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Unmasking Moral Shame Culture

Karlo Broussard joins us to talk about his new book, The New Relativism: Unmasking the Philosophy of Today’s Woke Moralists. We discuss issues related to moral shaming and accusations of being judgmental, hateful, and bigoted, particularly concerning lifestyle choices associated with the LGBTQ+ community. Karlo explores the underlying moral relativism behind such accusations and offers critiques of this approach, emphasizing the importance of open and reasoned discussion on moral issues.


Cy Kellett:

Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Are you feeling defensive? Are you feeling defensive about your Catholic faith? Does the society maybe in its messaging, maybe seem like it’s a bit bullying towards our Christian faith, towards the things that we hold dear, towards the moral choices that we make, or even the moral standards that we hold?

Well, Karlo Broussard is our guest this time. And he’s got the new book out, The New Relativism, and you can get it wherever good books are sold. The New Relativism: Unmasking the Philosophy of Today’s Woke Moralists. I think that this word moralist is a good place to start because what we’re feeling in many cases is attacked by a morality that is foreign to us, frankly. Maybe you’ve, as a Christian, experienced yourself or other Christians being subjected to charges of being judgmental, being hateful, being bigoted. All of those words are tools used by the new moralists to cow people. Karlo, thanks for being here with us.

Karlo Broussard:

Cy, thanks for having me, man. Looking forward to the conversation.

Cy Kellett:

We’re actually going to take our conversation from your book, the New Relativism. And you talk about moral shame culture. It does seem that moral shaming is a big part of what’s going on. What do you mean by moral shame culture?

Karlo Broussard:

Well, within our contemporary culture, Christians are often shamed into silence for offering any form of criticism, of certain lifestyle choices that are promoted, celebrated, and affirmed by contemporary culture, particularly those lifestyle choices associated with the LGBTQ+ community. There are a series of moral imperatives of thou shalt nots, as I articulate in my book. One in particular is thou shalt not be a judgmental, hateful bigot.

Whenever we offer any opposing view of lifestyle choices concerning transgenderism, lifestyle choices associated with the same sex sexual activity or so-called same sex marriage, we are often shamed by offering such criticism. How dare you? Shame on you for being such a judgmental, hateful bigot for expressing your opposing views to these behaviors.

That’s what I mean by moral shame, living in this culture where we are shamed into silence because most people are not willing or not able perhaps to engage these charges in order to show their absurdities, in order to expose the intellectual incoherencies lurking behind them. And so they just cower and they are silent. And some people just think, “Well, man, I must be a bad guy if I’m offering this critique of those lifestyle choices. And I don’t want to be a bad guy, so I’ll just shut up.”

Cy Kellett:

I don’t want to be a bad guy. I don’t want to be a judgmental, hateful bigot. And I think that’s why this is effective. That we’re social creatures and none of us want to be ostracized socially as somehow creepier than other people.

But people may say, “Well, you guys exaggerate all of this.” And I would challenge those people to listen when say a public school teacher calls us on the radio and says, “I don’t want to use the wrong pronouns for boys and girls. That’s lying to them about who they are.” Then they tell about the unbelievable pressure they are subjected to just to keep their job as teachers.

Karlo Broussard:

Absolutely.

Cy Kellett:

Or people who work in the sciences or maybe in medical care who say, “I don’t want to participate in these things. They’re immoral.” Everything from, well, certainly all the pro-life stuff, but even the new stuff about mutilating and changing people’s healthy bodies for ideological reasons. Try standing up to that when you work for a big healthcare corporation or a media corporation or a science doing corporation or a university. I don’t think we’re exaggerating this at all. People are feeling that shame and ostracizing are powerful tools that are being used against them.

Karlo Broussard:

Yeah, absolutely. And I articulate a few examples in this chapter of my book from contemporary culture. I mean, we look to our own president, Joe Biden, whenever Florida lawmakers announced a bill in 2022, the Florida House Bill 1557, Senate Bill 1834, that would ban certain classroom discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity for grades kindergarten through third. President Biden slapped the hateful label on it in two different times, one in a tweet and the other in his national address on Transgender Day of Visibility.

