In this episode of the Flannel Panel, Cy Kellett, Joe Heschmeyer, and Chris Check respond to the growing cultural claim that Christians are hateful simply because they don’t affirm transgender ideology. The panel breaks down how modern culture rewrites words like “love” and “truth” to frame Christians as the villains—and explains why real love means helping people live according to God’s perfect design.
Transcript:
Cy: Let’s have clip two. Here’s the reporter. And you’re only going to get the sentence up to a certain point. It’ll stop. And I want you to say, what are the words that come after that?
NPR Report: Mackenzie is a lifelong Republican and was raised in a church that taught homosexuality and gender diversity are counter to Christian teachings. But Mackenzie says-
Cy: So this guy was a Republican and he was raised in a church that says homosexual acts are wrong. Well, she didn’t say that. That’s not how she said it.
Joe: But gender diversity, you can’t even have two genders in whatever church. Mackenzie’s like, probably how Mackenzie has this ambiguous name.
Cy: So he came to believe is where that was supposed to end. And so. All right, so what did he come to believe?
Cy: That Jesus loves all people?
Cy: That Jesus loves.
Joe: I was gonna say that God loves everybody. Something like that. That God loves him as he is.
Cy: Okay, so that would mean. If that’s the answer, that would mean that all these Christians who believe that marriage is between a man and a woman or don’t believe in gender fluidity or the transgender movement, their belief, by contrast, is that Jesus doesn’t love everybody. That’s what you’re saying.
Joe: I mean, that would be ridiculous. It’d be hard to believe anyone would be so manipulative as to do that.
Cy: Because that would be really manipulative if what you’re saying is, I used to think Christian things, but then I came to believe that Jesus loves all people. Is that what you guys are saying? That’s how low you think this reporter is going? All right, how did the reporter finish the sentence? Darren?
NPR Report: But McKinsey says he came to believe that all humans are made in the image of God, a belief that has become personal for him.
Joe: Came to believe.
Cy: He used to be a Christian or whatever. I mean, I’m not. I’m obviously paraphrasing in a negative way, but he used to be one of those Christians that believes in marriage and stuff. But then he came to believe that God cares about all people. Yeah.
Joe: So I’m reminded here the great irony of this is one of the strongest points we have in resisting the kind of transgender ideology is that you already are made in the image of God. You don’t have to mutilate your body.
I mean, so Donald Trump. Not exactly State of the Union, whatever his address to Congress is called. I’ve got the text in front of me. I just pulled it up. He says, shortly after taking office, I signed an executive order banning public schools from indoctrinating our children with transgender ideology. I also signed an order to cut off all taxpayer funding to any institution that engages in the sexual mutilation of our youth.
And now I want Congress to pass a bill permanently banning and criminalizing sex changes on children and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body. This is a big lie. And our message to every child in America is that you are perfect exactly the way God made you.
That’s. I mean, obviously we don’t want to say that in a way that denies original sin or any of this stuff.
Cy: Well, you’re not perfect, but you’re off the.
Joe: Don’t need surgery.
Chris: Who’s the author of this?
Joe: That was Donald Trump.
Cy: That was Donald Trump. Yeah. Who that. Which means we don’t know who the author of it is because the President’s reading.
Joe: Used to be Joshua Charles, right?
Chris: No, Vice President. He wrote for the Vice President.
Cy: Oh, that’s right. Okay.
Chris: You know, but go ahead, Joe.
Joe: I was just going to say that’s the great perversity. There’s such this incredible game of doublespeak that gender-affirming care is the stuff that mutilates you at the gendered level.
And to believe that you’re made in the image of God means you have to deface the image of God as much as you can on your. Like that. That is so abhorrently false.
Our message is not. If you are confused about your gender, God doesn’t love you or you’re not made properly. Our message is even in the midst of your confusion, God made you beautiful as a man or a woman, and he chose that, not you. And that his design for you is better than whatever psychological state you find yourself in.
