3-19-25

I remember distinctly as a State Senator when Apple …..yes, Apple – the iphone

company…….would send its’ paid lobbyist to see me……the Pro Tem of the

Senate had been asked by Apple to promote legislation that would mandate that all

state agencies had to hire on a basis of diversity that included LGBTQ

preferences…..and wanted Alabama law to make LGBTQ claimants a protected

class so that they could not be fired, or rejected, without fear of lawsuits……I

remember looking him in the eye and asking what business Apple had as a private

entity trying to set public policy…..you may also recall some years ago when

Target said it would not wait for legislators to come to their side and declared that

all Target stores would have a transgender bathroom policy……or when Coca-

Cola and Delta Airlines both took open issue with Georgia passing tougher

election integrity laws…..there is no wisdom in this……there is no wisdom in a

company who has a duty to its shareholders openly working to alienate a large

section of its consumer base in order to achieve some higher ESG score that shows

how woke and inclusive they are……

Recently a story broke in Illinois about a school district that is still intent on

focusing on DEI…..specifically transgenderism…..the school board is under fire

after young female middle school students were forced to change into their gym

clothes in a locker room where a guy was changing….a guy that believes he is a

girl…..the real girls protested and called their parents….the parents were

outraged….but the school doubled down and literally blocked the door and would

not let the girls leave the locker room until they had changed their clothes in front

of the transgender boy who had invaded his privacy……who does that?!

At some point in recent times I was reading Proverbs 16…….I try to winnow down

sometimes to what part of a passage stands out to me…..and then prayerfully try to

figure out why…….as I was reading through this chapter I noticed something I had

never seen before……verse 16 of that chapter declares “How much better it is to

get wisdom than gold!”……I felt like I had seen that message before but what

struck me that time was that it was the only verse in the chapter……really in the

surrounding chapters that ended in an exclamation point…..Apparently God saw fit

to place some extra emphasis on the value he places on wisdom……and then this

morning while I was getting ready for today’s show Charlene sent me a quote from

a piece she read called “From the wisdom of Corrie Ten Boom’s father”…….well

that got my attention so I figured I’d better read it through and just wow!........

Corrie was young……and impressionable…..and inquisitive…..on one occasion

she was able to accompany her father, a watchmaker by trade, on business as he

bought parts for his shop……Corrie, as a young girl had overheard adults speaking

of something called sex and she didn’t know what it meant……Here is how she

related the conversation she had with her father……

She said, “Sex,” I was pretty sure, meant whether you were a boy or girl, and

“sin” made Tante Jans (her grandmother) very angry, but what the two together

meant I could not imagine. And so, seated next to Father in the train compartment,

I suddenly asked, “Father, what is sexsin?”

He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my

surprise he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack

over our heads, and set it on the floor. “Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?” he

said. I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts

he had purchased that morning. “It’s too heavy,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl

to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge

is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For

now you must trust me to carry it for you.” – that quote comes from Corrie Ten

Booms book The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

The summary that accompanied this quote from Corrie Ten Boom’s book said “We

are asking our children to carry loads that are way too heavy for them. They

should not be forced, as children, to see and feel the world through the lens of

adults. Innocence is worth protecting and worth fighting for. We need to do our

part as parents and caregivers to carry certain things for them until they are old

enough to bear the load.”…….you see, that’s wisdom……

what happens when companies and leaders go woke and try to supplant common

sense and decency and reset public policy themselves……we’ve seen it quite a bit

in the last few years …..the left has opened the floodgates to every worthless

pandering idea that accommodates the most extreme prurient interests in our

society……

Here's one for you…..do you remember Pepe LePew?.....that’s right the cartoon

character….the hapless French skunk who constantly falls in love with a cat….but

the female cat resists his overtures because he smells so bad…..the cartoons were

funny…..they were slapstick…..they were cartoons!....and they’ve been

banned….did you know that? Think about it….when is the last time you saw Pepe

LePew….well, after the #metoo movement got ahold of poor Pepe he was

canceled……one liberal journalist wrote that

his antics are perceived as” perpetuating stereotypes of French culture.” Another

lib named Amber E. George, wrote a 2017 essay "Pride or Prejudice? Exploring

Issues of Queerness, Speciesism, and Disability in Warner Bros. Looney Tunes",

describes Pepé's actions towards Penelope Pussycat as "sexual

harassment, stalking, and abuse".

So let’s get this straight…..we can’t have a cartoon skunk expressing his desire for

romance in slapstick fashion…..but we can force middle school girls to change

clothes in front of guys…..where is the wisdom?.....

You may recall the Wonderful World of Disney and its running gun battle with

Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida and his conservative allies in the Florida House

and Senate…….Florida passed a bill to prevent kindergartners through early

elementary students from having to be submitted to discussions, introductions,

even lessons on the liberal mantras of gender identity, gender fluidity, and

sexuality……Disney openly and very adamantly opposed the State’s duly elected

leadership on this issue……and not just a little bit…..like openly and

vociferously……it’s a tragedy and it was also a self-inflicted wound by a company

that has made its name being the family friendly kid-loving safe space for story

telling and wholesomeness……..there was no wisdom in it…..

So this morning as I pondered my prep for the show and also realized I was being

hit with the word wisdom from different angles…..I thought to myself, “yep.

That’s it. they completely lack wisdom. They’ve lost sight of their intended

purpose and are floundering in open seas because they lack wisdom”…..

It is a sad thing to see a great industry standard bearers like Apple, Disney, Warner

Brothers go down in woke flames…..it’s devastating to see school boards that

think that they should sacrifice the security and wellbeing of young girls over one

boy who has delusions of his own gender…… where is the wisdom that says there

should be a fight over teaching small children such controversial topics at a time

when their hearts and minds are looking for the next play time, the next friend, the

next meal, the next honest hug……

The American public by and large wants to return to the days that it could purchase

a product, engage a service, stay at a hotel, buy a commodity, shop for food, send

their kids to school, watch a cartoon…..without having to have a pang of

conscience over whether or not doing so is more about the support of alternative

lifestyles, woke policies or politics of any kind……ANY kind…..

It is time for wisdom to return …..Proverbs 16:16 says so with an exclamation

point.

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way!