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In this episode Trent reveals how we should take advantage of the one thing people on the far-left fear the most when it comes to issues like abortion and transgender identity.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. And today, I want to talk about what the far left fears the most, what they absolutely not just don’t like, but they fear. They don’t want to take part in it and so they will do anything they can to combat it. So what is that? Debate, fair, open, honest debate, where two sides can engage one another.
Trent Horn:
I have seen this time and time again, that especially on university campuses, when I try to go to campus to give a presentation on a controversial issue, where I’ll allow there to be Q and A. Or even taking part in a debate with someone who represents the other side, the other side, those who comprise what you might call the far left, are adamantly opposed to that.
Trent Horn:
I’ve seen it time and time again. And I think it’s because they know that their ideas, ideas related to the issue of abortion, issues related to transgender identity, many of the other ideas they put forward, those ideas can only survive if they are protected by power. That if you criticize the ideas, you’ll be deplatformed. You’ll get kicked off Twitter. You’re not allowed to come on the news show to offer your point of view, or it’s going to be in a truncated section, and that everybody else can have a lot more time to talk than you.
Trent Horn:
But when both sides can honestly engage one another in a fair medium, equal time for talking, time for direct engagement, where you have to answer the other guy’s question, these ideas, you see how silly they are because they’re not protected by university administrators or executive producers at more liberal television than news stations.
Trent Horn:
So that’s what I want to talk about today because that impacts what we do in sharing our faith, especially on controversial issues like gender identity, sexual behavior, pro-life issues. And so, I think that we win, when we go out and we do debates. That’s why I go and do debates.
Trent Horn:
I’ve been trying to actually set up a debate and it’s going to go on here in a few weeks, with a pro-choice advocate at a college in Georgia. But the pro-choice group on campus, the pro-life students, I’ve reached out to them, they want nothing to do with it. We found a pro-choice speaker. I’ll talk about him a little bit later, but the pro-choice group wants nothing to do with it.
Trent Horn:
And this happened time and time again, where I will go to a university campus and students ask me, “Hey, do you want to come out and debate with somebody?” Sure. And they’ll put out the phone calls to philosophy professors, to Planned Parenthood representatives. Nobody wants to take part.
Trent Horn:
On college campuses, instead of debating issues to see who is correct, one of the prevailing norms has been to shout down speakers you disagree with. It’s such toddler behavior and it’s scary how commonplace it is becoming on university campuses to shout people down and say, “I don’t like what you have to hear. Your speech is violence, so I’m going to do anything I can to stop your violence.”
Trent Horn:
We had that thing recently, Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. That is the natural outcome of saying that words are acts of violence. If what Chris Rock says about Will Smith’s wife is violence towards her, then why can’t Will Smith use violence back with his fists?
Trent Horn:
I’m not going to get into that whole discussion too much, but that’s what we’re seeing here on campus. The idea that if you say something that’s emotionally hurtful, that’s violence and people will use violence or one rung below it, what is called the heckler’s veto, to try to stop you from speaking.
Trent Horn:
And what’s worse is that they’ll say, “Well, I’m using my freedom of speech,” to yell and scream so that no one will hear you. News flash, that’s not freedom of speech. That’s just being obnoxious. That’s a mob.
Trent Horn:
So I want to play some of these clips. You can get an idea, offer a few of my thoughts and why Christians need to double down on debating our positions in public, any way that we can.
Students:
Get out.
Trent Horn:
This is at … I think it’s at Yale. It’s law students at Yale who are shouting out a speaker that they disagree with. This is recent. This is the past week.
Students:
Get out.
Reporter:
Recent events on college campuses are prompting questions about free speech.
Trent Horn:
It’s not free, and I hate this defense that I said earlier that, “Well, if you have the freedom to speak, then I have the freedom to yell and stop you.” That is not freedom of speech.
Trent Horn:
Freedom of speech means people have equal opportunity to share their ideas. These are just threats and the ability to make loud noises. That’s not what freedom of speech entails. And I also think that this is a huge liability for these far left groups on campuses, that if I or other people went to one of their meetings, or one of their events, if someone hosted a Black Lives Matter speaker and a bunch of students came in and shouted, “Get out.” It would be prosecuted as a hate crime. That’s what would happen, but yet these individuals don’t understand, people will use these same tactics against you.
Trent Horn:
It’s funny to me actually, that people will say that Christians are theocratic and they want to ban the opposing views and create a medieval theocratic kingdom where no one has free speech, and they talk about this. And you know what? Maybe that is the case.
