Rick Green [00:00:07] This is the intersection of faith and the culture. It's WallBuilders, where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. It's Good News Friday, so we're gonna 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. But let's get into some good new. We're here with David Barton. He is America's premier historian and our founder at Wall Builder. 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. David, get us started, brother. 

David Barton [00:00:41] Okay, the first one I got is pretty short, pretty quick. It is a decision just handed down from the Supreme Court or at least a ruling handed down. There wasn't a whole lot of explanation with it. There was a little bit of commentary from the two sides. It was a 6-3 decision and it dealt with a Trump policy that he initiated that said that on US passports, the passport holder the identification of their sex on the passport has to correspond to what they biologically are. And so there were groups like the ACLU that said, no, no, just whatever you call yourself, whatever identity you want to choose, that you can put that on the passport, you can identify however you want. And so now remember passport is a security item in the sense that we want to make sure exactly who's coming into the country. So I mean- 

Tim Barton [00:01:33] Yeah, I mean, dad, what- What could go wrong if someone comes in looking like a lady and really is a man and you don't know who they are? I mean, come on!  What what possibly could happen? That could maybe lead to something negative? I mean like this should be a no-brainer. It's it's almost as obvious as saying we don't need to have a border and boundaries and like just leave the southern border open Right, like what's worse to happen? Terrorists come in like that would never happen. Right?  Like How do people not recognize the obviousness of this situation? The fact that it's even disputed is mind-boggling, but it sounds like at least the good news is the Supreme Court came down on the side of common sense. 

David Barton [00:02:13] No, no, you ask, how can anybody not recognize this situation? I'm going to take you back to our most recent Supreme Court hearing. Wasn't there a question somewhere in that hearing that dealt with being able to identify gender? And it seems like that there was a current Supreme Court justice that wasn't sure what a gender was. So as you can imagine, that was one of the descending justices to this opinion. It was. 

Tim Barton [00:02:39] Yeah, I'm not,  I'm not a biologist. I'm not a scientist. I'm not sure. I mean, yeah. Oh yeah. It's a good point! Because that was utterly ridiculous. When someone who is literally about to become a Supreme Court justice was going to play the political game and say, I don't know what a woman is as she was a woman sitting there through that process. 

David Barton [00:02:59] You know, and is highly trained as she is, she had so much extra education because of all the law school and all the other stuff. How in the world is just a simple immigration official supposed to be able to determine gender if a Supreme Court justice can't? I mean, this this really could be something really quick. All right. Enough sarcasm. So back to things at hand. Here's what the six justices of the Supreme Court said. This is a quote that says, displaying passport holders sex at birth, no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth. In both cases, the government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to deferential treatment. So if you gotta put your country of birth, that's just as concrete as saying what your sex is or your gender is, and no one gets discriminated by that, and that was a 6-3 ruling by the court. Now, this is kind of a funny part. So the ACLU, who was on the other side of this, had argued that the policy was unconstitutional and that forcing someone to use a passport that differs from their self-identified sex could expose them to psychological harm. Now, if I can identify myself any way I want to, and it's not binding on anybody else, or in other words, they have to be bound by what my opinion is of myself, I can do so many things that I've never been able to do before If I could simply get by all the legal authorities out there, but really self-defining. Okay enough sarcasm. So but the good news is the Supreme Court came down today with the common-sense 6-3 decision. The crazy news is it's not it was not a 9-0 decision But at least we won this thing over gender identity on passport. So that's good news Tim next piece of good news 

