Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and the Culture. It's Wall Builders and we're talking about today's hottest topics on policy, faith and the culture, always looking at it from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. It's Good News Friday, so we're going to be bringing you some good news throughout the program today. You can get more of that at our website, wallbuilderslive.com. Now that's our radio site, so that's the place to go for archives of the program over the last few weeks, and that'll also give you a chance at constitutioncoach.com to sign up as a host and start hosting classes to help save our Constitution.

Folks, we're not just defending the Constitution anymore, we're not just educating about it. We're literally fighting for the life of the Constitution. But let's get into some good news. We're here with David Barton. He is America's premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders. Tim Barton's a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders and my name is Rick Green. I'm a former Texas legislator and America's Constitution coach Looking forward to our Good News Friday today. All right, guys, let's jump into that good news. David Barton's up first. First piece of good news, sir.

David Barton

Well, the first has to do with film and imagery and Hollywood coming out of Hollywood. So I'm going to ask a question. This is based in the article here Today. Do you think there's more sex and nudity in movies or less sex and movie than, say, in the last 24 years? Where's sex and nudity in movies today, compared for the last 24 years, up or down?

Rick Green

Tim, do you get the feeling this is a trick question? I? think it's a trick question. 

Tim Barton

Well, okay, I mean it's got to be a trick question because I'm going to say it's way more. But specifically, I'm going to say it's way more because, oh, you know what you said, Hollywood didn't you?

David Barton

Just movies, take major movies.

Tim Barton

When you're looking at

Rick Green

 he's setting us up. Tim, he's setting us up. Tim, he's setting us up. I'm telling you 

Tim Barton

yeah, because I'm thinking I mean right, when you look at it's too obvious.

Well, but some of the shows that have been popular, like Game of Thrones, where some of my friends we jokingly referred to it as like Game of Porn, because all it was was like nude people all over, and so we didn't watch it, and so definitely I would feel like the culture has become very desensitized. It's a very pornography, accepting nudity, accepting culture. So I would certainly think that that's become very common in movies.

Rick Green

You were on the nuance, though, when you said how'd you put it? Because I think that's streaming right, that's streaming on Netflix.

I bet.

David's talking Hollywood movies in the theater. I see the smile on his face. He knows he's busted. He thought he had us. We were going to say, oh, it's way more than it used to be. But, Tim, let's combine our answers. So you're saying way more than it used to be on streaming, but I bet in the movie theaters it's less. And he said 24 years. So there's something here. 

David Barton

This study goes back for 24 years, so you've got that opinion. So now let me ask you back for 24 years, so you've got that opinion. So now let me ask you let's take portrayal of drugs, violence and profanity. Take those 

Rick Green

plus, it's good news friday.

 So that's the other reason I know I'm getting set up here.

David Barton

You're what a psychoanalyst here, man who gave you your degree for psychobabble. You got psychobabble going here

Rick Green

 I'm ruining good news.

You had a great good news story for us and I'm ruining it by overanalyzing it.

David Barton

Well, I've given you four. So sexually explicit content and then drugs, and then violence, and then profanity. So those four, up or down on all of them, Choose each one. What do you think?

Rick Green

Way worse culturally, maybe not as bad, in the whatever segmented part of the culture you're getting your study from.

Tim Barton

Well, and what's funny, Rick too, is I'm thinking, wait a second. We have like John Wick and things out now, right, where you know all he does is go through and shoot people or even some of the kind of across the board it's a dead pool and you know all these f words that are used and all the death. But then I think back and go you know what braveheart there was a lot of blood and death, and braveheart too, and I was. That's been more than 24 years ago.

That's true. So like how's the measurement? How are they? Okay, we just have to get the answer now well, it's good news friday.

so what? We know what the answer is going to be. I'm just not sure how, what the metrics were, how the measurements were, but yes, there's going to be good news coming. We already spoiler. It's like we've read the back of the book of the Bible. We know what's coming. It's going to be good. So what is the good news?

David Barton

Well, first off, with drugs, it's the same as it was 24 years, last 24 years. The incidence of positive drug use in films is the same as it was. When it comes to violence, incidence of violence, it's the same percentage.

Tim Barton

So what you're saying is there's no increase, so there could be good news by the fact we're not promoting more drugs and more violence. That could be good news.

