February 23, 2020 Show with Dr. Beth Robinson AND Dr. Latayne C. Scott on “Talking with Teens About Sexuality: Critical Conversations about Social Media, Gender Identity, Same-Sex Attraction, Pornography, Purity, Dating, etc.”

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation, to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 23rd day of February 2021, and I'm thrilled to have back on the program two returning guests who have co -authored a book together that you must know about, that you must purchase, that you must put into the hands of parents and teachers and anyone who has any crucial involvement with children in their life, and that book is

Talking With Teens About Sexuality, Critical Conversations About Social Media, Gender Identity, Same -Sex

Attraction, Pornography, Purity, Dating, etc., and the authors of that book are here with us today.

First, we have Dr. Beth Robinson, and not only is

Dr. Robinson a professor of psychology and counseling at Lubbock Christian University in Texas, Dr.

Robinson is a licensed professional counselor and approved supervisor for licensed professional counselors, a certified school counselor with a teaching certificate, and a frequent expert witness in legal proceedings involving sexual abuse.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Sign Radio, Dr. Beth Robinson. Thank you,

Chris. I am excited to be here, and I'm looking forward to our discussion today. I am as well, and we also have joining us a frequent guest on this program,

Dr. Latine C. Scott, an award -winning veteran of the Christian publishing industry, having written over two dozen books and having earned a

Ph .D. in biblical studies, and they are both the authors of the aforementioned book, Talking With Teens About Sexuality, and I'd like to give our, oh, let me welcome you to the program as well,

Dr. Latine C. Scott. It's good to be back. Thank you, Chris. And let me right away give our listeners our email address.

It's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. If you have any questions for Dr. Beth Robinson and Dr.

Latine C. Scott, that's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and as always, please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and obviously a subject like this would easily lend itself to people asking personal and private questions, so you don't have to be apprehensive about identifying yourself.

Just feel free to be anonymous. But if it is a general question, one that would not embarrass you or identify someone involved in a situation that you would rather not publicly identify, et cetera, well, obviously, you may feel free to remain anonymous, but please give us the minimum location and name information that I requested if you are asking a general question.

Well, first of all, Dr. Beth Robinson, I know that you have been a member of this program for a long time.

You and Latine have already written before together.

The last time you were both on this program, you were addressing a previous book that you had both written together, which is called

Protecting Your Children from Predators, How to Recognize and Respond to Sexual Danger. And why is it that you felt compelled to write this new book with Latine, talking with teens about sexuality, since there have been many books, it seems, written about this issue, especially in the 20th and 21st century?

A lot of Christian counseling ministries offer books like this. Why did you see a need for a unique look or a fresh look or a specific look that you and Latine have to offer that isn't already available?

Two things really led to this, Chris. The first one is, 20 years ago, I wrote a book that was for youth ministers about dealing with sexuality issues in teaching teens in a youth ministry setting, and I have repeatedly had youth ministers ask me to update that.

And the second thing that really led to this is, I thought that Latine and I brought a pretty unique partnership to this type of book with her deep theological knowledge and my counseling knowledge, and I think it shows in the book that it's a very nice melding of a good understanding of Scripture and theology with the practicalities of counseling and how do you have the conversation.

And, I mean, a lot has gone on in the area of sexuality over the last decade, even less.

I mean, even over the last two years, and even over the last year, and even over the last several months,

God's law on this issue or these issues regarding sexuality has never changed, and will never change.

His canon is closed. And there is though, however, a new way where, new ways in which those who hate the

Scriptures, those who hate Christ, either consciously or unconsciously, they come up with ways all the time to not only make sexual activity that is forbidden by God in His Word tolerable, but now we have escalated from being demanded to tolerate whatever the world deems fit in regard to sexuality.

We are demanded to celebrate it. And people have been threatened to lose careers and people have lost careers and have been damaged in many other ways by opposing the status quo of the 21st century on sexuality.

But if you could, just name some of those reasons that even caused you a necessity to update your book, or update your thoughts on the subject.

Well, 20 years ago, we were not dealing with the issues in social media.

It didn't even impact us in our talk about sexuality, and it is such a powerful influence now. People didn't really struggle as much with the gender question, transgender, all those issues that our teens are hitting so early.

The open acceptance and affirmation of homosexuality is much greater now.

So, it literally is a different social and cultural landscape than it was 20 years ago.

There's very little in the book that I addressed in the original book 20 years ago, to be honest.

Very little. Because it is such a different climate, and as you stated, it's a climate that wants to affirm sexual choices that are contrary to what the

Bible teaches. And I just want to call parents and teens back to what the Bible teaches. Well, in fact, since you have even identified your co -author,

Dr. Latane C. Scott, as the biblical theologian who contributed to this book, not that you don't offer some of that as well yourself, but Dr.

Latane C. Scott, what is God's plan for sex? Well, he created sex, so he's not ashamed of it.

And we talk about celebrating, God celebrates sexual relationships between a man and his wife.

In fact, he demands it. He commands it, actually. He commands it, and he celebrates it.

He's not just commanding and he's going to punish you if you don't. It's that he wants you to find joy in it, because he finds joy in it.

It's part of the joy of sharing in creation, when it results in a child, for instance.

It is a creation of a new thing that doesn't exist or shouldn't exist anywhere else in a person's life.

You know, it's unique and godly for a man and his wife to engage in sex.

But, of course, what we're seeing in our culture today is the... And if you just watch network

TV, the number of relationships that are seen as exciting and healthy and good between a man and a wife are much lesser or fewer instances in a show.

You know, I like medical dramas, I guess because my husband went through so many medical dramas.

