Knight and Rose Show #45: Boldness in the Face of Compromise

Welcome to episode 45 of the Knight and Rose podcast! In this episode, Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss boldly defending the Bible’s teachings on moral issues, in a culture that preaches “don’t judge”. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We would appreciate it if you left us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Podcast description:

Christian apologists Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss apologetics, policy, culture, relationships, and more. Each episode equips you with evidence you can use to boldly engage anyone, anywhere. We train our listeners to become Christian secret agents. Action and adventure guaranteed. 30-45 minutes per episode. New episode every week.

Episode 45:

Episode  Summary:

Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss the task of defending the Bible’s moral teachings in a culture that rejects moral knowledge. We discuss what the Bible teaches about making moral judgements. We discuss the arguments of churches that reject the Bible’s moral teachings, and whether their approach succeeded. We discuss strategies for speaking boldly, and evaluate the long-term consequences of silence.

Speaker biographies

Wintery Knight is a black legal immigrant. He is a senior software engineer by day, and an amateur Christian apologist by night. He has been blogging at winteryknight.com since January of 2009, covering news, policy and Christian worldview issues.

Desert Rose did her undergraduate degree in public policy, and then worked for a conservative Washington lobbyist organization. She also has a graduate degree from a prestigious evangelical seminary. She is active in Christian apologetics as a speaker, author, and teacher.

Podcast RSS feed:

https://feed.podbean.com/knightandrose/feed.xml

You can use this to subscribe to the podcast from your phone or tablet. I use the open-source AntennaPod app on my Android phone.

Podcast channel pages:

Video channel pages:

Music attribution:

Strength Of The Titans by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5744-strength-of-the-titans
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Court rules Biden admin can’t force Christians to do trans surgeries

One of the scariest things about the secular left is the comfort and confidence they have about ramming their views down the throats of people who disagree with them. It’s not that they can beat you in an argument about which worldview is true. They can’t. Their only way to get what they want is by using force. And they don’t hesitate to do that.

Here’s the story from Daily Caller:

A district court ruled Monday that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) violated the First Amendment by attempting to force religious health care workers to provide gender transition procedures.

In 2021, the Christian Employers Alliance (CEA) filed a lawsuit against the EEOC over two mandates requiring religious employers to provide health insurance that covered gender transitions as well as forcing religious physicians to perform sex-change procedures or face charges of discrimination based on gender identity. The District Court of North Dakota ruled in favor of the CEA, arguing that the rules would violate an employer’s or doctor’s religious beliefs.

Who are the big heroes who argued the case? Alliance Defending Freedom, of course:

The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which represented CEA, argued that not only did the mandates require employers and doctors to cover and perform sex-change procedures, but it also demanded that they speak positively of them even if they objected, according to the press release.

[…]“By misinterpreting and improperly enforcing federal law, President Biden has far overreached his constitutional authority, to the detriment of people of faith across the country,” Matt Bowman, senior counsel for ADF, said in the press release. “The government cannot force Christian employers to pay for, or physically perform, harmful medical procedures that contradict their religious beliefs. The Constitution protects religious healthcare providers and employers and allows them to go about their work in a manner compatible with their deeply held convictions and faith.”

The EEOC did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Alliance Defending Freedom is a great conservative organization that defends religious liberty and conscience protections. They regularly win cases at the Supreme Court. If you don’t know about the ADF, it’s a great organization to support with your charity budget.

Leaked e-mails: doctors admit link between transgender treatment and cancer

You might be thinking that I’m going to be linking to LifeSiteNews or Lifenews or MercatorNet for this one. After all, the title sounds pretty far-fetched. After all, how could the secular left be so bold as to want to push unproven medical procedures onto children, if there could be such costly side effects? But, today’s article is from the UK Telegraph. Prepare to be shocked.

Here is the article from the UK Telegraph: (archived)

Leaked emails show other medical professionals admitting that trans patients do not always understand the consequences of gender reassignment.

The cache of files from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which sets guidelines that have influenced NHS treatment, show that doctors are carrying out life-changing surgery and prescribing puberty blockers even though they are aware the adults and children may not fully understand the long-term ramifications.

One doctor talked about a transgender person who died of cancer as a result of his hormone treatment.

“I have one transition friend/colleague who, after about eight to 10 years of [testosterone] developed hepatocarcinoma [a form of liver cancer],” the doctor wrote.

“To the best of my knowledge, it was linked to his hormone treatment… it was so advanced that he opted for palliative care and died a couple of months later.”

It’s not clear from the documents if the person who died was made aware or knew about the side effect.

It was a 16-year-old girl:

Another said they would go ahead with a double mastectomy (called “top surgery”) on a 16-year-old girl even though hormones had likely given her liver cancer.

I blogged before about how cavalier the doctors are about giving letters to health insurance companies, explaining that they approve of the need for sex-change drugs and surgery.

The e-mails reveal more:

A gender therapist said they had only turned one person down for treatment in 15 years.

“I have also intervened on behalf of people who have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, homeless and got at least an orchiectomy [testicle removal],” they said.

“In the last 15 years, I had to regrettably decline writing only one letter, mainly because the person evaluated was in active psychosis and hallucinated during the assessment session.

“Other than that – nothing – everyone got their assessment letter, insurance approval, and are living (presumably) happily ever after.”

A number of doctors admitted that their patients often did not understand the ramifications of hormone treatment or surgery – such as developing facial hair.

A child psychologist said in a leaked email featured in the report: “[It is] out of their developmental range to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them.

“They’ll say they understand, but then they’ll say something else that makes you think, oh, they didn’t really understand that they are going to have facial hair.”

If you’re wondering why the secular left is so committed to transing children, just because they ask for it, and even though they can’t possible understand the consequences, it’s the money.

Here is a story about one expose reported by Daily Wire:

“It’s a lot of money,” VUMC Clinic for Transgender Health’s Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said at one Medicine Grand Rounds lecture, video reveals. “These surgeries make a lot of money.”

Taylor noted that a “chest reconstruction” can bring in $40,000 per patient, and someone “just on routine hormone treatment, who I’m only seeing a few times a year, can bring in several thousand dollars … and actually makes money for the hospital.”

Citing the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery, Taylor said vaginoplasty surgeries can generate $20,000, gushing that it “has to be an underestimate,” since hospital stay, anesthesia, post-op visits, and other add-ons are not included in the total.

“And the female-to-male bottom surgeries, these are huge money makers,” the doctor continued, adding that such surgeries could bring in “up to $100,000” for the hospital.

Some clinics are “entirely” “supported” financially by such phalloplasty surgeries, Taylor boasted.

“These surgeries are labor intensive, there are a lot of follow-ups, they require a lot of our time, and they make money,” she emphasized. “They make money for the hospital.”

If you don’t believe that God exists, then this life is all you have. So, you find ways to justify getting more and more money any which way you can. You’re not out there trying to help people. After all, on the secular leftist view, human beings are just the accidental by products of natural processes that did not have them in mind. There’s no free will. No objective morality. No consequences for moral choices after death. Right and wrong are just “customs” that different societies have developed. They vary by time and place, and none of them is any more valid than cooking customs or dressing customs. It makes a huge difference what people believe. Beliefs are the rails on which they run their lives.