And that wasn’t even a critique of the lifestyles themselves. That was just saying, “We’re not going to teach kindergarten through third-graders these issues.” And it’s an immediate labeling of hateful Twitter that had an exchange with The Babylon Bee, a satirical website, and that it noted some time ago that biological sex was fixed at birth. Now we could quibble about whether they were right there, which they’re not because it would go before birth. But Twitter in response claimed that the tweet violated our rules against, here it is, hateful conduct.

Cy Kellett:

Wow.

Karlo Broussard:

Just by offering an opposing view, it was labeled as hateful conduct. I have a friend back in Louisiana, Father Andre Metrejean. On Facebook, whenever the New Orleans Saints in the Superdome had lit up the Superdome with LGBTQ+ colors in his Facebook response, he was like, “Come on, NOLA Saints, we want to support you. But this kind of stuff hurts society and souls. Don’t bow down to the pressure groups. Kids have rights. Children deserve to have a mom and a dad. Please don’t support immorality.” And then, social media blew up with posts of this is hateful, and here it is, this is bigotry.

And so there you have hateful, the hateful charge, the bigotry charge, and even the judgmental charge. Consider this, Cy. As I point out in my book, there was a Borno study done some time ago. It’s a bit of an older study, a research poll found that 87% of millennials who don’t go to church say that they see Christians as judgmental. And within that study it comes out that what they perceive as judgmental, and we’ll get to this in a moment, is Christians not caring about what other people think. And all they want to do is just affirm their own position.

Now, recently, their ACS technologies, it’s an information management software in existence since 1978, they surveyed 34.3 million Catholics. And the top reason for a lot of Catholics not attending mass was religious people are too judgmental. There you have the judgmental charge. We as Christians are perceived to be hateful, to be bigoted, and to be judgmental.

Now the question is why do they label us in these ways? Well, when you get down to it, these charges are thrown at us and made against us, Cy, simply for offering any form of criticism of behavior. We’re simply offering an opposing view concerning what is appropriate human behavior, particularly many times within the sexual arena in contrast to lifestyle choices that are associated with the LGBTQ+ community. And in response, we are labeled as hateful, judgmental, or bigoted.

It’s important that we understand that as we move forward. And then also to ask the question, well, what’s going on in the mind of these people when they’re making these charges against us? And there, we can begin to unspin the the modern spin.

Cy Kellett:

Maybe one thing that you do is you get into those words, hate, bigotry and judgmentalism. And you explain what they actually mean. And that’s one way of getting at the inappropriateness of using them just because someone disagrees with you on a moral issue.

Karlo Broussard:

Yeah. What’s interesting about this, Cy, is that those who are making the charges against us are actually using the terms or thinking of the terms in the right way. In contrast to thou shalt not be a white supremacist, where white supremacy is identified with affirming objective truth. That ain’t white supremacy, man. That’s a totally equivocation of the word. They’re just robbing the phrase and then attaching whatever meaning they want to it.

But in this case, those who charge us with these labels are actually utilizing the terms with their appropriate meaning. But the failure comes in the application, the reason for which they’re applying it. For example, hate is ill will towards a person. When you have ill will towards a person, you want that person to suffer badness for the sake of suffering badness. That’s the ultimate in bill. That’s hate, and they’re thinking that in the right way. They’re using the term appropriately, but notice when do they apply it to us? When we simply oppose a behavior and criticize a behavior.

Bigotry, that’s having an adverse emotional response to a person, an adverse response to a person based upon emotion rather than reason. And whenever people charge us with that, they’re using bigotry with the appropriate meaning. But notice why are they calling us bigot? Because we’re criticizing a behavior. And so therein we’re going to see in a moment, there’s a misapplication.

Judgmental. To be judgmental is to not care about what people think and feel as a person where you judge their motivations to be ill motivated without any sufficient reason. And that’s working and operating in their mind, but they’re applying it to us simply for opposing certain lifestyle choices.

And so just to give you a little flavor, Cy, of how people are thinking within our culture. Getting back to that Borno study. I had mentioned that Christians in the study, it was said that Christians never bother figuring out what other people actually think. They don’t seem to be very compassionate. That was the explanation as to why certain millennials think Christians are judgmental, not caring about what people think or feel.

