 Good afternoon everyone. Hi. I'm Noelle Mearing. You're here for the woke talk just in case you're in the wrong room. There's many other amazing talks somewhere else but we're talking about the woke movement in here today. The thing I've noticed the most and I think I said last night in my little commercial for my talk was that I hear from people all over the country that this movement has affected them very personally. Maybe they sent children off to college and the children came home and now despise everything that they taught them to believe. Maybe you've had hard conversations with family members or old friends. Maybe you've had hard times at work or with the HR department. Maybe your company is trying to have pride bingo all throughout June and you don't know how you can morally be complicit with that. I think the movement is affecting pretty much everyone and so in some way or another. So I want to talk a little bit about what it is how it operates why I think it's escalating right now and how we can respond to it. And I want to leave a significant amount of time for Q&A because I find this topic tends to elicit a lot of questions. And I actually really like Q&A because now I'm hearing from you what you want to hear from me. So I'm going to make sure to leave that time at the end. I want to start off by highlighting a scene in a movie I've talked about in a couple of other talks that are online. So I apologize to anyone. I know a couple of you said that you've watched my online talks. This particular movie I seen though I think is effective in driving home an important point. It's from a movie that came out in 1999 directed by M Night Shyamalan called The Sixth Sense. It was with Haley Joel Osment. He could see dead people. Bruce Willis was his psychiatrist. But then there's also a little reveal at the end about what he really who he really is. But there's one scene of that movie that I thought was really powerful. Always stuck with me. Haley Joel Osment's character. His name is Cole. And he sees a girl his age who has passed away. And she comes to him from the beyond and gives him a videotape and says can you please give this to my father and ask him to play it. And so he doesn't know what his mission is. But this is the point of the movie is that he gets these missions from people who have entered into the next life. So he it's in the middle of her funeral her wake at her home and he crosses the room nervously and presents this VHS videotape sort of dating dating the movie to this father wild with grief. And he puts it on and plays it and watches with horror as he sees that his wife was secretly videotaped poisoning her daughter their daughter's food before he or the nurse or the wife or whomever would go bring the tray of food to the little girl from the scene. I and probably many of other people were introduced to a really disturbing mental illness called Munchausen syndrome by proxy. I'm actually not sure if it's Munchausen or Munchausen. I always call them Muncha Munch. Okay. I heard it recently as monk and I thought wait am I the idiot. Okay. So that other person was the idiot. Okay. Good. Just kidding. No one's an idiot. Well, you know, you know. Anyway, and this is a mental illness I could wear by a caregiver most often most commonly a mother in vents exaggerates and oftentimes causes illness in the person in her care. Usually her child demands procedures demands care demands attention gains tons of sympathy. All the while she is actually the cause of the illness and this can eventually as it did in the scene in the movie cause the actual even the fatality of the child. From the scene I think that we can look at the key characters in it because I think there's something interesting happening in my book I wrote in 2020 I talk about the scene briefly and I call it what we're experiencing now a bit of Marxism syndrome by proxy. I thought it was pretty clever at the time but since then I've heard that a lot of others other writers who are finding this connection to particularly with the trans movement obviously where oftentimes it is mothers who are encouraging the transition of the child and encouraging the medical establishment is also on board and complicit in this you know that this poisoning and mutilating of children. But I think there's another way that we it's analogous to what we're experiencing now that can be instructive. So there's three main characters in the scene there's the daughter who is the victim of being given this poison. There is the father who is maybe unwittingly complicit maybe he brings the tray of food to his daughter but he has no idea he would have done anything in his power to have stopped it had he known. He just didn't know that what he was participating in was harmful and then there's the mother who is you know the sinister actor we you know we can we're not going to Litigate her level of moral complicity mitigated by her mental illness but she is the one who needs to be stopped right and I think that there's three responses that they each need or each needs a separate response. The person who is the role of the daughter is the victim right the person who's been given the ideology so I'm obviously using this is a metaphor for the poison of the food is the poison of the woke ideology. Some people are given this ideology it's they're raised with it maybe maybe they're just given it in school and it's surrounding them you know it's the air that they breathe. It's in their TV shows it's in their media it's on their phones and their social media. It's in the movies it's in their teacher and their friendships and you know they truly are bought into it and are not necessarily fully complicit especially when they're in their formative years and don't have the potential understanding to discern truth and falsity. They're real victims of this movement. Secondly there are the people who are and I think this would be most of the people we know I think who are woke your nice aunt Susan maybe your neighbor down the street your old friend from high school. Most of the people we know who are in this movement I would say are people of goodwill who think it is a movement of compassion who understand