But if you watch any of the medical dramas that are on now, very rarely do you see a man and his wife celebrating and enjoying and benefiting from their sexual relationship.

I want to, before we go any further, read an endorsement that is a pretty powerful endorsement for this book.

Jim Daly, who is president of Focus on the Family, a world -renowned ministry that does the very thing that its name suggests.

It focuses on the family and all the areas of life, how the family is affected by the world, and the answers to those conflicts in the scriptures.

But Jim Daly writes, Helping kids navigate our sex -satuated, morally confused culture can feel like an overwhelming task.

With the younger generations facing a barrage of unbiblical messages about sexuality,

Drs. Beth Robinson and Latane Scott have prepared a comprehensive manual to help parents instill in their kids a godly view of sex.

That was definitely a wonderful gift that you received in a commendation coming from someone with the reputation and the renowned blessings that Focus on the

Family have provided to the body of Christ and to the public at large.

Quite impressive. Let me just read one more, since he is a mutual friend of Dr.

Latane Scott and mine, perhaps even Beth Robinson as well, I don't know. But Dr. F.

LaGarde Smith, who I've known going back to the 1980s, he is the compiler and narrator of the

Daily Bible. Dr. Smith says, My father, bless him, would have benefited greatly from reading this book before giving me the talk.

The talk, he puts in quotation marks. For parents attempting to navigate today's daunting sexual world, this book draws from the talk to another father, the one who gifted us with sex and lovingly tells us how to handle it.

Well, thank you, Dr. Smith, for that impressive commendation. And when we talk to children,

I don't have children myself, but when parents talk to children about sex,

I'm sure there is, on the part of some, great embarrassment.

Not that they are in any way, in their own minds, embarrassed about the gift of sex, but they are perhaps timid and nervous about what to say and what to withhold when discussing these matters with children.

First of all, Dr. Robinson, how young should a child be before you even open up this conversation, or do you wait for them to start asking questions?

Well, we start teaching kids about sex before we know we teach them. We start teaching kids about sexual safety when they're preschoolers, even, and when we teach them about their bodies.

We teach them those first elements of protecting their body and being safe, but more specific knowledge about sexuality.

If our kids feel comfortable, they'll come ask us questions, and we definitely don't want to force conversations.

We want them to ask us questions, or we want to use teachable moments. So if there's something that happens on a

TV show, that you can ask what they think about it. Even like Dr.

Scott mentioned, where you see these medical dramas, and it's never a husband and wife having sex together, they're having sex with everybody but who they're married to.

You can ask your kids, did they notice that? What did they think about that? And then you listen to them, and if they have biblical values, then you've done a good job.

And if they don't, then you ask a few more questions, and you make some references to what the

Bible teaches. But to be honest, the talk doesn't work. We don't want a talk, we want an ongoing conversation, which is why the subtitle is

Critical Conversations. We should be comfortable enough to have multiple conversations with our kids at all different ages about sexuality.

If we don't address it, the rest of the world will address it and teach them values we don't want them to have.

I was just in a meeting with youth ministers, and one of the youth ministers said, I wanted to make sure that I had the seed in the soil before anybody else talked to my child about something that might sway them away from the

Bible. And I think that's how we have to look at it as parents, is we want to be the first person who talks about it and the last person who talks about it.

Yeah, I remember, I'm 59 years old, and perhaps you have these same kind of experiences where there were certain things in your even very young childhood that are burned into your memory forever, just because there was something dramatic or traumatic about it.

But I remember that my mom started to tell me about sex when

I was a very young child. I was probably asking her questions that led to these conversations, and I believe

I must have been even younger than kindergarten age or perhaps in kindergarten.

And I remember I went out and blabbed this information to my friends in the street, and my friends would then in turn tell their parents, and there were some angry parents in the neighborhood, that I beat them to the punch of telling their children about where children came from.

So I vividly remember that, so I know that parents should want to be the first ones to tell their children.

Do you think that's something that is far too often an issue that parents want to leave in the hands of other people they want to pass that responsibility on, and how do they do that in certain ways?

I think parents don't consciously think they want to pass that on. I think they just do not realize how much sexual content children are exposed to at very young ages.

They believe they're going to have this talk, and I'm putting quotes around it, this talk when the kids are 11, 12, or 13, and that they don't have to address anything before that.

But just like you brought up, where do babies come from is the beginning of sex education and how parents handle that and have those conversations.

And I can tell you that I had a child living in my home that was in third grade, and this is aging me a bit because he would be in his 30s now, but when he was in third grade he came home and didn't know,

I mean he was beside himself because he was about to get in trouble at school with the other kids because all the kids were passing around pornographic magazines then.

And today it's so much more easily accessed online. So I don't think parents necessarily decide that they want somebody else to do it.

They just think they have a lot more time to get around to it than they really have. And in fact, if a biblical preacher is opening up the

Word of God faithfully, and he is preaching from the whole counsel of God, there should be children in that room when he is preaching, and those issues are going to come up.

Not graphically, of course, and not in detail, but obviously, even when exegeting the

Bible, sex comes up. It comes up a lot, actually. It certainly does, and you know,

I'm going to say, I have been in churches for years where it doesn't get addressed.

It's like even preaching ministers just don't talk about those sections of the

Bible. And that's a huge message to children and teens when we don't teach it when it's clearly in the

Bible. Now, let's suppose, and perhaps you could even chime in,

Dr. Latane C. Scott, because you are a parent. Your children are adults now, but you have had the experience of raising children in a

Christian home. But Dr. Robinson, we'll start with you. You already said that this should be an ongoing conversation, and not like a talk, in quotes, that is like ripping a

Band -Aid off and getting everything out as quickly as you possibly can to get it over with, everything within reason, and then vow never to bring it up again.

