I Asked a “Gay Ex-Trad” About Sexual Ethics

In this conversation, Trent Horn and Cade Bradley go head-to-head on some of the hardest questions in modern sexual ethics: whether morality is grounded in natural law or human flourishing, whether affirmation actually improves outcomes, and whether data alone can settle moral debates. They also clash over same-sex relationships, public norms, schools, DSM history, transgender questions, and the limits of harm-based reasoning.

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Trent Horn (00:00:00):

Like as a society, shouldn’t we come together and say, “Don’t do this. These are bad health outcomes, whether you’re gay or strict. Don’t do this.

Cade Bradley (00:00:05):

We can encourage one thing and we can discourage- 

Trent Horn (00:00:09):

Oh come on.

Cade Bradley (00:00:10):

No, it’s a very easy thing. What do you think the studies say about fulfillment-

Trent Horn (00:00:14):

I don’t care. We shouldn’t chop people’s peepees off. Welcome to the Council of Trent. Today, my guest is Cade Bradley. He goes by the handle Gayx Trad, right?

Cade Bradley (00:00:29):

Yeah, that’s the actual @. And then my name on all the platforms is Cade Bradley.

Trent Horn (00:00:33):

Cade Bradley, but goes by the moniker, Gay X Trad. We’re going to get into the history of that. He’s been on Jubilee a few times. He’s had dialogues, had a dialogue with my colleague, Joe Heschmire, talking about religion, sexual ethics, and we’re just going to have a chat about that today. And this was also recorded, by the way, before my conference. This is actually the day before. And you’re stopping by, right?

Cade Bradley (00:00:55):

Indeed. I’ll be there all day.

Trent Horn (00:00:56):

Dude, I’m excited.

Cade Bradley (00:00:57):

Yeah, it’ll be fun.

Trent Horn (00:00:58):

Oh yeah. Because the goal of the conference, really anybody could come and feel at home because the theme is just online evangelism. How do we do it? Right. How do we do it? And I always think when I go to conferences, I always have in my mind when I give a talk to assume not everybody there is Catholic or Christian. If you assume that, it’s so awkward. Yeah. When somebody who is not Catholic or not Christian like yourself, because you identify as an atheist, correct? Yeah. Yeah. It’s super awkward. You’re bashing these people and they come up later. “What’d you think of the talk? “Well, I’m one of the people you were ripping on. Has that ever happened to you?

Cade Bradley (00:01:34):

Yeah. I’ve been at conferences both with people that I agree with and disagree with. And there’s times where it’s like, ” Man, I don’t think you’ve ever tried that talking point to someone who doesn’t already agree with you. “And I think online we sort of get this feedback which is like, ” Oh, I’m doing well because there’s views, but I know people who get a ton of views and they’re the most off-putting people on planet earth and those talking points never work with an average person. But online it can seem like, oh, this is a great talking point. “Yeah.

Trent Horn (00:02:00):

It reminds me because I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a little bit of Muay Thai. So I enjoy grappling,

Cade Bradley (00:02:06):

MMA,

Trent Horn (00:02:06):

That kind of stuff. It reminds me that there’s two kinds of MMA or fighters. There’ll be people who will demonstrate cool moves online. And I think to myself, you’ve never been in a real fight with someone.

Cade Bradley (00:02:18):

They’ll

Trent Horn (00:02:18):

Be like, ” Oh, you have to do. It’s just when they have the knife like this, just there you go. “I’m like, ” That would never work in a real fight. You will get stabbed and you will die. “And then there’s people I see who will demonstrate here’s what you should do in an interaction. And I can see it. I’m like, ” Oh wow, they’ve been like a thousand fights. They actually know what they’re talking about. “And I think you see that, but the problem is the people who, the fake fighters to someone who doesn’t know how to fight, it’s like, ” Wow, that was really awesome. Only someone who’s been in it. It’s like, oh no, that wouldn’t work at all. “And you’re the same way. It’s like you’ll hear people come up with probably religious arguments, ethic arguments, and there’s some that probably challenge you and others you’re like, ” Dude, have you ever talked to somebody like me?

Cade Bradley (00:02:57):

“Yeah. It’s the same thing in reverse where I know a lot of progressive people where they just sort of talk among themselves and then they keep workshopping more extreme takes and they’re like, ” We’re going to win by saying X, Y, and Z. “And you’re like, ” You got to be controlled opposition because if you want to lose, that’s the exact hockey point to use if you want to be as off-putting as possible.