David Barton

You could say that the third area is profanity. It's about the same as it was. However, when it comes to explicit sexual imagery, it's dropped 40% since 1924. Wow, so explicit sexual imagery in movies had dropped 40%. Now Tell me why.

Rick Green

Well, I was going to say on the drug use thing, it's because 80, 80 of all drug use and all entertainment was in breaking bad and the rest was all the other.

I don't know man, I don't know the answer 

Tim Barton

so the answer to why there's less nudity in movies is because they're showing less of it.

David Barton

Oh yeah. So what is driving the? That's a good answer, right, you ought to run for office. No, wait a minute. Rick already did that.

Speaker 2: 5:30

So what is driving the decline in that one area?

Rick Green

I feel like Tim's answer was about the passage of time and how the time is passing.

Tim Barton

We're trying to be unburdened by what has been.

Unburdened by what has been.

Rick Green

 People at home that have never listened to us before are going. What are these guys talking about?

Tim Barton

Obviously, if it is down, it's because they're seeing something in the market, something in the demand, that is down. there has to be some nuance, because we're seeing a rise in the pornography pervasiveness and culture, but it's not in movies. I would be so interested to hear from someone who can give us a deeper dive into some of that. What's there, but why it's not in movies? It's only because then people that are buying those tickets or people that are working promoting something around that industry, they're not in favor of it in movies. So I'm not sure what that demographic is, but certainly they're following to some extent where the market is and where the money is.

David Barton

So let me take you through. This is done by the Economist. So the big national group, national magazine, news, et cetera, the Economist did this study. So they said that what happens right now? It says that a fourth of all those polled, of all ages, say that sex and nudity have no place in movies and TV today. So that's a quarter of all polled. Nearly half, believe that such scenes are either always or nearly always unnecessary for the movie. So we're not going to take it out, but it's just not necessary. And then 10% thought that nudity improved the experience. So you've got just a tiny fraction at 10% said it makes movies better.

But here's the big deal. So when you come to millennials, 26% of millennials reported ditching a movie when the clothes came off. So that's that. You know, that's what is that? Now, 40% of the demographic is millennials and under. So that millennial group, that Gen Y group, you have 26%. Now here's the big one 43% of Gen Z will turn off something because of a graphic sex scene. It is purely the Gen Z population, on this one issue, that's driving the visuals down. It's very interesting.

Tim Barton

Well, and also it's interesting because that's probably the larger percentage of movie goers are usually younger people, are usually younger people. So if younger people 25 to 50%, depending on that age range are saying we don't want to see that and we will get up and walk out of a movie if that's in there, that definitely can be impactful. And again, super interesting because we do know that from some of the studies from, unfortunately again, the pervasiveness of pornography, from some of the studies from, unfortunately again, the pervasiveness of pornography, that in culture there's been such a breakdown of morals, especially in the rising generation, when it comes to pornographic things, that they don't have the same moral distaste for pornography that previous generations had and yet they don't want to see it in their movies Again, fascinating generations had, and yet they don't want to see it in their movies Again, fascinating. But that is great news that the movies coming out of Hollywood are not as pornographic, are not as graphic in the sex, the nude areas as they have been, and so that's really good news.

David Barton

Well, it's interesting too, because they looked further with the younger groups and said that this was not being driven by religious or moral values per se in the sense of traditional religious faith, and that used to be what drove a lot of this.

So this is a much more secular generation, the Gen Z, and yet they're much more modest, as it turns out, in many areas, and it's not a result of faith influencing them. This is something they don't accept, of faith influencing them. They just this is something they don't accept, and we've talked before, and we've seen polling before, where they feel like they should be tolerant and accept everybody, but they themselves don't necessarily like it, and so it's the kind of thing where they're tolerant of everybody's behavior. It's a very sexualized generation schools, everything else, LGBTQIA plus 81 genders, but not for me and so it's a really strange demographic. But the bottom line is Hollywood movies that are coming out are now less likely to have graphic sex scenes in the open sex scenes, because particularly that Gen Z demographic is driving that down, which is super interesting. But it's good news. Whatever the cause, that's good news for the culture.

