The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 92 – Brandon Showalter

Episode 92: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Dr. Jeff interviews Christian investigative journalist Brandon Showalter about the cultural and medical phenomena surrounding transgender identity. Showalter characterizes the medicalization of gender dysphoria, particularly in children, as a major “medical scandal” and “child abuse scandal.”

The conversation covers the experiences of detransitioners, the financial motivations of the pharmaceutical industry, the ideological capture of medical institutions, and the role of mainstream and social media in promoting what he called a false narrative. Showalter provides his perspective on how families should respond from a Christian worldview, emphasizing the importance of biological reality and biblical truth while condemning violence and bullying.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:02):
Hey everyone, it’s Dr. Jeff. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show podcast. This show is available on Apple, Google, Spotify, Liftable, Edifi. Wherever you get your podcast, please go there. Take a moment to do that and leave a review because more people will find out about the show if you do, and we want more people to find out, as I say, every week, because this is the show where I interview major thought leaders to show how our worldview changes everything.

Today’s guest is a Christian investigative journalist who has gone behind the scenes and looked at the whole world of gender identity, transgender confusion, gender dysphoria, and this is going to be a no hold barred conversation. If this is something that you’re facing, then I think this show’s going to be really important. If it’s not something that you have faced yet, it’s really important to understand where things are in our culture. We need to be people who understand the time. So please welcome Brandon Showalter to the show. Brandon Showalter, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show podcast.

Brandon Showalter (01:07):
Good to be here. Thank you.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:09):
Now, you and I are working on an ebook together on the issue of transgender, and that was our connection. But in the process, I learned that you have been reporting on this issue for the Christian Post for quite some time, and you’ve been involved in some video projects about this. Everyone is talking about transgender and our culture at this moment, and there are lots of things that we need to know, lots of things that we need to talk about. And so anyway, I’m really glad to have you on the show.

Brandon Showalter (01:45):
I’m glad to be here. Thank you. It’s an issue that’s near and dear to my heart.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:50):
Yeah. Well, Brandon, we do want to say at the outset, because there have been attacks on people who identify as LGBTQ, and some people have been killed and others have been shot. And it is very difficult to separate the narrative of the movement from the pain that people are experiencing and then also how we respond. It’s a really tough time to address this from a biblical worldview because doing so makes some people think that you’re being hateful.

Brandon Showalter (02:27):
Oh, yes. And this is not new for me because believe it or not, my first day on the job at the Christian Post during my trial period was the day after the Pulse Orlando nightclub shooting in June of 2016. And so with what happened in Colorado Springs, what you all are dealing with out there, I can only imagine what it’s going like. And of course, my heart goes out to everyone affected. It’s absolutely terrible what has occurred.

But I reject with the utmost enthusiasm that this is somehow the result of being a biblically Orthodox Christian for those who are wanting to put out that message. No, we’re not receiving that. But for those who are families who are identifying among the LGBTQ, I can only imagine how your heart is breaking because of this senseless act of violence. It’s unacceptable. It’s inexcusable.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:17):
And we never condone or tolerate bullying or supervision or name calling, and we want to be really clear about that. We’re not talking about this as, oh, well, we could just throw around these comments or aren’t these people strange, kind of thing. This is something.

Brandon Showalter (03:34):
You won’t hear me saying any of those derogatory terms. No, absolutely.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:38):
Yeah. Well, let’s dig into this. So I know recently you have interviewed some people who’ve gone through transgender and now are detransitioning. Talk a little bit about that. There’s so much we need to talk about. We’re never going to cover it all in just 35 minutes, but I felt like that may be an interesting place to start.

Brandon Showalter (04:08):
Well, I think that is a very interesting place to start because when people ask me why am I so obsessed with this issue? And I say to them, transgenderism is many things, but one of the main things that it is, is a medical scandal. I believe it’s one of the worst medical scandals and child abuse scandals the world has ever seen. And detransitioners are giving voice to what this medical scandal is.