their Christian mandate if they are Christian to be to walk with the marginalized to emphasize with the suffering to support the oppressed. They're all Christian Christian concerns that they have been manipulated I think in ways that I'll get into in a bit but I think a lot of people are really goodwilled and think that this is a good movement. And they need to be enlightened right they need to be woke they're they like the father don't understand the poison that they are delivering and they need to be helped to understand that and see correctly. And then there's the mother and she represents the people who just need to be stopped. And there are people just need to be stopped the people who are indoctrinating kids into transgender ideology that leads to permanent in your your reversible damages to their bodies. That movement needs to be stopped the actors who are acting in that movement need to be stopped maybe they can be converted and healed later I hope so. But I think the way the mistakes that I think this helps us avoid is it keeps us from seeing people are victims of the ideology as enemies right. We don't want to look at people who have had traumatic experiences how have wounds that have been manipulated into believe buying into this ideology that is alluring in certain ways. We don't want to look at those people and say you are my enemy I'm in and I oppose you and I want to stop you. But nor do we want to look at people who are really acting in ways that are deeply harmful and say I'm just going to try to accompany you. I'm going to befriend you I'm going to spend a long time trying to kind of convert you. That's all well and good but if they're doing actual damage and delivering poison to people that poison needs to be first and foremost cut off. And so I think we need to understand there's not a blanket approach as we interact with people and deal with how we think about responding to this movement. So what is the poison the poison as I said is I think woke ideology but I think in a deeper way it is despair. And so it ties well into I think the theme of this conference which is a theme of hope and holiness. And I think that that is the ultimate way in which we are going to have a real antidote to the movement is through hope and holiness because the movement leads people to despair because it's full of messages that are messages of despair. So and this is rife throughout the intellectual literature of the movement so taking it back to for someone like Karl Marx who would say you know we need to raise people's consciousness. You might think that you're living a happy life but you're unaware that your life is abject misery because there's oppression and suffering all around you and you think that you're happy because you've got this little family and you've got your little religion the opiate of the masses. You're deluded and we want to disabuse you of that delusion and wake you up to the misery that pervades your existence. Salelinsky famously said we need to rub raw the sores of discontent. We want people to not know how to suffer well. We want them to suffer loudly because people don't know how to suffer well are going to be catalysts for revolution. So really is awakening people having a world consciousness is helping them to see that there is despair at the core of their existence and little that they can do to resolve it other than to blow up the system. Okay so the poison I think is in a broad way despair but I think that if we can think about it in a particular way in two fundamental redefinitions of the human person. One is that you are defined by societal oppression either as of the side of privilege or the side of oppression. And secondly that you are defined by sexual repression and both require a certain amount of some degree of liberation and there's two types of liberation and I'll go into the first one first and then obviously the second. So in the first one if you're defined by societal social oppression this obviously a reformulation of Marx's oppressor and oppressed class. But if I can sum up the history in two sentences when the Marxist revolution failed to really take hold in particularly in the west. Pivotal figures from Antonio Gramsci to Rudy Dujde to the figures of the Frankfurt School realized that it was not enough to fight instigate revolution through economic and class division that we had to move into the realm of identity. And as Gramsci actually as all of those figures understood we had to do what Rudy Dujde called the long march through the institutions. We had to create a war of position. We had to get people in key positions in media in Hollywood in law in the academy in K through 12. And once we can control these these institutions we can slowly through that war of position create a culture that will almost naturally revolutionize the culture itself the family of the church as well war of position the family in the church. Okay so I think we're seeing the fruits of that war position play out really effectively now. And if so we're talking about the society social oppression so think about the redefinition in this way. Traditionally if we're like just thinking about through ancient Greek philosophy we understand that a human being is defined by certain universals so I am as human beings we are animals but we're distinct from the beast because we have the ability reason we're rational animals. As Christians we understand that the core definition is that we are made in the image of God we are made from a creator that we are defined by that relationship creator of author and creator creation. And that we are invited to be children of a good loving God so we are defined in relationship to love himself. In the woke and that gives us a gospel mission right that we want to go out to the world and spread the good news to people that they too are defined by love. That's our gospel mission for the woke. We are not to understand ourselves to be defined by the love of God but rather by the hatred of society and that gives us a contract gospel mission that we are not to go out and tell people the good news that they're loved by God but rather as I said before raise their consciousness that they