Understanding Change Allowing Counseling

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome, once again, everyone out there to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I am your host, John Harris. As always, we have two guests with me today that I'm very excited to introduce to you, and I'm really excited actually for the topic we're going to be talking about because it's something that is frankly, it's a little outside of my expertise, but this is something that I think a lot of Christians are grappling with and probably going to be grappling with more in the coming years, whether in the

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United States or Canada or other Western countries. And so we have with us today,

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Rosaria Butterfield with us, and she has a website rosariabutterfield .com where you can find out more about her writing.

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And she's a pastor's wife. She's a homeschool mom. She's a former university professor, appreciate you being on with us.

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And then Dr. Andre VanMaal is also with us. And he is very involved with Christian organizations in shining the light of biblical truth and just common sense on areas of sexuality and gender.

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You can find out more about his work at cmba .org. You can actually go to YouTube and just type in his name and you're going to come up with a lot of stuff on really the topic we're going to be talking about today.

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So I appreciate you joining us as well, Dr. VanMaal. Thank you for having me. So I want to start off, if we can, with you,

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Rosaria, and the document that you released recently, what was it, three weeks ago, maybe.

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And you had something to say about your previous position on conversion therapy.

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And I just want to say before I let you talk about it, I was so impressed with how you, the humility that you exuded, the frankness, the directness that you had.

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And you essentially reversed your position. And so I just want to open with you.

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Would you just explain to people, what was it that you reversed your position on? What did you think before about conversion therapy?

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And then in brief, what do you think now? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for those questions.

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Well, in 2014, I had written an article for the

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Gospel Coalition, and I just, in a pretty wholesale way, and just a pretty uncharitable way, dismissed reparative therapy as a heresy.

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In that article, that article was written right after a hundred students at Wheaton protested against my testimony.

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And one of the things I believed to be true at that time was that reparative therapy and side

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B Christianity, side B gay Christianity is the, well, it's the

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Greg Johnson position that you can be gay, you can be proud of being gay.

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And as long as you don't act on it, you're not in any sin. And what

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I believed at that time was that reparative therapy and side B Christianity were two ditches on the side of the road of orthodoxy.

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And I believe that because they were actually saying the same thing, ironically, about homosexuality.

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They were saying homosexuality is not a sin, acting on it is. And they both were using this category of orientation as a very stable category, when in fact, it's a 19th century invention.

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It's a very, it is a socially constructed category. There is no category of personhood called

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LGBTQ, or if you wanted to add an H, what you have is you are man or you are woman.

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You have the creation ordinance. And in the creation ordinance, you have heterosexuality as the pattern of God's goodness.

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So I, you know, anyway, I came out hard and heavy on both of these positions.

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And I, you know, I mean, you know, sometimes, you know, when you're looking back on the things you've done in the past, and they were foolish and sinful, and people say, well, why did you get there?

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And you say, well, I, you know, because I'm foolish and sinful. I mean, you know, I mean,

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I had some theological reasons. I'm a reformed Presbyterian. We have a particular understanding of biblical personhood that really situates total depravity as a central component, really, of, you know, what being born again is going to mean.

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And so, you know, from my neck of the woods, we were saying things like both reparative therapy and gay

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Christianity are using an unbiblical anthropology, an unbiblical idea of personhood.

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And so, you know, in addition to that, you know, I was a bit of a mess myself.

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I have a pretty messy conversion story, and it's taken quite some time.

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And while sanctification is progressive, it's pretty slow. I had a number of friends at the time who told me that they had been harmed and hurt by reparative therapy, and I believed them.

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And so, and then things started happening in the world, and I started realizing that those words were wrong, and they were sinful, and they were harmful, and they were being used by evil forces to do evil things.

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And so, I wrote a retraction of those words, and I put it up on my website.

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And my website is a very small little place. It's not a big deal. I didn't publish it anywhere. I really wrote it for the moms and the grandmas who write to me and want counsel and help for their lost children and grandchildren, and I wanted to make sure

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I wasn't giving them, you know, the wrong information. So, the process that led into that was long.

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I'm a university professor by training, and I'm Presbyterian. So, that means that whatever you guys do in a day,

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I'm going to take a year, you know, to just sort of work it out. But, you know, there are a number of things that were just coming to bear.

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One was, John, your podcast. I was listening to Darren Mell share his testimony, and it was really powerful.

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And I remember just, you know, nodding in agreement, and then he mentioned my name, and he said my name with so much,

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I don't know, kind of sadness and anger and betrayal. And I had to stop, and I thought, you know, this is a brother in the

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Lord, and I have really, I really hurt him, and I don't even understand what some of these terms are.

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And so, I reached out to Christopher Yuan, who basically knows everybody in the known evangelical world.

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He's sort of my Mr. Help Desk when it comes to finding people, because I'm not on social media.

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So, well, I guess I am on social media. I just don't have any accounts on social media. I'm living proof that you can completely eviscerate me on social media, and nothing happens, too, but that might be its own story.

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So, Christopher wasn't able to get me in contact with Darren, but he was at a conference when

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I texted him, and he said, Rosaria, I'm listening to this man named

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Andre Van Maal, and he is, well, here, let me just tell you what he's saying. And then he literally texted to me

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Andre's presentation, and I just said, Christopher, please get me in contact with this man, because it's almost like I woke up having a terrible dream that I was on the ball field, and I'm wearing the wrong team colors, running the ball in the wrong direction, and with Canada BC4 coming down the road and everything else,

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I need to correct course. So, Christopher got me in contact with Andre, and then a group of us started to meet via Zoom.