But what at least should a initial conversation be?

Perhaps your child hasn't asked at all. Perhaps your child or children are very shy by nature.

Perhaps something about sex embarrasses them. They know something about sex is naughty, and they may wrongly even think that it's naughty if mommy and daddy are doing it.

But what should be the bare minimum of an initial conversation, do you think? Or is that impossible to have a cookie -cutter answer to that?

In an ideal world, those early conversations would be about, before age 5, would be about sexual safety, identifying for kids what their private parts are and that nobody else is supposed to touch those.

Those are the introductory conversations that are easy, and that's where we should start the conversation. And then the conversation should increase in frequency and in topics discussed as kids get older.

You know, there are so many. People kind of want me to identify what a teachable moment is exactly, but the reality is if you're open to it, and you recognize what your kid's listening to in music, or what you're seeing at the mall on a poster, all kinds of things are there that you can talk about and teach from without lecturing kids.

Just being curious and saying, what do you think about that? And those are the teachable moments, and kids' lives are filled with teachable moments where we teach godly values all the time, not just about sexuality, but we should include sexuality as part of what we teach.

And Dr. Scott, in your own experience, did you, now that you know more about a more proper and biblical way to teach your children about sex, did you make big mistakes in that area yourself, or are you surprised that you handled the situation pretty well, even now that you look back at it with more wisdom behind you?

No, I made mistakes. My children were protected enough and were of an age, you know, my children are in their 40s now, but when they were toddlers and teenagers, there was not the sex -saturated culture that we have now.

Yes, it was available, you know, porn was available, etc., but speaking from my experiences with my daughter and my husband with our son, we had the concept from the way our parents handled it, that the mother was supposed to have the talk with the daughter, and the dad was supposed to have the talk with the son, and that they would feel open after that to come and ask questions.

Well, I think our son did feel that way, that he was open, but he was always trying to play gotcha, you know, like,

I bet mom and dad don't know this, you know. We'd say, yeah, I don't know about that, but our daughter was just the opposite.

She was a very innocent child, and when I started to talk to her about menstruation, she was astonished at all this.

I mean, she just, I mean, you could tell she was baffled. Why would I be bringing this up, and could it possibly be true?

You know, so what Dr. Robinson said, you know, that children are different, but they do have things in common, and I wonder if the parents of today are still thinking that they should have that one conversation like their parents had with them, and the answer is no, because the conversations are going on between your child and other influences all the time.

So, you have to get ahead of those conversations, like Dr. Robinson said, the youth minister said, be the one who plants the first seed, you know, the one who introduces these things so that they can be talked about without that embarrassment or even that astonishment that my daughter had.

So, I want to hop back in here, too, and say, you know, Latane raised her kids in a different time than today, too, though, because, like I said, even 20 years ago, it was so different than it is now.

Our kids are literally saturated with sexual information through all the technology that they have access to, and I cannot overemphasize that enough.

There's just so much more exposure at a young age to sexual content. So, even things that might have been effective another generation ago are not effective today.

Yeah, I mean, it's just absolutely everywhere, and as you were even mentioning before,

Dr. Robinson, it's typically not the godly expression of sex between a husband and wife.

It is predominantly fornication, adultery, and homosexual sexuality that dominates the airwaves, dominates television and movies and all kinds of media, and it's just inescapable in this day and age.

It's just insane how it has affected everything, even now in commercials, where you have many commercials that are intentionally including homosexual couples, not that they're doing anything openly sexual in the ads, but it is being obviously depicted that this is a romantically involved couple of the same gender, whether it's life insurance or whether it's anything else that you can service or product that you can purchase, they've included the homosexuals in that.

But we have to go to our first break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address again is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Beth Robinson and Dr. Latane C. Scott. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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Welcome back. I thank all of you who were patient enough to stick around as we were experiencing technical difficulties and we got kicked off the air and took us quite a while to resume broadcasting live, and thanks be to God we are now doing that again, as you can plainly hear if you are still with us.

If you just tuned us in, our guests today are Dr. Beth Robinson and Dr.

Latane C. Scott. They are co -authors of a new book that we are addressing today,

Talking with Teens About Sexuality. If you have a question of your own, contact us via email at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Dr. Robinson, what's happening developmentally when it comes to this area of sexuality and our teens?

Developmentally, teens are trying to figure out who they are. Because of all the social media that's going on, they're getting lots of messages about sexuality that are not scriptural, and they are being tempted to integrate those messages about sexuality, about gender, into their identity.

Because it's part of identity exploration to begin to try on different identities when you're an adolescent.

And the other thing that really hits developmentally is that teens really believe that consequences don't apply to them.

It's a neurological phenomenon. Their frontal lobes aren't developed. And so it's also real difficult to reason with adolescents because even though other teens get

STDs, I won't get them, and that's that personal fable that consequences don't apply to me.

And the other thing that we're seeing is socially and emotionally, our teens in this generation are less mature than teens we had previously.

And that lack of maturity could be because of interacting with technology a lot.

But they don't have the social skills and the relationship skills that previous generations had, and they're going to need more assistance, more coaching from their parents on what healthy relationships look like.

You know, you said something very key here when it comes to complaints that I have heard for many years from Christian women, and this was brought up again in an interview that I had recently with Dr.

Phil Kaiser on biblical romance right before Valentine's Day. We did a discussion on this.

But I've been hearing complaints from Christian women for years that one of the, and I'm speaking about single women, that they are frustrated that your average

Christian young man is completely and utterly devoid of social skills, and that they are very awkward, they are very unintentionally insulting perhaps, they are very overly standoffish, introverted, perhaps fearful of being involved in any kind of realistic conversation.

