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Josh Wood: Are We Seeing Pro-Family Cultural Shift Against LGBTQ Ideology? · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

• 0:00
  Hey friends, welcome. It's not bigotry to say that kids deserve both their mother and father and it's not
• 0:07
  hateful to acknowledge that certain family forms are better for children. It's love that tells the truth and the truth is this no matter
• 0:16
  how many policies or pronouns change, biology still matters, mothers and fathers still matter, truth still matters, and children always do best when raised
• 0:28
  by their mother and father. We're talking about that next.
• 0:35
  Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events, defending biblical Christianity, no topic, off limits, and now here's your host, David Fierazzo.
• 0:51
  Friends, welcome. We're a blessed to talk about this great organization again. It's called them before us, meaning them, children, kids, the website them before us.com. And then also they've got a substack them before us on substack. But I want to welcome Josh Wood to the podcast. He's the executive director at them before us. He holds a master's in humanitarian and disaster leadership from Wheaton College and a bachelor's in cross cultural ministry from massage
• 1:21
  Ohio University. He's been a non-profit leadership and church ministry. He's married lives with his wife in Charlotte, North Carolina and four kids. Josh, welcome to World View Matters. Good to see you.
• 1:34
  Yeah, hey, thanks for having us.
• 1:36
  So what I read, we started off with was the conclusion in that was the last paragraph and your article on the parenting study. We've forgotten all about this.
• 1:47
  It's kind of like a brush to side since that awful Supreme Court decision in 2015 on same sex marriage. But there it is. It's the parenting study that should have stopped gay marriage. And you can find this on their website and at them before us on substack.
• 2:05
  The study was in 2015 and it was put out by new family structures and it basically concluded what I started off by saying that children do best when raised by their mother and father.
• 2:19
  Josh, help me here because it doesn't take a rocket science to figure out this common sense truth as a fact that kids do best with a mom and dad. Your thoughts as we dive into some of this.
• 2:32
  Well, they've been my thought was as you're reading it, I wish anything you said was remarkable or groundbreaking. There's not that's that that's what confounds me even today is it's become novel to just say what we all know to be true. But unfortunately, that's the world we live in right now.
• 2:52
  And this study, here's here's why they kind of the media didn't report on it and it kind of got pushed pushed aside because it threatened to halt the March, your words towards same sex marriage and you got to put marriage in this context, we need to put marriage in air quotes when you're talking about same sex marriage because God defines marriage man does not define marriage.
• 3:14
  But progressives, they did a really good hit job on studies like this that proved that biological moms and dads are best to raise their own children and this was 3000 participants in this study, tell us a little bit more as we walk through this article, Josh.
• 3:34
  Well, the significance was that they had rushed in the lead up to that decision to pair it out all these studies that were showing how kids would do best. Well, it really that it didn't matter where kids were that they could be cut and pasted at any arrangement and they're going to do fine.
• 3:52
  And the problem was this study didn't rely on parents reporting how their kids were doing. It took a long view and said, we're going to actually track how kids actually do over time and the study, I mean, it's it's again, not groundbreaking when kids grow up in an intact family when they're raised by their mother and father and they maintain that connection over time.
• 4:14
  Guess what? They do great. They flourish. No arrangement has reliably provided that same amount of flourishing in anything we can find across the site.
• 4:25
  What do you think of when you see some of the abuses today, including just recently, two biological males, their gay men had their raising a baby and the media is finding over this picture of the baby on the chest of one man and
• 4:44
  to me, it's just such a perversion of God's design and the creative order. And it's all it's really evil calling evil good and calling good evil. Your thoughts on what we're seeing, Josh?
• 4:58
  Well, what people don't realize. And again, I've run into so many people who talk about this and they want to say things like, you know, just let people be, it's, it's the privacy of their own home.
• 5:09
  But what you quickly realized is that by elevating a fictitious institution, by saying that there was gay marriage, you actually create you'd necessitated for the state to step in and provide all the quote unquote using the term from the Supreme Court decision in a burger fell, the benefits of marriage.
• 5:30
  Well, what are one of the benefits of marriage? What's the transcendent, what do they say transcendent purposes of marriage for to create children, a legacy, et cetera? Well, when biology doesn't permit to people to create children, the state decided to step in and say, we have to now make sure that every state provides pathways to parents for adults.