are defined by hatred. I need to let you know about your privilege which is not something that you should be grateful for it's something that you should feel guilty about and also should silence you. Or I need to wake you up to know that you are hated you might think that you have friendships and that you can have healthy relationships and have some measure of success in your life. There is an invisible omnipresent omniscient all knowing evil in the world a systemic evil that you can't necessarily identify for particular acts but it will keep you from having any sort of parody. And you can't really do anything about it except for revolts against it. So this gives a moral stature to all of us trying to identify with a victim identity. You can see this all the time now that you know when people argue they have more credence the argument if they say you know so for example I'm my mom is Asian immigrant. So you know maybe that's something I can claim you know I'm a daughter of an Asian immigrant or I'm a woman you know I'm oppressed in that way too. But then somebody else is you know also a lesbian and then also they're non binary and then oh my gosh. You could stack up the victim identities and it gives more credence to your argument in the woke world because it is a war of positionality. Where your position on the spectrum of victimhood gives you access to a greater span of truth that somebody with less oppression cannot no longer access and so you can silence someone with that. Now this is effective in one way because there really are people who are victims. Hardly anyone in this in the human family comes out of life unscathed right. People have wounds and actually this is part of the reason why I think the movement is escalating now is because the longer the sexual revolution is exists with us than the greater wounds we create in society. And it's easier to believe that you're defined by hatred and evil and pain if you know the depths of hatred and evil and pain very intimately. And so people are more prone to accept the allure of this of this ideology I think because of those real and valid wounds that actually are not going to be healed by this only going to be exacerbated. And that's part of I think the manipulation is to exacerbate real suffering not not to redeem that sort of suffering make that suffering redemptive suffering. Okay so if we're going to redefine ourselves based on a lens through a lens of oppression we also want to redefine all of our institutions through a lens of oppression hopeless oppression to the point where they have to be utterly raised and then rebuilt. I think we've seen this really particularly and effectively done with the American flag. I was just talking to someone I think today and they were saying that that I think it was there there's homeowners association that they're part of and the homeowners association decided that it's too offensive to fly the American flag. So effectively it's been the campaign over the last 10 or 15 years to identify that flag with with hatred and racism that now we almost in almost a knee jerk way you see someone you know with a truck like flying the flag you almost you there's all sorts of assumptions that you make about that person. That are are insane right because the flag is something that is a symbol that should unite us and what has happened alongside that campaign to read around the flag in that way. Do we not have a new flag our embassies not flying a new flag all over the world proclaiming our new pelvic creeds on our embassies on our you know. Not not just the pride flag but now that flag is being recolonized to becoming the trans flag and so you see this there's new flags down they keep having more symbols creeping into it where it's becoming itself recolonized. This is an effort to attack our state the institutions that make us stable that we become further understood or we further understand ourselves to be defined by the oppression that permeates everything that that that used to unite us. All right so this is a perverse incentive that is really alluring but is deeply creating a society that's roiled in conflict. If you are going to maintain your stature your moral stature as a victim what do you have to do you have to always have someone who is a perpetrator. Who are you going to be if you're a victim without a bad guy right. And so this means that not only are we redefining ourselves as victims we're redefining ourselves as accusers which makes it really hard to our see ourselves with clarity. This stands in direct opposition to our church which is constantly you know this is a very human temptation. I had my daughter the other day she forgot her homework at the end of the school year in her brother's car and her brother my son he left for work and he wasn't going to be home till about 1030 at night. And she just started getting so mad she said why did Jack leave with my homework. Why didn't someone I was like he didn't know your homework you left your homework in the backseat why didn't you tell me Jack at work. It's always someone else's problem I said we need to look at ourselves. And this is what the church is constantly helping us to fight against this temptation to always find fault in everyone else to become identified as accusers which is the character of does anyone know who the the great accuser is. The devil right the divider and the accuser. This sort of psychology becomes really hard to practice the faith the faith which invites us through confession and through the maya culpa and the mass to look at reality to see ourselves with accuracy. It's incredibly difficult to see ourselves clearly we constantly want to deflect from our culpability we want to see the fault in other people and so to have an ideology come in and swoop in and tell the whole culture that that's actually where their moral moral stature lies is directly an opposition to anything that's going to lead to any opportunity for humility there is no humility without seeing ourselves with reality. And I think this explains why in a part why woke ism seems to be accelerating so quickly here because of those real victims. They're increasingly able to be manipulated and this