolling, though, just so you're watching it and viewing it in an educated or a ready,

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I guess, way. Number one is I would look for arbitrariness.

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So she makes a statement at one point, Addison does, that someone else may have an argument that opposes mine, but because they believe their argument comes from Scripture, and I believe my argument comes from Scripture, somehow, it's okay.

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She'll stand with that person. And I, of course, bring up, well, what if it was a racist? What if they're saying, you know, I can support my views from the

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Bible? And, of course, she personally did not like that, did not agree with that, and you can see her kind of waver a little bit towards the end of the interview, but she's going into politics.

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She did a great job. I said she was diplomatic. She did a great job dodging, I think, some questions, but she was very kind, and she was really on point as far as what she wanted to say, and she kept coming back to two words.

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She supports students, and the efforts at this protest were just to support students, which, of course, that's a blank book that anyone can write a chapter in, because what does that even mean?

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Support students in what? In evil? In good? In harm? In what? So, it sounds good, though, so that's what she kept coming back to.

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Another thing to look for is inconsistency. So, obviously, grace is given to those who are homosexual or transgender.

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No grace is given to Donald Trump Jr., and I probed her a little on this, so I'm not going to belabor the point, but you can see how

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I probed. Arbitrariness. Oh, I mentioned that already. So, look for those two things, arbitrariness, inconsistency.

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The most interesting thing, and I'm going to end on this, the most interesting thing to me is there does seem to be a postmodern element to all of this, and that makes sense of the inconsistency and the arbitrariness, but at one point, you're going to see

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Addison try to make a delineation between sins of victims and sins of abusers.

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These categories come out, and I've been talking a long time about social justice. Now, Addison is a libertarian, and I don't know how she feels about all the elements of the social justice movement.

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Generally, libertarians don't tend to, at least classically, line up with Marxist ideas, but this category distinction between, well, there's sins of abusers, and then there's sins of victims, and the sins of victims are treated differently.

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They're treated more charitably, and I tried to make the point, and you'll see me make it, that all sin has an element of abuse in it, and you can see how

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I articulated that, but postmodernism though definitely seems to contribute to the arbitrariness and the inconsistency.

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Worldliness seems to be giving this hierarchy of sins, and I've explained before,

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I think, how the connection between postmodernism, in history at least, and telling the story from the bottom up, from the point of view of the victim, because everything's about power in the

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Marxist worldview, postmodernism is used to speak truth to power, whatever that means.

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Jesus is the truth, he's the most powerful one in the universe, so I don't see, I don't see, Jesus speaks the truth all the time, right, and he is powerful, so he speaks from a position of power to the weak, but postmodernism justifies this stuff,

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I think, and these categories sort of come out. I'm going to end with a clip,

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I hope you enjoy it, I hope you glean something from this, I am concerned about the church, about Christian education in general, this is a conservative

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Christian university, as far as I know, I think this is the first time this has happened, I don't think it will be the last,

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I really don't, I think this stuff is ramping up, and one final observation, in hearing some of the counter, not demonstrators, but those trying to interrogate, for lack of a better word, interact with, sometimes in an aggressive, not horribly aggressive, but in a direct way, these protesters, a lot of Ben Shapiro, a lot of Christian in name only,

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I think of the comedian, and his name is slipping from me right now, but he has the change my mind tables and so forth, but a lot of these conservative, sometimes they call themselves

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Christians, Ben Shapiro calls himself Jewish, traditional Jewish, but these influences I could see in the counter arguments that were being given.

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Where are the rooted in, the word, brave, willing to speak the truth

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Christians, men, who are willing to go out there and stand up for truth?

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You know, Stephen Crowder, that was the guy, so why is it the Stephen Crowders and the Ben Shapiros are the ones that have all the videos of them interacting with people that are advocating

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Marxism, or these anti -Christian ideas? So, something to ponder, we do need more of that.