Do you have anything to say about that when it comes to a parent's responsibility, especially since the difficulty here is that you've got generation gaps where some things that parents might want to teach their children to say or do, to break the ice, to socialize in a way that makes them attractive, etc.,

some of that may seem totally antiquated when you're trying to teach your children that kind of thing.

But if you could just pick up the ball there. Well, my first piece of advice to parents would be to limit the amount of time their kids are interacting with technology, before their teens even, so that they do develop those social skills.

But we have allowed technology to babysit our children, and our children aren't learning skills.

And in fact, we see even among college students a lot more group dating than we saw 20 years ago, and not as many individuals dating just like I would have thought a guy and a girl alone on a date.

And I think a lot of that is social insecurity. And we're going to have to provide opportunities as parents for our children to interact socially with peers in a way that's non -threatening, where we can have them to our homes and put technology up, you know, put the phones away, so that the kids actually interact.

Maybe that's an old -fashioned board game, where kids learn to interact through a board game, and there's not quite the stress on them that there is to carry on a conversation without something else to do.

And, you know, service projects are a great way, too, to teach social skills. Keeping the kids off their phones, you know, and doing a service project for somebody, there's not as much pressure on them about social skills, and yet they learn some skills along the way.

But the biggest thing I would say is we have got to limit the amount of time kids are interacting with technology if we want them to learn social skills.

By the way, Dr. Latane C. Scott, I probably forgot to mention this, but as you may recall me saying to you in the past, whenever we have a co -host on a program, or somebody who is a fellow guest, but would like to ask questions of the other guest on occasion, since I cannot see you visibly,

I can't see you waving your hand, I can't see any facial expressions, if you have a question or even a comment, just dive right in there.

When you sense a lull, or when you hear a completed sentence, feel free to jump in.

And I sometimes forget to remind my guests and co -hosts about that when we are doing something on the air.

But we do have a listener. We have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who sent in a question.

And B .B. says, in Philippians 4, in verses 8 -9, we read,

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any evidence and if anything worthy of praise, think about these things, as for the things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the

God of peace will be with you. My question is, if we are to have our children think on these pure and wholesome things, these honorable things, how do we risk polluting their minds and thoughts with discussions of sex that is condemned by God?

Obviously, there is nothing dishonorable about marital sex, but at the same time, there is a lot going on in this world that our children should know about and learn about before they hear it on the streets, as you were saying before.

So how do we bring up issues such as homosexuality, transgenderism, and the list goes on and on without unnecessarily scarring or polluting the minds of our children?

Well, Tane, why don't you take that one? Well, they're going to be exposed to those things anyway.

That's the point, that unless our children don't use technology, these things are already going to be introduced to them, and they're being given a spin that experimentation is healthy, that exploration of your body and somebody else's body is an acceptable social rite of passage.

You know, like you learn to drive, you smoke your first cigarette, you have sex. All these things are portrayed as a normal part of growing up, and so a parent doesn't have to introduce such to their children.

If their children are on any kind of social media at all, even on the playground at school, you know, with a cell phone, they're going to come across these subjects.

So you're not polluting their minds. Satan's already doing that. Technology's already doing that.

You have to be proactive as a parent, and I want, of course, Beth, she's the expert on this, but a parent has to be proactive in addressing those things and being tuned in enough to their child that they know what's coming across their child's radar and can address it.

So Beth, what do you say? Well, the thing that I would add is we want to teach our children to be firmly grounded in moral, biblical truth so they're not swayed by culture.

And if we don't talk about it, culture has all the voice. Yes, and if our listener,

Bibi, wants to chime in to further clarification, I'm assuming that some of her question may involve, or I don't know if Bibi is a she,

I'm sorry about that, he or she, I'm sure some of the question may involve what amount of detail is necessary to bring up when you're talking about perversion when you're talking about abnormal, unnatural, damnable, abominable things involving the sexual world.

How far in detail do we need to go where we are perhaps even scarring the minds of children?

Well, my rule of thumb about the conversation about any sensitive subject with kids, not just sexuality, is you give them just a little information and then if they come back with another question, you answer the questions they have and you don't give them more information than they ask for.

So, you know, when a child asks, where do babies come from? And mom says, my tummy.

And the kid's okay with that. You don't explain how a baby gets in the tummy. So, you know, that's attunement to your child and what your child is asking for in terms of details.

So, you provide a bit of information and you wait and see if they have more questions.

Now, let me ask you a question. I can vividly remember as a young child watching

TV with my mother and my mother was born in 1925.

I don't know if this was unusual even for somebody who was born in 1925.

This could have been an unusual thing. It might have been a typical thing. I don't know. But I remember the subject of homosexuality came up on whatever

TV program we were watching and my mother said, do you know that I didn't even know there was such a thing as a homosexual or homosexuality until I was in my 30s?

Now, we find that unbelievable today, utterly amazing and unbelievable.

But is that a good thing that she was totally ignorant of even the existence of that?

I think in her generation it was. I think that was much more typical. I think my mother would probably say the same thing.

My mother was born in 1934 and I've never asked my mother that question but I suspect my mother wouldn't have known what it was either.

And that was part of the beauty of that generation is there was an ability to protect

Christian children, teens, young adults from some of this inappropriate sexual behavior that they're exposed to now through all of our technology.

You know, it can't just be social media. It's all of it. It's like you said, first time some reference was made on TV.

So, I think that was pretty typical for that generation. I think it was much easier for them to be protected and naive.

Is that though a healthy thing when you're trying to prepare a child for what's going on in the world that they're not totally caught off guard and shocked when they start to discover things like this?