And in 2022, thankfully there’ve been a number of stories that increasingly in the mainstream press, the legacy media, they’re finally paying attention to some of them still not in sort of the New York Times, ABC, Washington Post, but I’ve seen more mainstream coverage of their plight of detransition than ever before. And I’ve been reporting on these issues at the Christian Post since 2016. As I just said a moment ago, the medical damage, the irreversible harm that has been done to these young people is staggering.

(05:05):
And it’s staggering because this medicalization, I don’t even like to call it, medicine is done on perfectly healthy bodies in pursuit of a lie, in pursuit of a physiological impossibility. It is physically impossible for a male to become female and vice versa. But that’s what these vulnerable young people are told, many of whom are already dealing with a number of psychiatric ailments, depression, gender confusion, same sex attraction, autism.

There’s a number of things where sort of the typical demographic of young person who is lured down this pathway and sold hormones and surgeries as the fix, there are now so many of them, and there they’re now speaking out. Some of them are, and they’re trying to bring attention to that. This has all been a disastrous experiment and built on an edifice of lies.

I have interviewed some of them recently, one for a podcast series that I did, interviewed a man in England who’s suing the NHS over his general amputation, alleging that the clinicians didn’t adequately inform him of all that would take place or considering his other mental health issues. Interviewed a detransition in his thirties in 2020 who had his testicles amputated. The detransition stories are absolutely harrowing, but that’s because, again, this is a humongous medical scandal.

Dr. Jeff Myers (06:26):
And there are a lot of angles to that, but it’s a multi-billion dollar industry for pharmaceuticals using Lupron as a puberty blocker. So it is part of the standards of care that we have in medicine today that you must medicalize it. So if a child comes to the doctor and the parent says, I don’t know what’s going on, he’s a boy, but he thinks he’s a girl. The standards of care require the doctor to suggest, for example, well, we can just pause puberty for a while, but they’re using this drug Lupron, which it would ordinarily be used to help people who men who were going through prostate cancer lower their testosterone so that the cancer can’t be quite as aggressive.

But this is being used experimentally on children, and the effects are horrifying. So yes, so I understand the point that you’re making there. I think that it’s just, if you’re a parent and you’re trying to think through, alright, my child says they’re transgender, we’ve got to go to the doctor, and the doctor says, look, this is just the way it is. This is the standard of care. This is the best treatment plan. I don’t think we’re used to telling our doctors, no, I don’t agree with you.

(07:54):
And you might actually, as a parent in some states, I know there are three states where that could actually get you in legal trouble telling the doctor no, when your child says they want this, even though they’re not of the age where they can actually give informed consent. Yeah, huge, huge issue.

Brandon Showalter (08:14):
The ideological capture around this in the medical arena is stunning. You mentioned the standards of care. This is all emerging.

This experimental medicalization of using blockers to treat gender dysphoria is from an organization called the World Professional Association for Transgender Health or WPATH and their recommendations. And of course, the other societies have also been captured by this ideology like the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, and the Endocrine Society where they’re recommending this protocol even as European nations such as Finland and Sweden and the UK are moving away from this treatment protocol blockers, the Lupron that you mentioned.

It’s also used to treat endometriosis in women and prostate cancer, as you said. It’s also clinically approved to treat a condition, a rare condition called precocious puberty where if a child goes into puberty too early, they’ll use the blocker to delay it until a normal age, these drugs are rough enough, but at least that’s going after a medical condition.

(09:18):
If a child is truly gender confused, you do not hijack his or her endocrine system to block a normal natural process. And so you’re also correct that parents are not accustomed to telling their doctors no, because doctors carry great social trust in our society. And some people still have the mindset where, decades ago, where medicine was more paternalistic and doctors sort of know best, and so you defer to their expertise.

But when people pull back the curtain and they look at how this ideology has captured the medical field, it is pretty chilling. And so parents do have to be grounded in the material reality of biological sex that human beings are a sexually dimorphic species where sexually dimorphic mammals.