Trent Horn (00:03:16):

“Well, it’s like these kind of people they think, ” Well, there’s New York and San Francisco and I don’t think there’s anything in between here. So what does it matter? “The forget,” Oh, there’s like normal people who find this really off-putting. “So let’s dive in a bit. So we’re going to talk about sexual ethics today. We’ve got three prompts we’re going to go through. Why don’t you give a little bit of a background to our listeners about, because you identified not just as a Catholic, but as more of a traditional Catholic, right?

Cade Bradley (00:03:43):

Oh yeah. I was a big Latin mascue. I grew up sort of nominally Catholic. We went to Masso almost every weekend into middle school. I started going down the apologetics rabbit hole and bought most of the books from Catholic answers. I was listening to podcasts all the time and loved theology. St. Thomas Aquinas was my confirmation saint and my goal in life was to become a Catholic priest, was looking at the karmelite order that ended up not panning out. So went out to college to get and pursue degrees in philosophy and filmmaking. And then I was about 20 at the time when I started going, ” Do I have answers or do I have good answers to a lot of these questions? “Left religion about three, I think almost four years ago now, and then started doing YouTube a year and a half, two years ago, thinking through a lot of these big questions at life and wanting to have some really fruitful discussions.

Trent Horn (00:04:35):

And then the question of how you identify with your sexual orientation, where did that fit into that journey? What age or what stage I would say?

Cade Bradley (00:04:44):

I think it was at middle school that I started realizing that I was gay, wasn’t acting on it, wasn’t sure what to do with it. And then once I became super Catholic, I heard the talking points of, ” You can experience these attractions, just don’t act on them. “And so when I was Catholic, I was very Catholic, living a traditional sexual ethic, wasn’t living any sort of crazy double life. And at the time I was like, ” I’m happy I’m fulfilled. This is what chastity means. “I think my perspectives on that have shifted after leaving religion. But yeah, so I sort of realized beforehand while I was Catholic, was like, ” I’m same sex attracted, but not acting on it. Maybe the Lord will make me straight someday. “That didn’t end up happening. And then after leaving religion, I was like, ” Oh, this is actually a great part of life going on dates, falling in love.

(00:05:33):

All the things that I’d heard about the beauty of marriage from Christopher West and theology of the body and how amazing relationships can be, I found that in more sense leaving the church while appreciating a lot of the beauty and the Catholic teachings out there.

Trent Horn (00:05:46):

Okay. So your departure then from the Catholic faith into atheism, it wasn’t motivated by understanding your sexual orientation. It sounds like there were other intellectual objections you had that you couldn’t get over, I

Cade Bradley (00:06:02):

Guess. Yeah, correct. Yeah, because I had realized my sexuality before becoming Catholic class. But you were

Trent Horn (00:06:06):

Prepared to live just a chase Catholic life.

Cade Bradley (00:06:08):

Yeah. That’s what I was expecting to do for the rest of my life, whether it’s the single life or the priesthood. And then after leaving for sort of intellectual reasons, I came out and things have been great since. Not that they were terrible beforehand. I don’t think that … I’m very appreciative of the Catholic phase of my life and there’s a lot of things that I learned and shaped me into who I am. I’m also very grateful to be on this side of the equation now.

Trent Horn (00:06:37):

You’re not like one of the new atheists that has a perpetual chip on their shoulder about religion. We don’t have to get into it too deep because I want to talk more about sexual ethics, but what were some of the intellectual objections that kind of it would’ve pushed you out of not just Catholicism, but Christianity and theism?

Cade Bradley (00:06:53):

Yeah. I think the big thing for me was this idea of doagamo where we have beliefs that are absolute, that are sort of unchanging, that we hold in the highest regard. And I didn’t see a way to say, not only are we confident in God, but I can maintain or I have … Or it is objectively true that the Trinity is real or that the Catholic church is infallible in teachings of faith and morals. I like having a flexible worldview where we can have the weight of belief, stack up with the weight of the evidence that’s out there. I think if the religious claims were much more moderate about there’s something that’s supernatural that exists, but I don’t know the particular qualities, I’d be more inclined. Or if Christianity was to say, “We think Jesus was X, Y, and Z, or we tentatively hold this particular belief,” I’d be more inclined.