I would say in this day and time I would not say that that would be healthy in this day and time at all because you can't have the conversation with children if you don't know what they're being exposed to.

And I wish there were ways our kids never got exposed to it. So, I would certainly want parents and that's part of what's covered in the book

I hope in a gentle way and with a biblical worldview to try to provide information about the sexual culture and what kids are being exposed to today to prepare parents to have those conversations.

I think another thing that we tried to accomplish in the book was not just talking against sexual practices that are sinful but providing scriptures and conversation starting points about what the

Bible says that's good about it. You know, so that we're not just the person that says don't, don't, don't, don't we're the person that says look at what

God has said about these things. And God's creativity and the way that he put on each child each person he created a uniqueness that you lose if you try to be subsumed by your culture.

So, although addressing the sinful aspect of things is very important in the book and parents need to know how to do that and Dr.

Bath is really good at showing parents how to start conversations like that that for Phoebe and the scripture that she brought up about you know, setting your mind on higher things that's the other component of it of talking about sexuality is talking about what is good and right and lovely and uplifting in our lives and kids know that a depiction of certain things is not good and holy and uplifting and edifying to them they can tell the difference, you know and so it's a good starting point to start talking and memorize the scripture about it.

I think that you may have referred to our listener as Phoebe but it's Beebe Oh, Beebe, I'm so sorry.

That's why I didn't know if it was a man or a woman. Well, thank you,

Beebe and if you give us your full mailing address you have received a free copy of Talking With Teens About Sexuality by our guests today,

Dr. Beth Robinson and Dr. Latane C. Scott and our friends at CVBBS .com

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will ship that out to you at no cost to you or to us

So thank you very much for participating There is a phenomenon that is somewhat interesting that people who are millennials and younger

I have noticed in my conversations with them they respond to things that are outside of the biblical limits of marital sex they will respond to things like homosexuality and transgenderism in a much different way than even the unregenerate friends and myself being unregenerate growing up as a teenager and so on, being far from pure and pristine and holy we were very wicked kids but we knew that homosexuality was wrong we knew that it was abnormal we knew that it was unnatural but we responded to it not with any kind of Christ -like compassion because we didn't have

Christ we had no gospel to offer a person like that who was involved in that kind of sin

Now, obviously we don't want children or anybody to be mean -spirited and cruel towards people who are involved in a particular sin and I know that in our day and age being mean -spirited and cruel are defined as just being opposed to those things to being critical at all so I'm not talking about that we obviously don't want people just to be mocked with the sole intention of hurting their feelings we don't want people to be threatened with violence or actually receive physical violence we don't want anything like that as Christians, obviously but there seems to be something lost in that instinctive understanding this is wrong this is just not natural this is strange and when

I speak to young people in their teens and even in their mid to late twenties I'm surprised at their reaction to me as a

Christian even those that I know very well they start to put on the brakes in the conversation whereas they might have once completely thought of me as this really nice Christian guy who has their best interests at heart all of a sudden

I'm speaking in their minds like a hateful bigot how do we approach the issue with young people who have been brainwashed that we not only accept and tolerate people with these different views of sexuality and these different practices of sexuality but we're supposed to celebrate them not just tolerate them how do we respond to those young people that begin to accuse us of hatred and bigotry and Beth perhaps you could start and Latane you could chime in okay well

I'm primarily going to let Latane take this one because I do believe this is a strength she brings to the book

I can say that we see these younger adults teens being impacted by the world view that there's not absolute truth and because of that they believe this is just a political view or a personal opinion rather than being a matter of biblical truth and that's what

I love that Latane brings to the book is her depth of understanding of biblical truth in fact

Latane if you could do that when we come back from the midway break because we have to go into that I don't want to interrupt you in mid sentence so folks please be patient with us as this is our midway break in the show it's longer than the other breaks in the show because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

FM in Lake City Florida requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because they are required of the

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God willing that they will want to remain our advertisers because they are getting results and they will want to continue funding this program financially which will enable us to remain on the air for a longer future and also keep in mind that sometimes you can't purchase a product or purchase a service or visit a church or whatever it is that the advertiser is offering you just cannot be involved in it in a financial exchange but what you can do in those circumstances is thank our advertisers for sponsoring this show use whatever contact information that they have to contact them and say thank you so much for sponsoring

Iron Trump and Zion Radio that is if indeed you do love this show and do truly thank them for keeping the show on the air so write down as much of the information as you can from our advertisers so that you can more successfully and frequently do that and also write down questions on talking with teens about sexuality for our guests

Dr. Beth Robinson and Dr. Latane C. Scott our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter we will be right back after these messages with Dr.

Beth Robinson and Dr. Latane C. Scott so don't go away here's what

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Before I return to our guest today, Dr. Beth Robinson and Dr. Latane C. Scott as we continue our discussion on their book,

Talking with Teens about Sexuality, I just have a couple of important announcements to make.

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That's also the email address where you send in questions to Dr. Beth Robinson and Dr. Latane C. Scott on our topic today, talking with teens about sexuality.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com and Dr. Latane C.

Scott, you are just about to answer my question about how to tactfully approach the subject with our teens, whether you are a parent or whether you work with teens in church or any other realm of life, who make the accusation, wow, you have these harsh views against homosexuality, they should be able to find joy and fulfillment in life through the sexuality they have, just like anybody else.

Why are you so hateful? Why are you so bigoted? They've been brainwashed to think this by our leftist media and so on.

How do you tactfully respond to that and explain to them that this is really being motivated by love of God and love of His truth and love of people themselves, where you would try to warn them about the dangers of pursuing sexuality and anything else in life that God forbids?