Tim Barton [00:04:47] All right, guys, yeah, I am going to start with a headline. This is 70% of Americans say Democrats are out of touch. Now, as we already talked about earlier in the week, based on some elections that happened this week, you know, I, even though the majority of Americans might say Democrats out of time, I don't know that the majority of American showed up, for example, the New York city mayoral race  in the Virginia governor race, the Virginia attorney general race. So it is worth noting that even though statistics like this do mean something It doesn't always indicate what's going to happen when it comes to elections and for a variety of reasons. But, I will say this poll at least indicates something positive, It does say 70% of Americans say Democrats are out of touch and specifically It looked at some of the Democrat Party's positions like abortion up to birth the rhetoric on issues like the LGBTQ stuff has alienated a lot of Americans and so it's It's the extreme positions they've taken on some of these topics and issues. Now, again, the reason it matters is when they look at the extremities of where Democrats go, they say, Oh, I don't support that at all. And yet, you know, guys, politically we've seen how what has happened this week would indicate that even though the majority of Americans do not agree with the, the extreme position Democrats have taken, It is not cause them to come back and say, well, but we will not, you know, we will stop supporting them and start supporting somebody else. They haven't come that far, but the polling does go through and show some trends from 2013 all the way to 2024, where the share of Americans seeing the party as too liberal climbed from 47% to 55% on average with public polling, while the perception of Republicans as too conservative dipped slightly, which is interesting. Because the majority of Americans, the numbers saying Republicans are too conservative, that's come down. And the majority Americans and the polling again, climbing saying that Democrats are too liberal. So republicans are not as conservative, number one, and Democrats are more liberal, number two. Which maybe does say, maybe as conservatives, we should stop playing to the middle quite so much. Maybe have some courage and stand for something, right? To learn a Charlie Kirk lesson. Even in the middle of the lion's den, you don't appease to what you know to be incorrect or immoral. You say, no, guys, this is, this has not complicated that there's gender. There's male and female are a real thing, right? That an unborn human child is in fact an unborn, human child, and they deserve the right to life, et cetera. I think that maybe this is a critique on republicans as much as it is positive that the majority of Americans are saying, Hey, Democrats are out of I think now it's a question of what do we do with it? But guys, I do think it matters in the grand scheme of things is we're talking about, you know, what lessons do we take away from some of the Tuesday night election results and what does that mean? I think this polling actually gives us some good indication that the majority of Americans are not supportive of so many of the extremes of the Democrat party and yet with that being said. If, if conservatives, Christians, or in this case, other political party Republicans, if they don't start having courage and stepping up and stepping forward, then you don't maximize the majority of Americans thinking Democrats are out of touch. So I do think it says something about what the playbook should be, that we should be more emboldened, more courage to step forward and say things knowing that the majority of American's disagree with where things are. So this is good news where the majority Americans are, but it's really a question of what do we do with it? So it's good news with maybe a question mark of how far will this good news take us? Do we do something with it or. If not, if Republicans are becoming less conservative, which is again what the Americans are saying Democrats are too liberal Republicans are not too conservative then we got to be more conservative as the Americans, are recognizing that Democrats have become far too liberal 

David Barton [00:09:08] You know, going back to Trump's campaign when he was running this time before the election,  and he ran on some of the LGBTQIA stuff and people said, oh man, that's really dangerous. You know the nation has really moved in that direction and you're beating up on it and he kept saying, it's a 70/30 issue, it was a 70/30 issue. And he kept harping on it and consultants that were in the media said this is a bad move and you know, so he wins. So it turns out polling after the election, it was a 70/30 issue. It was one that definitely went his way. And I remember earlier this year, and I think I mentioned it earlier a few weeks back, but when he did that event, the Bible museum, we were there with, with, what that event and he, and he said, you know, this, this, these things is, and it was looking at some kids that had been discriminated against because their Christian faith was pretty clear on what the genders were and they had gotten in trouble at school. And he said, this is a 70/30 issue. And then he stopped himself and he said no, it's not. It's a 90/10 issue. And I think it really has become more in that direction. And so the next piece of news I got actually kind of affirms that. And so, the study was done by the Foundation for Individual Rights. They're out of Philadelphia. They contracted with a group at the University of Buckingham up in Canada. It's called the Center for Heterodox Social Science. And the title of the study is called the decline of trans and queer identity among young Americans. Now, I've got to just comment on that for a minute. You know, it wasn't what, five, six years ago that if you use the word queer in any kind of fashion and describing gender, man, that was a really negative pejorative. That was a hate term. And now here they are using that and applying it within that only community, which I find very interesting. But nonetheless, here's what they said. They said, more American college students see themselves as heterosexual now than in recent years. The number of people identifying as trans or non-binary are, which really, there's kind of, he said there's no difference between those two. It's like splitting hairs. He said, but that number began rising in the year 2010. So in the 2010, the number of students identifying as transsexual or nonbinary started up and it went up all the way through 2013. So we're talking 13 years of increase. And since 2013, it's dropped by nearly half. So in the last two years, it has dropped by nearly half after growing for 13 years, which that's a really quick turnaround, down about 50%. And so seeing that number come down, and it was about 7% of students who identified as transgender on college campuses. Now it's down to about 3%, you know, maybe 4%  it's that three to four range in there. But that's a really big turnaround, which kind of goes to the other two stories we've already talked about today to some degree, where there is a turn kind of going right now. And this has typically been a Democrat affiliate type of group or Democrats with this group. And if indeed Democrats are kind of moving in a different direction, this would be an indication that it might have impact in the upcoming election, but certainly it's good news that that number has diminished by almost 50% in the last two years. 

Rick Green [00:12:20] Hey guys, we're gonna take a quick break. Stay with us, folks. We've got more good news for you when we return. You're listening to WallBuilders. 

Rick Green [00:14:31] Good news Friday today. Thanks for staying with us. Let's jump into some more good news. Tim Barton with the next piece of good news, Tim. 