And check this out. Don Lemon or Lemon, however you wish to pronounce his last name, you remember, I think we talked about this before, whenever he went on the view in response to the Catholic Church thing-

Cy Kellett:

We did talk about this when he did that. Yeah, I remember.

Karlo Broussard:

We’re no longer, we’re not going to blast same sex unions. He went on The View and basically offered his criticisms of that position. And here’s what he said, “Whatever religion you happen belong to out there, go out and meet people and try to understand people. Instead of having the church hinder you, go out and have a barbecue and meet people and start breaking bread with people and getting to know them.”

Notice the implication here. What’s the implication of this statement? Well, we’ll see that they’re good intention people, and they’re not lustful people. They’re not ill motivated. The assumption being that he thinks we think they’re ill motivated. And so, this is an example of how people within our contemporary culture simply for opposing their lifestyle choice, they automatically think that we don’t care about what they think or feel. That we’re being judgemental in automatically assuming that they’re ill motivated in their lifestyle choices for choosing those lifestyle choices.

This is what’s going on within this moral shame culture, at least with regard to hatefulness, bigotry and judgmentalism. They are ascribing the appropriate meaning to the terms, but one of the critiques we’ll see in a moment when we go through them is there’s a misapplication. Those bad things are being misapplied to what we’re doing. Or to state it differently. What we’re doing in criticizing certain behaviors is not what these things are, hatefulness, bigotry and judgmentalism.

Cy Kellett:

Okay. What are some critiques of this way of thinking? How can we critique what’s being said here?

Karlo Broussard:

Well, remember, I think as we move forward, to keep in mind what are they charging us with these labels for? Offering criticism of a certain lifestyle choice. Okay. Well, think about it, Cy. First of all, there’s a bit of special pleading going on or double standard, an unjustified double standard.

If criticism of behavior, which we’re offering to LGBTQ lifestyle choices, equals being judgmental, hateful, and bigoted, well, then wouldn’t they be guilty of being judgmental, hateful, and bigoted for criticizing my behavior?

Cy Kellett:

Yeah.

Karlo Broussard:

In so far as they say, “Karlo, thou shalt not be judgmental, hateful, and bigoted. You should not be criticizing lifestyle choices of LGBTQ+ community,” well, then they would be operating upon an arbitrary standard. It’s okay for them to criticize my behavior, but it’s not okay for me to criticize other people’s behavior. You see?

Cy Kellett:

Yeah, that is.

Karlo Broussard:

There’s a double standard there. That would be one critique. And then the second critique, Cy, and I was alluding to it earlier, is that think about this. If criticism of the lifestyle choices associated with the LGBTQ+ community equals being judgmental, hateful, and bigoted, well then, wouldn’t the criticism of any other behavior also be judgmental, hateful, and bigoted? Well, it would have to be.

Notice how this understanding, this application of being judgmental, hateful, and bigoted undermines any and all negative opinions about human behavior. I mean, they’re offering a negative opinion about my behavior. The very logic of their charge would undermine their own negative opinion about my behavior. And then what about this, Cy? Well, aren’t we all opposed to racism here? Isn’t that what critical race theory is supposedly all about is to try to get rid of racism? Most people in our contemporary culture would say, “Yep, racism is bad.” Well, isn’t that a negative opinion about a human behavior? Isn’t that criticism of a specific human behavior?

If criticizing behaviors associated with LGBTQ+ community equals being judgmental, hateful, and bigoted, well then why isn’t criticizing racism equivalent to being judgmental, hateful and bigoted, you see? What we’re doing here is we’re teasing out the principle that’s driving the moral shame culture. And showing how if we apply it consistently, it’s going to take down a lot of things that they’re trying to fight against, namely racism. You’re going to have to affirm racism. You’re going to have to start allowing for racism in your moral world view [inaudible 00:16:28].

Cy Kellett:

If you’re supposed to be tolerant in the sense of every behavior is tolerated, then you have no basis on which to say racism is wrong. But Karlo, racism is wrong. Really the question is not about am I criticizing a human behavior. It’s about whether the behavior I’m criticizing is right or wrong.