Well, two things Chris, one is that it's pretty hard to read Romans chapter 1 with any kind of an open mind at all, a remotely open mind and not come away with the idea that God does not think homosexual behavior is ennobling or good or helpful to the human race.

And the descriptions in the last part of Romans chapter 1 show that they're connected with that homosexual behavior, and again, not homosexual inclinations, because we all have simple inclinations of one sort or another, but acting on homosexual urges according to Romans chapter 1 is something that puts you in the same, not category or class, the same posture as people who are disobedient to parents or are greedy or some of the other sins that are mentioned there, and envy and murder and strife and conceit and malice and gossip and slandering and hating

God. All of these things come out of the same bucket, which Dr.

Beth referred to when she said, among our children, they're not taught a moral standard against which things can be measured, and Romans chapter 1 actually does that.

But the other thing, Chris, that I think is really important that Dr. Beth brought out in this book and that I learned so much from, and that is that because homosexual behavior in particular and pornography and other things are portraying perversions of healthy sexual relationships, kids don't know what the boundaries are, and there's an entire chapter in here about intimacy and boundaries, and kids don't think, you know, they think twice now about going to the movie with their best bud, you know, of the same gender.

And so because of this unsureness about intimacy, they do what

Dr. Beth mentioned. They don't even go on dates, you know, as much as they used to boy -girl dates.

They go out in groups because they don't know, you know, the guys know all about how, you know, you can be accused of something if you come at somebody the wrong way with a tactless joke or a pat on the shoulder that doesn't land exactly where somebody thinks it ought to.

So guys are scared, and girls are confused, and so one of the things that this book does, and Dr.

Beth was so adept at doing this, is describing the different kinds of intimacy that you can have without having sexual intimacy.

So again, rather than this just being a book where a parent tells a kid what not to do, it can help a parent discuss with a kid what is good and what is appropriate and what you shouldn't have to be afraid of, you know, and the ways that just some definitional things to show a young person whether or not an action is a sexual action or not, no matter what our culture might tell us, you know, putting your arm around your best friend as you walk down the street, you know, while you're giggling is not a homosexual act.

It is a perfectly normal and good act that people become afraid of or afraid of what people are going to say.

I hope I answered your question. Yes. In fact, you reminded me of the fact that there have been homosexual activists who have tried to brand people from the past as being fellow homosexuals because of things that they wrote or ways that behave that today are considered very strange and abnormal for a heterosexual to say to somebody of the same gender.

You might find some... Oh, that's a great biblical example of that, Chris, and it's

David and Jonathan. Yes, because there are homosexual theologians who have tried to claim that they were homosexual.

Yeah, when actually they're showing great emotional intimacy with one another that was not sexual, you know, and that goes back to my point that Dr.

Beth is so good at showing, is that you can be emotionally intimate with somebody and not be sexually involved with them, and that never enters the heads of many of our young people, that there is a dividing line and that there are good examples in scripture of people who were loyal to one another and helpful to one another, and yet were not sexually involved in any way.

Now, Dr. Beth Robinson, I think we as Christians should be informed about things that have some connection to the realm of the psyche, and there are things that perhaps your average person doesn't understand about how the mind works.

In fact, there is nobody on earth who fully understands or even comes close to understanding how the mind works.

We have to, on the one hand, not be taken over by every wind of doctrine or teaching that may come out of the secular psychological world, where we are guilty of spewing psychobabble, as it were, but at the same time, there are things that we may learn about human behavior that are not necessarily spelled out word for word in the scriptures, even though the scriptures are sufficient for all we need to know for godliness and for salvation and so on.

But there are questions that I don't even know if anybody has the 100 % accurate answers to, but the thing that will very often come up with people who are

Christians, and even non -Christians, is how does somebody become a homosexual? For instance, there have been theories that if somebody is a male with same -sex attraction, a major factor in that has typically been that they had little to no relationship with their fathers.

They might have been abandoned as a young child and left to be raised by their mother alone, or primarily women in the family.

They have a craving for that male love that turns into a perversion, and the opposite, the mirror image of that would be the female going through the same experience, where they may have been raised by a father and they long and ache for that female love and compassion and tenderness.

And, you know, you have all kinds of things that are brought up as reasons. Like, when

I see documentaries, and I've seen several of them, about especially homosexual prostitution, every single male prostitute

I've seen interviewed in a documentary said that they were molested as a child, either by a family member or neighbor or what have you.

Can we say that we know what causes these things? I don't think we can say that we know with absolute certainty what causes this,

Chris. You know, obviously, children who are sexually abused, it is going to impact their sexual functioning, for the lack of a better term.

They're going to struggle sometimes with gender, sometimes with homosexuality, because the abuse created so much confusion for them.

I don't think there's definitive research. You can get somebody who will gather all the research on one side or the other, but when

I'm talking to college students, one of the things I say is, we don't have definitive research on what causes somebody to become an alcoholic, but yet we recognize that alcoholism is not a healthy behavior.

And I think that we go back to scripture, and we look at what God commands us to do, and we focus on putting our lives into the behaviors and the world that God wants us to be in.

And we turn away from the worldly influences that want to debate what causes this.

I find it very interesting that the debate often becomes, what causes homosexuality, instead of, how do

I align my life and my sexual preferences with what God wants me to do?

I think that should be our focus. And like I said, I find it very interesting that people want to debate what causes it.

There are lots of things in our lives, from a psychological perspective, that we don't have definitive research on.

I guess one reason might be that they want to prevent it with the children they see that may be in those circumstances of having a one -parent household, or having the knowledge that they have been molested, or something like that.