And so anything that they tell you no matter how silver tongue to doctor is, or they talk to you about standards of care or any of this other nonsense, don’t budge because the harm to the developing bodies, to their developing bodies is in many cases, irreversible blockers are used and it’s often almost always followed on by synthetic cross-sex hormones, which is almost a guarantee that that child will wind up permanently sterile.

And that’s just the compromised fertility. There’s cardiovascular problems, cerebrovascular disease, skeletal problems, liver problems, kidney problems. It just doesn’t end with this horror show. And so, like I said, it’s one of the worst medical scandals and child abuse scandals that the world has ever seen.

Dr. Jeff Myers (10:44):
Now, you mentioned Finland, Sweden, the UK moving away from this, which I think is interesting that the United States often has led the way in experimental medical treatments, but it has often led the way as a consequence in experimental medical treatments that have destroyed people’s lives. Lobotomizing is an example that you and I talked about, the forced sterilization of women that was not only endorsed by medical societies, it was funded by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation. I mean, this is just as mainstream American academia as you can get, and yet we look back on those as being medical horrors.

But now those countries that you mentioned, they’re moving towards psychotherapy as their first line of treatment. Talk about that because I think, so let’s say this interview is being passed on to someone who’s got a child going through this, why counseling and what does that make as opposed to medicalizing the issue and using drugs? Because there are some things like ADHD, you can treat that with certain drugs.

Brandon Showalter (12:08):
Right? I’m certainly not opposed to good medicine or good drugs that have been through adequate tests and that kind of thing. There are good doctors out there practicing ethical medicine and God bless them. The problem with this is that gender dysphoria, what has been, or what was once called gender identity disorder in the DSM five, the manual for psychiatric illnesses is that it is a psychological condition.

And so the first step should be examining the other underlying issues that are going on there. And almost always, certainly in my own journalistic work, but as I’ve reviewed the evidence for myself, gender confusion, gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, whatever you want to call it, this severe incongruence with one’s biological sex, it’s almost always one of several things. There’s a cluster of psychiatric comorbidities that are ailing a particular person. If you address the other things, oftentimes the gender confusion goes away and resolves on its own.

(13:14):
There used to be approach within a psychology that was championed called watchful waiting where, and this is shown in the literature where the overwhelming majority of young people who were gender dysphoric diagnosed per the diagnostic criteria referred for gender dysphoria post puberty, they grew out of it 80 to 90% around that, around that figure. And so when you introduce a synthetic foreign hormone or an untested hormonal agent to hijack that person’s endocrine system, well, gender dysphoria is not an endocrine condition. It’s just not. And you don’t take your hormone levels, which are based on your sex out of balance.

So gender dysphoria becomes an endocrine condition once you introduce an intervention that it normally shouldn’t be. And as any good journalist should do, follow the money here. These blockers are very expensive. You’ll be a lifetime medical patient if you go on them and then you follow it on with cross-sex hormones. So pharma’s laughing all the way to the bank, as is the medical industrial complex. And it’s insidious because this medicalization is being marketed via social media, tech, YouTube, Tumblr, to people on TikTok. And so they’re making the bank, it’s a new income stream for them. And if that sounds too…

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:36):
It is a lot of money.

Brandon Showalter (14:37):
Too conspiratorial. It’s a lot of money, millions of dollars.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:42):
For a person.

Brandon Showalter (14:43):
So it would be, you need to be thinking about these things. Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:45):
Yeah. I was just thinking, so I remember hearing the figure that every three months, every one quarter of treatment would be $11,000. So you’re looking at…

Brandon Showalter (14:57):
So just figure that, multiply that by however many, right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (15:00):
For the rest of your life, essentially. Essentially, as long as you don’t want puberty to occur.

Brandon Showalter (15:05):
My friend Jennifer Billick, who’s an extraordinary investigative journalist, gave a speech at Hillsdale College in the Kirby Center not so long ago in July. And I believe she highlighted the works of Dunham who wrote on medium just what these blockers cost. And for a subcutaneous implant, what that all costs, we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars. And so if you’re on them for several years, you take just a small handful. You’re literally talking about millions of dollars for experimental drugs that are enriching big pharma and the medical industrial complex, and the love of money is the root of all evil, and these people are just drunk on power.