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We call each other the team. We come from lots of different perspectives, and we have been working through our different perspectives on reparative therapy, and one of the people that has been a friend for a while, but I have really reconnected with was

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Anne Polk from Restored Hope Network, and she encouraged me to just come to the

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Restored Hope Network conference and just ask my questions, and I was excited to do that.

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It was in North Carolina, and my kids wanted to come and hike in the mountains, and that means that they're teenagers.

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That means they would do the driving, and I could do the knitting, so that was all good. Before leaving, a friend of mine stopped me and said,

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Rosaria, you can't possibly go there. These people hate you, and I said, well, if they hate me for a just cause,

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I will repent, and then they will receive me, and I have questions, and it was a wonderful conference, and I learned a lot, and I came to a position after that that there are still some concerns

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I have about reparative therapy. I wouldn't say

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I'm on board, but what I'm not is opposed to it, and see,

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I think there's a big difference in that. There are people who will still be unsatisfied with my position, but I believe in freedom for healthcare choices, and there are things about reparative therapy that I learned that I really, really liked, and I'll tell you what some of those are.

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One is that reparative therapy takes seriously what it means to have been a victim of abuse and assault.

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Part of why that is so important right now is we've got, was it called

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Lighthouse? What was that? Guidepost? What was the name? Yeah, Guidepost Solutions for the Southern Valley. Yeah, Guidepost Solutions.

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Strange, dangerous, feminist -informed new definitions of abuse, which

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I think really shadows over what real abuse is like.

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Now, I and many, many others, praise God, did not, our homosexuality,

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I guess I should say this for the readers, I'm a biblically married woman, happily married. I have four children.

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I have no desire to ever return to the sin of my past, but one of the highlights of the sin of my past was a deep, dark sexual sin, mostly in the context of lesbianism, at least for ten full years, where I was also an activist for LGBTQ rights.

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It was not abuse that led me there. Praise God, it was something else.

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I'm uncomfortable with this idea that the root cause of homosexuality is abuse, because I would say the root cause of homosexuality is sin, whether my sin or being sinned against.

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I think the big thing that we need to understand as Christians is you can be both a victim and a sinner simultaneously, and most of us are.

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But nonetheless, reparative therapy might be the clarion call for what real victims go through, real abuse victims, not what

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I read in that Guidepost report. That, I think, really is a very dangerous posture to take.

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So I really appreciated the way that there was real care given to real victims.

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The other thing that I really appreciated is the way that transgenderism, and I know that Andre is going to talk more about that.

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That's a whole different, dangerous, crazy situation.

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Transgenderism has completely trounced whatever the Me Too movement or the Church Too movement had to...I don't think we're even going to be talking about homosexuality in the coming months and years.

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And when someone is entered into that kind of delusion, there are medical needs that that person will need to come back.

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And we need that. So I like the way that reparative therapy is speaking directly to those, some of the medical needs that members, that people who are, they call it detransitioning, are going to need.

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And so that was really it. And so then I, with my husband's permission, of course, started to work on a retraction.

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And I shared it with the people I love, and people gave me good feedback.

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And then at the end of the day, Kent and I looked at it and said, who do we know who knows how to lock down a

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PDF? And then we put it out there. Yeah, well, that's all very helpful.

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And again, I just want to let you know, and everyone who's listening, of how good that piece that you put out there was on this, that statement, because one of the things from where I'm sitting, that becomes discouraging,

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I think, at times is when there's public error, and then attempts to obfuscate it, or minimize it, pretend like it never happens, sometimes even changing positions, but never really admitting that you've changed positions among certain people in evangelical elite circles,

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I'll say. And for you to come out as a popular author in evangelicalism and just say, you know,

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I was wrong, humbly, I get things wrong. And this was one of them, was a huge encouragement to me.

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And I think to many who listen in this audience, because that's true repentance.

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That's just, I was wrong. Jesus showed me where I was wrong. And now I'm going to tell people that, you know, don't follow what

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I said previously. So, you know, thank you for that. And thank you for explaining that. I think it's very helpful.

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Dr. VanMol, I wanted to ask you about reparative therapy in general, just because there's two levels in my mind at which this is discussed.

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I have, I think, approached it from more of a political angle, where I see this as an attempt to get into church pastors, counseling offices, and to make that kind of activity illegal.

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And I think we've seen that in Canada. We're seeing that attempts at that in California. And I thought reparative therapy is just, this is one of the ways they're trying to approach this.

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And that's kind of the angle at which I've approached this. But I know that there's obviously another important discussion here, and that is, can

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Christians even use reparative therapy, whether it's illegal or not? Is this a useful thing, medically speaking?

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Is it in line with a Christian anthropology? And so I'd just like to hear from you on what is reparative therapy?

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And then is this, as I've approached it, am

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I correct in my assessment that this is going to, the attack on it is going to lead into attacks on biblical counseling?

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And then I guess it's a three -part question. And then can Christians use it? Yeah, well, the thing is that from the start, the attack was always intended not just to be against mental health, but to be against theology.

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The assault on mental health is the stand -in piece, the first base, the proxy.

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But they're after theology. So it's not just that private conversation the pastor will have with you.

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It's anything he says from the pulpit. Your Bible teacher in a class you're in, she says,

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God designed your body for the opposite sex. Whoops, we've crossed a line. You see what I'm saying?

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And you'd think in light of the First Amendment, none of this would survive. And yet, here we are.