• 5:52
  And what does that mean? Well, when you allow someone to, when the state allowed, when the government, when the Supreme Court decided to allow a man to call another man his husband, when they opened and redefined marriage, they also entitled that man to call someone else's kid his son, they redefined parenthood.
• 6:10
  They redefined who could be a parent before, for years, I mean, we had adoption, which was a reactive, a reactive institution to tragedy when something happened, a kid lost access to their biological mother and father, the state would step in in a child centric way to provide a mother and father for that kid, and that was good.
• 6:31
  It was redemptive. It was trying to find a good home for a child who had suffered loss. This shifted all of it and said, we actually need to find good kids for these adults who are willing to pay to buy sperm and and and create a child. That's not reactive. That's actually proactively seeking out tragedy. And that's what the study really outlined was, when that happens to a child and they have that tragic moment, they, they suffer the rest of their life.
• 6:59
  So to quote you, as you wrote in this article, one of the major legal and cultural arguments against redefining marriage was grounded in child welfare, and then you say the link between marriage and child well being was strong.
• 7:14
  So the left and, you know, I just say Satan and his minions in the media and government set out to sever that link, claiming quote, there were no differences in outcomes for children raised by same sex couples. So who jumped on board, the media, academia, the courts, and they largely accepted these claims without question.
• 7:36
  And you write in contrast, same sex family formation is now celebrated, subsidized, and socially affirmed often without any acknowledgement of the child's biological disconnection. Talk to us more about that, Josh.
• 7:54
  Well, again, you get to a point where the tactic was, we just have to muddy the waters. So let's put out some studies where parents say these kids are doing justice fine. But what we found over and over again, and this was even ironically one of the critiques of the Red Mara study was saying, hey, but some of the kids of the same sex couples that were studied, well, they, they had gone through something tragic. They had lost connection with their mom or dad. They had been divorced.
• 8:22
  And that kind of told the whole story right there that that the children of intact families who were raised by their mother and father had not gone through something tragic. That was by definition required to create this new family.
• 8:37
  And that's a big, big difference. And so again, it's just not groundbreaking. It's actually something we know to be true in all of our hearts that, I mean, and this is the brilliance of God's design, right? He actually created children to look like us. That didn't have to be that way. But he understood that we would see ourselves in these children. And we would develop special kinds of connection that really we again, we've never found any way to replicate.
• 9:02
  Kids who are connected biological mother and father get more investment. They're better. They're safer. They do better in school. They're let they don't get incarcerated as often. The lifetime earnings are higher. I mean, it's, it's, it's God's design. But again, we don't even have to go there. I think even people who don't describe to our faith know something intrinsically that when you see a kid laying on the chest of a male whose cause playing in a hospital bed had nothing to do with that child other than purchasing.
• 9:32
  We, we just go, you know what? That's not right. And there's something good about that instinct. Yeah, I think, I think the leftover played its hand. If you can put the left in, there's so many, you know, different variables that go into when I say the left. But I think more people are catching on more people are, are wanting, are leaning toward truth and sanity and common sense now even when it comes to transgendarism, when it comes to children, what's best for children. But let's go now to 2023, just two years ago.
• 10:00
  When researchers conducted a multiverse analysis of this data and they ran it through you write 248 different statistical models to see if the original findings held up and across every single model children raised by parents who had same sex relationships experienced worse outcomes.
• 10:24
  So the LGBT parent effect didn't do so well. And then you say, and I'll let you comment on this, Josh, would that should have been front page news, but it wasn't because the truth is inconvenient. So please tell us more about that.
• 10:44
  Well, there's there's two points to be to be made here that yes, it should have been front page news. Yes, this study basically that it was a group of researchers who said we have to try to figure out a few manipulated some of the variables if you change some of the stuff.
• 11:00
  Is there a reason was this just an inflated outcome because this is a pretty significant study even to this day people cite this as being a really one of the big longitudinal studies citing that children do best with their mother and father.
• 11:15
  And they yes, they found that they basically couldn't erase the significance of biological mothers and fathers, which of course they couldn't.
• 11:22
  Again, we're talking about this is just truth and it's got it has a funny way of popping up no matter how far it's like a beach fall. It's underwater. It's going to pop back up like there's just no way to hide that.