And I think a lot of people are awakened to just the utter corruption of the pharmaceutical industry. Again, not to criticize good ethical doctors, and I’m not saying all pharmaceuticals are bad. That’s not true, but where were all these, I mean, suddenly all these young people who were confused about their sex, when did we hear that 30 years ago, this wasn’t a thing. Were they all committing suicide? Like the activists like to say today? No.

And of course, I have absolute sympathy for young people who, for whatever reason are dysphoric about their sex, whether it was caused by trauma or abuse or whatever, brought it about it has to be a nightmare, but I won’t have it on my conscience that medicine, this medicalization be practiced in such a way where young people are going to wind up sterile and disfigured. No ma’am. No, sir. This is not ethical medicine at all.

Dr. Jeff Myers (16:38):
Brandon, as you look at this, I know you’re looking at people who are adults who are going through a transgender experience. My main concern in all of this is young people because they are being pushed into a lie. And a lot of the young people that I’ve talked to, they actually believe that if they take these hormones, they can switch from being a boy to being a girl. The doctors don’t actually tell them that, I hope.

But they do tell them, take this medicine and see if you feel better. So some of them say, oh yeah, I feel better. What’s going on with that? Because I actually hear transgender advocates say, see, that’s proof that this kind of medicalization actually works to help people.

Brandon Showalter (17:28):
Well, there is a certain euphoria that happens within for those who undergo these procedures. And again, the media, in my mind, the legacy press is most culpable here for this medical scandal because they’ve reinforced with their manipulation of language and their ideological capture, they have pummeled this message of trans identity being this cool thing to be and do. And these medical blockers are completely safe and reversible is the line that they pedal. It’s a total lie.

But yes, doctors do lie invariably to young people who are vulnerable. Planned Parenthood clinicians will write you a prescription for testosterone, 30 minutes of a telehealth call. I know of cases like that. It’s just insane the speed with which they distribute these experimental drugs. But yes, the euphoria, a lot of people who have undergone the surgeries that have detransition will say that in the weeks and months after they alter their bodies, that there’s a certain sense of excitement.

(18:33):
It’s new. You do feel different. You do feel better, but because you don’t cut the body to heal the mind, it doesn’t help over the long term. But you also can’t underestimate the extent to which these activist clinicians will lie, manipulate data and design studies around these half truths in order to shift public perceptions in favor of this experimental medicalization. Case in point, CBS ran with the narrative from a JAMA pediatrics study that came out, study, put that in air quotes, jama, journal of American Medical Association. That’s what this is.

This came out a few weeks ago, I believe, September or October, and I thought it was very interesting because a lot of the legacy press likes to gaslight the general public to say that this isn’t happening to children, that that’s just a bunch of right-wing medical misinformation. These are just abusive evil people who are instigating terrifying threats against children’s hospitals and these doctors who are doing this, whatever, they’re just trying to take care of these sick kids.

(19:34):
And so they either go from gaslighting the public to make it as though they’re not happening, or they’re minimizing if it does or saying that it’s good for them. And CBS ran with this narrative from a JAMA pediatric study where they actually say they interviewed 30 some postoperative girls who had had their breast amputated, and the age range listed for that cohort was 13 to 24, and they were convinced per this study that this was improving their mental health and their quality of life.

But they only interviewed them a few months after their surgery, which if you talk to any detransition, they will tell you, well, the euphoria wears off many, many months after that initial period, but that is then picked up by the media to drive the narrative that these surgeries save lives or whatever nonsense that they’re spewing. So the medical malpractice is bad enough, but the journalistic malpractice is even worse.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:29):
You’ve been interviewed in a number of different programs. You have a podcast about this. You have been interviewed in documentaries that have been done about this. I wonder if you can comment a little bit on what you’re doing with the podcast and in those interviews.