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I'm going to end on the clip though, hopefully you enjoy it, and I'll see you next time. Alright, so, again, we already introduced ourselves,

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I'm John Addison, right? Addison, since it's recording now, why don't you explain to me what you were just telling me, what your position is on campus, and then a little bit about the event that just happened, because you said you were involved in organizing that and what the intent was.

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Yeah, so, my role as senior class president is to represent the senior class, whether that's to administration, whether that's to the student body president, whether that's to the

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House of Delegates, where we have student government. Basically, I represent,

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I'm supposed to embody the senior class and speak on behalf of them. Okay, and so you were involved in planning the event, now what, is there an official name for what just took place outside?

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My aspect of it was the Me Too demonstration. So, LU for Me Too is the group that I head up, and any sign that you saw out there with LU for Me Too on it is from my group.

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That would be your group. Okay, so, the rainbow flags and the pro -homosexual group, that's not affiliated with the

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Me Too group, or are they separate? I just want to understand. So, the Me Too group serves to assist students that have been through issues of sexual assault with the

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Me Too movement. So, while some people may be in the Me Too group and also support other groups, the

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Me Too itself exists for sexual assault survivors. Okay, because the advertisement that was sent to me, the reason that I came out to check it out today was the flyer seemed like there was two different groups that had come out.

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So, one was the Me Too group, which you just talked about, and then the other one was an LGBTQ group of some kind.

25:33

Kind of, yes. So, basically, overall the event is a show of support. So, LU for Me Too is out here to support the

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Me Too movement and say, these jokes were made, but we support you.

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It's not a laughing matter on campus. And then, people that are involved in LGBT groups saw it similarly in that their community was slighted, and part of their community was slighted, rather, and that they wanted to also show up and support.

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So, when I put the information about the Me Too site in our

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LU for Me Too chat with people that are interested, a lot of them, well, not a lot, some of the people overlap.

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So, they also say, hey, these people were hurt, too. I want to support them. So, we sat down about it.

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Because we didn't want to conflate two issues that should be separate, should have their own areas, we decided to put this under We the

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Students. So, if you support LU for Me Too, you can come out here, hold an LU for Me Too sign.

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If you support other people that you feel have been hurt, you can also come out and support them. And that the umbrella statement of this demonstration is,

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Liberty students deserve love, and they deserve respect. And regardless of where you fall on some of these issues, we can all agree as students that we want love and respect shown to each other.

27:02

Right. Now, I was trying to sort of work my way to the unifying features. You're saying it's love and respect would be the message you want to get across.

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And this is, you know, two basic groups of people, the Me Too and the LGBT group, coming together to say love and respect.

27:22

But in the poster I saw, or the flyer, it was against statements that had been made when

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Donald Trump Jr. was on campus speaking with Jerry Falwell Jr. And what I had heard when

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I was out there was that there was a statement made about raising a child to be a particular gender.

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Am I tracking right so far that this was against that, condemning that statement and saying that that wasn't loving or respectful?

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So, those students that came out because of that, they came out, again, with the same intention of showing that students love and support.

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Those statements are what they felt was a slight against the transgender community.

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It was broader than that, but I can't speak exactly on what was said because my niche is

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Me Too. That's where all my energy is. Okay. So, I can't speak as well on that side.

28:21

So, I want to circle back to that, but why don't you speak about your motivation, even your personal motivation for why to have an event like this with the flags and the signs and everything else.

28:36

Definitely. So, LU for Me Too was founded last semester when Candace Owens came to speak at convocation.

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Candace Owens is known for being an outspoken opponent of the Me Too movement and has disrespected women that have come forward with their sexual assault stories because of that.

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And so, in light of that, the word protest is used, but we stood with the signs, not against Candace speaking, but in support of students that would feel hurt by it.

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So, like, girls, guys, whoever you are, your stories matter and your hurt matters and we don't agree with making light of it.

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So, that was how it founded. And so, when our platform as a

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Christian university was, again, used to make light of something as heavy and hurtful as sexual assault, something so dark and sinful as rape, we weren't okay with it.