They want to try to make sure that... Well, I certainly... I'm sorry,

Chris, I didn't mean to interrupt. No, no, go ahead. I certainly want children who have been sexually abused to get treatment, because if homosexual tendencies are coming out of abuse, they definitely need treatment.

But I know that there are individuals who will say that they have always felt attraction as a homosexual since they were pretty young, and I don't think the research is definitive on that.

I think there are lots of different environmental influences, and I would much rather a single parent protected their child from being abused than a single parent worried that they had...

It's a mom, and she's got a son, and she's so worried that he'll be homosexual that she brings in males into the home that may not be the godly men she thinks they are, because the number one risk factor for children being sexually abused is single parents who bring in adults of the opposite sex.

Whether they marry them or just bring them into the household, there's such a risk for abuse, and there's just not research that really supports the old idea that he's a mom, his boyfriend's gay.

It's just not really there. Now, as far as a single mom bringing men into the relationships with her children, and also perhaps a single dad doing the same with a woman, wouldn't you say that that is healthy when you're not talking about a romantic relationship that the parent has with this person, but it's a brother or sister in Christ from church, somebody with an excellent reputation, that is showing appropriate biblical affection and compassion and love and caring and tenderness and discipleship and anonymity?

Isn't that a good thing and a healthy thing? It is if they're showing that to children when there are other adults present or other children present.

It is still a huge red flag if that's a one -on -one relationship. Now, would you say that would be true even with teenagers, when you're having a guy who recognizes that a widow or a divorcee has a son who has no biblical male role model in his life, he wants to go camping with the kid or take him out fishing and hunting or be involved in some kind of sporting activities either as a participant or as a spectator?

I mean, when the child is older, I mean, is there any red flag that should be going on there?

There's still a huge red flag, yes. If it's one -on -one attention or isolated attention, we just see too many instances where individuals who have outstanding reputations are abusing kids and people don't believe it because they've got, they're such a good person and nobody thinks that's going on.

So, it is a red flag anytime an adult spends a lot of one -on -one time with a teenager.

It would be a huge red flag for me for a guy to take a teenage, a male teenager with him to go fishing or hunting if he's not taking a group.

Take a group, not a red flag. One -on -one, they're red flags for me. Huh. And we do have an anonymous listener who says, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think

Dr. Latane Scott was saying earlier that there's a difference between same -sex attraction and being physically involved in making those attractions manifest in physical actions.

But aren't they both serious sin just as having adulterous thoughts or thoughts of fornication or other thoughts that involve sex outside of marriages are sins?

Why wouldn't homosexual thoughts and attractions be in and of themselves sin?

I'm glad to address that, and that's an important point. There's a difference between having a temptation, which we all have temptations, and acting on the temptation.

We can't, I don't believe the Bible teaches that we can squelch all temptations, else

Jesus would not have been tempted in all points as we are. So the idea that a parent can say to a child sympathetically is, you know,

I've got a problem with overeating, or I've got a problem with compulsive shopping, or I've got things like that.

I battle that all the time. The fact is that it exists, and I battle it.

It's different than giving into it. And I did indeed say that, you know, there are people that are born...

Well, I shouldn't say that. I don't have the right to say that. It seems that there are people that have inclinations from early childhood, and they have to fight those inclinations, whether they're the inclination to act on a sexual urge of any sort, or an inclination to abuse a substance, or something else.

And it's not, as Dr. Beth said, yes, abuse or other childhood factors can affect how you respond to those things, but we all have temptations.

Every one of us has some sin that we have to fight. And so some,

I believe that the... And Dr. Beth, I'd like for you to chime in on this. I think that when someone has an inclination or a temptation, that you don't condemn them because of something they can't prevent in their own minds, you know.

And with our society presenting so many images in front of our children, things occur to them that never would have occurred to them if they had not seen such an image.

The point is not whether or not that temptation or that idea is there. It's what you do with it. Do you fight it, or do you give in to it?

You know, Billy Graham's famous example about the man that had two dogs, a white dog and a brown dog, that he took into town in Alaska.

And he'd always be able to predict which dog was going to win when he set them at each other to fight.

And he said the secret is it's which one you don't feed. You know, the one who loses that you don't feed.

So we can't afford to feed any inclination or sin that we have.

Beth, you want to address that and straighten me out? No, I think you covered it very well.

I don't have much to add to that. Well, let me tell you where I am as far as being opposed to a mindset that has grown immensely in popularity today.

Even in very conservative churches and denominations and fellowships, there is a concept that I'm opposed to, where you have even ministers who will identify themselves as gay, but they are celibate.

And there seems to be in their minds nothing wrong with having a proclivity or inclination towards this sexual proclivity or inclination towards the same sex, as long as they don't do anything physically about it.

And to me, that is dangerous. It is also a sign that the person is waving the white flag to sin and saying,

God cannot change me or won't change me. This is what I am. They are identifying themselves by a sin, and even if these people are chaste, it seems that it is bringing into the church an acceptance of this condition that the

Bible is totally foreign to, if you follow what I'm saying. Perhaps you could respond to that.

And if you want to start, Latane, and then we'll have Dr. Robinson chime in. Yes, I think the best example is a woman that I greatly admire,

Rosaria Butterfield. And Rosaria Butterfield says she came out of a homosexual lifestyle and as an intellectual who supported and wrote about and talked about her homosexual life with her partner.

Well, she left that, and she left all of her sin behind.

But she says that sometimes these thoughts pop up in her mind, and she has to fight them, because Satan doesn't leave you alone once you abandon a sin.