Karlo Broussard:

Absolutely. Yeah. It’s a distraction. It’s a red herring. It distracts from the real issue at hand. And this is actually one of the critiques that I point out in the book. It’s an ad hominem fallacy. It’s a fallacy of relevance because notice, Cy, that whenever I offer a criticism of a lifestyle choice associated with the LGBTQ+ community, we receive a charge of being hateful.

In other words, “Karlo, your ill will towards the person.” Well, wait a minute, that’s an appeal to my motivations. That’s a distraction. That’s irrelevant as to whether the human behavior is moral or immoral. “Karlo, you’re being a bigot.” Well, maybe I am, but this question still remains, is this particular human behavior, same sex, sexual activity maybe or a transgender lifestyle, is this moral or immoral?

Maybe I am being judgmental. Maybe a Christian is judgmental in wrongly judging the motivations of the person whose behavior they’re critiquing. But the question would still remain is the behavior moral or immoral. Notice how these sorts of charges or actually falling prey to the fallacy of relevance. It’s attacking the character of the person who’s doing the criticism rather than focusing on the real issue at hand, namely whether the human behavior itself is moral or immoral.

And so, that’s yet another critique that we could offer. Now, Cy, one thing I wanted to mention here, recall how earlier I said how this way of thinking in the moral shame culture undermines any and all negative opinions about behaviors? This is where the new relativism raises its ugly hit because herein lies moral relativism.

Cy Kellett:

There we go. Yeah.

Karlo Broussard:

Yeah. If a criticism of a behavior entails being judgmental, hateful, and bigoted. In other words, you’re a bad guy for being critical of a human behavior, well, then that’s nothing more than saying you can’t be critical of human behavior. But if you can’t be critical of any human behavior, well then there’s no human behavior that’s right or wrong. And so there we have moral relativism. No absolute truth when it comes to appropriate or inappropriate good or bad human behavior. Relativism, at least moral relativism, rears its ugly head within this moral shame culture. In particular, the moral shaming of judgmentalism, hatefulness and bigotry in those charges.

Cy Kellett:

Wow, there it is. Right down at the root of all this, somebody should write a book about this. That at the root of all this moralism and shaming is actually a relativism that doesn’t really care about or maybe even admit to, that there are things that are moral and things that are immoral.

Karlo Broussard:

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think, Cy, too most importantly perhaps, is that to point out how each of these charges fails to make proper distinctions. I mentioned it in passing earlier, but I think it’s important to highlight here.

If we take the hateful charge, notice how it fails to distinguish between having a negative opinion about the behavior and having ill will toward the person. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. If I criticize the behavior that you’re engaging in, what am I basically saying? I’m saying, “Cy, that’s not good for you. That’s immoral, that’s not good for you.” Well, why would I point that out? At least for a Christian, why would we point that out unless we want what is good for you? That’s an expression of goodwill for you not ill will.

And so, my critique would be an expression of goodwill or love as opposed to hate. Take the charge of being judgmental. This fails to distinguish our assessment of behavior versus the person’s culpability. When Don Lemon says, “Hey, go have a barbecue and break bread. You’ll see that they’re not ill motivated in their lifestyle choice.” Well, listen, we’re not judging that these behaviors are immoral because we think those people are ill motivated and just lustful people trying to satisfy their lustful cravings. We judge these behaviors to be immoral because they conflict with the natural moral law and the order of good inscribed in our nature.

Take the bigotry charge, it fails to distinguish between negative opinions about behavior based on reason and negative opinions based on emotion. Bigotry is not, Cy, simply expressing negative opinions, but doing so based on emotion or biases rather than reason. The question for us as Christians, whenever we are opposing certain lifestyle choices, are we opposing it merely based on emotion or preconceived biases? Or are we opposing it based on reason? If the former, then we would be guilty of bigotry. If the latter, then we’re not guilty of bigotry.

We need to reflect on ourself, for ourselves as Christians, and have self-knowledge to make sure the charge of bigotry doesn’t stick. But simply criticizing the behavior itself based on reason, that is not bigotry.