is destabilizing our society and it's and and and the the habits of accusation becomes something that breed more accusation because it's really hard to break that cycle. When somebody says they think something bad about you you want to get back at them and you know this creates a real real habits of sin. This is poison. All right the second the second type of poison I think the first is societal oppression that's defining ourselves by societal oppression. The second one is defining ourselves by sexual repression. So whereas the first one identifies oppression outside of ourselves this one is saying there's actually oppression inside myself that is caused by the oppression of the moral law. So in the second evil which in my book I cry it's in the chapter called the will over reason. Every totalitarian regime it wants to say that deny that there's any such thing as a stable human nature. So that there's any such thing as natural law that our bodies are made by design and that design means that they're caught there are contours and contents of our happiness that are built into our nature that if we try to divest ourselves of we will you know be like a person jumping off a cliff saying I defy gravity and then hits the ground. But our very bodies in the moral law become a type of oppressor and the way that we find our liberation this is you know straight out of the queer queer theory is by identifying in us identities that are transgressive and then bravely and authentically living them out and expressing them in the world and the more defiant of moral norms they are the greater opportunity for freedom that we have if you've ever stumbled on a pride parade. It's you can kind of see this immediately that there's it's almost like a competition for the most outlandish presentation of self and they'll well I'm going to be wearing this leather harness well I'm going to be just naked. And now I'm going to be with me so you know it's just bizarre and then you know the latest thing is that you bring kids to this type of thing which is a whole other thing. Well a piece of this that I think I'll talk about but this defines of your nature becomes something that is a revolutionary act so male revolutionaries in the 60s one particular named Mark Rudd who he was a one of the weatherman. He writes about how being ashamed that he was unable to overcome his innate tendency towards heterosexuality so we thought if I were really free if I really revolutionary I'd be able to be with anyone you know. And there's another story he has in this biography that he they when they were on the lamb as the from the law after I think a bombing or something they say some. Some people sympathetic to their cause took them in this couple married couple who were also revolutionaries they let these two men who were on the lamb come stay at their house and the husband went to work and while the husband went to work both men bedded his wife. And the husband came home and she and she said you know this is for this is for the revolution this is good this is freeing I am free and the husband came home he's like what why did this happen when she told him. And she's like this is our this is what we believe in this this we are living a bourgeois life this frees us from that you see this mirrored now in the language or surrounding the transgender movement where. You will be or you know oftentimes there's a new effort to say if you're unwilling so if you're a man unwilling to open himself up to intimacy with a transgender woman so that's a man who is a biological man who who identifies as a woman. If a straight man is unwilling to have intimate physical intimacy with that other man then that is transphobic because that man is now a woman and he has to be open to that. And that this sort of distorting yourself for the sake of the political ideology is rampant throughout it. The danger of this part and why I think it's escalating now is that if you fetishize transgression there is no limiting principle to what boundary you will not cross. What you transgress today becomes really boringly normal tomorrow. And so queer theory says once something becomes normalized it has to be queered. And so this creates a limitless and ever expanding boundary of what you will not cross in order to keep queering what is the norm. And I think that we're seeing that escalate now in particular because it cannot help but go into really sinister places. At the Grammys this year there was a singer who's I think he's trans Sam Smith and he dressed up like Satan and had like a bunch of people dressed up like a coven of witches and they were worshiping him and there was like sex sex or sex sadism implied in it. And he had you know devil horns and a lot of people thought oh well he's just kind of making fun of like our impression of what he is. And I think what we didn't you know what we need to realize is that the mask is just slipping now. It was always Satan behind this. Thou wilt be done is the Christian call. My will be done is the Satanic call. And that is the beginning and the ultimate end of this second dogma of the woke movement that my will will not be subjugated to the will of any sort of moral norm or even the will of a creator. Okay so another part piece that I think we're seeing in particular now is that this is inevitably targeting of children. And one thing that's really important to understand is that in the woke movement innocence is dominance. Again I'm not talking about your woke aunt Susan who probably doesn't go around seeing oh innocence is dominance. I'm talking about in the literature which leads the movement and anticipates the next phase of the movement innocence is dominance. And I think that we can understand that pretty easily that if someone is innocent of something a child innocence stands in rebuke of ourselves. Right when we encounter innocence and maybe we've got something we're really shamed about on our conscience. It calls us either makes us recoil because we don't want to face that truth. You know there's nothing more offensive than the truth we're trying to silence in ourselves. But it can also inspire us to repent right because it stands as a measure as a signpost to