(00:07:46):

But the version of Catholicism that I was in, going to the Latin mass was very all in or very all out. And so once I started questioning things, I was like, “Well, I guess I’m all out. ” I looked at some other Christian denominations. Yeah,

Trent Horn (00:07:57):

Because I was going to say, why wouldn’t you just end up being somebody like Brandon Robertson, just super liberal, progressive. It all sounds very Christian. It’s basically universalist and I’ll believe whatever you want, kind of. But you didn’t want to go that route, you went just straight up atheist.

Cade Bradley (00:08:11):

I think every time I would go to a non-Catholic Christian church, I would just hear all of the Catholic talking points against Protestantism in my head. And so I went to a few different denominations. I didn’t find them any more compelling. You can take

Trent Horn (00:08:24):

The man out of Catholicism, but you can’t take Catholicism out of the man.

Cade Bradley (00:08:28):

It’s true. Yeah. Every time I’d go to these Protestant churches … One of the churches that I looked at as I was deconstructing, they were talking about the Last Supper discourse and I was like, “Oh, I’ve read too many books on this one to just sit here during the sermon and not analyze it. ” I think a lot of people find fruit in progressive interpretations of Christianity or sort of Christian agnosticism. I found that once I was out and thinking through the issues, I probably consider myself like a mere Christian for a handful of months. And then after a few months later, I was like, “I don’t think I believe at all. “

Trent Horn (00:09:04):

It’s so funny. I feel like basically you were raised in this trad mindset and I try to be always very gracious to be … I mean, I think it’s so funny, people on the outside will probably call me some kind of hardcore, traditionalist, insane Christofascist. And then if you ask the trads online, they think I’m a total liberal hippie, subversive converso. It sounds like you kind of kept the trad mindset because trads would say it’s Catholicism or bust. And so it’s like, oh, well, if it’s not Catholicism, then it’s bust.

Cade Bradley (00:09:35):

Yeah. And I found a lot of meaning and purpose or meaning and purpose took a while to sort of figure out what is the point of life, what is it that I care about outside of religion. And then that sort of took a year or two of visiting a lot of different religions or people into spirituality, got big into ultra marathoning the outdoors and have built a sort of much more integrated and fulfilling life now. I think a lot of people do stop in more progressive religious denominations and love that. I found I always wanted to pursue the truth wherever it led and was so deep into theology that I just couldn’t make those more middle of the road approaches work. Oh, you

Trent Horn (00:10:22):

Do ultra marathons. My spiritual director does ultramarathons. No thanks for me. I would rather fight a 300 pound black belt than run like 50 miles. I don’t know how you do it. It

Cade Bradley (00:10:33):

Gets crazy when you’re running a hundred plus miles. 100 plus woods.

Trent Horn (00:10:37):

Yeah. Man wasn’t made for that. All right. So here’s the first prompt. We had three prompts. The first one was just, how should society understand and parse out questions of sexuality? Hat should society do in relation to sexuality? Kind of a broad question. How would you answer that question?

Cade Bradley (00:10:57):

I would say I want people to be well. I want people to have authentic human flourishing, which I think is going to be a fine balance between a number of different things. I don’t think there’s easy solutions to a lot of these questions on sexual ethics when it comes to marriage and kids and dating. There’s so many questions to have. I like to often lead with the data, figure out like, are we just creating a hypothesis, but let’s test that and see if it’s real. But once we look at the data, we can figure out what’s the ideal outcome, what do we know works? What are the things that are always bad all of the time? What are less ideal situations? I don’t think that there’s one overarching ethic that answers every question under the sun and every particular dilemma. I like to look at the facts and then use our reason, our empathy, all of those buzzwords to sort of make determinations after we’ve looked at a lot of this data.

Trent Horn (00:11:54):

Okay. Yeah. I guess if I had to summarize it, I would say that society should encourage morally good sex and discourage morally bad sex. I think we could probably agree with that. Yeah.

Cade Bradley (00:12:06):

We might have different conclusions about what those good and bad things might be, but yeah, I think I don’t like the model of just do whatever makes you happy because there are things that we know don’t lead to good mental health outcomes. We know that there are things that ruin marriages. I want people to have as many options on the table to know the pros and cons of each of those and ideally make the healthiest possible decisions somewhere along the way.