Tim Barton [00:14:36] Yeah, I want to jump into a, a report from Barna Group, and it says for the first time, men outnumber women in church attendance. Now guys, y'all are older than me. You have probably been to more church services than I have. Although as a kid, I feel like that wasn't possible for anybody to have gone more church service than I had because I was in every church service there was.  I didn't always think about the fact that my parents were the ones taking me to the church services or my grandparents taking me to church services. So the rest of my family was probably there as much as I was at least, but we were always in church and it was not unusual and common, especially when I was in high school back in the nineties, when you went to youth group, there were some guys there for sure, but generally, there were way more girls that were around in the church. There were a lot more ladies in the church than there were men in the church. And obviously there were married couples and there were definitely men around, but it was, it was far more common to see women more engaged. And you saw more women around. This is so interesting. Part of the article, it says, this is a reversal 25 years in the making in the early 2000s, women attended church at a far higher rate than men. Over time, female participation steadily declined while men's remained relatively stable. Now guys, it's interesting because the first trend we see is that women stopped going to church at the same rate while men maintained. So already what we're seeing is it's not that a lot more men have gone, but that women stopped going as consistently, that's that's leading up since 2000, but in 2019 Attendance among young adults, especially young men has surged. So now we've gone from just women not going as much or not as many women going to now men, specifically, young men since 2019 is surging guys. We've talked for a while about being in a revival or maybe even like a third grade awakening kind of scenario. And this is not just something, right, since Charlie Kirk, obviously at  his memorial service which was basically the biggest televised church service in American history, incredible! Right? Estimates are what they think 100 million live streams that was happening or 100 million people that viewed it whatever it was? Just incredible how many people saw it and have seen it since then.  Well over a billion people they think have seen part of that service, maybe closer to two billion that have watched it. Whatever that number was, incredible. But the reason I bring it up is that the increase in church attendance, that didn't happen since Charlie was murdered back in September. This has been going on since 2019. There has been an increase in incredible stuff. Now, because it's a Barna Group and they do a lot of data, they did a deep dive into part of why women are are leaving the church. And also just guys as a side note as we're kind of data dumping on some of this, it is interesting, that women, and I think it was 18 to 29 year olds, that voted in the New York city mayoral election. It was like 80 something percent that voted for Mandami. And, and so when you look at young men and young women, young men are turning to faith. And young women are drinking the woke Kool-Aid,  you know, the, the Taylor Swift album, whatever it is, they are going so far in a secular direction. And this is not just the decline of church sentence and women. Cause obviously if they're 18, 29 year old and there's been a decline happening since 2000, uh these people weren't alive in 2000, many of them. So they're not the reason it's declining. So there are other things as well. Now, with that being said, the really positive news is one of the things that has been tracked is that when men are going to church, and especially when it's a father, if the father goes to church the family's more likely to go to church. If the father goes to church, the family goes to church and the kids are much more likely to be people of faith. And so the family faith much more is reflective in the father's faith statistically, we know the fathers have a great influence. And so it does give hope, that not only will there be a great impact from those individual young men coming to church, but certainly what it could mean for the increase of families. Which also in some of this data gets into,  families with married dads,  rising single moms are falling behind, which means marriage rates are going up, as opposed to the expansion and growth of single moms, et cetera. So there's lots of really interesting, good data in here by the Barna Group. And it's actually very, a long, breakdown of this I'm reading through as we go overall though, guys, I will say this is such good news, super encouraging. We talked about it now, probably a couple of years seeing the increase of young men attending church and the fact that right now there are more Gen Z people attending church than any other generation. There are more young people in church than in any other generation in church from Gen Z. And The majority of Gen Z that are attending church are young men. So bodes very well that it's the young men are the ones that are turning to church, turning to faith. And again, it bodes well because when, when fathers are engaged in faith, when fathers are engage in church, the percentage of the family and the kids following in that father's footsteps are far higher than if it's just the mom engaged. So lots of, of positive things thinking in the future, what this might mean for some of the social structure, for some leadership kind of things. But overall, a really cool report from the Barna Group. And it's for the first time, if people want to look this up later, for the First Time Men Outnumber Women in Church Attendance. That is really great news. 

Rick Green [00:20:37] Yeah, Tim, I don't know if that study will so far as to say, OK, with church attendance, how that affects all elections, which, of course, affects the community. I know we've talked about that in years past. Seems like it's something like, you know, literally like the number one indicator of how somebody's going to vote is whether or not they're in church on a regular basis. So the idea that dads are now attending are more likely to attend, and therefore the family's attending, downstream, that's going to mean a lot for the community 

Tim Barton [00:21:02] Yeah, this one doesn't track that specifically. It does track church attendance, but not necessarily, uh, voting patterns from it. But Rick, I remember that same study ,Dad. It might've been something that, it seems like it could have been part of U-turn maybe, what was the one you did with, Jim Garlow, 

David Barton [00:21:20] This Precarious Moment. 