Brandon Showalter (20:49):
Yes. Well, our most recent podcast series at the Christian Post is a five-part documentary style audio only investigative podcast series called Generation Indoctrination. We wanted to do a really succinct but thorough look into these issues, particularly as they affect children in the school system. Obviously with this terrible medical experimentation that’s going on. We also examine some of the history of how this developed, how this took off in culture and where it’s going.

And then at the end, we interviewed a detransitioner and some other voices, 20 or 21 contributors, a broad range of people, Republican, democrat, conservative, liberal, Christian, non-Christian from a variety of fields. Of course we’re the Christian Post and we’re not ashamed of the gospel. But this wasn’t a really Bible heavy or preachy podcast. We were just trying to do the job that should be done by the legacy mainstream press, and we’re just presenting an even handed look.

(21:46):
How did ethics shift in the medical field? How did this happen with the ideological capture? What are the lies that are being told to children? And how is this gender confusion being manufactured in the school classroom and in the guidance counselor’s office? What’s going on? So we did what traditional media’s job should be and provided a very good look, and we’re going to be doing a bonus episode on what’s happening with the prisons as males who identify as women are now being, even if they’re rapists and serial sexual offenders, they’re being housed with women who are incarcerated.

And so there’s nothing that this ideology doesn’t touch that just brings ruinous corruption as I like to say to your question about documentaries, most recently I was in Tucker Carlson’s Fox Nation documentary called Transgressive the Cult of Confusion. I was honored to be a part of that, and he takes viewers through a journey of how this ideology functions very much like a cult.

(22:40):
There are several stages where you’re just enticed down this pathway. Then of course, it leads to irrevocable medical harm. There’s another documentary that I was in called Trans Rec that’s available I believe, on Epoch Times TV. There’s another documentary coming out in December, is scheduled to come out, about how this rips apart families, the family suffering, and there are some other documentaries that are coming in the next year too.

So this is kind of the hot topic right now, but there’s going to be a lot of journalistic work left to do because of the extensive suffering that families have been through. The full history of this medical scandal is yet to be written.

There’s a documentary that I would recommend that everybody go watch on Vimeo called the Detransition Diary: Saving Our Sisters by my friend Jennifer Law. I helped on the background with that, but it’s about three women, all of whom took testosterone, one of whom got her breasts cut off, just what led them down this path. It’s a very insightful window into their inner lives, and it’s got some very effective and sort of punctuated with some really poignant commentary from people who have been in the trenches resisting this from the beginning.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:49):
Yeah. Well, thank you. Those will be some great resources that people can check out after they listen to the podcast or watch it. Brandon, I’d love for you to speak to the families for a minute. Last week I was speaking in an event and a lady came to talk to me in between after my talk, after my speech, and she said, yeah, so I’ve got a grandchild who’s going to be coming over, and the parents have instructed me that I must call him her, use the pronouns that this isn’t normal. This is what’s going on. This is the way we’re handling it. So I know there are families who right now are facing that kind of tearing apart that you’re talking about.

Brandon Showalter (24:39):
Shattered. Yes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (24:41):
Yeah. But if you think from the perspective of a young person, they’ve watched a few videos on this, they went to the doctor, they got a prescription, they’re feeling better. It’s not like they’re open to instruction at that point. They’re not prepared to hear it, and they would almost automatically reject anything that you would say. So I can see how tough this is going to be for families. Where do you even begin?

Brandon Showalter (25:16):
You begin on your knees. If you’re a Christian, you begin seeking the Lord for his counsel. I can’t pretend to give advice for every specific situation. You’re going to need the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. You’re going to need divine insight. I am of the view that you need to be as truthful as possible and resist this as much as you possibly can. Obviously, there are some calls to make and how you navigate certain holiday gatherings and how you’re going to all do this, but this is some of the most objectively harmful stuff the world’s ever seen.

So I don’t think anyone is served by lending a single iota of credence to it, particularly if they’re on the medical pathway already. You need to nip this in the bud and say no, because yes, I interviewed someone the other day whose son fully believes that he can change his DNA with hormones.