Trent Horn (00:12:33):

I think though that our foundation of how we approach things is going to make it a little bit different. Do you think that there are objective moral truths? Like it’s just an objective fact, you ought to do good and avoid evil. There’s certain moral things you ought to do, or is it more just, well, there’s different things you can do and there’s different consequences and you pick the consequence that you prefer. So one would be more of a moral realist perspective, which some atheists hold to and others and be a moral, anti-realist, it’s more just pragmatic or a motivist. A way of saying right and wrong is just makes me feel good or bad. Kind of like Alex O’Connor as an emotivist view. Where do you fall on that?

Cade Bradley (00:13:14):

I tend to sort of bypass or skip a lot of the questions on right or wrong and rather replace those words with more constructive ideas because we could talk for two, three hours just on what do we mean by right and wrong and moral realism and are there objective facts? Do we have stance independent ideas? I think oftentimes right and wrong are a label that we put on something after we look at the facts. Because I think as we get into ideas of, let’s say gay marriage, I think it’s not just that you and I agree on all of the facts and see that question as the same question. I think we have different ideas of what gay marriage looks like, what it means, how it affects people. And so fighting over sort of the label of right or wrong, I think is less helpful than does affirming someone’s identity lead to better mental health outcomes?

(00:14:03):

What are the stats on X, Y, Z particular lifestyle? And I love to get into those details. And then people at home are able to go, “Am I seeing the full picture and what do we mean by I want to encourage this or not encourage this without getting weighted down into the more esoteric philosophy?”

Trent Horn (00:14:20):

Yeah, I think so because what I worry is that sometimes, I think most people understand morality at a basic level, even if they can’t fully articulate it like, “Hey, that’s wrong. You ought not do that. ” Not just like, “Hey, that’s a bad idea. You’re not going to feel good.” Or if you do that, they won’t feel good or it is a fact you as a reasonable person should not do that and so it can be held accountable for doing that or, hey, you could be praised for doing this. And when it comes to sex, so I appreciate it. I think a lot of people who might take the more secular liberal position,

(00:14:52):

A lot of them will take a very minimal moral view, very, very minimal moral view and you’re trying to take a bit of a higher view. I worry though about inconsistencies that’ll arise when we’re just trying to say, “Well, let’s look at the empirical data of human flourishing based on different behaviors and making sure we’re consistent on that. ” So for example, I remember once actually, I gave a talk or I gave a talk on, and I have to use the phrase so- called same-sex marriage because we have a different view about what the word marriage refers to, so- called same-sex marriage. And I gave the talk and it was so funny. There were a group of atheists with matching shirts in the front row. It was at a public university.

Cade Bradley (00:15:35):

Matching shirts is always a bad sign. If you see a group of people with matching shirts, they’re probably not mentally wild.

Trent Horn (00:15:40):

No, but once again, what I love about a lot of atheist groups, it’s like you can take the man out of religion, but not religion out of the

Cade Bradley (00:15:46):

Man.

Trent Horn (00:15:47):

That’s like something you would do in a youth group.

(00:15:50):

It’s the same thing they’re doing. So they show up and I gave the talk and during Q&A, none of them asked anything. Then afterwards, they come to my table and I’m like, “Guys, what happened?” And they said, “We thought you were just going to quote the Bible and we were really not prepared for you to give a non-religious argument for your view.” And one of them, I said, look, what I try to do, so I got a sheet of paper as a flyer and I turned it over and I said, “Let’s write down all the different sexual behaviors that are out there.” So there’s marriage, premarital sex, which I call fornication, adultery, incest, rape, zoophilia, your video cannot be monetized. You could put all this different stuff on there. And like I said to them, all of us are trying to draw offense around the good ones and lock out the bad ones.

(00:16:43):

And what I feel like is what we need to figure out, so this is my crude drawing I’m working on here. I feel like the way we draw that fence, society encourages good sex, discourages the morally bad sex, or however you want to phrase it, good or bad. I feel like that fence could be drawn. If it’s drawn arbitrarily, then you can just change it for any reason. It’s good to have some kind of principle behind it, otherwise it doesn’t really exist at all. So that’s the challenge. So I think when you say things that we call bad sex, not like, “Oh, didn’t feel great, wasn’t up to the expectations, Carrie Bradshaw, Sex in the City.” I mean, morally bad or we would say like, “Ooh, don’t do that. ” What are some things you would put under that?