[00:21:22] That's the one that's This Precarious Moment. It was, it seemed like it was in one of those books, but it was, I think a George Barna survey or study. And it was not just attending church, but the frequency of church attendance. So the more often you attended a month, the more likely you were to vote conservative and the less you attended church, the more likely, you were two vote liberal, was I think that the, the polling data, so I don't remember what that exact breakdown was. If you attend a church, at least once a month you were, you know, probably voting conservative or if it was twice a month. But I do remember the more, often you attend it, the more likely were to vote on conservative issues. And by saying conservative issues, right, at that point you're talking about things like believing marriage is a man and woman and traditional marriage and things that it's odd that people would say well, those are these far-right conservative issues No, those were pretty basic Bible humanity issues. And so it makes sense if the more you go to church the more you hear basic truth like God created and formed us in our mother's womb, Psalm 139 lays that out. Well, the more you're in church, the more you hear basic Bible. And therefore, the more you tend to vote on some of these conservative policies and issues. So that does make sense, Rick, that's not exactly what this study covered. It was really just covering, kind of church attendance and frequency and part of their thoughts for the rise of men in church, the decline of women in church et cetera. But there definitely are parallels. Like you're pointing out. 

Rick Green [00:22:50] Well that's going to be one to watch guys because that'll obviously have a long-term effects as well. David What's the next piece of good news today? 

David Barton [00:22:56] Well, I've got one that deals with abortion and just to be real frank, we haven't had a whole lot of articles that we could have had on the abortion issue that appear to be good news. I've had so many articles come across my desk on how many Planned Parenthood clinics have closed down, how many states now have no abortion clinics in them at all. And I haven't covered that on good news because while the headline sounds really good, it doesn't mean the number of abortions in the state have gone down. They've just not been surgical. They moved to chemical. And so the mail order abortion pills, that's up. And so, the number of abortions is still way too high. It's just that Planned Parenthood has been going out of business because they were funded so much by the federal government, by Democrats. So it doesn't mean that abortion is down, but actually, although I haven't covered those other stories, this is one I did cover because it has some unique features in it. The ad line says Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton busts illegal abortion clinic ring. And this is after several months of investigation. And it deals with rings down in South Texas and Houston. And they're still performing surgical, physical abortions there. It just turns out that it wasn't doctors doing it. There was a midwife who called herself Dr. Maria Maria Rojas, and she had trained a bunch of other women and they were running a chain of abortion clinics down there and doing physical abortions. And so they've now been charged with practicing medicine without a license. All of these folks from this perspective, it has now shut down that line of clinics that's down there. And I do think that that's really good news. I mean, we've always known that abortion is dangerous anyway, we know what it does. And in so many studies we have, it is unequivocal. I saw some more studies this week, abortion has a really high tendency to increase breast cancer and increase other health effects two three four eight years down the road. I mean, there's still so many negative consequences. But that's an immediate danger when you have someone who's not a physician doing actual surgery on somebody and they haven't been trained for that. That's just not a good deal. So I really appreciate Ken Paxton and he's been pro-life all the way. He's very strong with that. He's enforced our Texas laws, but these are people trying to get around the fact that that Texas is a pro-life state. We have shut down abortion clinics. We've not fully been able to keep the mail-in pills out of here. Although we passed some good legislation this cycle to help do that and he's starting to enforce that so that you can't send that mail-in pill to Texas. But there's some good things going to Texas pro-life wise. That's for sure 

Tim Barton [00:25:38] And, Dad, one of the things you pointed out is that there's legislation we've passed in Texas. That's actually something that we are also working on this year at the Pro Family Legislative Conference, which is coming up just in a couple of days next week. And so everybody listening, we'd love for your prayers for that, for all the ideas that are going to come out of that, the things that are going to happen in states to help protect innocent life, protect inalienable rights. We can kind of go down that list, but certainly this is one of those topics that not only has there been really great pro-life legislation come because of our Pro-Family Legislative Conference, but there's a lot of good stuff coming as well. So hopefully we'll have some really good and creative ideas of what we can do to curb the evils of abortion even more in this nation. 

Rick Green [00:26:21] Alright guys, we are not going to get anywhere near through the stack of good news that you've piled up from the last few weeks, so we'll dive into more of that next week. Thank you for listening. Share the program with your friends and family, and join us in being salt and light in the community. Biblical values. That's where all the answers are, right there in God's Word, and you can be the one to apply that in your community. Thanks so much for listening today. You've been listening to WallBuilders.