Trent Horn:
I mean, there’s arguments for that point. Though I think that in general, freedom allows good ideas to prosper, but that’s not just a Christian … But to say that’s just a Christian thing, no. Anyone, when they have power, will create their own theocracy. Their God will just be woke identity politics.
Trent Horn:
I mean, think about it. These students would probably make fun of medieval Christians. But these same students believe in excommunicating people who disagree with them on politics, in doing whatever they can to censor heresy on their campuses, and using force, even violence in some circumstances. Because they would say that heretical ideas are dangerous and can hurt people and must be stopped. So they’re actually just like the medieval Christians that they would probably want to make fun of.
Trent Horn:
Now the thing is, this has been long in coming, what is going on university campuses. And it comes from an idea, just from really Millennials and Generation Z, where college campuses exist not for the exploration of ideas, but college exists as a place for people age 18 to 24 to go and have fun and have a community. That’s what college …
Trent Horn:
If you wanted to learn, just do classes online. Read a book at the library. College is not for learning really. It’s just for discovering yourself, finding your community and for having fun and an experience. And so, that’s why students are opposed to things that take this away from them, that make them think about things that are uncomfortable or controversial.
Trent Horn:
So, here’s an example of that. This is at Yale University back in 2015. The university, I think sent out a letter saying, “Hey, don’t wear Halloween costumes that are inappropriate, not immodest ones.” Nobody cares about that. But Halloween costumes that are culturally insensitive, dressing up as a Native American, dressing up as someone from another religion, identity group, things like that. Except if you want to dress up as a immodest Catholic nun or a Catholic priest, that’s totally fine. Nobody cares.
Trent Horn:
So this was a university faculty member, administrator. I forget the gentleman’s name. But he sent an email saying, “Maybe we all need to calm down a bit that we’re adults. And if a Halloween costume offends us, we don’t have to act like it’s the end of the world.” That was a gist of what he said.
Trent Horn:
And a mob of students showed up where he was, and he tried to dialogue with them to say, “Well, let’s share ideas and see the merit of our positions.” And they started with that but then the students would not have it. It’s just my way or the highway. Here’s what they say. Here’s what they do.
Administrator:
The exception is because other people have rights too, not just you.
Trent Horn:
That’s the administrator saying, he’s saying, “Well, I have the right to not be offended.” No one has the right to not be offended. Sorry. There is no such right. If you have the right to not be offended, I’m offended by all things. I’m offended by drag queens in elementary schools as any normal person should be, but nobody cares about my right to not be offended by that. So he’s saying, “You have a right, but other have rights too, to express themselves.” And doesn’t go over well.
Students:
Walk away. He doesn’t deserve to be listened to.
Trent Horn:
Got to hear that, “Walk away. He doesn’t deserve to be listened to.” Instead of engaging the debate, they want to shut down the debate.
Student:
[inaudible 00:08:54] Be quiet. We’re all humans here. You understand that? As your position as master, it’s your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students that live in Tillman. You have not done that. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master. Do you understand that?
Administrator:
No I don’t agree with that.
Student:
Then why the (beep) did you accept the position?
Trent Horn:
So see, he can’t even … I don’t agree with your position. Instead of engaging that, just yelling. And she says before, “No, don’t talk. You listen. This is a place of home and comfort, not a place of learning.” At least not of learning about controversial ideas that you disagree with.
Student:
What the (beep) point of view.
Administrator:
I have a different vision than you.
Student:
You should step down. If that is what you think about being a master, you should step down. It is not about creating an intellectual space. It is not. You understand that? It’s about creating a home here. You have no right doing that.
Student:
You are supposed to be at Africa.
Trent Horn:
It’s not about creating an intellectuals that’s… And this is seven years ago. I guarantee you, it was there 17 years ago. It’s been building for the past 20 years on college campuses. And these people who graduate from college with this attitude, have editorial positions at the New York Times, at the Washington Post. They’re the ones who are now in these elite positions in society, to put forward this view that some things are just not up for debate. And in fact, that phrase, not up for debate, is a common talking point among the far left to say, “No. Transgender, identity, abortion, LGBTQ, we’re not debating this. It’s just not up for debate. Here’s an article in the Guttmacher Institute, the former research arm of planned parenthood, not up for debate. LGBTQ people need and deserve tailored sexual and reproductive healthcare.
