Ep. 178 - Pence's Wife Attacked For Job At Christian School
Mike Pence’s wife, Karen, is the target of outrage today because she got a job at a Christian school. The media claims the school is"anti-LGBT." Why? Because it affirms Christian teaching on sexual morality. Also, is it ever really necessary to apologize for an opinion? I say no. Finally, Kamala Harris shared some deep thoughts with the world. They just might change your life. Date: 01-17-2019
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, Mike Pence's wife, Karen, is the target of outrage today because she got a job teaching art at a Christian private school.
We'll talk about this fake stupid outrage, but there is something very disturbing and ominous about the fake stupid outrage, which I want to discuss as well.
Also, is it ever really necessary for people to apologize for expressing an opinion?
I say no.
We'll discuss that.
And finally, some deep, and beautiful and revolutionary words of wisdom from Kamala Harris.
You're going to want to stick around to hear these.
It'll change your life.
today on the Matt Walsh Show.
The pences are in trouble again.
They're in big trouble.
The left is shocked, yet again, to learn that the Pence's are Christian.
It seems like they learned this fact.
Our friends on the left, they learned this fact about Mike Pence and his wife.
Every few months, they learn it again.
Like, they forget and then they learn.
And every time this epiphany happens, when it dawns on them again that, oh my gosh, these people are Christian, they're offended.
And so the epiphany happened once again this week when Mike Pence's wife, Karen, got a job at a private Christian school.
And this has elicited many outraged headlines across the mainstream media and many shocked and appalled and frightened tweets and so on.
Now, of course, the stated reason for the outrage is not that Karen Pence, a Christian, is working for Emanuel Christian School, a Christian school, but it says it right there in the name in case you were confused.
That's not the reason that they're giving.
The reason that they're giving is that the school bans openly gay teachers and does not admit openly gay students.
It also prohibits all other manner of sexual conduct that is considered immoral by Christian teaching, including premarital sex.
Teachers are required at this school to affirm in writing the biblical position on all of these moral issues.
We'll take a look at some of these headlines here.
So, BBC News, Vice President's wife Karen Pence to teach at anti-LGBT school.
New York Times, Karen Pence is teaching at Christian school that bars LGBT students and teachers.
New York Post, Mike Pence's wife back teaching at school that bans gay transgender students.
Karen Pence takes teaching job at Christian school that bars LGBTQ students.
Second Lady Karen Pence faces backlash for teaching at Christian school that bars LGBTQ students.
The Washington Post, Karen Pence's job at a school that bans gay employees is latest reminder of administration blah blah blah blah blah.
Here's what the Huffington Post has to say about it.
Karen Pence, wife of Vice President Mike Pence, started at a job this week teaching art at Emanuel Christian School in Northern Virginia.
It's not a school where everyone is welcome.
In a parent agreement posted online, the school says it will refuse admission to students who participate in or condone homosexual activity.
The 2018 employment application also makes candidates sign a pledge not to engage.
Those are in quotes.
or violate the unique roles of male and female.
Those are in quotes.
The application says, moral misconduct, which violates the bona fide occupational qualifications
for employees, includes, but is not limited to, such behaviors as the following.
Heterosexual activity outside of marriage, premarital sex, cohabitation, extramarital sex,
homosexual or lesbian sexual activity, polygamy, transgender identity, any other violation
of the unique roles of male and females.
They also list sexual harassment, use or viewing of pornographic material or websites.
The application says that the school believes marriage unites one man and one woman, and that a wife is commanded to submit to her husband as the church submits to Christ.
Which, of course, is just a quote from Ephesians 5.
And then it goes on from there.
Parents are also asked to sign an agreement saying that they will cooperate with this policy of biblical morality.
All right.
So here's the thing about that.
There is no difference between attacking Karen Pence for working at a Christian school And attacking Karen Pence for working at a school that prohibits behavior contrary to Christian teaching, because any legitimate Christian school will do exactly that, because that's what it means to be a Christian.
That's why we call it a Christian school, as in, there's going to be Christian stuff going on here.
This is a school for Christians, by Christians, to Christians, and this is part of what it means to be a Christian.
Okay?
That's what it means.
This is what every authentic and credible Christian school ought to do and does do.
So this is by far not the only Christian school that requires a pledge of this sort.
They all should.
And here's the thing.
There are plenty of Christian schools who do not require these kinds of pledges and do not have these qualifications and will higher teachers who are categorically opposed to Christian teaching and will admit students who have no interest in Christian teaching whatsoever.
But do you know what happens with those schools?
They end up very quickly not being Christian schools anymore.
What they end up being is just very expensive Secular private schools where maybe there's a cross hanging on the wall in the guidance counselor's office or something.
That's what ends up happening.
So they lose their identity as a Christian school.
Obviously, when you start admitting people, teachers, students, when you stock the school up with people who have no interest in Christianity, it's not going to be a Christian school anymore.
So that's why the Christian schools that are interested In actually remaining Christian schools, that's why they have these qualifications.
I think the point is pretty clear here.
If you are manifestly and in principle opposed to Christian morality, then obviously you don't belong at a Christian school.
There are many other places you can go for your education.
Nobody is stopping you from being educated.
But you shouldn't go here.
Why would you even want to go here?
If you are that opposed to Christian teaching on sexual morality, why would you want to teach at a Christian school in the first place?
You don't agree with them.
You obviously think that Christianity is a bigoted, horrible thing.
Why would you want to be there?
They're doing you a favor by refusing you admission or employment.
In the same way, it would be terribly reasonable to exclude someone from attending or working for a Muslim institution or a Jewish institution if that person rejects Muslim or Jewish teaching, respectively.
Although, you're never going to see this when it comes to Muslims.
There are Muslim members of Congress, and there aren't going to be a bunch of mainstream media headlines saying that so-and-so Muslim Congresswoman attends an anti-LGBT mosque.
You're not going to find headlines like that.
Even though every mosque, if it is actually a Muslim mosque that teaches and promotes traditional Muslim teaching, they're all going to be anti-LGBT in the sense that Muslims also believe that homosexual activity is sinful and that marriage, and that two men can't get married.
That Muslims believe the same thing.
But you're not ever going to find those headlines with Muslims.
It's only Christians.
Because this is just about, it's not about You know, standing up against discrimination, right?
This is just about being anti-Christian.
That's what this is.
Because, again, Christian schools are in the business of teaching Christianity.
Now, they teach other things, too, but through a Christian lens.
So, if you're not willing to impart or receive those Christian teachings, then there are many other lovely educational options available to you.
But it's really important here to pay attention to the backlash that Karen Pence is receiving here.
Because the left is revealing something and we should take the revelation seriously.
They're telling us something about their agenda, and we should listen and take it seriously.
We talked about this a few days ago after the protests over a church sign.
There was a church sign that a pastor put up, standing for Christian moral teaching, and there were protests over that.
So we made this same point, but to go over it again, For many years, the left claimed that they're not interested in suppressing or outlawing Christianity.
They said that what they claimed is that, you know, they just want to live according to their own beliefs without Christians shoving the Bible down their throats or forcing them to accept biblical principles.
Just keep your religion to yourself and you'll be fine, is what they said.
Well, of course, I have a problem with the idea that Christians should keep their religion to themselves because that's not The protection that the First Amendment—the First Amendment does not have that qualifier of, well, you have freedom of religion as long as you keep it to yourself.
That's not what the First Amendment says, and also as a Christian I realize that as a Christian I can't do that.
That Jesus Christ commands us to go forth and preach the gospel, so keeping it to yourself is not an option.
But in this case, in the case of Karen Pence and her new employer, they're doing exactly what the left demanded.
The school is merely trying to operate by biblical principles within its own walls, on its own property.
Okay?
It's a Christian school that simply is trying to be a Christian school.
It isn't bothering anyone.
It isn't knocking down anyone's door and trying to control what they're doing, invading their home, lecturing them about their sexual behavior.
It isn't doing that.
It isn't preventing anyone from working or living or enjoying their lives.
It's not preventing anyone from doing anything.
It's just saying very reasonably, very unobtrusively, hey, we're going to conduct ourselves by Christian moral tradition.
If you don't want to accept that moral tradition, if you're opposed to it, fine.
By all means, go somewhere else.
We're just going to be over here on our little small corner of northern Virginia doing our thing.
That's all.
If you don't agree with it, then just—you don't have to come.
This is exactly the approach that the left for years endorsed and insisted upon.
For years, they said, if you do that, we won't bother you.
Because we're not anti-Christian, we're not trying to control you, we just don't want you to control us.
So this Christian school says, alright, that's what we're going to do.
And Karen Pence says, hey, I'm a Christian, I want to go teach art at a Christian school.
That's all.
Suddenly, though, it's a problem.
Suddenly, Even Christianity, behind closed doors, on private property, in a private school, is a target for outrage and scorn.
Because it was a lie all along.
They were never planning to stop just outside your door, just outside the walls of your home, or your church, or your school.
That's just what they said to lull you to sleep.
Before the next phase begins, and it looks like the next phase has begun.
What does that phase entail?
Well, it's pretty clear.
It entails attempts to change, transform, morph, deform, or the word they would probably use, evolve Christianity itself.
Okay, they want to change Christianity itself.
They want to change it doctrinally, fundamentally.
This was always the plan.
And if you would just Unfortunately, so many Christians were not paying attention, but if you had just paid attention to the kinds of things they were saying, this would not come as a surprise to you.
Like, when they go around saying that everybody has the right to not be discriminated against, Just that idea alone.
Now, they've been saying that for years.
But if you had just paid attention to that and thought about it for a minute... Okay, so they're saying we have some sort of universal right to never be discriminated against.
So they have that, and then over here they say, well, Christian teaching is discriminatory.
So if that's discriminatory, and you have a right to never be discriminated against, Well, combine those, that's a problem for churches, for schools, for any Christian.
Now, of course, in reality, if we're talking about actual human rights, if we're talking about the rights that the Bill of Rights codifies, this idea that you have the right to never be discriminated against, that just doesn't make any sense.
That, of course, is utter, total, complete nonsense.
You know, to discriminate simply means to distinguish one from the other.
To discriminate, generally speaking, dictionary definition, all that means is to choose one thing instead of another.
It's to prefer one thing over another.
And so, this idea that you have a right, that nobody is ever allowed to distinguish you from something else, or to prefer someone else over you, or to choose someone else over you, this idea that no one ever has the right to do that, because you have the right to be accepted everywhere, in every situation, always, all the time, that of course is crazy!
And if you try to actually enact that into law, you end up with tyranny!
And you also end up with chaos.
But that's where this is headed.
Because what they're going to say, what they're saying now, and what they will continue to say, even more stridently, is that the next phase is, hey, yeah, you basically have the right to be Christian.
You basically have the right to go to church and go to these schools and believe all this stuff about Jesus.
But, I mean, nobody has the right to be a bigot.
Even if you're in your, I mean, just because you're in a church that doesn't make the bigotry any less bigoted, you know, well, of course you don't have the right to that.
So all this stuff about homosexuals and this stuff about, you know, the roles of women and men, well, no, no, no, that, of course you can't, well, that, of course, you're gonna have to toss out.
I mean, because that's just horrible, it hurts people's feelings, and you can't do that.
So we'll just get rid of, but you can have everything else, so we'll just get rid of that, though.
That part we're gonna do away with.
but everything else you can have still.
All right, so I posted something yesterday.
I posted on Daily Wire a formal non-apology because I went on Fox yesterday morning, Fox & Friends, and I made some comments about the Me Too movement and about that stupid Gillette ad.
And the comments that I made were picked up by Media Matters and the Daily Beast.
And then, as you can imagine, I got some, we'll call it, critical feedback from some of their readers.
And there are people emailing me, angry, insisting that I should apologize, especially for the comments that I made about the Me Too movement.
And in particular, I said, which I've said many times on this show and in writing, that I didn't learn anything from the Me Too movement.
Because I already knew that it's wrong to rape and harass people, and I didn't need anyone to tell me that.
But that was very upsetting to some people.
That opinion of mine was upsetting, and I was told that I should apologize.
So I wrote up a statement explicitly not apologizing, not expressing any remorse, and doubling down on the original offending opinion.
Now, as I said, The reason I'm not apologizing is that, well, there are two reasons.
One reason is that I'm right.
Okay?
The opinion that I expressed about the Me Too movement is actually right.
So I'm right about the Me Too movement, and that's why I'm not going to apologize for saying what I said about it.
That's one reason that I'm not apologizing.
And in fact, as I said in the piece that I wrote, If anything, I was, in what I said on Fox, I was too generous to the MeToo movement.
Because there, all I said about MeToo, in that case, all I said is, well, I didn't learn anything from it.
But in reality, nobody learned anything from it.
Because everybody already knew.
That it's wrong to treat women this way.
And yes, some men still went ahead and treated women that way, but it's not because they didn't know.
And I could go even further than that and say that not only was the MeToo movement ultimately useless, but it was actually a net negative.
It was harmful.
It was a bad thing in the end.
It did a few good things.
Smoked out guys like Weinstein and so on.
But when you compare that with all of the negative, I think in the end it's a net negative.
Because of the way that it lumps all different manner of sexual misbehavior into one big pile and makes it impossible or difficult anyway to distinguish one from the other.
And so we're taking like actual rape and we're lumping it in with inappropriate comments and all of that.
So everything is piled together and that is just a very unhelpful and it's just the wrong way of dealing with these problems.
Things like sexual harassment, rape, abuse, these are things that need to be looked at on a case-by- They need to be looked at individually, specifically, on a case-by-case basis.
When you start taking all of them and just throwing them in a pot together, that's not helpful.
Because it doesn't help you get to the truth and to the reality of the situation.
Other problem with the MeToo movement is that it's a very black-and-white, oversimplifying thing.
Where the men are bad, the women are good.
It doesn't allow for discussions of situations where women contributed to creating inappropriate environments in the workplace.
And it certainly doesn't allow for conversations about women making false claims or exaggerated claims.
Or women engaging in consensual sexual activity and then later on saying that, oh, actually, no, that was not consensual.
Doesn't allow for any discussion about that.
And then we can go on.
I'm not going to rehash all of it.
Because actually it's irrelevant.
Okay?
The second reason why I'm not going to apologize for that opinion or for any other opinion that I give is that Even if I was wrong, which I emphasize I'm not, but even if I was, I haven't done anything to anyone by expressing an opinion.
So, yeah, I'm not wrong, but let's put that to the side for a minute, because we've got this idea that people should apologize for opinions, especially if they're later convinced that they were wrong about the opinion, and then, well, in that case, they should go and apologize.
Now, if you express a wrong opinion and you realize that your opinion was wrong, then it makes sense to go back and admit that you were wrong and say that you changed your mind, explain why you changed your mind.
That's an honest and forthright thing to do.
But apologize?
Why?
To who?
Who exactly should receive the apology?
That's the problem with this apologizing for an opinion thing.
Who are you apologizing to?
It's just an opinion.
You believe that you were right, so you argued for your opinion.
Maybe later you realized that you were wrong.
You didn't hurt anyone.
You didn't cause any... You didn't affect anyone's life.
You just expressed your point of view.
And your point of view changed.
Great.
So admit that it did.
Who are you apologizing to?
If I have a wrong opinion, and you have a right opinion, and we argue, and you're saying that you're right, and I'm saying that I'm right, and then later on I decide, okay, you know what, you were right, I now need to go and apologize to you?
Why?
What, for traumatizing you with my wrong opinion?
You were right!
Why would you be traumatized?
I mean, you were right the whole time!
See, this is my problem with public apologies in general, really any public apology, because there's always this question of who are you apologizing to and why?
Whatever you did, why does the whole world need to be apologized to?
I mean, was the whole world really affected by whatever it was?
If the world was affected, then sure, apologize.
But even if you really did something terrible and wrong, I mean, if I were to, if I stole your car, let's say, and then I had a change of heart and I said, you know what, I'm going to bring your car back to you.
Well, yeah, I should apologize to you that I stole your car.
And then hopefully you won't call the police and we can just let bygones be bygones at that point.
But then do I also need to go and apologize to my neighbor Jim and to Bob down the street and to the cashier at the grocery store?
No.
Yes, I did something wrong, but why would I apologize to them?
I didn't steal their cars.
They weren't affected by it.
They don't care.
Why are they owed an apology?
They aren't the aggrieved party.
I feel this way about when politicians are caught having affairs and then they get up and they give this public apology in front of the world and they're, you know, they're doing the press conference and the, um, The jilted wife is standing there with them very awkwardly.
And I always think, why are you apologizing to us?
I mean, apologize to your wife, apologize to your kids, apologize to anyone else you hurt.
And with affairs, you hurt a lot of people.
Apologize to all of them on a personal basis.
But you didn't hurt me.
I'm not hurt by this.
I mean, I feel bad for your wife, but you didn't hurt me.
You don't have to apologize to me.
Think about how odd that is.
If someone were to just stop you on the street and say, hey, listen, I'm really sorry.
And you said, well, what are you sorry for?
What did you do?
I cheated on my wife.
Okay, you shouldn't have, but go apologize to her, not me.
I'm not the one that you need to apologize.
I am not owed an apology in that situation.
So the whole public apology genre is absurd in my opinion.
There may be the rare cases where it's the right and proper thing to do.
As I said, cases where the public itself really is harmed in some way, then fine.
But for the most part, the public apology is just a kind of ritual that's totally pointless.
But with opinions, it's even more pointless.
And so we really need to get away from the idea that a person might owe an apology for an opinion, even a wrong one.
A person might be wrong about the opinion they express.
That doesn't mean that they've done something wrong by expressing the opinion.
Now, if they know that they're wrong about what they're saying, and they're saying it anyway, then they have done something wrong, because that's hypocrisy.
But if they think that they're right, and it's a sincerely held belief, and they express it, now the fact that they think that they're right doesn't make it right, but it does mean that they haven't done the wrong thing by expressing it.
They are just being American citizens, contributing to the public dialogue, which they have every right to do.
I've changed my mind about things, plenty of things.
Like, for instance, I used to support the fair tax.
Which is a national sales tax to replace the income tax.
Now, I don't support the fair tax anymore because I just want to abolish the income tax entirely, not replace it with anything, and then make up for the loss in income to the government by cutting government spending by 40%.
That now is what I would support, of course, which will never, ever happen.
But anyway, so I've changed my view on that.
Okay, and there have been times in the past when I have very passionately argued for the fair tax.
Now I've changed my opinion.
I've realized I think that was the wrong opinion.
So I need to apologize.
Who do I apologize to?
Who is owed an apology because I was wrong about the fair tax?
I don't think anyone is.
And whatever the opinion was, it doesn't matter what the opinion is.
Nobody is owed an apology.
So, that's the main thing.
If you express a point of view, and this is really important because people are becoming increasingly afraid of expressing their views in any forum whatsoever publicly because they're terrified that, well, what if I'm wrong?
And yeah, there's certainly a hesitation.
A certain thoughtfulness that you should have before you express a view.
You should think about it.