Cade Bradley (00:17:29):

In the making sure it’s outside of the circle? Keep it

Trent Horn (00:17:32):

Outside of the fence. We’ve got the fence. We want to keep it outside. Let’s keep that

Cade Bradley (00:17:36):

Out of here.

Trent Horn (00:17:36):

We don’t want that around here.

Cade Bradley (00:17:39):

I think the types of sex that we ought not allow in society are ones in which people are not able to give informed consent. I want ones that lead to, like I said, authentic human flourishing. And I’m less concerned about drawing the map and finding a philosophical phrase that has the most explanatory power because I don’t think things can- Well,

Trent Horn (00:18:00):

Right now, I just want to get examples.

Cade Bradley (00:18:02):

Examples. I’m just trying

Trent Horn (00:18:03):

To think of specific examples of things

Cade Bradley (00:18:04):

That you

Trent Horn (00:18:05):

Would call, that’s bad sex. That’s like, we shouldn’t promote that.

Cade Bradley (00:18:08):

I think two consenting adults is my ideal things involving non-consent, things not involving adults and things not involving humans are going to be outside of that fence to begin with. And then

Trent Horn (00:18:21):

I- So we would put SA. Man, I hate having you say grape, essay, unalive, but I would like this to reach a lot of people or should I just say … Essay, assault. I mean, come on, you know what we’re talking about people. So essay, PDF file. You were also talking about … So zoophilia. So the big thing where it’s got to be adults, consent, there’s another one, right?

Cade Bradley (00:18:52):

I think consenting adults is going to be our base starting point of what could possibly be allowed, but I don’t think every possible way that adults can have sex or with any number of people is always going to lead to flourishing, but I wouldn’t outlaw certain practices between adults.

Trent Horn (00:19:13):

When we cut to society also, because I said society should encourage good sex and discourage bad sex. The discourage can be of different levels. So the highest way to discourage would be crime, criminal punishment.

Cade Bradley (00:19:27):

Correct. Yeah.

Trent Horn (00:19:29):

So for SA, for example, that makes sense. We don’t want that to happen,

Cade Bradley (00:19:34):

So

Trent Horn (00:19:34):

We’re going to lock you up for that. We’re going to criminally punish you. But above criminal punishment, we could say, “Yeah, it’s legal, but we’ll do social disapproval.”

(00:19:45):

So for example, it’s legal to smoke tobacco, but we went through a … Well, actually, you’re too young for this. When I was your age in middle school, when I was a kid, so this is the late ’90s, we had these commercials to try to get us to not smoke. And they actually worked well. This girl smokes and she goes in the bathroom and she kind of spits up maggots into a sink. But it was really controversial at the time. Remember this is for YouTube. My generation, we were like the most kid glove. Your generation has seen the most horrible stuff by the time you’re like 11, and I feel bad about that. I grew up in a much more innocent time. So in the late 90s, might as well be the 50s to you guys, basically. But we still have that. We discourage smoking tobacco without outlawing it.

(00:20:32):

We say there’s places you can’t do it. We don’t put it on television. We think, “Yeah, it’s legal, but it’d probably be better if you didn’t do this. ” So when it comes to things, so for example, I’ll give you another consenting thing. How about adultery?

Cade Bradley (00:20:48):

I don’t think I would make it illegal, but I think it destroys people that are, A, destroying your partner. I think B leads to bad outcomes for the partner that is doing that. And so that’s something that I would never encourage. And if a friend’s considering that, I would not want them going there because I think it’s harming your spouse that you’re cheating on. It’s harming yourself and it’s harming the person that you’re engaging with that in.

Trent Horn (00:21:16):

And I agree with that. I am a bit on the fence between disapproval and criminal punishment. I’m like, it’s so bad. It’s like, why not? You’re wrecking families, you’re wrecking kids. It’s just like, I mean, if it caused more evils as a result, maybe not do that, but I’m open to nipping it in the bud. Yeah. Okay. So let’s see. So we’ve got this. Yeah, I appreciated that you didn’t want to make it super minimal, just like consenting adults. I’m worried it might stay there. So for example, like let’s say one night stands, just like super casual sexual encounters. Would you say that’s fine or that could fall under social disapproval?