something something good to a real standard to a real metric. Well if there is no metric if we need to keep queering the culture until it's all in ashes then we cannot have something that points to a standard. So I think this is the reasoning behind for example transgender story hours which at first seemed like a fringe movement but now we're seeing that that it's really kind of exploded. The ostensible reason for this group of these events is that we don't want to have bullies. So if kids are going to have a tendency to grow up and be bullies we need to disabuse them of that so they can be open to this sort of lifestyle. Or maybe there's a child in the room that is prone to this identity and so we need to give that child something to model after. But the deeper reason is that their discomfort with the queer lifestyle is itself a form of dominance. It's pointing to a norm that they are not a part of and they want to queer that norm until it is destroyed. Okay and this threat to innocence and this fetishizing of victimhood these two types of poisons are both an attack on the truly one truly innocent victim who is the ultimate victor our Lord. And it is his authority that is the final target. And I think there's a real spiritual dynamic that I talked about in my book that's happening here. Our Lord is the one true victim and he's also the only truly innocent except for our lady who is the only perfectly innocent creature. But our Lord represents innocent victimhood and the woke movement tries to claim his victimhood for their own and claim his innocence by disabusing the possibility of innocence. Well I think there's two claims to innocence I think it's disabusing innocence in this world corrupting innocence in this world. But I think it's also that through the first lie of the victim's class if you are guilty for your privilege no privilege no guilt. So if I'm in the oppressor class I can behave in ways oppressed class I can behave in ways that if you're in the oppressor class you cannot behave in. I don't have privilege and so it justifies certain actions. There's real spiritual dynamics happening here. Of all people Richard Dawkins recently came out saying that he finds an interesting connection between transubstantiation and the transgender movement. And I think he was trying to expose something I don't think he was saying celebrating that. But there are a lot of inversions of Christianity that you start to notice in the movement. For example confessing my sins becomes confessing my privilege. Your allegiance to God becomes allegiance to ideology to party. But what Richard Dawkins was saying about the transubstantiation is that it's interesting to see the Catholics and the Mass the source and summit of their prayer is in the Eucharist which maintains all of the physical attributes while internally becoming utterly transformed in substance. And that in the transgender movement that power is being claimed for the person right. My body doesn't have to change and yet I am utterly transformed in my identity. It's a self-deification effort. And I think that the more we see this as a spiritual movement not a political movement the more we can understand and galvanize around fighting it. Again I want to emphasize the fact that there is real pain out there and I think even that real pain in those real wounds tends to feed into the ferociousness of what we're seeing in the political tribe now. People need to have family and the more we break down family they look for a family even if it's a pho facsimile of a family life. And so what does the woke movement offer? They offer here's some belonging. Here's a significant unique identity. Here's loyalty. Here's protection. Here's a tribe right. And I think that's creating even more ferociousness in the movement because they're seeking things that are real human goods that were denied from them. Alright so how do we respond to this and then I want to get to questions. Okay if we start with those three categories of people the child in the sixth sense the victim who needs to be healed the father who needs to be enlightened and the mother who needs to be stopped. So let's start with that that those three categories so healed. I think we need to understand that obviously our Lord is the person who's going to heal anyone right we are not going to go around healing people especially people with depths of wound. We have to believe that he can heal them right that no one until our last dying breath there are there is massive amounts of grace and mercy on offer to all of us. Thank God. So I think we can become instruments of that healing right so one thing I would say is that we want to take seriously and this is a good day to think about friendship because of the feast day and what Father Kirby said in his beautiful homily. We need to take really seriously I think our postulates of friendship and truly be a friend you know I think about you know if you think about you're someone you love you know so for you know besides my husband my best friend is my sister and she's not she's not trans. But if I think about imagine like another world where my sister this person I love deeply identifies as struggling with gender dysphoria how would how do I want her to be treated I would hope that there would be like Catholics who would meet her and would look past that and just see that she's a human being made the image of God and welcome her you know and not welcome her saying like oh we're going to change our moral laws and say that everything and affirm every decision you make but rather welcome her as a person as a brother as a sister. We I think we'd all want that for somebody we love so I think we need to be those instruments reaching out to people who are open to being talked to and to being befriended. I think another thing we have to know to do is to know when to not speak up right so the Holy Spirit is key in this we can't just be impulsive in the way we have very delicate conversations with people who maybe have a lot of hostility and maybe been treated badly by people who represented Christ to them before. That sometimes we can diffuse a situation and put the friendship first and try to get to know