Trent Horn:
Another one from SOS and the University of London, trans lives should not be for debate. They’ll say, “We’re not going to debate this because there is no debate. It’s the most clever way to win a debate by saying just that there is no debate and I’m right. It’s an amazing way to go about it. Or to not just say there is no debate, but when you try to present your view to shout it down and to use violence ain’t necessary. This was just recently here. This video was taken March 4th, the begin of March, 2022 at the University of north Texas, right near where I live, where Jeff Younger, he was giving a presentation on transgender issues, dealing with the fact that his wife wants to transition his son, I believe was the situation. And he opposed that, and this is harmful to children. And he goes to the campus to express his view, and instead, a mob shows up to shout him down. Here’s the end of that exchange.
Jeff Younger:
I’m more than [crosstalk 00:11:41]
Mob:
Don’t you dare. Don’t don’t you record my friend.
Jeff Younger:
She did grab my hand [inaudible 00:11:45].
Trent Horn:
And that’s where it goes. Don’t you record my friend. Excuse me, you’re crashing a public event. I’ve been at pro-life demonstrations where we did this on campus and the pro-choice protestors would jump in front of our cameras and say, “I don’t give you a permission to film me.” It’s so funny. But there’s where it goes, they say this person is a, he, no, it’s a, she, I’m not going to say at. And then the mob explodes.
Jeff Younger:
She.
Mob:
He.
Jeff Younger:
She.
Mob:
He.
Jeff Younger:
She.
Mob:
He.
Jeff Younger:
Do you actually believe that if someone disagrees to something, you can stand up and spit on them?
Mob:
*Screaming*
Mob:
Yes.
Trent Horn:
Think about this, that they want the freedom to spit and scream at people who don’t agree with them. Would they ever tolerate someone doing that to them? No, it would… This becomes barbarism. The difference between barbarism, the word barbarism comes… The ancient Greeks, when they dealt with non-Greek tribes, this is a way to make fun of them. They didn’t understand the words they were saying. So it sounded like this to them, bar. They didn’t understand, they didn’t speak Greek. They didn’t know what these people were saying. So they called them barbarians. Just like we might say, if it was people that were uneducated, we didn’t know what they were saying and they were uncivilized, uneducated people, we’d call them blahblahians. They just, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don’t understand that blahblahians. It’s barbaric.
Trent Horn:
They turn into, we disagree, let’s see who can yell and scream the loudest, spit the most and slug the hardest and that person wins. That’s going backwards 5,000 years in public discourse. But they can’t do it because if you just went up there and had a debate about this, they would lose. Look what happened with Matt Walsh and these transgender advocates on the Dr. Phil show. If you want, you can check out my video on my channel here, where I talk about that more. You expose the other side for its silliness, the other side can only win when it bullies to get its point across.
Mob:
You try bring it to the face in front of me, you will pay.
Jeff Younger:
All right guys.
Jeff Younger:
I want to thank you for the show.
Jeff Younger:
It was very great to see you today.
Mob:
Go home.
Jeff Younger:
Let’s go.
Jeff Younger:
No. Let’s go.
Trent Horn:
How awful, it reminds me of that awful line from Revenge of the Sith. I think it’s maybe Empire, Attack of the Clones. And this is how Liberty dies, the sound of thunderous applause. It’s a cheesy line, but it’s true here. And notice what they do. I was giving a presentation, I talked about on the podcast a few months ago on pro-life at a private college, and there were students there to protest. Thankfully it did not get out of hand like this, the event could continue. So it was worthwhile, but they had police there to protect me. And there were people in the university, in the room saying that I made them unsafe, even though it was a mob there… They were not, they weren’t a mob at the campus I was at thankfully. A group, the people there who outnumbered me severely, but it’s not just the students though.
Trent Horn:
It’s not just the students who want to protect this. It’s also the university administrators who encourage this through inaction of not stopping people, not punishing them for this behavior. And also for university policies that allow this infantile behavior to prevent conservative speakers, or Christian speakers to go to campus to make their views known. So the universities are in cahoots on this. There’s a great video at the Alliance Defending Freedom, YouTube channel ADF, Alliance Defending Freedom. A great nonprofit organization provides legal counsel to Christian groups, pro-life groups. This is a video talking about college discrimination against conservative speakers, with Ben Shapiro talking about the experience that a student group that invited him to come to campus, what they dealt with.
Ben Shapiro:
Professors and a handful of students saw flyers for my upcoming appearance and were furious. How could an inclusive place like CSU allow someone to speak, whose views they find offensive. Some activists tore down flyers promoting the speech, others threatened violence if the speech went forward. One professor even went so far as challenging the student organizers to fight.