Cade Bradley (00:22:01):

I think it’s sort of in that fine of the gray area where as long as people know the statistics around it, people are being safe. I don’t have a particular problem with it. I think the research tends to show that lifelong stable unions are much better for people’s mental health, but I think that’s a choice at the end of the day for an individual to make what sort of lifestyle they’re going to lead. But I certainly, both for myself and I think a lot of people want lifelong stable unions to be able to raise kids. I think kids are a great thing to encourage, but I would never want a couple to feel like they have to have kids or if someone hasn’t found an amazing partner yet, like I’d rather have someone wait and find an amazing partner that makes their life better than just go like, “Well, I can’t sleep around, so I’m just going to find the first person get married to.

(00:22:48):

” Also seems not terribly ideal. Yeah.

Trent Horn (00:22:50):

Well, I agree. I’m not in favor of people rushing into marriage. It’s a very boomer way to approach the problem. My favorite is when people in the boomer generation will be like, “How can you kids not pay your student loans? Do you not understand what you signed up for with the student loan?” Then it’s like onto their third annulment. I didn’t know what marriage was when I got married in 1978. You’re on your third one already.

Cade Bradley (00:23:15):

Third time is not the charm, it turns out.

Trent Horn (00:23:17):

Yeah. But seeing in this though, okay. So yeah, I’m getting from you more of this vibe of like, “Hey, here are the risks and rewards and you’re going to have to weigh that for yourself.” But I think there’s some things that you’re like really clear are bad. We picked SA as an example. I’ll pick one because it’s just kind of growdy, but I think it’s going to push our mental thinking on this issue further

Cade Bradley (00:23:44):

Out.

Trent Horn (00:23:44):

We’ll take like zoophilia, bestiality, whatever. They don’t monetize me, they don’t monetize me. It sounds like there’s some things that are so bad. I think that should be criminally punishable. And I was watching, they’re on YouTube, but I go through fads every now and then. One of my fads is the body cam videos from police officers. Those just show up on my feet

Cade Bradley (00:24:04):

A bunch. From Blue Cam, Lacrosse, Wisconsin. What a place to watch.

Trent Horn (00:24:07):

Yeah. So it’s just like, okay, because I love growing up watching cops. I was always on a hotel room when I’m off. Bad boys, bad boys, what you’re going to do. So the closest thing I have now is I’ll watch this body cam videos. And I saw one where they go, we found a disturbing Snapchat, this lady of her doing stuff with the dog. And so it’s like, we’re going to have to take you in. And so I’m like, yeah, that stuff not in a civilized society, but here’s my concern basically. I worry that the rationale you give, because bringing in the law to say you’re going to jail, you’ve got to have a hefty, really good reason for that. And if it’s just like, “Well, empirically it might not be the best for your mental health.” We really don’t lock people up for that kind of stuff.

(00:24:56):

Now what you might try to get around and say, “Oh, well, it’s kind of like animal cruelty. We lock up people for dog fighting

Cade Bradley (00:25:02):

And

Trent Horn (00:25:02):

This or that. ” But I mean, this lady could do stuff with a dog and the dog’s never even going to really notice or be hurt or nothing’s going to change for him. So I feel like what is motivating it more is not just these main empirical things, but we have a deep sense of like unnatural sex can be so bad, society must do what it can to prevent people from engaging in that, regardless of the sociological consequences. And if that’s a principle we go by, it opens a lot of other doors. I don’t know, what say you on that question?

Cade Bradley (00:25:37):

I think in these conversations, we absolutely have certain emotional responses to things, and I don’t think those are bad things at all. When we bring up crazy examples or reduction out absurdum, you bring up examples that get a disgust response. And I want people to keep a disgust response to those things that you were mentioning. And the data does show that it’s terrible for the animals involved. It’s also terrible for the people involved and I’m absolutely on board with making sure that that’s illegal.

Trent Horn (00:26:06):

Well, here’s my problem.

Cade Bradley (00:26:08):

Okay.

Trent Horn (00:26:08):

If you’re like, “Well, we should throw zuo files in jail because it’s bad for animals.” But let’s say a lady does something with a cow, does something, lets the cow stimulate her in other regions or something like that. I don’t know. We say like, “Hey, that’s bad for that cow. You’re going to jail.” But then the next day that cow gets chopped up for food. That was probably way worse for the cow getting chopped up for hamburger than him sniffing around her in other regions. So that doesn’t seem as plausible to me that the reason we have such a huge social disapproval is because of what happens to the animal, because it’s legal to do way worse things to animals like eat them.