Cy Kellett:

But we can fall into bigotry because knowing the truth about a thing, even a moral thing takes work. And so if you just get in the habit of saying no to things or being disgusted by when people are different than you, then you’re not going to do that work and you will slip into bigotry. Because I’m sure there’s lots of things that people do all over the world.

You know what? The only example I can think of right now, Karlo, is arranged marriage. I have to say I had this visceral opposition to arranged marriage until I met an Indian couple whose marriage had been arranged. And they explained to me how it was done, and it included their consent and all that. And it would be bigoted of me to reject their mode of finding spouses in their part of India. And it was bigoted of me because I didn’t know.

It’s possible to just go, to go, “That’s awful. Arranged marriage is awful,” until you actually find out, well, it’s not what you think it is. All right. What about bigotry? There was a distinction you wanted to make about what…

Karlo Broussard:

Well, I just made it prior to your comment. I was making the distinction about it fails to distinguish between negative opinions about behaviors based on reason.

Cy Kellett:

Oh, right. Yeah.

Karlo Broussard:

And negative opinions based on emotion or preconceived biases, like would’ve been in your case. And so, the charges of bigotry, simply because we’re making a criticism of certain behaviors that doesn’t stick because bigotry is whenever you have a negative response based purely on emotion rather than reason.

Now, are there some Christians who do that? Yes. But the criticism itself is not bigotry. And we need to make sure that whenever we do offer criticism, it is based on reason and not on emotions. And so that comes with a little bit of training and work. And if we don’t know the reasons why, we still need to be able to say, “Well, I know that’s wrong. I haven’t thought through the reasons why.” And then you leave it at that. And that’s not bigotry just by saying, “I oppose this behavior and I think it’s immoral.”

Cy Kellett:

Right. Right. Okay. Well, we’re getting near the end, Karlo. We’ve actually kept you longer than we said we were going to keep you. You want to give us the… It just seems to me that the primary insight here that you have is that underneath all of this is this relativism and that what’s really just going on, the word hate, when someone calls me hateful in this context, it doesn’t mean that I’m hateful. It means they have a view of morality that is more slippery. And they just want to defend it by saying, “Well, at least I’m not hateful like you.”

Karlo Broussard:

Right. What it amounts to is you cannot criticize these particular lifestyle choices, those associated with the LGBTQ+ community. And so we need to challenge people to say, “W ell, why not? Why can’t I criticize and have a negative opinion about these behaviors? But we can criticize and have negative opinions about other behaviors? Why is moral analysis excluded for these lifestyle choices, but not for other lifestyle choices?” That gets to that double standard there. And saying, “Come on man, we need to be consistent in offering a moral analysis of behavior.”

Now, you might think my judgment is wrong. You might say, “Hey, Karlo, I think you’re absolutely off base in your conclusion that same sex sexual activity is immoral.” Fine. If you disagree with that, that’s fine. But let’s have a discussion of why you think I’m wrong and we can interact with that. I’ll give you reasons why I think you’re wrong in your judgment that it is moral. That’s where the conversation has to go, as opposed to just shouting at each other saying, “You’re a hateful, judgmental bigot, and I don’t want to talk to you.”

Well, we’re just throwing reason out the door there and we’re only reduced to wheels. And in this case, there’s a conflict of wheels. And so it’s going to be the one who has the more powerful wheel who’s going to win the day.

Cy Kellett:

Yeah. Or whoever has CNN on their side. Karlo, thanks very much. I always enjoy the conversations.

Karlo Broussard:

Cy, thank you, buddy. God bless.

Cy Kellett:

And thank you to all of our listeners. We do appreciate that you join us here. If you’d like to know more about what we do, you should check out catholic.com. That’s our website. If you’d like to see more or hear more of what Karlo does, you can check out his podcast. No, not the Sunday Catholic Word. Sundaycatholicword.com, sundaycatholicword.com is where you can find what Karlo does.

And if you are of a mind too, and you have the means and you can support us, it does take some money to keep doing this. You can always support us financially at givecatholic.com. Your comments, suggestions, ideas, complaints are all welcome at our email address, focus@catholic.com, focus@catholic.com. And I think that about does it for us. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. We’ll see you next time, God willing, right here on Catholic Answers Focus.

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