them build up trust because you know the beginning of an interaction we don't necessarily have a whole lot of trust that we can engender and someone who doesn't really know us and doesn't know that they can trust that we actually care about them. So you know there's different you know I've heard amazing stories and the deacon Harold and his amazing talk today talked about how he went ahead and went for it with that waitress and it worked out. I have no doubt that he was talking to the Holy Spirit and that that made sense and this was the only interaction maybe he was going to have and he's like I either say it now or I never say it ever and she's asking asked a question that's an open door someone asked you a question you have you can answer it. So I want to mitigate that that there's there's potential element here that is key but sometimes I think we need to know when to not when to not speak up when to put getting to know the person ahead of telling him what we think. Now for me that's difficult because everyone knows what I think if you know that knows me. All right I think we can also not play into the framework so I saw an old friend recently from high school who who's gay and he has you know his partner was there too and he had no idea you know anything about me we're not we weren't friends on social media at the time. And at some point we spent an afternoon and evening together with this celebration for a friend's birthday party and it was lightful and at one point towards the end of the night of mutual friends said something about well you know Noelle's really religious. And he looked at me with his eyes wide and he said you're religious and I said yeah and he said do you hate me. And I looked at him I said you don't like the Catholic Church do you hate me that's who I am. I'm not assuming that you hate me because you disagree with something that is the core of my identity and you shouldn't assume that I hate you because I might disagree with some activity that you think is to the core of your identity. So I think we have to not play within that framework right and find ways that we can disarm it. I think we also have to make it easy for our friends to change their mind. I've not always done this super well by any means but I have some friends who are very progressive and I've tried hard to not make it feel like it's a matter of they're going to be kind of a little bit of humiliation if they realize that I'm ultimately right about something you know that they're going to eat crow. And recently this one friend of particular came and said you know I'm and she's very very progressive and she said I'm really starting to feel uncomfortable with this trans movement. I don't like it in my kids school. I don't you know where's this going what's this coming from and she had no hesitancy I think of expressing that maybe she was wrong you know about this because she initially had been supportive of it. And I think that's a good thing to do right is that we can make it not a battle of our ego and their ego so that they can it's easier pathway for them to I think change their mind and maybe admit error. I think we also have to realize that we might lose friends and this is a hard one. I've always prided myself on being able to maintain friendships across deep disagreement that changed in 2020. And one of my oldest friends really took me to task publicly on social media and just challenging me and wanting me to pledge allegiance to BLM and questioning my intentions about why wouldn't and I stood my ground and then and I would text on the side said call me. Why are you doing this publicly and she said you know she wanted but she kept going at it publicly. And after this interaction it was my first experience of really having intense you know enmity with an old friend and I just started crying I just was so shaken up by it and I realized later why would I expect that I would not have repercussions for speaking out. So I think we have to understand that the consequences for the consequences for not speaking out I think when we're called to are far greater than any consequence we might face for speaking out. And so we have to be willing to accept those consequences and know that we're not in control right. I can't control what other people think and that friend and I have actually since reconciled but I have had other friendships that have basically just evaporated and I think we have to be at peace. With that OK the second category is the enlightening. I think we should admit and believe and have real confidence that they're really they really are persuadable people out there. I just saw a recent statistic that I think that people who oppose the transgender movement has actually increased in the last couple of years. So there's a lot of people are seeing through things more and more and I've been encouraged by how many people now are very invested and engaged in fighting. The whole woke thing that weren't a couple of years ago that were a lot more sheepish and now people are saying like whoa whoa whoa whoa this is this is they've overplayed their hand. I see through things now and I want to fight. But there's a lot of people who are still maybe leaning towards that but are just quiet and they don't know if they can speak out yet. We want to be able to persuade them if they're persuadable but be encourage them if they're just afraid. Right. The more people that speak out the stronger the resistance gets you have just a few people that's kind of a fringe thing but you have a whole host of people resisting something then that becomes something to contend with. What that father would have given to know the harm that he was unwittingly imposing upon his child. And I can't help but think that what so many people will realize later with something deeply sinister and harmful that they were unwittingly complicit in at that now looking back in you know the future. And what what they would have done to have someone come into their life and help them to see that this is a bad movement and to shake them out of this sort of ideological possession. So it is an act of charity I think it can be a real act of charity to try to lighten people. We want