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So let's start with conversion therapy. That word, coined in 1991 by an activist psychologist, that was its first appearance in the peer review literature, was designed to be pejorative.

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It's misrepresentative. It's deliberately provocative and vague. So anybody who wants to come out there and say, oh,

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I was hurt by conversion therapy. And everyone assumes, oh, okay. Well, excuse me, what did you mean?

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Well, I was talking to a pastor and he told me the way I was living wasn't right. You see what

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I'm saying? But that second question is never asked. So conversion therapy is anything they want to call it.

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And I've even found in the very secular peer review literature, where scholars are complaining about this, why is the term so vague?

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Anybody can say anything. We're supposed to buy off on it. But most importantly, it's a jamming tactic.

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It's intended to shame you. If you are any kind of a mental health expert that wants to assist somebody who is unhappy with their same -sex attraction or is gender confused, they want you to be shamed out of doing that.

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And of course, the title conversion therapy obviously has linguistic utility to it.

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It kind of alludes to, oh, conversion, like forced conversion, like making you be a

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Christian as if somebody could be forced to be one. So it always carries that shadow of, oh, it's involuntary.

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Someone was dragged into it. So that's what conversion therapy is. It's a junk term.

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And it's a weaponized term. And of course, almost everything with the nomenclature of sexual minority issues, all the language is weaponized.

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So I encourage people not even to start the conversation before you agree on the terms. So someone comes up and says, oh, do you support that anti -gay stuff?

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What does any of that mean? What do you mean by gay? What do you mean by anti -gay?

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Like Rosario was talking about, there is no gay straight. These are ideologic constructs from mid 20th century.

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And homosexual heterosexual is an ideological construct from one century before.

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For all of human history, sexuality was a verb, not a noun. It's something you could do, but it's not who you were.

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It's behavior, not identity. And as Rosario said, aptly, this is entirely a category error.

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But we are a century into thinking wrong about this stuff. And unless you call attention to the words and the definitions, the language is going to work the way it was designed.

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You're going to be painted into a corner and you're way behind the power curve before you even say anything.

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So I hope that's not bewildering for your audience. These are important points to understand. Now you're asking specifically about reparative therapy that was designed by a

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Roman Catholic psychologist, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, since passed away. It's since kind of being replaced by reintegrative therapy.

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But reparative therapy, looking on their website, has these four basic rules. Disclosure versus imposing of the therapist's views, which is already a step up from what we have now.

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The therapist would tell you, here's my view on this. Here's what I'm coming from. Instead of there's only one view on this and you will comply.

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Secondly, encouraging the client's open inquiry, which means the client and you can directly disagree, which already runs against the whole so -called conversion naming thing they're talking about, that you're encouraging this kind of therapy.

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Bring out your disagreements. Let's hear them. You're not going to get stepped on for it. Point three, resolving past trauma, which everybody's got traumas.

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To be alive is to have traumas. But some of these are big. You know what I mean? They're not all equivalent and they have consequences.

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And refusal for people to face that pain is part of why we see people in Christian leadership positions backslide into the homosexual position again.

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Abject refusal to face their past pain or to think, oh, redemption takes care of everything. It's like, no, there are messes still to clean up, including ones you made.

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You know, that's what repentance is about. And point four, educating the client regarding associated features of homosexuality, namely known causative factors.

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And we don't know everything, but we know some underlying motivations and the health consequences, namely, well, if you're going to decide to pursue this kind of lifestyle, you need to know to protect yourself because you are going to be at increased risk of all kinds of bad things, physical, relational, spiritual.

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So that's reparative therapy. Reintegrative therapy. And I'm sorry, I should have said right from the start to your audience,

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I am not a therapist of any kind. I'm a board certified family doctor. That's what I do. I'm a family physician, but I work with people who have done these things on these different committees and task forces that I've been on nationally for some years and I've gotten to learn a lot over the way along the course of the way.

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So whether you're talking about reintegrative, reparative or whatever, those are just different tools, different schools of approaching what we'd call maybe more aptly what was called sexual orientation change efforts.

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The people who actually do it since I think 2016 like to call it safety, sexual attraction, fluidity, exploration and therapy.

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Let's see what's behind your situation and let's see where we can go.

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Now by definition, by rules, by profession, the client is the one who directs where therapy goes and your audience might be interested to know that a whole lot of the takers, if not most of the takers for so -called conversion therapy are actually same -sex attracted people who plan to stay that way, but they want to tone it down.

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They want a safer, saner existence. I don't really like the way this thing swings me around.

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I want to be the one in control kind of thing. And there's studies about that, specifically out of the

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UK, three studies following this group of clients over about 10 years who specifically wanted to tone down their same -sex sexual behavior because they didn't want to end up with AIDS and the whole drug problems, all these other things that were associated with it.

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And these are considered good quality studies and nobody points to them and says, Oh, you know, you're an anti -gay bigot.

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See what I'm saying? It's like the double standard kind of thing. Now switching this over to the transgenderism deal, which

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I guess is outside the purview of your question. Maybe you don't want me to do that. That's fine. Transgenderism is an ideology, whereas gender dysphoria is a diagnosis.

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So is autogynephilia and other things that come under that blanket, which is to say all things gender dysphoric fit under the umbrella term transgenderism, but transgenderism includes a lot more.

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So think of transgenderism as an ideology, gender dysphoria as the diagnosis we're talking about where people are very uncomfortable with their sexed body.

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There we have decades of literature showing the overwhelming probability of underlying mental health problems for really good studies just out of the past,

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I think since 2014, coming out of European centers, out of Australia, other places showing that the clients that were coming to these gender clinics already had mental health diagnoses of longstanding.