Chris: I think we can encourage our listeners, Cy and Joe, who find themselves frustrated by this, to make a practice of listening to how the words specifically are being manipulated to mean either to set up this opposition or to mean something.
That they don’t mean what they are.
So choice is a great example. Right. Which means killing. But that’s a very good point. Another one.
Joe: States rights.
Chris: Another one that Joe. I’d actually like to come back to Joe’s utterly bizarro analogy from the earlier segment or similar.
Joe: I didn’t mean to derail you.
Chris: It’s okay. Another word to be alert to is safe. So we hear about safe spaces all the time in the National Catholic Reporter, which follows these methods of journalism the same way that National Public Radio does.
There was an article about a transgender hermit who was going to come and speak at a Catholic church, but then someone in authority stopped this. Thanks be to God. But the poster for the ad advertising the event said, this is going to be a safe space. Right.
So what that automatically sets up is that anyone who’s opposed to this confused Man.
Cy: it’s not going to be a safe space for them.
Chris: Yeah, well. Or requires or desires for the people to come to it not to be safe.
Cy: Yeah, right.
Chris: Which is nice.
Joe: It’s the idea that speech is violence and violence is speech.
Cy: Yeah. That’s a good. Someone should assemble, like, a top 10 list of words that are currently being used. You know, we should monitor. Like, these are the words that are being used to basically tell you you’re not allowed to talk about this opposite.
Chris: Of what they mean. Here’s one. Here’s one. Border. Well, until very recently, border didn’t mean what it should mean, you know.
Cy: Wait, what did it mean? Well, like, someone that boards at your house.
Chris: No, no. Border between two countries. It meant civ or something. Or. But it. But it didn’t really mean border.
Cy: Yeah, yeah. Oh, I see. Well, but words change over time. That’s fine. But the question. Is there an attempt. Is there an intentional attempt, use this word, like safety or safe space or choice. Yeah. To basically. To label people.
Yeah. So this guy. This is a weird thing. Like, this is like a cudgel that’s used against Christians. Like, well, Jesus taught love. And when I found that out, I realized that all the other things Jesus taught are baloney. That’s not how that works.
Jesus is love. Jesus didn’t just teach it. He is love incarnate. He is love come among us as a man. So listen. Listen to him. Like, that’s really, really important that you listen to him.
Chris: This is why the work of our colleague especially, and I’m not saying the other apologists don’t do this, but our colleague and friend Karlo Broussard, who is philosophically trained and insists on using words that we are going to agree what the definition of those words are, and he insists on, you know, these are the categories, and let’s agree what they mean, because if we can’t first agree on those things.
So one thing that you rarely hear the people at National Public Radio talk about, as Joe has observed already, is what’s true. And by the way, what does that mean? Right. Can we agree what truth means? And if we agree that there’s something called truth, then we have to agree that there’s something called not truth.
But that’s a word that you’ll hear love a lot, but you really won’t hear truth a lot.
Cy: Yeah, that’s a very good point because love is so malleable.
Chris: Or what does love mean? And as Karlo would tell you and Joe or anybody who’s listened to Catholic Answers Live could say it’s my oh. No, sorry, I guess I didn’t know the answer.
Chris: Yeah, good feelings about everyone.
Cy: Yeah, that’s what it means.
Chris: No, it’s desiring the good of the other. And then, of course, good is going to require some definition there as well.
Joe: Flannery O’Connor, in her letter to Dr. Spivey, I believe, talks about she throws out the thesis that Catholics are more fascinated by truth and Protestants by goodness.
And if you take that principle seriously, and she argues as a result, Catholics love Protestants more than they love atheists, but they understand atheists better than they understand Protestants because an atheist who says, I don’t think this stuff is true. Okay, we’re having the same conversation.
A person who says, well, it doesn’t matter what the doctrine is because we’re all just trying our best. That’s a different framework.
There’s more of that thought, but I’ll have to save it for the other half.
Cy: I got another quiz question coming up. National Public Radio, endless wonderful information about religion in America. And when they cover it, we try to cover them. We’ll do more of that right after this on Catholic Answers Live.