Trent Horn:
I love that the professor, how he’s animated, it’s like he’s shorter than everybody else, so I think that’s funny. And it’s well, that’s worthwhile.
Ben Shapiro:
A few days before the speech, school administrators informed YAF that although the school has police, whose job includes providing security for speeches, YAF would have to pay an additional security fee because they have views they deem controversial. The university had over broad guidelines that left it to the whim of officials to decide who had to pay the fee based on viewpoint. A practice, the US Supreme court has repeatedly found to be unconstitutional.
Trent Horn:
Now, Here’s, what’s interesting about this. When I was at Arizona State University many years ago in the early two thousands, we did all with the same thing. When I first invited Justice for All with their pro-life exhibit to come to campus and set it up, our student group, the university told us, “This is a very controversial exhibit with abortion. You’re going to have to pay an additional fee to hire more security.” And students for life sued over that, because it is unconstitutional. Now, it’s easy to say, if the school said no conservative speakers are allowed, well, if it’s a public university, you’re getting first amendment violation right there, that’s a slam dunk. But what they try to do, is in a sneaky way. To say, “Well, we let everybody speak. You’re so controversial, you have to pay more security.”
Trent Horn:
But the problem is that it’s not applied equally, that if a Black Lives Matter speaker who is really controversial comes to campus. And even if they know that they invite Antifa to come and speak and they know there could be riots or things like that, the university will absorb the costs themselves for the extra security. If they only ask conservative groups or Christian groups to absorb the cost and pay the security themselves, or the extra security they think is needed, then it’s viewpoint discrimination. And I have seen that before. Also for Young Americans for Freedom, that was the group that invited me to the college in New Jersey, where I had a mild protest. I talked about that episode, go a few months back and you can find that.
Ben Shapiro:
When you have objected school, president William Covino wrote the group, explaining that he was canceling the speech, but would be open to allowing a future event that would be more inclusive and would feature speakers with differing viewpoints on diversity. In other words, on the campus of CSULA, which is a publicly funded university, school officials believed they could cancel students free speech rights, just because they didn’t like their views. This not only deprives speakers of their constitutional rights, it deprives individuals on campus regardless of their political views, of the chance to learn and hear new ideas.
Trent Horn:
Now the speech ended up going forward and I think CS, YAF sued the university and the university backed down all these requirements. And Shapiro makes a good point about why this is… Let’s see if I can go here. Here we go.
Ben Shapiro:
Violate its student’s rights. If only to back down after being challenged, the hard truth is that on many campuses, no one fights back and those students lose their rights. The lesson is that if Americans want to keep their rights, they need to fight for them and never take them for granted.
Trent Horn:
That’s right. And so including the right to publicly debate, especially on a public university campus. So we need to be able to do that. And the more we can get out there to do public debates, public dialogues, where it’s long form, I’ll give you another example. Like for example, when Sanjay Gupta was on Joe Rogan’s podcast, talking about COVID and talking about what CNN had done, I thought that was just absolutely brilliant that we don’t have people on CNN or even for ox news or the news channels. We don’t have them just like, in a long form, two hour discussion. It’s just, here’s your 22nd sound bite, then we’re going to go on with the show. When you force people to sit down for extended periods to discuss their views, you start to see which views have more merit to them. And that’s something that we absolutely need more of.
Trent Horn:
But I do want to offer a word of caution that some people who would agree with us on these issues, aren’t in favor of debate and public dialogue. And I find that to be unfortunate. I’ve been in situations where Catholic campuses, the students wanted me to come do a debate. And I remember a priest at the Newman Center there said, “I’m not sponsoring any debate. I’m not taking the risk that students will lose their faith overseeing a debate.” And I said, “Well, you’re not going to take the risk. They’re going to lose their faith seeing a debate being an atheist, but you’re okay with them just going to campus and getting that same message in a classroom where it’s not going to be challenged.” So that’s one thing I’ve heard that we need to move away from. That concern that it’s not up for debate. It’s not just more left people on the left that has that attitude.
Trent Horn:
There’s an article recently by Alexander DeSantis at national review called Why I Debate Abortion. And she was debating Jill Filipovic, who is a pro-choice feminist blogger on the issue of abortion. And what’s interesting. Two things are interesting. One. She said that when she went to talk about debating the issue, she noticed that people even on her side were opposed to her doing this. She writes, “When I shared a link to the event livestream on Twitter shortly before the debate, I was reminded once again that free speech opponents, aren’t isolated to Jill’s side of the aisle. There are plenty on my side too, by the way, this is an abortion debate hosted at University of Notre Dame. So it says, “I got a reply saying that abortion should not even be up for debate at a Catholic university. And that Notre Dame was violating its Catholic mission by hosting the event.