Rick Green

Well and yeah, and let's not forget big picture, that's where a lot of people get their values, is their entertainment, and so anytime that moves the right direction, that's good for us downstream on the culture. So really good news, tim. How about you, man? What's your first piece of good news today?

Tim Barton

Well, this one is coming out of Yakima, Washington. I'm saying that-.

David Barton

Yakima.

Tim Barton

Yakima, yakima.

Yakima Okay.

Now, when you say Yakima I've definitely heard it that way before, but I didn't recognize it there.

David Barton

That's an Indian tribe as well.

Tim Barton

So Yakima Indians, yakima, washington Well, and that's why I recognize the name. I wanted to actually go back to one of my old favorite TV show days and say well, I've heard it both ways, but I refrained from-.

Rick Green

I was thinking, Sean, when you said that. For those that know, yes.

Tim Barton

Anyway, for those that don't know, don't worry about it, it wasn't that important. There was a Christian group in Washington state, the Union Gospel Mission of Yakima, Washington, and there was a lawsuit where the state of Washington actually passed a law against discrimination. And, generally speaking, when we hear about laws against discrimination, you think, well, that's a good thing, you passed a law against discrimination. And, generally speaking, when we hear about laws against discrimination, you think, well, that's a good thing, you shouldn't discriminate against people. Well, we needed to find some terms. What does that mean? How was this law applied? And the law was to bar employers from discriminating based on sexual orientation, so you could not prevent someone from. If someone applies, you can't narrow your search. If you're a church and say, well, at our Christian church or at our Christian ministry, at our faith-based organization, then you we believe in in men and women, we believe in boundaries and sexual relationships and we believe marriage is between a man and woman and and so if you believed in those basic things and you hired people accordingly, that's discrimination. So they had filed a lawsuit because they had to stop hiring because of the threat of prosecution that if they hired according to their faith, which they had always been able to do, that. They would be sued and they could be closed down, et cetera, et cetera. And so they filed the lawsuit.

In 2023, us District Judge Mary Kay Demke rejected the suit, saying that, look, we really don't have the authority, the authorization, it's Washington Supreme Court, it's beyond our pay grade, and so she really didn't help them, but she declined to do anything with it. Fortunately, there was a US Court of Appeals. It was a Ninth Circuit panel. They went back and reflected and said that Demke should not have turned away the case and the Union Gospel Mission has shown that it's being injured by the law by having to self-censor and there's a possibility state officials will prosecute the group if it continues to hire based on the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. The panel said that's part of how the state officials have repeatedly refused to commit to not enforcing the law against the mission. Judges said Anyway, on it goes.

The good news is this came from Alliance Defending Freedom. Their counsel, ryan Tucker, who represented the mission, said in a statement that the appeals court rightly overturned the lower court dismissal permitting the ministry to pursue protection for its constitutional rights in federal court and actually the title of the article says appeals court revives Christian case against Washington state law. So all they did was revive the case, saying that you actually can bring this suit. There is a lot and because this came from the Ninth Circuit, it's going to go through the process and we would expect Washington is a fairly liberal state with usually very liberal and secular left-leaning justices.

It would not be surprising that they do not side on the side of union gospel. But we do know, with allies defending freedom, they're not afraid to take this thing all the way to the US Supreme Court to protect the rights of religious conscience. And we do know now that there's a US Supreme Court that is very favorable to protecting the rights of religious conscience at any level. Right now this is good news that their lawsuit that had been suspended had been tossed out. They now can bring it back again to hopefully be able to continue to hire in Washington state according to their religious beliefs. So this is a piece of good news. It's not over, but seeing a federal court recognize that Christians do have legal standing to be able to follow their Christian beliefs inside of their Christian ministries, that is really good news.

Rick Green

Very good news. Quick break, guys. We'll be back with more good news. Stay us.

Break

Rick Green

Welcome back to the Wall Builder Show. Good news Friday today. And there's more on our website, so be sure and check that out at wallbuildersshow. That's wallbuildersshow for archives of the program. You can go back and look at any Friday program over the last few months and get more good news. David, you've got our next piece of good news.