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So those don't go away just because you decide, I'm going to put on a persona of the opposite sex.

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They're still there to be dealt with. And amongst those mental health problems are also neurodevelopmental problems.

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And specifically I'm talking autism spectrum disorder. And these people and these kids in particular are really vulnerable to it, to the whole ideology that's everywhere now and is being passed along by social contagion and advertisement for goodness sakes.

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But the kids that like Asperger's, that's part of the autism spectrum thing, but kids with spectrum disorder don't do well with abstract ideas.

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They tend toward the concrete. And so what happens with minimal coaching, which is all too easy to find on the web, especially the dark web, is they become convinced of this false concept that, oh, now

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I know why I'm different than all the other kids. It's because I'm trans. And it's exactly the wrong idea, but they really lock onto it.

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And it's kind of hard to get them to let it go. So the problem is in the

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US, Canada, Australia, the activists in medicine and mental health are just driving this train over the cliff, full speed ahead kind of thing.

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Whereas places like the UK, Sweden, Finland, and France that were leading the charge of so -called gender affirming therapy, by which we mean transitioning people that are gender confused, they're going the other way.

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They had enough complaints, did scientific reviews, national level stuff supported by the medical organizations as well as the government.

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And when they review the literature, it's always the same conclusion. Man, everything's low to very low quality.

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In fact, the UK High Court case of Bell versus Tavistock, that judgment put wonderful things into writing.

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Looking off of different summaries that were done in the UK, one of which goes by the acronym NICE because of the organization of government that does these kinds of reviews.

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So NICE 1 and NICE 2, NICE 1 was about puberty blocking agents. NICE 2 was about cross -sex hormones.

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And these and other things, including some quotes from some of my colleagues in America appeared in this court decision where they basically said gender affirming therapy has not been proven safe, not been proven effective.

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It is experimental. And the greatest caution should be exercised in allowing kids to do this and a bunch of other stuff in there.

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Consequently, the UK, within weeks of that Tavistock decision, their

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National Health Services Gender Identity Development Service, the biggest gender clinic for kids in the world, stopped it cold.

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You know, no gender affirming therapy under 16 without specific court order.

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So it would be like a big deal. And not between 16 and 18, unless it's in a very controlled experimental type situation.

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And even then, they recommended that the courts be solicited on it.

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Sweden incorporated that. And Sweden was already, it's not like they just did what the

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British did. They were already well along in reviewing this. Again, their national level scientific organizations, divisions of government going over the literature, same conclusion.

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And so their main hospital that was doing it also stopped cold, with the exception between 16 and 18 of a tightly regulated study situation.

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Point being, there really haven't been these tightly regulated, you know, having the control population, all the things that are supposed to be happening in a well done study.

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Hard to come by, very hard to come by. And Finland did it as well. And again, these are countries with, you know, lead dogs, lead horses, pushing the gender affirming therapy bandwagon.

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And in France, their Académie de Médecine, I think, put out a statement on it and, you know, they took the liberty of translating in English for us.

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So when the French do that, they're serious about something. So, and again, in the

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US, when we bring this up, you know, the teams I work with and stuff in legislatures or for courts or whatever, you know, the other side all but ignores it.

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Like it's not happening. And that's, you know, it's going to go down. I mean, the weight of the evidence alone is going to end, because it's happened before.

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You know, gender affirming therapy was big, you know, in the 70s here,

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Sweden, elsewhere. And Johns Hopkins University was one of the institutions really leading it.

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And when Professor Paul McHugh took over their psychiatry department, the first thing he did is, well, you know, you guys do all these, you know, screening tests, all these psychometric evaluations of people coming into your sex change clinic, take those same tests, let's apply them again sometime after.

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And they did. And they found that nothing improved. So in short order, the clinic was shut down.

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And most of the nation's gender clinics did the same. That was 40 years ago.

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Here we are, we're repeating the error. And now we're doing it with kids. But there's so much money behind it.

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Ideology, big corporations, big philanthropy organizations. There's a lot of steam.

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And of course, you know, the general secular progressive leftist organizations have come on board too.

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But I am pleased to tell you that what I've witnessed and participated in, in the

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US, Canada, Europe, Australia, elsewhere, is the opposition to gender affirming therapy, as they call it, for minors, is an all hands on deck movement, hands across the aisle.

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There's even an organization by that name out of the UK, by which I mean, people opposing this happening to kids are conservative and liberal and everything else.

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They are believers, they are non -believers, everything else. They are actually sexual minority organizations.

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There's gay groups, there's an adult trans group, completely opposed to this happening in kids. It's not that they oppose it altogether in adults, but it's like, no, no, no, no, you protect kids from this kind of stuff exactly because they're kids.

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So, but our current, you know, administration in Washington is obviously of an altogether different mind and wishes to mandate that doctors like me, the mental health experts out there would have one and only one choice.

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And that would be gender affirming therapy. That if a confused kid or adult comes to us, the only thing we tell them is, here's how you get on the train, you know, to get onto puberty blockers, if you're at that age, cross -sex hormones.

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And if you choose, you know, gender affirming therapies, gender affirming surgery, which they also called gender confirming surgery, proving how weaponized the language is.

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You can't even discuss it without being on their terms, which is why you need to oppose their terms.

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You know, of course, we want to do that biblically, compassionately, respectfully, you know, honoringly, but you still do that with a backbone.

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Yeah. Wow. That well, it's encouraging because right now it does not feel like that movement is running out of steam.