• 11:32
  Then the challenge I find going forward with this study even now today is that we have committed to this.
• 11:41
  This institution and developed so many alternative pathways that that now we're kind of the state would have to do a lot of unwinding because when we said that this that same sex couple would get access to all the same things we had to create intent based parenthood we had to enforce it.
• 11:59
  We had to make sure that all of these adults would have access to children. I mean, we have there's a class action suit from a same sex couple in New York right now claiming that they are infertile to men and that they're entitled to IVF and to surrogate.
• 12:14
  Because they're saying we're just like them. You can't tell us that we're not infertile because we're two men and they're a man and a woman. So you see we've committed to this and we've only begun to see how entangled it has it has sprawled into our family law system.
• 12:31
  So that was the original study that we talked about was a 2012 study concluding that children do best when raised by their mother and father and that was buried basically on purpose by the cultural Marxists and the media and you know the usual suspects.
• 12:51
  So before we move on, we did an interview. I think around six months ago, Josh, you're the executive director at them before us. Well, we had Katie Faust on the founder and president. Let's put that one up in case people want to go. How can you find that go to worldviewmatters.tv worldviewmatters.tv and in the search on the upper right just put in Katie Faust FA UST or you can put at them before us and Josh will come up now as well.
• 13:20
  So Josh, moving on, just briefly, you sent me this really interesting article that you did on a nice Scotty Sheffler dad ad. We're going to get into that. We're going to take a brief break in a minute. We'll get into that when we come back. But it's very interesting that this was like, wow, a corporation actually did this.
• 13:41
  It's like, again, this shouldn't be a headline, but it was such a normal moment for a father and his son. Tell us about that. We'll talk about that more when we come back.
• 13:53
  Again, you're hitting on the point. Why is it that the things that are notable right now are things that we all know just intuitively but have been almost banned from saying out loud for the last several years? That's what gets me.
• 14:08
  Why is a Volvo ad that just talks about a father being invested in the legacy of his child somehow breaking news? Why is it that it's all these different ads that they're really clearing the lowest bar for being honest.
• 14:21
  But man, we have almost been at like a cultural impasse for the last several years where you weren't just not allowed to say things we knew to be true. And I'm glad that groups like Nike, Apple, Volvo, they're responding to the market. Obviously, but I'm glad that the market is now valuing life again, valuing relationships, fatherhood, family as they should.
• 14:43
  Yeah, we're going to talk about that when we come back. Is there really a cultural shift because you know the corporate leaders, their world view is probably not going to change.
• 14:52
  I don't think they had a come to Jesus moment, but it's about following the money and people are seeing this insanity and the other side of this. So we'll be right back with Josh Wood on World View Matters.
• 15:02
  Today's show is brought to you by Harbinger's Daily World News Biblically Understood stay informed at Harbinger's Daily dot com.
• 15:12
  So in this article, Josh, we're keeping this theme going so far in the in the podcast. You say America needs a return to the things that actually matter, such as family, fatherhood, legacy.
• 15:31
  Obviously, we would put God above all things and then everything else should line up and fall into order. But let's bring up that article Jeff on Nike, Nike's Scotty Sheffler dad adds signals a cultural vibe shift.
• 15:45
  So Josh, are we seeing a shift? Josh, are you seeing that? You mentioned a few ads corporately, but if you back up and take a bigger view of things, are we really seeing a shift in your thoughts?
• 16:00
  Well, I would probably say that that shift was most evident in how men invading women sports led to in my mind, the real first turn of the progressive movement in how many years, 50, 60 years, a serious loss that they sustained.
• 16:19
  I think like you said earlier, they overplayed their hand and it's almost sad to me that it took seeing traumatic brain injuries and volleyball men winning in swimming by five or 10 minutes in a race to present the stark reality that men and women are different.
• 16:38
  But I think we finally got to the point, I don't know if people, if there's been a shift, I think maybe people are completely fed up and just unwilling to go along to get along anymore and they're willing now to and maybe it's just enough of us saying something, they're willing now to voice it and to say, no, men and women are different and I'm done pretending like they're not.