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So, that's where we started gathering and so that's how we decided, you know, we need to hold signs, we need to support these students again.

29:39

It seems, so, in reaction, though, to, you're talking about something that happened a while ago, but this, what happened just now, though, is in reaction to statements made at the

29:47

CPAC, right? Yes. Okay. What was said at CPAC that offended Me Too or your group?

29:54

So, Donald Trump Jr. used hashtag Me Too as a punchline and made a joke about it.

30:00

Okay. And that's why we felt we needed to make a statement both to students on campus and even to, like, people that we're involved with.

30:08

I go to Liberty, but I don't support joking about rape. So, and that's what you interpreted that as, the

30:14

Me Too movement is only about opposition to rape. There's not a broader understanding of that.

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So, the Me Too movement as a whole is about sexual assault and mistreatment, whether it's in the workplace, in the home, things like that.

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For me, I interpret that mainly as, let's support victims of sexual assault. Right. I understand that other people have different interpretations, but as a whole, it's usually as a response to sexual assault.

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It seems like it started somewhat that way, but after the confirmation hearings last year and the way that Me Too has been used, that hashtag, to bully some people when there has not been evidence,

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I think that has, I don't know if you'd agree with me, kind of muddied the waters as to what the meaning of Me Too actually is, because now it's been popularized and it's been used so broadly to apply to so many different situations.

31:06

Do you see that? Yeah, so for me personally, it's a lot like I view feminism.

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I would proudly identify with first -wave feminism. That's where my heart is, I believe in equality, in the home, in the workplace, that's my passion, and that's what

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I see in scripture. And so, for me, I claim feminism because that's what I identify with, and I understand that modern feminism has twisted some things and has represented the movement poorly, but instead of giving up the term,

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I choose to reclaim it. For me, whether it's conservative feminism, things like that, Christian feminism.

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I see the Me Too parallels that in certain ways. I see how it has then, it has a potential to be misused, but I feel that overall, the movement has provided a lot of good and will continue to provide a lot of good in helping women like me come forward with stories, saying...

31:59

So you want to reclaim the Me Too. You want it to mean opposition to rape, specifically, and then any misuse of that you would denounce and say that, well, that's wrong.

32:10

It's strictly about opposition to assault and rape. Well, I don't have a monopoly on the term

32:15

Me Too. For me, I use it in response to sexual assault, which isn't just rape, but also things of that nature and mistreatment in the workplace, sexual harassment and such.

32:26

Okay. So I'm going to sort of cut through the fat, if it's alright. Someone like myself, and I've heard others out there who are interacting with some of the protesters,

32:37

I think there's a couple concerns going on, but I think the primary concern is that there's rainbow flags, there's...

32:46

I heard them talk about it, so there are those who are advocating LGBT as in transgenderism, homosexuality, lesbianism, being not sinful things, that they're actually legitimate, and that message was going out there, along with the

33:04

Me Too message, and it seemed kind of confusing, for lack of a better term.

33:10

And so, when I hear things that God says are sinful, in His Word, being advocated,

33:17

I'm obviously going to have, as a Christian, a bit of an issue with that, and I think that's what a lot of the people that had an issue with it were trying to advocate, and bring awareness to,

33:27

I guess. Did you see any... now you're strictly for the Me Too, you're not with the

33:34

LGBTQ group, but they were together, protesting together, so there is an association there, there's some kind of a fellowship.

33:42

Do you agree with the message that was being advocated as far as homosexuality is not a sin, it's okay, transgenderism, not sinful, legitimate, or...

33:56

Yeah, so, what I was trying to do, as one of the organizers of this event, was to kind of catch people in groups, individually, to kind of say, hey, you know, this is the intention, we are here to show students love and support, you may hear different messages from different people that have joined in, but the overall message is, we support

34:18

Liberty Students. So, I made it very clear to the people that were here at the beginning, we had a pastor come in, advocate for ways to pray with sexual assault victims, and to, basically, to handle that well, and handle it gracefully, handle it like Christ.