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It sure feels like they're holding sway, at least in the United States. And as you just said, there's a lot of money behind this.

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In fact, the other day, what you just said about trans people or LGBT people who identify this way, opposing this in children.

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I saw a video online of a lesbian practicing lesbian who just said, look, if I knew in the 90s when

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I was advocating for lesbianism on a political level that it was going to lead to this library hour and everything else,

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I would have never done it. And, you know, I don't know what the numbers are. It sounds like you know a lot more than me, but if people are starting to wake up,

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I mean, that's an encouraging thing. I was wondering, I do have a question for Rosario, but I want to ask you first,

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Dr. Venmal, about whether or not this is compatible with Christianity. That's an objection that gets brought up, is that, well, you know, this repair,

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I think I was pronouncing it wrong. I said reparative. You're saying it's reparative. Is that how you pronounce it? No, I mean, reparative or reparative, that's all fine, or reintegrative.

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But safety is actually the acronym they prefer we use. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, what term should

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I use? Safety. OK, so this kind of therapy is, according to some

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Christians, out of step with a biblical anthropology, with this is, in fact,

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Greg Johnson, I think, called it a prosperity gospel of sorts to think that you can possibly be delivered from these kinds of attractions, because I guess they're so intrinsic to who you are.

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So what do you say to that? And I'd actually like to get both of your answers to this, both you and Rosario on this.

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What do you say to someone who offers that objection and says, well, it's good that we don't want that safety therapy.

34:31

We just want a biblical approach, whatever that is. Well, ultimately, I think that the

34:36

Critics Foundation is unbiblical because they are canonizing temptation.

34:42

Here's the one temptation you can't get any help with because it's so intrinsic. It's so special.

34:48

Nonsense. Why is someone else's temptation more holy than my own? Temptation's temptation.

34:55

Why do we canonize theirs? You know what I'm saying? It's ridiculous. It's saying, hands off my sin, hands off my problems.

35:03

That's one thing if someone doesn't want to participate. I mean, the ground level requirement for any kind of counseling, pastoral or otherwise, is a willing and motivated client.

35:16

You can't drag someone to it. They've got to want to be there, and they're going to have to work hard, be it biblical counseling or other.

35:24

So, I think it's ridiculous to canonize temptation. Secondly, their approach assumes that the only problem with same -sex sexual attraction and behavior is theological and moral, and it's not.

35:40

It has other causative factors that even the very secular folks have identified and is in the literature.

35:46

Trauma is one of them, and it's a big one, but it's not the only one. You know, there's many roads to brokenness, and we are all broken, you know, in one way or another.

35:58

So, whatever your problem, your weaknesses, you know, your false conceptions, there were a lot of ways to get there, but you're the only one who got there the way you did.

36:07

So, you need skilled counselors that, you know, know what they're doing with this stuff. But yeah,

36:14

I just disagree with every part of that. And for those, you know, from, say, like the secular atheist side, who are going to say, well, homosexuality is not a pathology, so applying counseling to it is ridiculous.

36:27

Well, bereavement's not a pathology either, and nobody has problems with any kind of counseling for that.

36:34

Pastoral, you know, biblical, secular, whatever. Oh, what are you seeing the counselor for? Oh, you know, my mom died, and it's really hard on me.

36:42

Oh yeah, bereavement, sure, go ahead, that'll help. No one's upset about that, and it's not a pathology that you're dealing with.

36:50

You know, and again, you're going to get into a mud -flinging contest when you bring the term pathology, you know, to same -sex attraction.

36:59

But, you know, again, some of the takers on this who want help getting out or quieting it down are fully atheist, you know what

37:08

I'm saying? So, biblical counseling isn't anything they're ever going to step into. Consequently, you know, applying good therapy to their situation is at a minimum doing good by all men, you know, it's a biblical mandate kind of thing.

37:24

And, you know, medical historian H .E. Sigarest said Christianity entered the world as the religion of healing.

37:31

Before Christianity was around, I mean, Judaism had the same undergirding philosophy, of course, but it wasn't very widely distributed.

37:39

But say, like in the Greco -Roman times, the ill were repulsive, you know, the way you treated the dead into dying, the dying were just to push them away, you know, everybody's a leper, you know, kind of thing.

37:54

Christianity, Judeo -Christian faith enters into it and says, no, you're a special creation, you're created in the image of God, deeply loved, you have dignity, you know, boom, boom, and applied that to medical care and helped medical care be something that wasn't just something for the rich, you know, we invented hospitals, look at all these mercy ministries right along through.

38:17

The modern scientific movement is a direct result of Christian theology,

38:23

I mean, science as such happened all over the world, but William Lane Craig notes that a scientific, you know, enterprise was always stillborn in these different cultures until it reached the

38:38

Christian culture, and you know, we can argue how Christian it was, but of Western Europe, where you have these presuppositions that allows it to charge on and become a field, and it was directly a result of Christianity, and no field of science was more influenced by Christianity than medicine.

38:56

Now, you can argue, well, it certainly has fallen a long way, hasn't it? You bet, but it's not over yet.

39:02

So again, you know, these Christian contributions, even the idea of universal human equality and universal human rights are directly out of Scripture.

39:13

So says Jürgen Habermas, Europe's preeminent philosopher, who's also an atheist, and say like his

39:20

French number two, Luc Ferre, and they both say the same thing, you know.

39:25

So Christianity's been offering the world a lot that it didn't have before, and its contributions to medicine are a prime part of that, and of course, our views toward illness and toward people, you know, et cetera, that are suffering, and that brings us to where we are now.