Cade Bradley (00:26:48):

I mean, I want good animal welfare laws across the board. I think slaughterhouses that are out there are very harmful to animals. There’s less cruel ways to dispatch animals. I think anyone who grows up hunting knows respecting these animals. I worry that bringing up this example of a lady in a cow.

Trent Horn (00:27:12):

Well, a pig is going to be a lot more manageable, but it’s like, continue your thought and then I’ll give a thought.

Cade Bradley (00:27:19):

I think in a situation like that where we’re trying to think of like what’s the particular rule, what’s the intuition, what’s the reason behind it? I don’t think that has anything or provides us anything of substance when it comes to conversations like gay marriage or talking about LGBT topics because I worry about this sort of technique of what are the disgust responses that I have when looking at different activities that are out there? What’s a rule that sort of connects them? You can find all sorts of rules to make fences and you can have fences that feel absolute and have explanatory power, but they can still be wrong and actually lead us to very unintuitive conclusions. We can start with our intuitions. And I think we also ought look at a question like gay marriage and look at our intuitions there, figure out what is the data there, engage with people who are in gay marriages or talking about trans healthcare, all of that.

(00:28:12):

I want us to be able to look at the facts in this case instead of looking at a different case, what’s an operative principle and just a priority cutting off this entire discussion with much more data and it’s much more relevant and salient to people’s lives than perhaps some hypothetical out there somewhere. It’s not hypothetical.

Trent Horn (00:28:32):

It’s on body cams. You’ve got people who get arrested. There’s multiple arrests every year for bestiality. It’s not purely hypothetical.

Cade Bradley (00:28:39):

By the numbers, when we look at what do we do with people who experience same sex attraction is a much more pertinent question. It’s one that affects a great number of people in society and is so disanalogous to this other case that I don’t know how this other case helps us find an illustrative principle to identify

Trent Horn (00:28:59):

Here. You know what’s kind of interesting? I’m just talking about what do we do here and we’re trying to figure out, “Hey, why is this wrong?”

(00:29:04):

And I’m not even bringing up same-sex issues. It sounds like more you see this and your first reaction is, “Oh no, if you think this about this case, you’re going to think homosexuality is wrong.” Like you’re running down the pike because I never brought that up when just talking about, I’m talking about this one, I’m trying to find one case where it’s not just, because I understand with rape and consent, people can say, “Oh, you should be consenting adults.” But with animals, we let dogs work for the police department and that’s very hazardous for their health, but we don’t consider it animal cruelty.

Cade Bradley (00:29:34):

There are people that do on police dogs, but-

Trent Horn (00:29:38):

But like a

Cade Bradley (00:29:38):

Pig,

Trent Horn (00:29:39):

I think it’s for a pig, if he’s sniffing around a ladies in other regions and she gets really excited by that, that’s going to be, the pig is much better off doing that than getting chopped up for bacon. And most people don’t think chopped up for bacon is a crime.

Cade Bradley (00:29:53):

Those windy burgers are very good with the double bacon on there.

Trent Horn (00:29:57):

But I think I can pull a lot of this together because I am really Be worried about the empirical notion. Because we’ll take, for example, children, PDF file. And also I guess the bigger question of, because you’re saying like, okay, well I’m fine with the baseline is got to have consent. Why?

Cade Bradley (00:30:15):

Consent. We know that on consensual encounters destroy people for their entire lives. It physically harms people that are involved in it. It’s something that nobody in a society wants to have out there. It’s one of the most destructive things that a child can go through. And so- Well

Trent Horn (00:30:37):

Yeah, or I just said adult or children,

Cade Bradley (00:30:39):

Non-consensual. Yeah. We know that non-consensual sexual activity can destroy people for their entire lives and no one wants that out there. The reason why I’m-

Trent Horn (00:30:53):

Yeah, so it just sounds like the fence you’re … And I think at the end of the day, we’re all going to make fences because you’re going to have a list. People ask you, is it crime, disapproval? Totally fine. Eventually, if I press you, you’d have a column with those things in it. And there’s going to be some reason separating them. If it’s totally arbitrary, it’s like, what are we doing here? And it sounds like the fence you’re building up is basically, what do we know from the social sciences of the psychological, emotional, and physical consequences for beings that engage in this behavior? That sounds to me where you build the fence around. And if it generally leads to negative outcomes, we should disapprove or criminalize.