David Barton

Yeah, this is kind of an entertainment piece of good news At least it was for me. I really enjoyed this. Somebody sent me a link to a brand new song that's out and I listened to it and it was really good. I really enjoyed the theme of it and thought it was worth sharing. But just Enjoyed the theme of it and thought it was worth sharing. But just backing up in entertainment for a minute. You guys all right, you're much younger than I am. Clearly Nobody has any trouble knowing who Elvis Presley is, right, everybody gets that name, even today Correct.

Who was equal with Elvis Presley in popularity at the time of Elvis Presley?

Tim Barton

 Billy Graham

David Barton

 who in music entertainment. Billy Graham's who in music entertainment would be equal as an entertainer in popularity nationally.

Rick Green

Marty Robbins, 

Tim Barton

you can't wait until I get a correct answer and then change the rules of the game. 

David Barton

Yeah, I can,

Tim Barton

 that's ridiculous.

I just did it. I just did it. 

Tim Barton

But, rick, you said Marty Robbins Now that's interesting, marty Robbins. Marty.

Robbins, johnny Cash. No, they're a little bit later, maybe I'm not having my timeline correct.

David Barton

They had popularity within a niche Talking national popularity.

Tim Barton

National popularity. A musician nationally is popular Johnny Cash didn't he have national popularity? Did he.

You're right, he was a little bit later.

David Barton

I'm going to give you some standards. 50 million records sold, 38 top 40 hits for actually 10-year, for actually a 40-year period, over 40 years. He was the top charting artist for 40 years, between 1955, 1995. Wow, he had 220 consecutive weeks on the Billboard top charts with one or more songs in the top charts on Billboard. So I mean I go through the stats. There's a lot more stats, really impressive national stats.

Also.

Hollywood career, a movie acting career, super popular,

Tim Barton

 bing Crosby.

David Barton

 The good guess. But no, he didn't spread that, he didn't trans that genre. This is wider than Bing Crosby.

Tim Barton

Okay, you're going to have to go ahead and tell us, because we're going to keep saying names, but clearly we're not coming up with a name you want us to.

David Barton

Pat Boone

Rick Green

 no way. Seriously. 

David Barton

Pat Boone, seriously, Wow, Pat Boone and Elvis Presley and Pat Boone is the one that breaks all the records on all the charts over time Wow. And the fact that he stays in the top for 40 years. Are you kidding me? I?

did not know that man Well.

Pat is still alive and well, still in Hollywood. We've been friends for a good while. We've done projects together and Pat's a great guy and somebody sent me recently he did a song and it sounds like one of his songs out of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. But just want to play a little minute here of the song because the message is so good about America and the strength of America and it's called when Did America Go? And it's kind of like a return to let's get America back on top again. Here it is when did America go? The land of the brave and the free? Can one generation erase a great nation? Cause we can't find a way to agree? Cause we can't find a way to agree, where has America gone? Where are Abraham Martin and John? We drowned out their voices and gave up our choices. Do we have the strength to move on? Do we have the strength to move on?

So it's a single out there. It's fun to listen to the whole thing. I'll point out I think Pat is 93 now, so that's a 93-year-old singing like. That Sounds like he's back, you know, 15, 20, 30 years ago, whenever. But it's a great song because it asks all the right questions how come. We can't get along anymore and he just drives the core. So I thought that's a really good tone to come out and it's doing really good as a single out and moving again. So just putting it out there for everybody to listen to. It's called when Did America Go by Pat Boone. You can go look it up on any platform. You can look it up on any messaging site. You'll find it.

Rick Green

You know, there's so many artists over the last couple of years that have captured this moment in time where they know the American culture is crumbling and we need to do something to rebuild it and that we're at an inflection point. And, man, it's just been great to see that, of course, we've got John Rich with his Revelation video and Aaron Lewis with Am I the Only One? I mean, I think this is good. Culture needs to reflect where we're at at this moment, because it does move people to action when they hear those things. So, tim, you get to close us out today with a good piece of good news.