39:43

People are suffering, you know, same -sex sexual attraction and behavior has negative stats, negative behaviorally, negative in terms of health, disease states and whatnot, you know, higher levels of domestic violence, and yeah, you know, the push here for 20 and 30 years is to blame it all on externals.

40:04

Oh, it's minority stress, it's stigma. Now, there's a lot of studies that contradict that, and I've written about that, you know, for the

40:11

CMDA and other groups. Whatever part that plays is small, you know, it's significant, but small.

40:18

The problem is internal. The behaviors are leading to bad places, and good, competent therapy, counseling, can help a person with that.

40:29

Yeah, I'm thinking on a practical level here, if my friend, let's say, is struggling in this area, and he's offered a choice between, you know, go to a

40:38

Christian counselor or a biblical counselor, and then go to someone who's going to give him what we're talking about now, more of a secular approach to this, you know, what am

40:50

I going to tell him? And that's, I think, what perhaps is behind a lot of the questioning in Christians, or at least a lot of what layman

40:58

Christians, when they hear objections to this, that's what they're thinking. They're saying, well, of course, we should go to the biblical counselor, and maybe some of them would also be opposed to psychology, psychological approaches in other areas as well.

41:11

But that's, I think, the objection. And I think I've been, in my mind,

41:16

I've just been pretty practical on it. I think, well, you know, if your friend actually gets help and assistance in turning from a sinful behavior,

41:26

I don't have a big problem with, you know, if it's not a sinful means by which he's turning,

41:33

I don't have a problem with it. But I think that's what people are wrestling with.

41:38

If Jesus isn't at the center of the counseling, you know, is it really counseling that should be utilized at all?

41:47

Yeah, well, it's not, you know, it's not an either or proposition either. Cy Rogers, you know, was big on saying, well, if you present a person with a problem to a doctor, a psychologist, and a pastor, they're going to come up with three different prescriptions, but they may all be correct on a certain level, because they see different needs.

42:08

So the fact that you're seeing, you know, a mental health expert doesn't mean you don't see your pastor.

42:14

I wouldn't advise that. And I'd be careful of sales pitches, because just calling something biblical counseling doesn't make it biblical counseling.

42:22

You're absolutely right. And proceed with great caution, you know, when you're pursuing a psychologist or, you know, or a counselor, you'd like someone who's recommended, you know, by organizations who support the right stuff.

42:36

Because in the United States, you know, you walk into the average psychologist or mental health experts office, and you say, hey, you know,

42:45

I'm gay, and I want to see if I don't have to be, they're going to be terrified to talk to you.

42:50

Really, they're going to lose their license over you. See what I'm saying? Now, you know, again, numerous states have protected the free speech and therapy, but well over 20, you know, have banned it.

43:01

Again, it's not going to hold up ultimately in Supreme Court challenges. But for right now, everybody's running scared of losing their licenses.

43:11

Well, Rosario, I'd love to hear from you on this, especially when it comes to Christianity, broadly speaking, because the way that this has been presented often to me, and the term conversion therapy is most often used is that there's this very horrible unbiblical approach called conversion therapy, which we would do well to reject.

43:32

In fact, it's a prosperity gospel, as some have said. And it's great, you know, or it's at least we shouldn't object to the fact that in 20 states, this has been banned.

43:44

And what do you what do you think that's coming from? Why has that at least in the last 10 years dominated so much of even evangelical counseling advice?

43:58

Right, right, right. Well, one of the places it came from was me. Right. So I'm asking the right person.

44:06

I believe that I believe that in 2014, I very much believe that reparative therapy was an example of the prosperity gospel.

44:16

In fact, I use those words in the Gospel Coalition piece. And I believed,

44:22

I believed that Joseph Nicolosi, Sr. used pornography in his practice.

44:30

I still have friends who insist to me that this is true.

44:40

It is so but but here's why the theological reason why

44:45

I believed that that reparative therapy.

44:52

And I think, Andre, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we also using the word change allowing therapy?

44:58

Is that that's okay. And that that's been that's been the one that I it just it has less acronyms.

45:03

I can hold it in my 60 year old brain better. But the reason was because often these programs from our perspective, put sanctification before justification.

45:18

In other words, you would you would instead of having someone who had truly been a born again

45:24

Christian, a true believer received by faith alone, the promises of God for the forgiveness of sin and the deliverance of sin.

45:33

If you put sanctification before justification, you're going to get a works righteousness approach to things.

45:41

And so if your primary focus is on orientation change, that can happen.

45:49

And I think if you listen to the stories of West Hill and Julie Rogers, when they talk about their

45:56

Christian faith, you know, you get the sense that at least in some of those circles, being raised in a

46:04

Christian home means you're a Christian or having some video of you singing this little light of mine as a four year old was proof you were in the kingdom.

46:13

And, you know, for those of us who are, you know, like, no, no, no, no. So so the question of the order of salvation, needing to model the process by which a person is sanctified unto holiness would be one of our one of the concerns.

46:31

Another concern is that the presence of indwelling sin, and this is a job, you know, we can just go right to John Owen for this.

46:40

The presence of indwelling sin is a bear. And I think honestly, what can really trip a person up if you come from a very perverse, abominable, horrific pattern of sexual perversion, of which

46:56

I did, if you ask somebody how you feel, that's not a great question.