(26:05):
He absolutely believes that he’s been indoctrinated into this nonsense and he believes a lie. So you need to push back against that lie and tell people the uncomfortable truth, even if there may not be in a petition to receive that if they get mad at you, okay, but you are literally trying to spare them from a lifetime of irreversible harm. What’s happening to children?

If people could hear the screams and the whales and the tears and the sobs that I do, or they see the pictures of the broken and disfigured bodies in their inbox like I do, I’ve felt like a crazy man for the last several years dealing with this, but I just can’t tolerate nonsense. No, you can express your masculinity or your femininity. There are norms that you don’t really have to abide by. If you have stereo-atypical interests for a boy or a girl, fine, great.

(26:54):
There’s nothing wrong with your body. No one has ever been or ever. No one has ever been or ever will be born in the wrong body. It’s a lie. And people have got to tell the truth. So in terms of what should a grandparent do? Seek the Lord, but register their resistance. And there’s no easy way out of this.

I mean, there are grandparents that I know who, because they have refused to go along with this, they haven’t seen their grandchildren in years, and it’s excruciating suffering. That may be the path ahead for some of you. I’m not going to pretend that this isn’t hard. It is. But someone has to tell the truth to these children. Someone has to.

Dr. Jeff Myers (27:33):
I think that’s really powerful. If you knew that your grandchild was blindly running out on the street looking one direction when a car was coming from the other direction.

Brandon Showalter (27:43):
You’d move hell in high water to make them stop.

Dr. Jeff Myers (27:45):
You would stop.

Brandon Showalter (27:46):
This is no different.

Dr. Jeff Myers (27:47):
Yeah. Okay. Well, that’s really helpful. Now, I think there are a lot of things to navigate about that. That’s why we’re writing an ebook on this, and we’re going to try to put that out, that we can cover everything at once, but we definitely have collected all of the big questions that people are asking, and we’ll at least give some kind of answer to it. Now, there are people who say, see, I look at the rapid growth of transgender oriented young people because how many now are in treatment for using the puberty blockers? It could be tens of thousands, could be.

Brandon Showalter (28:24):
We don’t really know.

Dr. Jeff Myers (28:25):
We have no idea. But we know it’s at least three times what it was just a couple of years ago. There have been enough studies. Yeah, it’s growing fast, but there are a lot of young people in schools who if you don’t identify as transgender, you’re not cool anymore. It’s grown that fast. Whether people are really serious about it or whether it’s just a fad is a little difficult to discern. But I remember hearing, I think it was John Oliver, talking about this saying, well, it’s just like left-handedness that it was suppressed for a long time, and that’s why it’s all coming out now.

Brandon Showalter (29:07):
That’s a lie, by the way. Well, and our comedians are so disgusting. I mean, people have so much, I mean, what these gender actors will say is people like me have blood on their hands because I don’t support this and I don’t apologize for my unequivocal condemnation of these unethical practices, and I will not back down. And so I don’t care what they say about me. A lot of them expect me to say that because I’m a conservative leaning white male Christian. So it reinforces their narrative that people like me oppose this.

But let me tell you, the people that I have met in this space span the spectrum. Racial minorities are really opposed to this. I mean, I have a black left wing atheist friend, a journalist who’s like, we can smell the eugenics train roll into the town. We know this is not right, and this is not broadly supported in the public, but our elites love it, and they push this, and I suspect money and ideology and other perverted aims are what’s driving them.

(30:06):
And the comedians that just, they look at you with that mocking, oh, it gets me so hot under the collar, just watching that arrogance push this abuse on young people, and they gaslight anybody who objects as though they’re some sort of bigot or whatever. No, I think that you do have to be grounded in knowing that science human beings are sexually nothing wrong with your body. And this notion that it’s just like left-handedness or that it was just sort of suppressed all along, or we just didn’t know that it’s all propaganda.