• 17:00
  So in your article, this is over at the Federalist, I believe, do I have that right? Yes, the Federalist, you write that politics is starting to reflect this fatigue cultural fatigue and here's what you say, I'll let you continue after I quote you, Americans are exhausted.
• 17:19
  For years, we've been force fed a diet of corporate sloganeering, social experiments and astroturfed ideology, the commercials, the awards shows, the children's programming, it all felt like a coordinated effort to deconstruct everything normal and call it progress.
• 17:39
  Josh, continue, because I agree with you 100%.
• 17:44
  Well, I think you almost felt like, I mean, probably most evident in that, that ad that I think probably contributed to Harris losing the election.
• 17:55
  This transgender surgery for inmates and I can't remember if it like, it just got to the point where you go, okay, I don't think any, the constituency for that is four and a half people.
• 18:07
  Like, how could that possibly be true? And you're, you were willing to say that. Was that a panda? Who's behind this? Like, I think it finally like the fever broke and people are going to go, hey, and then this is a nice thing.
• 18:19
  I don't think that it's political. Like, I don't think the Sheppler ad, the Nike or the Apple ad, there's one on Volvo.
• 18:29
  Look, my background was in missions. I served among Somali refugees in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and college.
• 18:37
  I remember going into an apartment complex one time. And the first thing this mother did who had had a cell phone for just a couple weeks, right?
• 18:44
  She had come from Somalia by way of Kenya. She lands here. She's been here for four or five weeks. What's the first thing she shows me on her cell phone?
• 18:52
  Pictures of her kids playing soccer. That's what she had taken pictures of. That's not any different than my dad did.
• 18:57
  We're really, these cultural values are pretty universal. And so I think people are realizing like this was maybe a fever dream.
• 19:05
  I don't know who funded it. What was behind it? But man, it feels good to go back to things that we can all just agree on. Family is good.
• 19:14
  And you say you wrap up this article by saying, if now Josh, I'm going to let you comment on it when I'm done.
• 19:21
  This is a huge if okay. That's my opinion. It's a huge if you write if the culture makers are smart.
• 19:31
  They'll recognize the path forward isn't paved with more slogans, more division or more social experiments.
• 19:38
  It's built on the foundation of family. I agree with you. Big if your thoughts.
• 19:45
  Well, it does make you think how has it survived so long doing other things? What is behind? Who are the money interests that are propping up these?
• 19:57
  And what are the structures that we need to pull apart to make sure that these corporations are not slaves to a very, very, very small interest?
• 20:08
  And again, because you know it doesn't make sense. That's what overrides in my mind is, again, the constituency for some of this garbage is so small.
• 20:19
  So what is the incentive structure that continues to push these big corporations to do thing? I mean, I'm thinking about Bud Light, Cracker Barrel.
• 20:27
  You can name it John Deere. I'm like, this doesn't make sense. It's out of touch with your consumers. It's not even good business. Why do you push it?
• 20:37
  And I'm hoping I'm hoping if anything just our self-interesting greed will win out and people will say the normal person wants to see ads like this. It's good. It's okay. We should do that.
• 20:48
  Yeah, this is a good reminder to be a faith-driven consumer, friends boycott and by-cott support companies that represent Christian values or biblical values and do not spend money on corporations or at places where you know are hostile toward the biblical worldview that support they support abortion, gay marriage, socialism, and other far left things.
• 21:11
  So two things I want to try to squeeze in in the last six minutes here, Josh, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey and Chip and Joanna Gaines.
• 21:21
  Let's start with what you wrote about marriage, Taylor and Travis. I'm not a fan at all because of how she, Taylor Swift has changed over the years.
• 21:35
  That's all I'll say, but it has almost become demonic. She's against Christianity and the biblical worldview, but she is an icon, a role model to many people and they're engaged. Of course, if you guys follow football, Travis Kelsey plays for the Kansas City Chiefs.
• 21:53
  So you wrote an article, Taylor and Travis accidental family icons with the question mark and then you ask what could happen to the culture if commitment goes viral. Just give us a couple bullet points on this article.
• 22:07
  Well, accidental is intentional there, ironically, because we do have to be careful who influences our children and what we need to make sure is that our family icons are intentional.
• 22:21
  Now, I want to recognize that in this situation, if we're later focused on what's good for kids, that's what our organization does about everything else.