47:03

It's not a great question, because it doesn't always how I feel is not always the great, the best answer to how

47:11

I am. So so so those are the two things that it seemed to reparative therapy seemed to flip flop justification and sanctification, deny the presence of indwelling sin, even in the life of a faithful believer, thinking about something like Galatians six, or even even something like Romans seven, why do

47:33

I do what I don't want to do? It is the law of sin in me. Often in my conversations with people, you know,

47:40

Christians can disagree about this. But from a reformed position, Romans seven is

47:45

Paul as a believer. From a more Arminian perspective, that's

47:51

Paul as an unbeliever. And so some of these are the questions that would be in play here.

47:56

Part of why this is not of concern to me anymore, I will tell you like that is not that that is I have no dog in that race.

48:03

And it is because we can agree apologetically and disagree theologically, and maybe get some work done.

48:11

And that is true across the board. We have done that with homeschooling. Andre and I both both of our households have adopted children out of foster care as older teenagers with serious trauma.

48:27

You know, what kind of counseling do you get the kind that lets you not have quite as many holes in your wall for this Tuesday?

48:32

Thank you. You know, it's you you make choices along the way. So I, I am on board with all of this apologetically,

48:42

I may have some differences of opinion theologically. But for right now, we're in a war and in war borders close.

48:53

And I think one of the borders that has closed is this hyper attention to theological details as though we're always putting a church together.

49:06

Right now, I'm not putting a church together with Dr. Van Malt. That's not what we're doing.

49:12

But we are concerned about children. And I think the church needs to be concerned.

49:19

What will it look like 10 years from now when all of these survivors from the transgender delusion movement come to our church?

49:31

Are we ready? Do we understand that we are going to need to work with medical professionals on a daily basis to help them for sure?

49:42

But I think that one of the issues on board that really makes it difficult is that the evangelical church is a mess.

49:49

It's a disaster. And one of the core issues that we need to just vote up or down is whether we believe that homosexuality and transgenderism is both harmful and changeable.

50:05

If that's what you believe, that's what I believe, then I believe we can team up together even across theological differences.

50:16

Very well stated. You know, I'm reminded of an article that I read actually in the

50:21

Gospel Coalition. The author was making the point that, and this was with identity politics, but he was saying that we as Christians can form an alliance with identity politics.

50:34

And he used as an example of that, that the Soviets and the

50:40

United States formed an alliance against Nazi Germany in World War II. So therefore, it's okay to form an alliance with people that you disagree with.

50:51

And the question I remember I had when I was reading it, I said, well, who are the Nazis? You know, who are the bad guys in this scenario?

50:58

That's the thing that never got fleshed out in this particular article. And I have the same feeling about this where we have these godless pagans, these,

51:12

I don't even know quite what word to use because there aren't words in my vocabulary that seems strong enough, but these people who want to attack children in the most grotesque, horrible ways.

51:24

And I mean, this is demonically inspired stuff. And really, we're going to quibble about there's these people who might be secular, some of them who are going to engage in the safety or change therapy that might not exactly line up with our theology.

51:44

It's just a sense of proportion. It's like we're sifting at gnats and swallowing camels if we think that we can rejoice or at least not see a problem with this demonically inspired movement.

52:00

Could I add one thing to that? Please do so. Please do. And it just, it is a complete failure to read the times.

52:09

So, you know, parachurch ministries come and go. What we're not, we're not suggesting that a parachurch ministry holds the keys to the kingdom, but to fail to misread the times like that after all of the information we have right now, that's really serious.

52:27

And that's why when you hear some of the things that Preston Sprinkle, what he's saying right now, and Greg Johnson, I don't share either a theology or an apologetics with that.

52:42

Right. I mean, it is just, and certainly, you'll hear Greg Johnson say things like, if we oppose

52:50

Greg, you know, we're all spiritual abusers. We're spiritual siblings, but we're spiritual abusers.

52:57

And it's an interesting, you know, it's just an interesting concept. I suppose I feel more offended at the thought of being a spiritual sibling than a spiritual abuser at this point, if that's the conversation.

53:07

Only because I have no authority over a PCA pastor last I checked. So I don't think, you know,

53:14

I don't think that's an accurate, I think we use the word abuse so poorly these days that it just becomes anything.

53:19

But I do think that with the evangelical church in such a mess, it is important that Christians stop and rethink and realize what's coming to us.

53:37

How much time do you think we have before we also are in the position that Canada is in?

53:46

That's right. And well, that's actually a good question to ask the good doctor here,

53:52

Dr. Venmal. How much time do we have or is it going in the opposite direction, like you said, and this is all going to dissipate?

54:00

You know, it's a David and Goliath appearing situation. But again, you know, things are moving.

54:08

Stuff's coming together in the United States. You know, again, whoever the political administration in charge is makes things more difficult to more easy and with the current one, it's quite difficult.

54:22

You know, could we be Canada in short order? Yeah. But there's things in the way, you know, the constitution, the

54:30

American church, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And it's just really interesting the help that God brings in and from where, you know, unexpected places and stuff.

54:39

But who would have thought a few years ago to be the UK, Sweden, Finland and France, you know, going in the right direction and providing the data for the rest of us to follow, you know, kind of thing.

54:53

So the other part of it is, though, the other side that we're talking about, this massive educational, ideological, industrial complex.

55:03

You know, it's like all the big pillars of society here deciding that, oh, you know, the trans bandwagon is, you know, the current great civil rights project that, you know, especially living in California, they just look desperate.

55:22

I mean, it's so much over the top stuff being put forward. It's like, oh, you're showing your entire hand.

55:30

You think you're on the way out. You know, they don't act like it. And of course, the media is no help whatsoever.