The movement to medicalize children and in event a monopoly of however many dozens of gender options there are 72 at my last count or whatever. To what end is this, what is this really about? I mean, we’re in a society now where gender norms have been broken down so much. And look, like I said a moment ago, if you have atypical interests, you like the color pink, if you’re a guy or blue, if you’re a girl or your hobbies don’t exactly fit into the stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, fine.

(31:23):
Again, don’t disfigure or irreparably alter your body in pursuit of something that’s physically impossible. No one is served by lies in medicine and the ideological capture of these groups that I also mentioned a moment ago, no, if you’re grounded in biology, you’re grounded in material reality.

And if you’re a Christian, if you’re grounded in the reality of Genesis one, that we were made male and female and God’s image and that that’s not a mistake, don’t buy into the religion of narcissism. As my executive editor likes to say, this is the epitome of the God of the self. And it’s as though you’re telling God that he made a mistake when he made you male or female. No, God doesn’t make mistakes. He doesn’t make mistakes when he’s forming children. And this is a demonic assault on the image of God and every person.

Dr. Jeff Myers (32:10):
Brandon, as you look at the media, and you mentioned what happened in Colorado Springs where people at an LGBTQ friendly nightclub were killed by an attacker.

Brandon Showalter (32:23):
Yes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (32:24):
And many others were shot. Lots of injured people who are recovering from that right now. Where is the balance? Because it only took two days for the narrative to turn from. We are really heartbroken by this too. And it’s not so much in Colorado Springs as it is a national narrative kind of coming into our town from outside saying that this is because of hate. I think it started, actually, well, the White House reinforced this.

Brandon Showalter (32:56):
Well, they did this with Pulse. They did with this pulse nightclub too. No, this is all Christian’s fault for not capitulating. Yes. That’s the narrative.

Dr. Jeff Myers (33:04):
So we want to care. How do you express that caring and what do you say in response to the narrative that is using this somehow to push the idea that this is a nation overwhelmed with hate? The hate is because of Christians holding to traditional marriage.

Brandon Showalter (33:28):
Just refuse to be bullied and reach out to your neighbors and do whatever you can to serve the victims in earnestness, and take them casseroles. Like, ask how you can help show unconditional love like Jesus would, but don’t be bullied by the media. Understand that they are despicable liars. A lot of them are. They have an agenda. They’re pathological serial liars. It’s some of the worst. I mean, I work in media. I know how they have no shame.

I mean, they are champions of the sexual revolution and the goal of the sexual revolution, I’m just going to say it, is to murder the church. They want us out completely neutralized with no influence. They oppose marriage because it is the icon of God’s love. They hate it, destroy marriage, destroy Christianity. That’s their goal. That sounds hyperbolic, but it’s not the devil wages war on marriage and traditional sexual ethics because it images forth God in a way that nothing else does.

(34:27):
That’s what he froths in. His fury is just ferocious over that. So refuse to back down, show the unconditional love to your LGBT identified neighbors and invite them into your home. Love them. I’ve got friends who identify among that alphabet, and I’ve had them at my dinner table. I really have. I’m not making this up. I mean, I am not afraid. I’m not a homophobe, but I refuse to lend any kind of serious, reasonable belief in any of that narrative because it’s just stupid.

And no, and marriage is not something I’m willing to compromise on as a Christian. You can’t get Genesis one wrong without getting the entire gospel wrong. Marriage and sexual ethics is not a secondary or a tertiary matter, doctrinal matter. This is not an agree to disagree territory about particularities of how you like to worship or whatever. Whether you’re more liturgical or low church, whatever. No, you can’t get marriage wrong without getting the gospel wrong.

So I’m not in any way going to bend to that kind of lie that’s being put out there by the legacy press. You have to understand that they have a sinister agenda and it’s very destructive. But again, at the same time, love your LGBT neighbors. You can do both. Resist the lies and love your neighbors.

Dr. Jeff Myers (35:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s really good. Yeah, love others, tell the truth. Yeah.

Brandon Showalter (35:49):
We live in that tension. That’s a tension we live in.