34:37

And those people were briefed on, this is our overarching message, we're not pushing an agenda, we're not pushing policy changes, we're not pushing

34:45

LGBT one way or the other. But it clearly was being pushed.

34:50

So, what I'm saying is, what the Me Too group, the Me Too group went out there for Me Too.

34:58

When you have a demonstration like this, you can't always control who comes in. But the flyer had two groups on it.

35:04

I understand that. But the flyer still had the overarching message of, we support students.

35:09

It was not pushing policy, it was not pushing any kind of change in administration.

35:16

It was saying that students were hurt by these comments, we're here to support them. And so, the people that were here initially were versed on that, they were clear on that.

35:25

You can't always control what people come in and what they say. And so, that's where there were some conflicting messages.

35:33

Some people did not get the message that we are strictly here to support and love students that were hurt by comments made by our university.

35:41

Some students made comments that I wouldn't have made. But I'm not here to,

35:47

I didn't hear everything that they said. Now, as the organizer of the event, did you go to these students who were giving a different message than what was originally promoted and trying to encourage them to not give that message?

35:58

Or were you just kind of letting it go? Or were you in agreement with it? For me,

36:04

I felt that it would cause fewer problems to talk to those people that had been speaking with them on the way out, rather than interrupting what the students were trying to say.

36:15

Okay, so that could be viewed as an endorsement of sorts. But would you say you're not endorsing the idea that homosexuality, transgenderism are...

36:26

My point is, that's not why I'm out here. Okay, that's not why you're out here, but that is what happened at the event.

36:33

I understand that people joined in that were in support of those ideas, and that's what they advocated.

36:39

And I did my best to follow up with people and say, Hey, this isn't pushing policy one way or the other.

36:45

We're here to support students. So I want to get that message across to you. I want to give you a little bit of a, it's a hypothetical of sorts.

36:51

But if, I could give you a long list of evangelical leaders who have said very anti -racist things.

36:57

Racism is wrong. It's evil. Okay, let's say someone had joined that crowd with a sign that said,

37:04

We need to love racists. We need to accept them. We need to walk through them with their racism and support them in some way.

37:13

Would that have been a problem? Well, I would definitely agree with the statement that we need to love them, and we need to minister to them.

37:21

And I think that's a pretty universal view. What I'm doing is I'm just trying to pick a different kind of sin and say,

37:28

Well, what about this sin? What about adultery? What about people who actually are committing these sexual abuse crimes and so forth that Me Too movement, as you've advocated for, is against?

37:40

What if we had signs that said, We need to love the perpetrators of sexual assault.

37:45

We need to understand them. And there's no condemnation of it, just a message of acceptance.

37:51

Would you have a problem with that? So I definitely understand where you're coming from. My response to that last one is it's not fair to conflate a consensual relationship, whether we or you agree with it or not, to abuse.

38:06

Because in situations of abuse, there is always a victim. And I don't think it's fair to conflate the two.

38:15

In regards to groups out there advocating for things that most people at Liberty View have sinned, the people advocating those, most of them have theological views.

38:29

They have sound reasons why they believe that way. And it's not my place to dictate their views.

38:35

My place is here to support the Me Too movement. So the reason I'm probing this is because Scripture speaks very clearly to the issue of homosexuality, transgenderism.

38:48

It also speaks very clearly to the issue of, I mean, it's actually in the same category of sin, sexual sin, sexual abuse.

38:54

These things are all wrong. The Old Testament says, Toi avas, abomination, Leviticus 18.

39:00

If you go to the New Testament, obviously, in Romans 1, it's part of the exchanging of truth of God for a lie and disordered desires.

39:09

And so God sees these things as sinful. And anytime there's any kind of sin, it's an affront to God, first of all.

39:18

But then you were just talking about abuse. There is an element of it that abuses

39:24

His creation. In the case of, let's pick homosexuality for a minute, 50 % of those who are homosexuals had some kind of,

39:33

I mean, this is what statistics say, but there's some kind of an event or an abusive relationship that sort of corralled them into making this decision or into this lifestyle.