to be persuasive right. We need to know the arguments. I think a lot of fighting this movement is just really understanding how it operates we won't be manipulated by it. I said in my last talk that the movement I think manipulates on three levels first pity. It manipulates your your compassion. Secondly through fear you're going to get canceled you're going to get ashamed you're going to lose human respect you're going to lose your job. Thirdly force and I think we are it's going to the more that people are awakened to it the more it starts leaning into the force manipulation. We're going to start seeing that more and more now it's getting louder because there's more light on it and dark things don't like light shine on them to disinfect it. Okay how maybe questions that help people to see glitches in the matrix. So for example a good question to ask is if you're engaged if you're engaged with someone who is open to a conversation. Do you do you think that it's always and everywhere wrong to discriminate and someone based on their skin color. Well I think that but if you're woke you can't think that. Did you know that the woke movement has put out multiple times in literature that such universal human virtues and values such as being punctual objective reasoning hard work are white virtues. I have three three my brother-in-law is from Kenya and so I have three nieces and nephews who are half and they back half white and they have a beautiful harmonious family. And I think what message would it convey to them if they were told that because of their skin color they're less likely or able to be polite. It's incredibly racist. Did you know that the amount of children identifying as nine non binary has increased by something depending on state and statistic between 200 to 800 percent. And the last couple of years and that dramatic spike correlates with a dramatic spike of education materials with scripts like and I'm this is actually not that much of a paraphrase. There is an I an identity for a reason what do I think I am I might be born the wrong body. Maybe I am right and the doctor was wrong. There's no way that that correlation is not directly a causation of this intense spike of dysphoria that we're seeing now. All right. Another glitch in the matrix Riley Gaines great glitch in the matrix right effective glitch in the matrix. She's the swimmer who who stood up and said no I'm not going to undress in front of a six foot man with his genitals intact staring at me. That's not OK to ask me to do it nor is it OK for me to compete about this man who is against this man who is four hundredth in the male division and is now dominating my sport. That's a real glitch in the matrix. I remember when I was a child growing up and there was you know rumors of there's a flasher around you know in town. There's a flasher and we would be on the playground look out and be like over there a man a trench could it's going to flash me. Now we just call that pride. Right. That's another glitch in the matrix. All right. Stop. How do we stop this movement. There's an amazing man named Robert P. George. You probably have heard of he's at Princeton law professor. He I've been Facebook friends with him for a while and going to meet him in October which I'm excited about. But one time maybe years ago probably about eight something years ago he just put out this story about some something that was being covered in teen teen Vogue magazine aimed at 12 to 18 year olds and it was. Are there any children in the room. It was teaching them how to have anal sex girls teen girls from young age of 12. And he basically posted this as a wake call he's like if you're a parent if you're if you're a person seeing this figure out what you can do try to do something. So this is I think you must have been about eight to 10 years ago and I remember thinking OK I'll try to do something. And so I started a group on you know I just started throwing things up against the wall I started a group on Facebook called you know studying the sexual revolution. Was it good or was it bad for us. You know let's just talk about it and I invited people and we had all these great robust debates and who knows if it was effective in any way but it started something you know and then I just started thinking about the more I reached out to an old friend who was a classmate of mine at Franciscan where we were in grad school together. Her name is Carrie grass maybe you've heard of her she's a prolific writer. I reached out to her and we had this phone conversation you're doing all of this work I'm interested in this work and we just started talking and eventually that became theology of home. She's the first one who encouraged me to write I was ranting about the Met Gala about something happened the Met Gala in 2017 2018 and she said why don't you just write that in an article and submit it to someplace and I just said I didn't know I could do that. I'll try that. Anyway I'm just saying that there I think that oftentimes we can get paralyzed by thinking there's so much that's bad and what can I do. And it doesn't have to be you know in a public sphere obviously that one of the best things we can do the most essential thing we could do is get our own house in order spiritually interiorly our material life of prayer and our families and our friendships and our communities. My priest who I love so dearly he's 84 years old he's seen so much of life and he sees exactly what's happening he's like it's almost like I see the devil is just pushing buttons and just controlling so many things but I also see people flocking to them. I think that's the faith like never before when people become aware that there is real evil they start to look for something that's really good. And I think there's a lot of people are hungry right now for something that's really good. Okay how else do we stop this. I think we see there's a lot of practical stuff right there's policy and law there's a grassroots movement there's school boards participation voting knowing who are your local civic leaders. There's a lot more control that can happen on a civic local level than I think we think we think it's all that some presidents