And so I would draw a contrast, I think, Chris, between celebrating an identity that God can't

Himself foster or applaud, as the end of the book of Romans teaches, and realizing that people are going to deal with certain sins all their lives, and the thoughts don't go away, the temptations don't go away, and it's what you say about them and what you do with them.

In your example, if the man is not saying, I recognize that this is a sin to feed this inclination, then

I think I would have to agree with you. You know, Jesus was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin, and it's because, not that the idea didn't occur to him apparently, but that he rejected it, and that's what we have to do.

By the way, as you may know, I also know Rosaria Butterfield personally, and have interviewed her on a number of occasions, and she's written a glowing commendation for the show.

But I know that she is very opposed to the gay Christian movement, where people who are identifying themselves as gay, even though they're chaste.

For instance, she does not introduce herself to people as a lesbian Christian.

No, she does not. You're right. And she doesn't even believe that that is a genuine, or healthy, or correct way to worldview, or way to identify people.

People identifying themselves by a sin. One of the reasons, you may know this about me,

I don't know, but I had a very serious addiction to alcohol, and was a backslid into public drunkenness, to even a scandalous level, for a number of years, after 18 years of sobriety.

And I recognize, and one of the things that drove me to repentance, is that the sin of drunkenness is something that the

Bible clearly states is among those other sins, like murder, and all kinds of sexual depravity, that will send you to hell if you don't repent.

And one of the things I do not like at all about the 12 -step program community,

AANA and anything else related to that, is the constant identifying as the sin from which you repented.

I don't tell people, I'm Chris Arnzen, and I'm an alcoholic. I tell people, I'm Chris Arnzen, and I'm a former drunk who was delivered from that wickedness by the grace and mercy of Christ.

Do you follow what I'm saying? Yes, I do. And we have to go to our final break right now, and this is going to be a lot shorter than the other breaks, but if you intend to send in a question, please do it now, because we are rapidly running out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away, we'll be right back with Dr.

Beth Robinson and Dr. Latane C. Scott, and more of our discussion on talking with teens about sexuality, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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One of the things that we didn't really speak about much is the whole confusing and baffling concept or idea or sin known as transgenderism.

It is something that even divides those that would consider themselves a part of the

LBGTQ community. There are even those who are involved in homosexuality and lesbianism who are opposed to transgendered athletes being given the freedom, if you are a biological male, to compete in the same competitions with women.

And all kinds of things are going on in this day and age. And it's really baffling that people act as if they are thoroughly knowledgeable experts on this issue when they are just speaking whatever is the popular trend of that day from a particular element of society.

But if you could, Dr. Robinson, what should we learn today? I know that's a very brief portion of time that perhaps we could discuss in greater depth later.

But what do you have to say about this phenomenon? Are you there,

Dr. Robinson? I'm sorry. I think it has become more of identity formation again.

For developmentally, we have teens who are searching to understand their identity. And because this transgender issue has gained so much media attention that then we have adolescents who are kind of trying it on as an identity, where with good biblical instruction and conversations, they kind of move through it as a phase and re -embrace their

God -given gender in many, many cases. That's the counseling perspective.

But I'm going to tell you, where I learned the most in writing this book is in learning from Latane about this from a biblical perspective.

You know, I was greatly affected by Nancy Percy's book, Love Thy Body, and leaned very heavily on some of her research in there.

We have the privilege these days of understanding what

DNA is. And, you know, people in previous generations didn't have this explanation.

But we have confirmation through DNA studies that people are born with their gender

DNA deep. And you can change the outside portions. You can give hormones.

You can do all these other things. And you still don't change a person's DNA of what they're born as.

And that's led to so much confusion about, you know, someone who wants to be referred to as a woman who's made the surgical amendments to have a body that looks female, but it does not change the fact that the person has male

DNA. So I see this as one of the few cases where we can, as Christians, point to science and technology and say it makes biblical teachings that God created human beings male and female in the book of Genesis.

That he creates people with a particular gender.

Um, that we actually have confirmation from the scientific world of that.

One of the best quotations I've heard was about the heart surgeon that says, you know, you go in and you operate as someone who is transgender and you have to accommodate, you have to account for the fact that the person is a male or a female under surgery and not what they've adopted their body to look like.

And I think that's very telling. Yeah. Isn't it interesting how the left has flip -flopped on so many things.

They're against color blindness, which they used to be in favor of, which everybody should have adopted the idea that you don't judge a person in any way by their skin color or their appearance.

And yet the left is now saying, no, that's wrong. We have to focus on the fact that whites are inherently evil and blacks are in some way, morally superior, et cetera, et cetera.

The same is true with this issue. I can remember growing up and the liberals were right.

When they would say, don't dare say that a boy is a sissy or that there's something wrong with his gender affiliation or what have you, because he likes to cook or he has a talent in this area or that area that might be typically or most commonly enjoyed and practiced by a girl or a woman.

And the same thing with, don't dare call a young girl a lesbian because she likes to fix things mechanically and she likes sports and she likes outdoor activities like hunting and fishing.

Well, today you have the liberals and the leftists saying, oh, that person's transgendered.

I think that you should start hormone injections and perhaps consider surgery immediately when the child is only eight years old, which is just in my mind, satanic from the core.

But obviously there is much more we could say today that we don't have time to say. I want to thank you both for being such superb guests.

And if anybody wants to find out more about Dr. Beth Robinson, you can go to the

Lubbock Christian University website, which is lcu .edu. Do you have any other contact information you care to share,

Dr. Robinson? No, that's the best place to reach me right there. And Latane C.

Scott's website is latane .com. That's L -A -T -A -Y -N -E dot com.

I want to thank both of you for being such superb guests. I want to thank everybody who listened today, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater