The 3 failed promises of gay 'marriage'



Many people supported gay marriage in good faith, based on promises its advocates made. Here are three assurances that are no longer so sure.

  1. LGBT people need marriage.
  2. Legalizing gay marriage will make LGBT people feel better.
  3. The kids will be all right.

The children of cohabiting same-sex couples seem to fare better than the children of legally married same-sex couples.

Failed promise #1: LGBT people need marriage.

The reality: Evidently, LGBT people don’t agree that they need marriage.

There has been no dramatic "rush to the altar" among same-sex couples. Recent Gallup data show that only 8% of Americans who identify as LGBTQ are married to a same-sex spouse, while 6.4% are living with a same-sex partner. By comparison, 11% of those who identify as LGBTQ are married to an opposite-sex spouse and another 11% are living with an opposite-sex partner.

These figures suggest that much of the increase in marriages among LGBTQ-identified individuals has been driven by bisexual or nonbinary people in opposite-sex relationships. Presumably, many of these individuals could have married the person of their choice, even under pre-Obergefell law.

Also please notice heterosexual people are marrying in much larger percentages than self-identified sexual minorities. Even after years of legally permitted same-sex marriage, same-sex-attracted persons are not drawn to married life “just like everyone else.” Redefining marriage did not radically transform the relationship behavior among same-sex-attracted individuals.

Failed promise #2: LGBT people will feel better if we redefine marriage.

The reality: The mental health numbers for sexual minorities have not improved. In fact, there is some evidence that their mental health has declined. Researchers have long observed that sexual minorities report higher rates of psychological distress than exclusively heterosexual populations. What remains contested is the explanation for those differences.

We were told that stigma and discrimination were driving elevated rates of depression, anxiety, and other mental-health challenges. Reduce the stigma, and the disparities would narrow. Yet after extraordinary gains in legal recognition and cultural acceptance, including gay marriage in the U.S., the worldwide evidence is difficult to reconcile with the so-called minority stress theory.

A study using data from UCLA's Williams Institute compared different generations of sexual minorities, ranging from those shaped by the Stonewall era to those who came of age during the push for “marriage equality.” The expectation was that younger cohorts, who experienced significantly greater social acceptance, would demonstrate substantially better mental health outcomes.

But the study found that the “equality generation” experienced higher rates of psychological distress and suicidal tendencies.

The researchers acknowledged, and I quote, “Our findings are clearly inconsistent with the (minority stress) hypothesis” that declining social stigma would produce corresponding declines in mental health problems.

A 2025 systematic review of 123 studies from 31 countries reached a similar conclusion. The review found substantially higher rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and bipolar disorders among LGBTQI+ individuals than among the general population. Nor were the disparities small: The rates of distress among LGBTQ individuals were between eight and 11 times greater than the general population.

In fact, the combined studies found that 35.3% of LGBTQI+ individuals reported depressive disorders, compared with 3.8% of the general population, or nine times greater.

None of this proves that discrimination plays no role in mental health outcomes. But surely, if “minority stress” or discrimination were the primary explanation for the high rates of psychological distress, we would have seen some positive movement in these numbers. That is exactly what we do not see.

Failed promise #3: The kids will be all right.

The reality: High-quality recent evidence shows that children of married same-sex partners are not “all right.”

This topic is so important that it deserves its own article. For now, let me give you evidence that casts doubt on the very strong assurances the sexual revolutionaries gave us.

A 2017 study showed that by the fifth year of elementary school, young children in same-sex parent families had significantly lower emotional well-being on three different standardized measures.

The measures include:

  • interpersonal skills,
  • externalizing well-being (which includes things like aggression and acting out), and
  • internalizing well-being, which includes things like anxiety and depression.

Compared with children living with their married biological parents, the children in alternative living arrangements have higher levels of psychological problems. The children of same-sex parents, shown on the far right-hand side of the chart, have as great or even greater problems than other children, even children in alternative family forms.

The authors attribute those difficulties to higher instability, meaning that same-sex couples have more changes in relationships and living arrangements.

The 'hold constant' fallacy

But this shouldn’t make us feel any better about these findings. More instability in the parents’ relationship is not a factor that we can legitimately “hold constant” or “factor out,” as if it were a completely independent factor. The well-documented increased instability in same-sex parents’ relationship means the kids experience more divorces, breakups, re-partnering, changing living arrangements, and so on. This instability is part of the package of having same-sex parents.

This reminds me of researchers back in the day trying to say that single parenthood isn’t so bad, if you “hold constant” their income. But having a reduced income is part of the experience of having unmarried parents. This attempt to explain away an unwelcome finding in no more valid when applied to same-sex parents today than it was when applied to unmarried parents back in the 1990s.

Another study examined a wide range of family structures, including married biological parents, single parents, cohabiting couples, stepparent families, legally married same-sex couples, and same-sex cohabiting parents.

This study found that children with same-sex cohabiting parents were 3.3 times more likely than those with intact married biological parents to suffer serious emotional problems. Children with same-sex married parents were 5.4 times more likely to have serious emotional problems when compared with biological parents married to each other.

These empirical results directly contradict the assurances we were given prior to the Obergefell ruling. With man/woman parents, marriage supported better emotional outcomes for children than with any arrangement of unmarried man-woman parents. But with same-sex parents, the opposite was true. The children of cohabiting same-sex couples seem to fare better than the children of legally married same-sex couples.

And yes, these estimates were adjusted to eliminate the effect of demographic factors, such as the child’s race, sex, and age. We don’t really know what exactly accounts for these findings. But we can conclude this: The idea that “the kids will be fine” is no longer a slam-dunk, end-of-discussion statement.

Full disclosure: The author of this 2021 paper is my colleague, Fr. Paul Sullins, Ph.D. a retired professor of sociology. If you are going to dismiss him because his clerical collar indicates a conflict of interest, you should probably also dismiss the findings of self-described gay or lesbian scholars. They certainly have an interest in some research outcomes rather than others.

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Genderless marriage

In any case, I have shown enough to cast serious doubt of the assurances that advocates of genderless marriage gave us. Make no mistake, “genderless marriage” is a better description than “gay marriage.” The court removed the dual gender requirement for marriage. That was a tacit assertion that the sex of the body is irrelevant for marriage and by extension, irrelevant to parenthood.

We were told that gay people needed to get married. Evidently, not too many of them got that memo.

We were told that gay people would feel better. Evidently, and sadly, that is not the case.

Finally, we were told that the kids would be fine. The evidence I’ve presented shows that this is not self-evidently true.

People are making life-altering decisions based on the assurances of activists. The decision to have a child is not a decision that can easily be walked back if you figure out you had bad information.

It’s time to reopen these important conversations.

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Netflix’s East Of Eden Has No Knowledge Of Good And Evil

The problem with Kazan's East of Eden is that it tries to understand evil without first understanding goodness.

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Netflix ‘adapts’ Steinbeck’s ‘East of Eden’ — and Satan gets a sympathetic makeover



Any thrill I might have experienced upon learning an “East of Eden” adaptation was in the Netflix pipeline was rapidly extinguished by memories of the latest screen desecrations of beloved classics.

Earlier this year, provocateur Emerald Fennell turned Emily Brontë’s Gothic tragedy “Wuthering Heights” into cheap fodder for the smut-obsessed. This summer, Netflix retconned Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” — complete with culturally fluent pioneers and a DEI-mandated American frontier.

They are systematically eliminating our clearest portraits of evil because behind them lies the Christian realities that inspired them.

As for Christopher Nolan’s “Odyssey,” I thought it was a cinematic success, but it still made the face that launched a thousand ships a lesson in representation, while casting transgender “Elliot” Page as the Greek warrior Sinon, who’s not even a Homeric character.

I’m already recoiling thinking about the heresy that animates feminist auteur Greta Gerwig’s upcoming “Narnia” reimagining, which intends to emasculate Aslan and turn Lewis’ sacrosanct creation myth into a secular 1950s “rock opera.”

I could go on, but that’s enough to make plain the pattern of Hollywood’s utter disregard for adapting the literary canon faithfully. Always it must infuse its warped catechisms, lest we plebeians forget where it stands.

But being the masochist I am when it comes to these matters, I watched Netflix’s “East of Eden” anyway, and I have to tell you, I was genuinely gutted by what I witnessed. Not annoyed by predictable woke tropes, although those were there too. No — gutted.

My visceral shock, however, was less about the revision of John Steinbeck’s perennial Cain and Abel allegory and more regarding what that deliberate modification reveals about the dismal state of our culture.

Will the real Cathy Ames please stand up?

If you haven’t read Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” (and please do!), I’ll take the liberty of giving you a little teaser: The novel's antagonist, Cathy Ames, is certainly one of the most heinous villains in American literature, if not in the entire Western canon.

The book introduces her with this haunting bit of prose: “I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.”

And that’s an apt entrance for Cathy. She is a monster at birth, a mutant at the soul level, a fiend cloaked in human flesh. Modern-day psychologists would diagnose her as an incorrigible sociopath who takes pleasure only in the torture, humiliation, and demise of other people.

Cathy is also what critics call a “static character”: She undergoes virtually no meaningful change over the course of the novel. More unsettlingly, she remains almost impossible to relate to at a human level. Steinbeck gives her no humanizing backstory that draws our sympathies, no redeeming ethical or moral arc, no thing we might point to and say, “See, that’s why she behaves so horribly.”

Static characters are almost humorous in their simplicity, and they serve a variety of purposes in literature. But in Cathy’s case, her function is symbolism. She is an emblem for unadulterated evil, and that’s neither my nor the literary authorities’ verdict. It’s Steinbeck’s. In a letter, he called Cathy Ames “a total representative of Satan.”

It’s a tailor-made description, given she frames two young boys for sexual abuse, drives a man to suicide, and burns her parents alive all by the age of 16 and the end of the chapter that introduces her. In hopes you will read the book for yourself, I won’t spoil the rest of the unspeakable horrors that unfold at Cathy’s polluted hand.

But as sinister as she is, Cathy Ames plays a paramount role in this story. “East of Eden” is a moral epic, meaning it’s not just an entertaining tale about fictional people and events. It actually employs those things for the explicit purpose of drawing our attention to the cosmic war between good and evil, heaven and hell, God and the devil. Cathy, as I’ve already noted, represents the dark side of that epic struggle. Humanize her in any way and you collapse the entire framework.

But surprise, surprise — that’s exactly the sin the makers of Netflix’s “East of Eden” committed.

A moral epic gets the Hollywood makeover

Writer Zoe Kazan told Reuters, "We wanted our audience to be able to identify with every single character, the ones that are good on the surface and the ones that are evil on the surface because if we think about people that are evil or bad as being not human, we don't learn anything about ourselves."

A pleasant sentiment, except no logical reader could conclude that Steinbeck’s Cathy Ames is evil “on the surface.” He makes it unmistakably clear from the outset that she is not just a perpetrator of evil but the embodiment of evil itself. “A malformed soul” are his exact words.

So to correct Ms. Kazan, Cathy is nonhuman in that she lacks the very qualities that make one so — empathy, moral quandaries, regret, emotional baggage, anything that would resonate with a real human being. The Bible gives Lucifer no domesticating backstory, so why should his literary stand-in have one?

Actress Florence Pugh, who plays Cathy in the series, had her own nauseating comments: “She can still make terrible decisions and face awful consequences, but there can also be ... an understanding of her history and her past, which makes her the way that she is.”

Except being a static archetype, there’s literally nothing in Cathy’s history or past to explain her savagery. The fact that she is inherently and incurably evil is the entire point of her character.

But that won’t do for Hollywood. It must tinker and snip at a classic until it creates its desired Frankenstein's monster. Thus Kazan gave the diabolical Cathy Ames a tragic backstory, turning her from a Satan figure into a woman we can pity, even as she destroys. She suffers abuse, acquires trauma, is driven to desperation, and, of course, experiences the cold hand of misogyny. It’s not even worth delving into. Suffice it to say it’s a lie. More important to me is the "why" behind it.

When killers get poignant backstories

The show's egregious misreading of Cathy raises an important question: Are the makers of this blasphemous series just stupid, or are they up to something?

That’s a rhetorical question. You know as well as I do there’s an agenda at play. What might surprise us is how ugly it is.

Obviously, these Hollywood revisionists are well aware Steinbeck’s Cathy Ames is not a sympathetic character in any sense of the term. But they chose to rewrite her as one anyway — and it has nothing to do with the audience wanting to “learn something about themselves,” as Kazan sold it.

"Introspection" is a reasonable sop to satiate the masses, but it’s a ruse. Cathy must be remade, for she represents the very thing the progressive left wants to retroactively undo. As long as objective evil breathes, it stands as a barrier to their dark vision for the world: a dystopia ruled by moral relativism, where one man’s act of slaughter is another man’s tragic mental break.

Or should I say woman’s? After all, the morally intact part of the nation has been watching, mouths agape, for months now as thousands of people (most of them mothers) fought for a woman who admitted to methodically strangling her three young children to death in a basement. “Postpartum psychosis” was an evocative enough backstory to tip the pity scales in Clancy’s favor.

A similar and equally disturbing trajectory of events surrounded the premeditated stalking and murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. His admitted killer, Luigi Mangione, was made into a sympathetic vigilante by radicals who cheered his “courage.” His chronic pain, denied claims, and manifesto then made him an ideal mascot for progressives’ agenda to blame “the system” rather than the criminal.

Karmelo Anthony, the “good kid” who stabbed an unarmed student after a verbal confrontation, claimed self-defense, and was cast as a victim of racism, is yet another example.

There is a pattern here, and it reveals a dark truth: There is much power to harness when you give a killer a poignant backstory.

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Television tells a vision

But backstories, even those belonging to killers, are not off limits. On the contrary, they are the lens that allows us to see the gray, the nuance that tempers dichotomous thinking. Much good results from understanding motive so long as the line of objective morality remains unblurred — because for every degree it fades, Pandora’s box opens a hair more. And then suddenly, the demons are too numerous to count. And they do not go back in the box willingly.

But Steinbeck’s Cathy Ames is designed to make us look at those bloodthirsty demons, not the complexities of real people living in a broken world. To adapt her character, or any similar character, in this way is a calculated attempt to corrupt what C.S. Lewis called the “Law of Human Nature,” the idea that man is born with a moral radar.

No doubt entertainment has been powerful in the dulling of man’s intrinsic moral compass. Under the guise of artistic license, it surreptitiously conditions the masses. True to its name, television tells a vision — in this case, that evil is really just the manifestation of trauma or poverty.

By turning a Satan symbol into a tragic figure, a Netflix series becomes propaganda for the progressive push for absolution. And of course, the communists are cheering. Explaining away evil is their vision too, you know. The only difference is their endgame isn’t equity or decarceration; it’s dominion.

Christianity in the crosshairs

I initially thought it was ironic they chose a famous moral epic — the least fitting vessel — to undermine the idea of pure evil. But then I realized that’s exactly why they chose “East of Eden.” They are systematically eliminating our clearest portraits of evil because behind them lie the Christian realities that inspired them. If your goal is to unmake evil, Christianity is where you must aim the arrow.

Steinbeck’s 600-page epic boils down to a single word. After God rejects Cain’s offering in Genesis 4, he tells the soon-to-be fratricidal murderer: “Sin lieth at the door ... and thou shalt rule over him.” After a long spiritual journey, the character Lee discovers that the Hebrew translation for “shalt” — timshel — is less of a command and more of a gracious offering.

Despite Satan and his wicked pull on the hearts of man, “thou mayest” rule over evil. That is the lesson Cathy’s son Cal — who fears he has inherited his mother's malevolent nature — walks away with.

But when you get rid of objective evil, what is there to rule over? That’s what really guts me. By painting evil as buried trauma, the series offers a secularized, counterfeit timshel. Biblical permission to recognize and deny Satan’s influence turns into a therapy session on handling our misfortunes better than our forebears. It would be a decent message if it didn’t obscure precisely the cosmic war between good and evil that “East of Eden” seeks to illuminate — a darkness our culture exploits for any number of nefarious ends.

The war is real, however, and there's no opting out of it. You can distort works like "East of Eden" to pretend that it isn't, but you remain a combatant nonetheless. Just one who's chosen to fight for the losing side.

When the Pentagon cries ‘UFO,’ Christians should look to the Bible, not the skies



The Pentagon wants you to watch the skies ... again.

Last month, the War Department published a sixth release of declassified and historical files related to UAPs, while the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office continues to publish military footage of UAPs. Some cases have explanations. Others remain unresolved because of insufficient data.

Most of the people getting excited about 'aliens' have spent their entire lives being taught that nonhuman spiritual beings don't exist at all.

"Unresolved" does not necessarily mean extraterrestrial. It does mean, however, that Christians should stop laughing at the question.

This wheel's on fire

The Bible never says humanity is alone. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture speaks of intelligent beings who are not human. Some serve God; others rebel against Him. Today, though some may call them "aliens," changing the label does not change what they are.

Job 38:7 says that at creation, "the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy." These heavenly beings existed before humanity and were not originally from Earth.

Western art often depicts angels as harmless babies or ordinary humans with bird wings, but biblical angels look very different. The original Hebrew mal'akh and Greek angelos mean "messenger" and are used to describe what these beings do, not everything they are.

Daniel described a heavenly being with a face like lightning, eyes like flaming torches, and limbs like burnished bronze. Ezekiel's cherubim came with wheels within wheels covered in eyes. And Isaiah's seraphim, the "burning ones," were adorned with six wings each. If someone who rejected Scripture saw such a spiritual being today, what would they call it? Likely an alien or a god.

As Paul says in Ephesians 6, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. The idea of the unseen realm is not a modern conspiracy theory. Rather, it has always been part of the biblical worldview.

Deities ... or demons?

Ancient archaeology provides another connection. Mesopotamian traditions from Eridu speak of the apkallu, sages associated with the age before the Flood. They were given the role of bringing knowledge to humanity. Centuries later, Assyrian palaces at Nimrud displayed human and eagle-headed winged figures connected with these sages. At Nimrud and Nineveh, enormous lamassu, which are human-headed winged bulls or lions, guarded royal thresholds. Ancient texts also speak of the Anunnaki, a group of powerful deities.

Now put these figures next to Ezekiel's description. He describes each cherub as having four faces at once: a human, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. The apkallu looked like a human body under an eagle's head and wings. The lamassu combined a human head with the winged body of a bull or lion. These same features keep showing up in Ezekiel's description of a similar being.

This doesn't prove the carvings are exact portraits of cherubim, but the resemblance is too striking to ignore. These cultures may have been deceived by real spiritual beings, represented them in their images, and worshiped the creation rather than the Creator. These artifacts show that early people were already telling stories about nonhuman beings, sacred knowledge, and contact between heaven and earth.

The biblical writers didn't treat these pagan gods as harmless myths. Both Deuteronomy 32:17 and 1 Corinthians 10:20 say the sacrifices pagan societies offered were made to demons. That's a different claim than what most people assume today, where the old gods get filed away as folklore.

But swinging too far the other direction causes its own problems, and Christians shouldn't assume every strange light is a demon. A UAP could be a balloon, a drone, an aircraft, classified technology, a natural event, a hoax, or a simple misperception. Some encounters may still involve spiritual deception too. Christians should test the evidence and test the spirits.

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The coming darkness

This connection between the pre-Flood world, ancient cities, and rebellious spiritual powers is one reason we wrote our biblical fantasy novel "Lightborn: Dawn of Darkness." This world is not separate from what we see happening today. The novel explores where this spiritual rebellion began and imagines the ancient world behind the biblical account.

Archaeology shows that ancient civilizations believed in powerful nonhuman beings and worshipped them as gods. Scripture reveals the darker spiritual reality at play. These fallen spirits did not simply disappear along with the ancient world. They continued to influence people and nations, and that spiritual deception will play an important role in the end times.

Most of the people getting excited about "aliens" have spent their entire lives being taught that nonhuman spiritual beings don't exist at all, and that's the actual danger. Paul warned of this in 2 Thessalonians 2, describing a lawless figure who comes cloaked in false signs, wonders, and deception.

We believe the modern alien narrative could help prepare people to receive dark powers as teachers or saviors. Scripture does not say the Antichrist will arrive in a spacecraft. It does warn that supernatural appearances do not automatically come from God and that people may encounter angels without recognizing them.

If a shining being offers secret knowledge, a new religion, or a savior other than Jesus Christ, the church should not first ask which planet it came from. We should ask who it serves. Good angels refuse worship. Fallen ones seek it. Jesus Christ alone is the way, the truth, and the life. Whatever future disclosure may reveal, that truth will never change.

Stallone’s ‘Steps’ looks back on the long, brutal road to ‘Rocky’



Sylvester Stallone is one of America's most recognizable actors. He also stands as a rare representation of sanity in Hollywood, refusing to dance to the industry's carefully choreographed ideological drumbeat.

His new memoir, "The Steps," documents his rather fascinating rise to fame.

Casting agents repeatedly shoved him out of their offices, telling him his voice sounded like a broken garbage disposal and his face looked like a stroke survivor's.

The story starts on July 6, 1946, in a maternity ward in Hell’s Kitchen. The delivery went sideways when a careless doctor dragged him into the world with a pair of forceps, severing a facial nerve and paralyzing the lower left side of his lip, chin, and tongue.

Hangdog sneer

The easily avoidable accident left him with a permanent hangdog sneer and slurred speech, a combination that made childhood an endless gauntlet of brutal teasing. His home life proved equally chaotic, torn between a short-tempered barber father and an oddball mother who dabbled in astrology and DIY medicine.

His parents eventually “shipped” him off to a boarding home, and he bounced between over a dozen different institutions before finishing high school. Teachers saw him as a lost cause, while his peers treated his cartoon-character name as an open invitation to brawls. He routinely answered the mockery with his fists, accumulating bad grades, behavioral warnings, and a growing reputation as a feral misfit.

By the early 1970s, Stallone was stranded in Manhattan with a few dollars in his pocket, sleeping on wooden benches at the Port Authority Bus Terminal when he couldn’t afford rent. To keep from starving, he took on whatever absurd odd jobs came his way. He cleaned out lion cages at the Central Park Zoo, a gig where he lived in constant fear of urine sprays and sharp claws. He worked at a fish market slicing heads off cod, cut hair in a basement using box cutters with hands that “resembled ten bananas connected by foam rubber,” and worked as an usher at the Baronet and Coronet Theatre. He even sold his beloved bull mastiff, Butkus, outside a 7-11, a moment he describes in "The Steps" as his absolute bottom.

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Rejection as rocket fuel

His early acting credits were equally unglamorous. Desperate for heat during a brutal winter in a tiny room on 46th Street, he agreed to star in an adult movie called "The Party at Kitty and Stud's" for $200. "The whole thing was an embarrassing debacle," he writes in the book, maintaining a dry, self-deprecating tone about his total lack of hope and dignity. Casting agents repeatedly shoved him out of their offices, telling him his voice sounded like a broken garbage disposal and his face looked like a stroke survivor's.

Stallone used the rejection as rocket fuel, sitting down with a notebook to study screenplays and figure out how stories actually worked.

The turning point came in March 1975, when he watched Muhammad Ali fight Chuck Wepner. Wepner was an obscure boxer who lost the fight, yet managed to knock Ali down and survive 15 punishing rounds. Stallone locked himself in a room for three days and hammered out the screenplay for "Rocky." When producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff offered him $350,000 for the script, Stallone refused to sell unless he played the lead role. He had $106 in his bank account, and his wife was pregnant. Still, to his credit, he held firm against every attempt to replace him with an established star like Robert Redford or Ryan O'Neal.

Stubborn to a fault, he got his way and managed to get the film made for under a million dollars. "Rocky" went on to win Best Picture at the 1977 Academy Awards, instantly turning him into a massive movie star.

Stallone eventually bought his dog back for $1,500.

Eye of the tiger

The middle section of "The Steps" tracks his explosive run through the 1980s, but here the narrative loses some of its original momentum. Stallone is most entertaining when he is broke, angry, humiliated, and scheming his way toward the next opportunity. Once the rags become extreme riches, some of that desperate comic energy disappears. There are stretches where a story about an almost pathologically determined outsider turns into the considerably less relatable story of a very famous movie star.

But Stallone taps into his inner Rocky in the final act, reviving the book by confronting his age (80) and mortality with absolute honesty. A churchgoing Catholic, he suggests that although life can be difficult, “you just get stronger the more you fight back and finally realize that God’s greatest gift is your heart and the will to keep going.” It’s a little cliché, but the New Yorker is nothing if not genuine.

He looks back on his career choices with surprising sincerity, admitting when his ego got the best of him during his late 1990s box-office flops. He presents himself not as a genius auteur, but as a relentless, working-class craftsman who understood his own limitations better than his critics did. "The Steps" succeeds because it avoids fawning self-congratulation, standing as an inspiring account of a man who escaped a nightmare to achieve the American dream.

Nick Freitas says America needs real men again



Who better to write a book called “The Man Book” than BlazeTV host Nick Freitas, a former Green Beret and Virginia legislator, husband, father, and — let’s be honest — an undeniably rugged, manly looking guy?

Freitas has built a huge social-media audience with dry humor and blunt observations about politics, culture, marriage, and family. His Instagram following recently crossed 2 million. More important, he offers young men an alternative to influencers peddling a hollow parody of masculinity built on conquest, self-promotion, and obsessive image management.

National renewal begins when men accept that calling at home and live in a way their wives, sons, and daughters can trust.

I have argued for years that real masculinity is not toxic. The one-dimensional brute whom the left beats like a cheap piñata is a cartoon caricature. Toughness, discipline, and endurance can make a man a better father, husband, and protector.

Freitas’ book makes much the same case. Published this spring, “The Man Book” — subtitled “A Point-by-Point Guide to Sucking It Up and Getting the Job Done” — reached the New York Times bestseller list and peaked at No. 6.

Appearing recently on A.J. Rice’s “Dangerous Laughter” podcast, Freitas said national renewal begins with men who accept responsibility, build strong families, and transmit faith, character, and durable values to the next generation.

“I am 100% absolutely convinced that the way you're going to save the country and the way you're going to save our politics is through godly families that are strong, that are cohesive, and that are transferring their values to future generations,” Freitas said.

His political career grew out of frustration. Freitas served two combat tours in Iraq and later said he became fed up with political leaders imposing rules of engagement that, in his view, constrained warfighters in the field. After leaving the Army, he entered politics and served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 2016 to 2026.

“The real problem,” Freitas told Rice, “was our side had kind of given up making the argument on what we believed and why. And to the extent that we did make the argument, it was always kind of this stuffy, overly academic, esoteric argument, instead of actually just talking to people and maybe — God forbid — adding a little bit of sense of humor and sarcasm to it.”

That direct style eventually migrated from politics to questions about marriage, fatherhood, Christianity, and manhood. The questions Freitas received changed too. Young men wanted to know how to become good husbands and fathers. Young women wanted to know how to recognize one.

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The central distinction in “The Man Book” is between masculinity and its counterfeits. A good man is neither passive nor recklessly aggressive. He is strong but disciplined, capable but humble, protective without being domineering, and willing to use force when necessary without making violence an identity.

Freitas argues that progressive politics has alienated many men by treating qualities they naturally want to cultivate — strength, courage, competitiveness, competence — as suspect. Attempts to manufacture a politically acceptable masculinity therefore ring false. Aggression can imitate strength, but violence without self-command, responsibility, and moral purpose is not manhood.

“There’s no pinnacle that you achieve with respect to manhood,” Freitas said. “There’s just things that you go through and experiences that you develop and character that you develop that helps shape you and turn you into the sort of a godly man that other men want to follow and look up to and that your son can follow and look up to.”

That formation requires doing hard things. Freitas encourages fathers to create rites of passage and even to give their sons what he calls a “violent hobby” — learning to shoot or fight, for example — not as an invitation to recklessness but as a way to develop competence, courage, and self-command.

“The problem is that when you get to a critical mass where there’s enough men that don’t know how to do the difficult things,” he said, “you end up in a society where you remember very quickly why you needed men that could do difficult things.”

Theodore Roosevelt made much the same argument more than a century ago: “We need ... the iron qualities that must go with true manhood,” including resolution, courage, indomitable will, and the ability to do “the rough work that must always be done.” Roosevelt immediately added that strength without moral purpose becomes little more than force and cunning.

“You’ll be your son’s hero until you prove to him that you shouldn’t be,” Frietas told Rice. A boy’s natural admiration gives his father an extraordinary advantage — and an obligation to become worthy of imitation.

“Part of being a man is doing hard things that hurt — that may make you tired, that may make you frustrated — and developing the emotional and intellectual maturity and the intestinal fortitude to push through in order to keep your word and take care of the people that you love.”

RELATED: The Christian counterculture is already here

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That means bringing sons into real work instead of relegating them to passive entertainment. The invitation tells a boy he belongs and that his contribution has value.

“You will never understand how important it is to your little boy to be included on projects dad is doing,” Freitas said.

A father’s example matters just as much to daughters. His strength, honesty, presence, and affection establish their earliest standard for honorable manhood. “Understand that you are the first vision to your daughters of what a good man looks like,” Freitas said.

That is where the interview moves beyond a book about masculine habits. Its larger claim is that politics reflects culture, and culture is formed most powerfully in families. Strong nations require men who can govern themselves, do difficult things, protect others, and transmit faith and virtue to their children.

National renewal begins when men accept that calling at home and live in a way their wives, sons, and daughters can trust.

Halloween isn't opening a door to demons. Christians need to stop pretending it is.



It’s that time of year again, when certain well-meaning but misinformed Christians sin against their fellow believers by questioning their salvation and accusing them of inviting demonic activity.

One young woman told me she is 'called' to spend her time looking into these things, so she can warn everyone about the evil of Halloween.

The crime in question? Participating, in any way, in anything related to Halloween. Well, except for denouncing it — the well-meaning/misinformed group enthusiastically participates in things like this:

Diane Schrader

I appreciate the zeal of the people who came up with this. They want people to stop being evil and turn to Jesus.

But there are so many things wrong with this approach.

Let’s unpack some of their base philosophies on this — all of them pretty questionable.

Halloween is evil

The first false assumption is that Halloween is inherently evil.

The history of Halloween is a mash-up of Catholic and pagan traditions. All Hallows' Eve (“hallow” means holy) was the night before All Saints' Day, an explicitly Catholic celebration to remember dead saints, which intersected with pagan harvest time traditions related to the belief that the dead could come back as ghosts — thus the “spooky” imagery of the holiday.

Trick-or-treating seems to have emerged from a medieval British practice called “souling,” where the poor would go door-to-door on November 1 or 2, offering prayers for the dead in exchange for food, often “soul cakes.”

Are some pagan roots evident here? Yep, just like a lot of things in our culture. Our names for the days of the week, for instance, reflect the names of pagan gods — like Thursday is named for the god Thor.

The key point here, though, is that nobody will be worshipping Thor this next Thursday, most likely. Because how something started is largely irrelevant. What matters is how it is today.

Halloween traditions brought to the U.S. by immigrants from Britain, Ireland, and Scotland became increasingly mischievous and destructive in the early 20th century, sometimes leading to outright vandalism or violence. To curb this behavior, in the 1930s, various community groups, civic organizations, parents, and churches began promoting organized, door-to-door treat-collecting for younger children.

Trick-or-treating exploded in popularity after World War II and, as it was heavily marketed by the candy companies, grew into a cultural staple representing good clean fun for America’s kids.

That is what changed, and for the vast majority of Americans, that is where we are today.

So no, Halloween is not inherently evil, even in its history, nor is the American tradition of trick-or-treating.

Light should have nothing to do with darkness ...

We can agree on this one; it’s in the Bible, of course — “what fellowship has light with darkness?”

The problem is, as we just clarified above, that children trick-or-treating, which is 99.99% of Halloween for most American families, is not “darkness.”

Ironically, the misled are actually taking this passage out of context, because it certainly is not arguing that we can’t go out and be around “darkness” (unbelievers). On the contrary, how can we love them if we hide away from them?

The real meaning of the passage surfaces when we read the whole thing:

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? —2 Corinthians 6:14

This is prohibiting close attachments with non-Christians that might compromise the Christian's faith — think marriage or perhaps a business partner.

It’s hardly an injunction against going outside on an October evening and chatting with trick-or-treaters.

... but we’re just fascinated with darkness

It is my observation that the misled crowd tends to be more interested in ferreting out sordid aspects of the darkness than they are in bringing light.

Some even boast of having “gone down the rabbit hole” of “research” on Halloween. But it isn’t actual research, or they would at least have some of the basics down (see above, “Halloween is evil” section).

Instead, they grab onto and fearmonger the most horrific (yet undocumented) claims. We’re talking about TikTok videos from highly questionable “pastors,” spurious claims by “ex-witches,” or paragraph after paragraph detailing pagan gods and occult practices — none of this is a good use of time for most Christians.

One young woman told me she is “called” to spend her time looking into these things, so she can warn everyone about the evil of Halloween. She might be called; I’m just not sure who’s doing the calling. Because this is what we’re told to focus on:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is dignified, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, consider these things. —Philippians 4:8

There’s no darkness in that (above) at all!

Anyway, here are a few of the claims repeatedly made “from the dark side.”

CLAIM: You’re worshipping the devil when you trick-or-treat, whether you want to or not! (A lot of credit is given to what satanists have allegedly said about all this.)

FACT-CHECK: You can’t be "tricked" into worshipping the devil.

CLAIM: Halloween is the worst day for human trafficking!

FACT-CHECK: There is zero supporting evidence; there is no “worst day” for human trafficking, according to law enforcement.

CLAIM: Also human sacrifice.

FACT-CHECK: Again, zero supporting evidence for this.

CLAIM: Witches are out casting spells on Halloween; being outside risks having a demon attach to you.

FACT-CHECK: You can’t accidentally pick up a demon; you have to willfully sin to invite that kind of activity.

CLAIM: If your neighbor is a witch or a satanist, the neighbor curses the candy, and that demonic presence comes into your home!

FACT-CHECK: Your neighbors are most likely not witches or satanists. And if they are? “Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” —1 John 4:4

RELATED: The last ethnic Halloween costume nobody apologizes for

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All demons, all the time

There is a flavor of Christianity that tends to fall into this obsession with darkness, and it reaches its pinnacle in so-called “deliverance ministry.”

Deliverance ministry focuses on casting out demons and tearing down spiritual strongholds and uses language about curses, “soul ties,” and the “legal rights” of demons. Much of this is not biblical. There are people who claim “deliverance” is their gift, and they dig deep into the darkness because of that.

The problem is that there is no such gift in the Bible. Only Jesus and the apostles were able to cast out demons. No instruction about that is given to us, and there is not even the suggestion that we should try to interact with demons in any way. On the contrary, actually, as we’ll see below.

Instead, every believer is given everything we need to win at spiritual warfare, in the fight against the demonic:

  • We are to put on the full armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18).
  • We are to resist the devil (James 4:7).
  • We are not to give him room in our life at all (Ephesians 4:27).
  • We are to seek God, who tells us we can overcome the world, by simple faith (1 John 5:4).
  • We are to be alert and of sober mind (1 Peter 5:8-10). A magnificent passage, and not a word in there about ordering demons around.

The things I have heard some Christians say about “opening a door to demons” are truly troubling. Touching a crystal opens the door. Stretching your body in a way that yoga teaches opens the door. A pumpkin on your porch opens the door — and the person wasn’t even talking about a carved pumpkin — just a pumpkin. Or my very (least) favorite: Using alternative medicine opens the door.

Some of the most outspoken purveyors of this kind of thinking are people who were formerly involved in the occult. I respect their desire to stay far from anything that reminds them of their old lives. But they overstep when they blindly condemn others for a pumpkin, a stretch, or a trip to a functional medicine provider.

Believers, of course, cannot “accidentally dance with the devil.” We are sealed in Christ, who never lets us go, as multiple Scriptures attest. We have nothing to fear from demons while we walk in His light. We can walk outside on Halloween night, and we can even bring home a Hershey bar and not fret that it’s “cursed.”

However, Christians can certainly make choices that open them to satanic influence. Mindfully disobeying God puts you in a dangerous place. But we are bought and paid for by the blood of Christ, and obeying the Scriptures above is our ticket to spiritual safety.

The bad attitude of the demon-obsessed

It shouldn’t be too surprising that people who get caught up in demon obsession are going to respond very negatively to being told they’re on the wrong track.

But they prove they’re wrong with how they interact with the rest of us. Because it is wrong to demonize (pun intended) fellow believers who participate in neighborhood trick-or-treating. The spiritual pride of those who think they have it right leads to them saying some pretty appalling things.

This guy on the right below is a prime example, and Red Pen Logic does an excellent job of explaining how he’s wrong in this brief video.

The 'Halloween Halters'

As for the “Halloween Halt” event advertised in the graphic at the beginning of this article, I think it’s pretty obvious that accosting families with children to tell them that their Halloween celebration is satanic is highly unlikely to win anyone to the cause of Christ, but it will certainly embitter, anger, and antagonize moms and dads just trying to enjoy this cultural tradition with their little ones.

Two truths the Halloween halters and haters are missing:

  • God put you in your neighborhood for a reason.
  • One night a year, God literally brings your neighbors to your door.

This is called a gospel opportunity, and next week I’ll share some ideas on how to make it truly a night of light.

This essay previously appeared at the She Speaks Truth Substack.

Justice Alito’s Practical Guide to Originalism

Almost 40 years ago, when he was still a new member of the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia gave a speech, later published as an essay, on how judges should interpret the Constitution. In "Originalism: The Lesser Evil," Scalia argued that judges should interpret the Constitution's words in accordance with how those words were interpreted by the generation that wrote and ratified them.

The post Justice Alito’s Practical Guide to Originalism appeared first on .