Dr. Jeff Myers (35:52):
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Okay. I think that’s really helpful. So I wanted to mention something that you kind of brought up a couple of times, and that is how much of what we think of as the transgender agenda is based on cultural stereotypes. So this is a stereotype of what a woman is, and then you watch, say a drag show person, and they actually aren’t refuting the stereotype. They’re enacting it and even furthering it. How much of this is sort of laid at the feet here in America? This is almost a uniquely American problem, and it’s almost uniquely a social media.

Brandon Showalter (36:37):
It’s global. It’s especially here. But yes, it’s everywhere. It’s in Canada, it’s in Europe, it’s in places you wouldn’t expect it to be, but it is especially bad in America. Yes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (36:45):
Okay. And then it’s also a social media issue.

Brandon Showalter (36:48):
Very much so.

Dr. Jeff Myers (36:48):
I remember one gender studies professor saying, if we didn’t have social media, we would not have this.

Brandon Showalter (36:54):
I believe that. Yes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (36:56):
Okay.

Brandon Showalter (36:57):
Right. So stereotypes, this is stereotypes on steroids literally. And as I’ve spoken with very left wing feminist and lesbian friends, some of whom have been at my brunch and dinner table, they hate this stuff because these men who appropriate womanhood, they fetishize it.

And there’s this condition called autogynephilia, which is kind of a type of gender dysphoria. I don’t even like to call it that, but it’s a fetish where they sort of fall in love with themselves as a woman. It’s very bizarre. It’s not well understood, but they somehow believe that by putting on these garish outfits and makeup that somehow makes them a woman. And it’s very regressive and insulting and demeaning to women, many of whom are gender non-conforming, but they’ve got female biology, and that’s all it requires to be a woman. Again, you might have atypical interests for your sex.

(37:49):
You’re still a woman. You can’t change your biology. And radical feminists rightly detest this kind of thing because it’s as though being a woman is just a costume and she’s reduced to an idea. JK Rowling has said as much that she finds this so offensive that these trans activists are somehow claiming to be women on the basis of these superficial notions.

No, a woman’s body is a wondrous thing. It generates new life. Eve is the crown of creation. The idea that a man can somehow put artificial body parts on or put on clothes that are stereotypically worn by women and then by virtue of that claim to be female is insane. And it’s misogynistic. There’s no other way to put it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (38:36):
Yeah. Well, I appreciate your addressing that. Thank you for your candor and talk about all of this. We’ve got to do another show sometime about biblical aspects of masculinity and femininity that counter the stereotypes without objectifying and furthering them. So that’ll be a topic for another day. But I really appreciate your time today.

Brandon Showalter (38:59):
Yeah, and I think it’s important that we do that because I mean, I was not exactly the most gender conforming kid as a child. I preferred music over sports as a boy, and in America sports are kind of, oh, well you’re a man. You play sports. I didn’t. I like the color pink. I wear a pink shirt every once in a while. It’s fine.

So it’s good to unpack those things because I think especially in more conservative, small, low orthodox Christian circles, some of those gender norms can get reinforced in ways that aren’t really helpful at all. And people need to know that it is. These things demand a truly biblical response and that it’s absolutely great if you want to express your masculinity in what may seem to some in a more feminine manner, but it’s actually just know it’s who God made you to be the fullness of your manhood in womanhood in Christ and let that be that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (39:48):
Yeah, man. Good stuff. Okay. Alright. Thanks, Brandon. I really am grateful for your time.

Brandon Showalter (39:54):
Thank you. Good to be with you.

Dr. Jeff Myers (39:56):
Thank you to my guest, Brandon Showalter, for joining on the Dr. Jeff Show podcast today. You can find out more about Brandon’s work at christianpost.com, and also you can find out about the podcast he mentioned called Generation Indoctrination. You can look at that at Christian Post or you can just Google Generation Indoctrination. The Apostle Paul said, it’s in Christ that we live and move and have our be. That’s where our identity ultimately needs to be rooted. Otherwise, we are guaranteed confusion. Thank you for joining the show today. We’ll see you next week.

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