Trent Horn:
These people are telling me the same thing that Jill’s allies say to her, both she and I are wrong. They say they grant one another the courtesy of our presence for a conversation, because each of our positions is supposedly too correct even to debate if we believe that we’re doomed, but that’s true. What’s interesting here at Notre Dame, I would say, “No, I want to do an abortion debate at Notre Dame,” because I bet many, if not most of the students at Notre Dame do not hold to the pro-life position that abortion is intrinsically evil and should be illegal. I bet most of them don’t hold that view or many don’t, so why wouldn’t I want them to be exposed to this on their campus? What’s interesting is in Jill Filipovic, this pro-choice feminist, she wrote an article defending because she gets a lot of people who say, “Not up for debate, abortion, we’re not going to debate it. You don’t debate human rights. It’s a basic human right.”
Trent Horn:
And so she wrote this article in defense of debate before doing it, I think shortly thereafter. So here’s what she writes about why she does debates. Now I don’t agree with everything. I don’t think that certain issues should not be up for debate, but the reason she goes and does public debates resonates with me deeply, even though we’re very divided on these issues. She writes, “Colleges are also places where the seeds of lifelong change are planted. When I debate issues I don’t believe should be up for debate, I’m not doing it because I think I’m going to convince the audience that I am right. I am doing it because there may be a few people listening, who haven’t thought about it in quite that way before and who may not change their minds right that minute in a college auditorium, but for whom a real back and forth, maybe one in a long list of small moments that eventually produce a bigger shift.
Trent Horn:
I’m doing it because there will probably be a bunch of people in the audience who agree with me, but may not always know how to articulate why. I’m doing it because I think it’s good practice for me to think through, be challenged on and defend my most deeply held beliefs. I’m doing it because there will definitely be many people in the audience, potentially a majority who think I’m flat out wrong. And while I don’t believe I will convince them to embrace abortion rights, or I guess in my position to convince them to be pro-life. And this is me at a secular university, I don’t think I’m going to get everybody in the audience or even a majority to agree with me right there, but,” she goes on. “I do hope I can push them to think about why their own position is incomplete or hypocritical.”
Trent Horn:
Maybe I can get them to dig a little deeper into why they believe what they do. That’s great. It’s exactly like what I would say. So it’s funny when people who are very divided on important issues find agreement. Finally, I’m going to do this debate at Emory University soon against Nathan Nobis on abortion. Dr. Nobis is really one of the best pro-choice philosophers out there. I’m really looking forward to it. But it’s interesting, the pro-choice group didn’t want to co-sponsor it. Professors did not want to moderate it. Nobody wanted to take part in it, and Nathan is super frustrated with that. He’s really frustrated because he agrees with these people on abortion many times, but they don’t want to… They disagree with him about the importance of debating it. So he has a good article about that on his blog. The title is, Is abortion “up for debate”? Clearly it is! That’s why ‘ethical literacy’ is needed.
Trent Horn:
He writes, “A lot of people declare that abortion is “not up for debate.” Saying this is absurd.” Remember Nathan Nobis is pro-choice by the way. “Clearly abortion is up for debate: what do people think is going on? Maybe it should not be up for debate, but it is. Again, what do people think is going on? So why is abortion up for debate? And why shouldn’t it be? Abortion is up for debate because too few people know why it should not be up for debate. Too few people understand why abortion is generally not wrong and should be legal.” And so he goes on, and what’s interesting here is he talks about how people lack critical reasoning skills. But he said somewhere else that pro-lifers are really good at doing educational trainings institutes to teach people how to talk about abortion.
Trent Horn:
And pro-choices have really fallen behind on this. And so he’s encouraging them, don’t fall behind We got to win hearts and minds as well. And that’s what we do. And that’s why I think debate is so important. The far left hates it because their ideas won’t stand up to debate. But I believe that the traditional views about the dignity of life, the nature and purpose of sexuality, these things can stand up to reason, scrutiny in a fair and open debate where you’re not getting shouted down. We have equal time on both sides and we need more of that. That’s good for society. The far left don’t like it and some on the right did say, “Don’t even bother debating that. No, we should get together and debate. Isaiah 1:18 makes this clear, come let us reason together. So that’s what I hope we’ll do. I hope you’ll encourage others to do that as well. And I hope this was helpful and enlightening for you. Thank you so much. And I hope you have a very blessed day.
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