• 22:33
  We have to recognize that if more people get married, and especially if they do so, and I'm not saying that Travis and Kelsey, that Travis and Taylor waited for marriage and they live together, I'm not, I'm not, nothing like that, but they haven't had children yet.
• 22:47
  If they choose to get married then have children, that's an unmitigated good, and that even as an example is will benefit children. So I'm, again, that's what I wanted to highlight is that. Unfortunately, we are just incredibly impressionable as a society. I cite in the article that there's a show on MTV about 16 impregnant that actually had an impact on the nation's teen pregnancy rate. That's what the study showed.
• 23:12
  We're so impressionable. So be careful who your kids watch, but also just like man, it would be great if this bird a rise in marriage, and I'll take it.
• 23:22
  Yeah, so even even a broken clock is right twice a day. So yeah, it's accidental family icons. I like that. So because we're running out of time, I want to jump over to this only because, well, first of all, Kurt Cameron and others, thank you.
• 23:38
  I called out Chippin Joanna Gaines and Katie Faust from them before us. She wrote an article called Chippin Joanna Gaines Compromise is a warning to us all. This was also at the federalist, but for if some people might not know the story.
• 23:55
  Chippin Joanna Gaines new show back to the frontier recently featured two gay dads as part of a cast and you're going, wait a minute. A lot of Christians follow Chippin Joanna Gaines and support them and love them.
• 24:08
  But there's compromise. It's so easy for some of these people to get up and once they become popular or famous, then the compromise comes. Josh, speak to us a little bit about this. I'm thankful for Kurt Cameron. I'm thankful for Katie Faust and others who are calling them out as the latest example.
• 24:24
  Of mainstream voices caving to the culture. Instead of standing for the truth of God's word because they are Christians, Chippin Joanna. So Josh, your thoughts.
• 24:37
  Well, this is really simple. We can never let empathy, which I think is at the root of their desire to include this couple, whose stated aim was to normalize same sex parenting. That was their goal. They created a child. They created a child from donors and surrogates. They created this child who had to lose something to be a part of this new constructed family. They had to lose a connection with their biological mother.
• 25:00
  That child sacrificed to make the reality possible for adults who really wanted something. So here it is. You cannot ever in the name of inclusion to try to improve Christianity's public relations image.
• 25:16
  You can't ever place adults at the center and ask children to sacrifice for them so the adults don't get their feelings hurt. It's that simple.
• 25:25
  And I think it gets increasingly harder as there's money on the line as media corporations line up and tell you that this is a nice thing to do or that there's money in it to do it this way. And I don't know their motivations past that.
• 25:38
  But for us, this this again, and then before us, it's always putting the children, the weakness in society, the ones that need a voice, it's putting them first, we make this really simple asking the children to sacrifice victimizing the child in the name of empathy for you to create and construct the family is always always wrong.
• 25:59
  So look up this article friends over at the Federalist Katie Faust and we're running out of time, but basically chip responded after some blowback from Christians and conserved with people that are questioning their move.
• 26:13
  He said you're going to love this show social experiment plus family time well spent and then when people started criticizing them, he said just we need to talk and ask questions and maybe learn too much of American Christian culture is judge first and understand later or never.
• 26:32
  Here again, someone's using the judge don't judge, don't judge me or don't judge what we're doing, but that's not the right angle to take is it we've got to start the Bible is our final authority and like you said children do matter and here we go this he even admits social experiment with the two gay dads.
• 26:49
  So this is a mess when you get Christians all of a sudden compromising that just muddies the water even more your final thoughts Josh on anything you're doing at them before us or what we've been talking about.
• 27:00
  Well, first off, he can characterize it however he wants we're defending children I call it judging if you want we're defending children and I'm more scared of the millstone that Christ described than his opinion so we'll stop there.
• 27:13
  Amen.
• 27:15
  We defend children we want to equip you to do so then before us calm we would love your help join the movement head of the website.
• 27:22
  You can follow them on sub stack as well friends went by way too fast say hello to Katie for us Josh wood thanks for your time today God bless your brother.
• 27:31
  Thanks friends keep sharing the podcast and thank you for your prayers God bless you and as always keep speaking the truth about things that matter.
• 27:44
  You