going to come swoop in and then to save us all it's not going to happen. You know whether or not they're going to win or not I don't think that that's going to be the ultimate solution it may be nice I would love to have a conservative president don't get me wrong. But I think we need to focus on our cities and our towns and on our states and on our counties. Boycotting is obviously been pretty effective right Budweiser felt that target is feeling it. I don't think we can necessarily boycott our way out out of this but I think it is a key element in our fight. And I think targeted boycotting is important because you could boycott almost every company right like Starbucks contributes to plan parent like there's so many companies that contribute to something bad. So I think that it's important that when something gets a lot of attention everyone galvanize around boy kind of that one company and that that sends a strong message. Let's see. Conversely supporting companies that are not woke. So there's all sorts of organizations now that are platforms to promote companies that are not are don't hate our American hate American values. One's called Public Square and other ones called New Foundings. I think one's called Red Balloon anyway you can research these organizations they help gather the companies that are like minded and help them to link arms. And then we can use our dollars to support them. One another thing I think it's important to understand is that we might whether or not we can stop this movement I don't know but we can stop it from coming into our homes right. So we should be at the bare minimum trying to stop this movement from coming into my family our families. One is to get in control of our technology technology has been a direct avenue to that that's exacerbated and escalated this deeply it particularly over the last few years when kids became so online. And became at the mercy of so much ideology and propaganda and actually even predatory behavior I think. So I think getting control of that what's happening in our homes what we're building up in our homes which I'll end with that. But before I get to that I just want to say we need to identify where our line is right. Figure out now where your line is before you cross it and that's a good question to ask yourself you know as if you're in the workplace you know what is the line that I will not cross. So for example one one simple one I would say is I would never use different pronouns I wouldn't even say my own pronouns if someone asked me pronouns I wouldn't say she her I would say I am a woman. My friend says he says if somebody asked him his pronouns he'll say take a guess I bet you'll get it right. It's kind of obvious let's play a game. So that's an obvious one but I still hear from orthodox Catholic kids young or in Christians who say well you know I have to put it on my LinkedIn because I'm implying for law school and no we don't have to do that. And if everyone does that then it's we don't remember just lying passive to this ideology we have to draw lines particularly at active participation and lies. We have to understand also that we're not going to be treated fairly. It's not hypocrisy it's hierarchy as someone while Adrian Vimule if you know who he is he coined that phrase and it's so true. It's not hypocrisy it's hierarchy that the world movement understands itself to be playing by different rules and that they have special privileges because of the nature of who they are. And so I think getting constantly frustrated and encouraged by the sort of hypocrisy that with which things are treated is it's understandable but it's not it's not helpful. We have to name things. Gender firming care is sexual mutilation. We have to name what they are and name them clearly without a lot of heat necessarily or a lot of polemics polemics but just with clarity of the truth. We also have to know that when we self censor they rarely do. So I spoke in my alma mater which is an evangelical school it's about 50 50 conservative and progressive now student both student body and in the administration. And I was talking to one of the more conservative students and she said you know it's about 50 50 but you know we just don't want to fight so I just don't like to talk about it. So most of my friends like we just don't say anything you know they're they're very vocal and I thought you know this is the easiest time to say something you're 50 50. Let's say something. So why do they feel so bold and bold and to speak what they believe and why do you feel so cucked out and speaking what you believe. All right. And lastly there's someone else in that munchausen syndrome prok by proxy story and it's maybe let's say a nurse or doctor in the room and this represents the fourth the fourth person that that might be we need to we need to try to embolden. And that is the person who knows that something is off knows this mom is doing something harmful maybe can't quite pinpoint it but senses it senses that something sinister is happening but doesn't want to rock the boat. And that person needs to be encouraged right and I think there's a lot of people who just need to be who know something's wrong and we need to get them to resist this. Finally we need a positive vision we ought not seed to ideologues the vision of the good life and we actually have the vision of the good life. The Catholic Church is a church of incarnation embodiment traditionally the best supporters of the arts architecture of beauty we need to lean deeply into that the woke movement doesn't really have a positive vision because it's an ideology of negation. It can only break things down cannot actually build things up. We have the exact opposite. We are all about fruitfulness growth creativity bill building. And so we have to lean into that doesn't necessarily mean I have to run out and become an artist right now. But there's one thing we can do immediately which is shore up the positive vision which is the family. The family is often called the domestic church but in today's raised and ravaged landscape I think the family is more like a cathedral beckoning people in and pointing them above and I'll take any questions.