39:45

You look at the lifespan of homosexuals and how reduced it is, the suicide rate of homosexuals and transgenders and stuff.

39:51

So these are really bad, bad things. I wouldn't want to be in favor of those things, knowing that God's against them and all the destruction that is caused by them, in the same way that I would not want to be in favor of racism or those who are committing sexual abuse, because they're also causing all kinds of problems, not just in this life but in the next life, for their own souls.

40:15

And I'd be concerned about that. So in that sense, I would see them as connected.

40:21

Do you think I'm wrong? Coming from your point of view, I totally understand it. I understand that you have a biblically sound argument and a reason for what you believe, and a lot of the people out there have the same thing.

40:38

And so at the end of the day, I'm here to love people and show support to them, and LGBT issues aren't my niche.

40:50

My niche is Me Too. Me Too. All right, so let's talk about the

40:56

Me Too then for a moment. There was a joke made about the Me Too movement. So I didn't hear the initial joke.

41:02

I don't know if you want to give me a quick synopsis of what exactly it was. Yeah, so I don't want to misquote it.

41:08

I won't directly quote the conversation. But basically, they were talking about how my boys were born with guns in their hands and my girl has a doll in her hand, things like that.

41:21

Joking about gender roles, things like that. And then Donald Trump Jr. responds laughingly with hashtag

41:27

Me Too. And it was part of a bantry conversation. It was a punchline.

41:33

It didn't sit well with me, and it didn't sit well with other students. What do you think he meant by that when he said that?

41:39

He was using it as a punchline. He thought it was a funny thing to say, hashtag Me Too. Right, but do you think that he was meaning let's just make fun of rape victims?

41:48

I don't think anyone is saying that Donald Trump Jr. was mean -hearted, trying to, like, ooh,

41:56

I think I'm going to try to make fun of rape victims today. It's not that it was necessarily intentioned to be the evil thing that it came across as, but it was taken lightly and flippantly, and students were hurt by it.

42:11

That is what the poster, though, conveyed, advertising the event, was that this was a flippant, this was an attack essentially, so we're out here to defend those who were attacked in the statement.

42:24

So that's the impression that I got in looking at the advertisement for the protest. Is there a place, do you think, for Christians?

42:33

I don't want to assume just because we're sitting at a Christian university, but I'm assuming you're a Christian. Yes, sir. Is there a place to give grace to Donald Trump Jr.

42:43

and the benefit of the doubt and maybe interpret his words in a more charitable light?

42:49

Maybe he wasn't talking about rape victims, or he doesn't understand the MeToo movement the way you understand it.

42:56

Yes, there is room for that. The point of the protest, as I think I've said before, it's not we are against administration, we are out here because we're angry.

43:07

The point is to show support. So we're moving past those things.

43:12

Those things happen. Students were hurt. We're responding to the students. If this was directed at administration, we could just knock on Jerry's door and try to get a meeting.

43:21

But that's not what this is about. You're probably in a position that you could more easily do that, I would think. Yes, but it's not my job to chastise

43:29

Jerry for what he says or what he retweets. My job is to, hey, students are hurting, what can

43:36

I do? Let's get out there and love them. Yes. I guess here's one of my concerns would be, if that's the criteria, just that someone's hurting, for us to then show, do what just happened, have a bunch of people come together with flags and signs and have a protest of sorts, then this is a broad, broad category.

44:01

I can say I was offended, and in a sense I was. I had good conversations, but to see people advocating for homosexuality and transgenderism with flags and signs, that offends me as a

44:15

Christian. And so, okay, I'm hurt. What about, I just talked to a gentleman who was abused by a pastor who was watching the event, and he did not agree with the event, and he found it in some ways offensive.

44:29

So what do we do about that? Does that now open the door for, we can go do a counter -protest and you're offending me?

44:35

Because it seems like if that's the only criteria for whether it offends a person, then that just opens the door for any kind of protest against anything.