55:37

But I think we are making progress. And, you know, frankly, my answer to this,

55:43

I mean, I like science. You know, I like this. I wouldn't spend so much time, you know, in my extracurricular activities if I didn't, you know, believe in the different structures that God's made available to us.

55:57

But I believe in divine acceleration. You know, the Bible, New Testament tells us a dozen times to co -labor with Christ, which means we should be in waters that are pretty deep, that if God doesn't show up, we're done.

56:09

Because if we could do it on our own, why didn't the rest already do it? You see what I'm saying? So co -laboring with Christ, that's one of my benchmarks, you know, every day that I come back to, am

56:21

I doing this? You know, do I have first things first? And, you know, there'll be this divine acceleration.

56:29

The other side got to where we are over about 50 years. You know, their incrementalism, you know, taking down orthodoxy little by little.

56:40

God's going to have us go the other way much faster. Again, this presupposes you're working with Him, you know, and doing things

56:48

His way. But so it is to say I am encouraged, but that is because I am looking to the

56:56

Lord for my encouragement. It's all too easy to, you know, be like Peter and, you know, you're walking on the water by God's invitation and then you look down and it goes really bad really quick.

57:07

And I'm 15 minutes away from that every day of my life. I want to do it. But, you know, eyes on God, co -laboring with Him, working with the people

57:16

He brings together, these wonderful teams I get to work with, the hugely supportive church that's behind me.

57:22

So I approach this with enthusiasm, but it's because of the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of man.

57:29

Yeah. Well, we're all grateful for your work, Dr. Venmal, and for sharing this time. I wonder if either of you have final thoughts.

57:37

Rosaria, you have any final thoughts? I don't have any final thoughts. I always love listening to, well, my final thought is, wow, how is it that the good doctor from California is optimistic?

57:50

And I don't, you see, that's why I wanted to stop everything. I'm like, we've reached the top of the hill and I'm like,

57:57

I don't want it to get worse. Let's just kind of like end on that note. Right. So I don't know, John, how come you and I are like,

58:03

I don't know, let's just prepare to suffer. Let's suffer well. And here's, but anyway, I'm encouraged by what

58:09

Andre is saying. I also do think, though, that this opportunity that I had to meet with Andre and so many others working in very different ways on behalf of not just children, but sinners who want to stop and who need various kinds of help.

58:37

It has been a huge blessing to me. It's been eye -opening.

58:43

I think we really do need to find our team and realize that we are at war.

58:50

Borders have closed. Maybe things aren't going to be as tightly woven as we'd like. Yeah, I would add something to what you were saying before too,

59:00

Rosaria. And I'm going to do it by doing it rather than back -referencing you.

59:07

If everybody tomorrow that's sexually confused, everybody was suddenly opposite -sex attracted and comfortable with their bodily sex, does that save them?

59:21

That answers the prior problem that Rosaria was speaking about so well.

59:27

No one's saying this stuff saves you. You see what I'm saying? Right. No, that's a really good point.

59:32

I'm glad you brought that up. You still need the Lord. Plus, directly to what Rosaria was talking about, because we've talked about this in the church

59:39

I attend for 30 years. So, when God brings all these people in, yeah, are you ready?

59:48

Is your church ready? How do you integrate these people into your Bible studies, into your classes? How do you get these people discipled?

59:55

Where's the format for that? Has your church set it up? If tomorrow God called on your church to increase by 25%, are you ready to take these people on board?

01:00:05

If the answer is no, we have to ask, where's your faith been? What have you been waiting for?

01:00:10

You didn't prepare for anything? Yeah. Well, that's the story of evangelicals, unfortunately. If we had political power, real political power,

01:00:20

I think a lot of the evangelical elites wouldn't know what to do with that, because the posture has been opposed to that.

01:00:29

It's bad to have power. You should never oppose it and stuff. There's just so many issues like that where we're just kind of—the only way

01:00:38

I can articulate it, I guess, is that a lot of evangelical leaders want to have the moral high ground.

01:00:44

This is a perfect case, actually, of it where we're kind of on board with banning this, or at least we're not opposed to banning this safety therapy.

01:00:55

But at the same time, we can kind of batter the fundamentalists, or not the fundamentalists, but the people who see a problem with that, we can kind of take the moral high ground against them.

01:01:08

I don't know what that is exactly, but there's so many different issues that I can see where this problem reemerges.

01:01:17

I think what you just said about this not being a tactic to convert someone's soul, but rather a tool to help them change an unwanted behavior, that is so helpful.

01:01:30

In itself, I think it takes away that moral high ground and says, look, it's not what you're making this out to be.

01:01:37

This isn't a prosperity gospel. This isn't another gospel. This is really just a tool people are trying to use.

01:01:45

Let's just say they're convicted by God. They have that conscience thing, and hopefully that's what's motivating this.

01:01:50

They realize what they're doing is wrong, and they're trying to find a tool to help them stop.

01:01:58

And so, yeah, man, I appreciate it. There's so much more that could be said, but I know we've gone for over an hour.

01:02:03

And again, you can find out more about Rosaria Butterfield at rosariabutterfield .com.

01:02:11

And for Dr. Van Mole, you can go to YouTube. You go to so many places. If you just Google your name, you've probably done that.

01:02:17

There's some like the whole page. I try to avoid doing that. Oh, yeah. Okay, well, but go to cmba .org.

01:02:25

That's probably the main one, right? Yeah. So, all right. Well, God bless both of you. And thank you once again for all your contributions here in the ministry that you're doing.