Tim Barton

Well, this one I am looking at dealing with Texas. It says Meta agrees to pay Texas one point four billion dollar settlement in biometric data lawsuit. Biometric data lawsuit Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Facebook or the parent company Meta for the unlawful capture of personal biometric data and I'm just reading this article trying to make sure I remember all the details and it identified more than 20 million Texans had their biometric data collected and Facebook was taking pictures and they were using it for facial recognition purposes and Texas filed a lawsuit. Now there's a lot more to this because guys, even as we're now going through airport security so often and they have those new machines that they want to take your ID and stand in front of this and it's going to do facial recognition, that they want to take your ID and stand in front of this and it's going to do facial recognition. We are in an era where I am just kind of anti a lot of the facial recognition, apart from maybe logging into my cell phone quickly and easily or getting some of my apps. I appreciate it on some level, but recognizing what AI has a capability of and what they are doing and then also not trusting so often what happens with some of these big corporations and big government, and it's a very interesting time looking at this.

Nonetheless, facebook, without permission had gone through and, according to court documents, facebook captured the biometric data through a feature known as tag suggestions, which first rolled out in 2011. The lawsuit goes through and identifies several things that have happened, but it says the conclusion Facebook was disclosing users' personal information to other entities who further explored it. So Facebook isn't only just taking it for themselves, they were sharing it more over. Facebook often failed to destroy biometric identifiers within a reasonable time, exposing Texas to ever increasing risk to their wellbeing, safety and security. The conclusion of the article says Meta will pay the state of Texas over five years, with the first installment due within 30 days of the executed date of the agreement.

Now it's good news that there's some accountability for some of these big corporations and some of what they are doing without our consent, which also kind of crazy the era we live in when, for certain programs or apps, you click on the user agreement and there's so much detail, nobody even knows what's in their user agreement. So we're agreeing to all kinds of things that if we actually knew what it was and if we had options, we would not be willfully agreeing to some of the terms of use and agreement that we agree to. However, certainly when it comes to Facebook and we wanted to share photos of our friends and our family over the last couple of decades, none of us did it with the understanding or thought that they're going to be using this for biometric data and sharing this with other companies and organizations. So it's good news. There's accountability this with other companies and organizations. So it's good news. There's accountability.

But, guys, with all of us being Texans, I am curious With $1.4 billion coming in, does this mean that any of us can expect to check in the mail anytime soon? I feel like I got to be one of those 20 million people that have their photos wrongfully used.

So maybe we should send an email to Attorney General Ken Paxton and just say hey, if you want to distribute that money to the people that were impacted by this, here is my address. Feel free to send that my way, Corps came in.

David Barton

A lot of states picked it up. That was going to be the new educational reform. One of the things that went with it was not only online curriculum for the students, but it was doing what's called data mining, and that's what Meta was doing here. They were data mining. They were taking your personal data. You didn't give them permission to have all that, but they start mining it and then they start finding the preference for the kids and then they start selling to advertisers who will buy advertisements on Facebook and meta et cetera to target those kids for what their likes are. So they created entire profiles on you what you like, what you don't like, where you go, what you see, who your friends are and they sold that to all these outside companies to do advertising in order to come back. So it's just way too much privacy violation. We talked about that back then and public schools were doing it through Common Core and they were getting all this data on your kids way back in public school.

So this is a huge accountability thing. What was it, Tim? 1.2 or 1.4 billion? I mean, that's no small 1.4 billion. That's a great signal to all these other platforms. Leave the private data private, Stop taking the private data and selling it. It's big stuff and, by the way, this is part of the whole bigger thing of just data mining in general Biometric data, taking your personal stuff, taking who you are, what you do, what you like, who your friends are, and so this whole thing of the intrusiveness that happens through social media. This is such a good accountability for them to get slapped down, especially with such a high price tag on it. That's a good thing for all of us, preserving some of our rights of privacy as we go forward in this kind of social media kind of world that we've had for the last 10 to 15 years.

Rick Green

Thanks for listening today, folks, you've been listening to Wall Builders Live. There is more good news on our website at wallbuilderslive.com. That is also the place you can make that one-time or monthly contribution. That's also a great place for you to share the programs with your friends and family, whether it's today's or if you click on the archives, you can get shows from earlier this week or even in previous weeks. Share that with your friends and family and then also consider signing up to be one of our Constitution coaches. Right there at biblicalcitizens.com, you can get access to the class. You can join us on Monday nights and even be a part of the Q&A session that we have after the videos play. But do something in your community to help restore our constitutional republic. We've got lots of ways for you to do that. Check it out today at biblicalcitizens.com. Thanks so much for listening to WallBuilders.