44:44

Yeah, so what we're doing is, again, supporting students.

44:50

And if you have a group that wants to, well, a Liberty student has a group, that wants to support students that were hurt by a certain way,

44:57

I encourage them to go ahead, rally people. If what you're trying to do is to show the love of Christ, always.

45:04

I think that it takes specific hot topics that hurt enough people to be able to get enough people to do a demonstration.

45:15

But I'm in no way against demonstrations at all. My day job is helping push free speech on campus.

45:21

So for work, that's what I do. So even demonstrations I disagree with, go for it.

45:30

You're going to have great conversations either way. Yeah, so would you be okay then? I'm winding it down here, but if...

45:37

You ready for your Zinger, your gotcha moment? What? No, no, no, no, no. I don't want to get you into a gotcha moment type of like, oh,

45:47

I got her to say this. I really want to understand the DNA of what that was that we just witnessed.

45:55

Why it happened, what the motivation was. So far it seems to me very confusing. It seems like a group of people that didn't know quite.

46:02

But since you're an organizer, or the organizer of it, I thought getting your opinion would be probably the first place to go.

46:11

If I, let's say, I don't want to use myself because I'll get in trouble here, but let's say a hypothetical student wanted to do a demonstration where they were offended at, let's say

46:21

Jerry Falwell Jr. makes a statement against racism, and says, you know, racism is bad, it's disgusting, or whatever.

46:28

And they want to get together all the people at school who have either been former racists, or have racist family, or racist friends, or...

46:38

They've been discriminated against in their minds because their views aren't popular.

46:45

And they want to get together a group for free speech with signs and say, you know what, yes, racism is a sin, but we're going to bring out, let's say even,

46:55

I'll make it a little more extreme, let's say they bring out Nazi flags and stuff to say, you know, this stuff should be allowed. We need to love these people.

47:02

And yes, we think it's wrong. And maybe some would think it's right if I'm doing apples to apples, which is what we just saw up there.

47:10

But for hypothetical reasons, let's say they say it's wrong, but we just need to love. And there's no condemnation of racism whatsoever.

47:17

It's just love, love, love. They were hurt by these comments. Would you support something like that?

47:23

Or would that be problematic? Yeah, so, again, free speech on campus is my day job, so this is kind of a passionate issue for me.

47:32

So I work for a libertarian organization. And we would say,

47:38

I would say, as long as the demonstration is not violent, as long as it is not infringing on anyone's property, or breaking anything, causing any damage, then that demonstration should be allowed to happen.

47:51

Personally, I would not like it. Which is, I know, you know, what you want me to say, like, for me, racism is a hurtful issue.

48:00

I would not like it. But at the end of the day, they have the right to be there. They have the right to organize. Yeah, so you do view that sinful issue different, though, than you would view lesbian, gay, transsexual issues.

48:15

Am I hearing you right on that? For me, well, one,

48:21

I don't view, you know, homosexual and transgender as necessarily the same thing.

48:29

But I know very many Christians. Well, I don't either. Yeah, I know a lot of Christians that have a sound theological argument for why they believe that.

48:37

And it's not my place to tell them that I disagree with their view in that aspect.

48:42

Right, but there's also Christians who could give you a great argument for racially insensitive opinions as well.

48:49

So, I mean, just because someone can give an argument for it, that shouldn't make it a legitimate thing, necessarily.

48:55

I wouldn't think, at least. Yeah, okay. Well, you've been very articulate. You've been very diplomatic.

49:01

I appreciate you letting me ask you some harder questions and pushing you on these things. Is there anything you want to say?

49:08

No, I was just, while not everything at the demonstration went smoothly,

49:14

I was very encouraged by how many students came up and said, like, on the Me Too aspect, like, hey,

49:20

I don't hear a lot about this issue on campus, and as a survivor of sexual assault, this meant a lot to me. And so, for me, it's hard to navigate other issues related to this.

49:30

But at the end of the day, I know that I showed up to support students who needed it, and for me,