You should try not to express wrong opinions.
But that's not really the fear that people have.
The fear is, well, what if I'm wrong?
And then there's the backlash.
And then, you know, as if like if I'm wrong about this opinion, it might hurt people or something.
And then I've done some horrible, terrible thing by expressing a view that it turns out I was wrong about.
No, if you're wrong, if you express a view and you're wrong, then just admit you were wrong.
You don't owe anybody an apology.
You didn't do anything to anybody.
You didn't hurt anybody.
And this is part of, you know, this is supposed to be part of what it means to be an American, what it means to be just a thinking person.
Is sometimes you're kind of experimenting with ideas and you're kind of working through things.
And so, yeah, maybe you have an idea, a point of view, and you think, okay, that's an interesting point of view.
I want to express it.
I want to let people know.
I want to talk about it.
And then through the course of the discussion, maybe because of the discussion, you realize that, okay, no, I was wrong about that.
Fine.
No big deal.
No harm, no foul.
It was just a point of view.
Just an opinion.
See, sometimes it's through the discussion, it's through the interaction and the debate that you may discover that you were wrong about the thing.
And you may not, unless you express it and talk about it and put it out there for sort of public examination, you may never discover the wrongness of it.
So we have to encourage people to express their views and allow people to be wrong.
Without acting like some sort of crime against humanity has been committed.
Finally, I want to end with something.
I figured there's been a lot of negativity today, and I wanted to end with something uplifting and powerful.
And this is really impactful stuff.
Kamala Harris, who is running for president, was interviewed by ABC.
And, you know, ABC is always doing the really hard-hitting interviews with politicians, especially Democrats.
And so here's the tweet from ABC News.
Here's their headline.
It says, potential 2020 presidential candidate Kamala Harris shares advice for young women.
Don't let anybody tell you who you are.
You tell them who you are.
That is deep, deep insight.
I mean, I have never heard — it's a good thing that ABC News made it into a headline, because I've never heard that kind of sentiment from anyone.
You know, don't let anyone tell you who you are.
I mean, whoa.
Whoa!
Have you ever heard that before?
I mean, it's not like you've heard that from literally every politician who's ever existed on the face of the earth.
No, you've never heard — I mean, that's — and it's so profound, it's so moving.
I mean, it kind of chokes me up a little bit, to be honest.
There's some other great quotes from this ABC interview I just wanted to share with you, some other Kamala Harris quotes.
She says, if it's worth fighting for, then it's a fight worth having.
Man, let me just stop and think about that for a minute.
I mean, my mind literally exploded in my head right now.
It's like soup in my head because I can't even... If it's worth fighting for, it's a fight worth having.
She also says, my mother raised us with a belief that we could do anything.
That's just beautiful.
I mean, that is so beautiful.
She says, there are going to be many times that you are going to be the only one like you in the room.
Well, don't you feel so inspired right now?
And this is the last piece of advice.
And again, for ABC to be able to draw this out of her, So you find not only the brilliance of Kamala Harris, but you find just whoever did this interview.
I mean, this is someone who knows how to do a penetrating, just evocative kind of interview.
So here's the last piece of advice.
She says, surround yourself with really good friends.
Oh, man.
Sorry.
I mean, I am getting a little bit emotional.
I've just, I've never encountered wisdom like this.
And I really feel like my whole life has been changed now.
I mean, Kamala Harris, she makes Socrates look like a vegetable in comparison.
So thank you, ABC.
And thank you, Kamala Harris, for that.
I think it gives us all something to think about.
And thanks for watching, everybody.
Thanks for listening.
Godspeed.
The State of the Union is strong, but the State of the State of the Union is not strong.
Will Pelosi disinvite Trump?
Will Trump show up anyway?
Do we even need the State of the Union?
We will analyze.
Then, Ilan Omer implies that Lindsey Graham is gay.
Rudy Giuliani implies the Trump campaign may have colluded with the Russians.