Cade Bradley (00:31:33):

I think there’s a game of things that always lead to harm, things that often lead to harm, things that only carry occasional harm and things that are almost never harmful. I think the things that I want to be crimes are things that always lead to harm. And the reason why I tend to not spend a lot of time on these other hypotheticals is that sort of second question that we’re going through is how should society react to people with same sex attraction?That’s I think the more relevant part of the discussion. And not that you can never have a conversation about other outside topics, but I don’t know exactly how that helps illustrate what the main brunt of the conversation is.

Trent Horn (00:32:15):

It helps because the question becomes, how should we respond to people who have same … There’s a difference between people who have same sex attraction. Because to me, that’s almost the question, that’s not as important to the question for me.

(00:32:29):

Because I care more about the actions people engage in, not the internal dispositions that they have. People can have whatever dispositions, orientations. I don’t care.That’s something you generally don’t have control over, though I think you can cultivate certain dispositions and maybe you shouldn’t do that, but a lot of times people don’t have control over that. So it’s like, I don’t think society should be investigating a lot or dealing a lot with how people feel on the inside. The mechanisms of society, whether it’s the law or media or social ostracization should be focused on, “Hey, this person did this action.” So for me, I don’t even ask the question, “Well, is same-sex attraction? Is that good or bad?” I’m more of the question for me, is sodomy or non-procreative sex acts. So the dividing line for me is, okay, we have procreative sex acts, like the marital act.

(00:33:21):

And I would say the bare minimum is consent. So essay, even in marriage is wrong, and that’s possible. And then there’s non-procreative sex acts. And I would say that non-procreative sex acts, things that are by their nature with beings where it’s not even ordered towards procreation, it’s so unnatural that it’s wrong. And so we ought to at minimum not support, then maybe move to disapproval, and then in some cases, criminalization. So for me then, when we get to the issue of same sex, because I think you would agree that the sexual behavior between two men or two women would be called a non-procreative sex act.

Cade Bradley (00:34:03):

Yeah, you can label it that way. Yeah.

Trent Horn (00:34:06):

Yeah. Well, I guess because for me, I think one thing that might be a difference

Cade Bradley (00:34:10):

Between

Trent Horn (00:34:10):

Us is even answering the question, what is sex?

Cade Bradley (00:34:14):

I also don’t find that discussion particularly helpful because we can use words in a lot of different ways. Some people define sex according to a legal standard. I think our phenomenological approach to what do people refer to? What does the term sex index in the English language? We can talk about the ways that people use the term sex. I find it more relevant to think for the one to 10% of the population that experiences same sex attraction, what is the path ahead of them? We know that a path of affirmation and being able to live a fulfilled life and be able to be able to get married has way better mental health outcomes, has better societal outcomes. It produces a much better society at nearly every single metric in that we know that when people are raised in environment that they are never allowed to act on those attractions, that marriage is off the table.

(00:35:11):

They have much higher rates of mental illness, much higher rates of adverse childhood experiences, or higher rates of suicidal ideation in attempts. With that decent chunk of the population, we got to decide which path do we want to go down. And I want the path that people are flourishing on, not the untenable path, just because we defined words in a certain way about a separate issue that makes intuitive sense, but is a nice clean mental model. I want us to engage in what is the reality for people on the ground that are a substantial number or percent of the population.

Trent Horn (00:35:49):

So once again, it sounds like, so your standard is, all right, look, let’s just, people are going to do something. We’re just going to ask, what does it overall promote their flourishing or hinder it and then just move from there and either encourage or discourage. I have two concerns about that. First, let’s take, for example, same-sex relationships and not just between men.That’s why I use the word sodomy. And it’s so funny, people might be like, “Oh, you’re such a horrible person.You’re talking about sodomy. What are you some 19th century bigot or something like that? ” No, the reason I do that is that the majority of individuals that engage in sodomy have opposite sex attractions. So for me, I don’t want to single out people with same sex attraction. By focusing on the acts, I can tell guys like, “Hey, that’s not what your girlfriend’s anus is for.

(00:36:37):

” That’s not what it’s for. I know you probably watched a lot of porn and you think this is great. Brayden, make that corn. Put that over me in the thing. We’re going so well, that algorithm, you have to say corn, great, unalive. There has to be a whole list of things

Cade Bradley (00:36:52):

You can’t

Trent Horn (00:36:52):

Say, but I

Cade Bradley (00:36:54):

Probably said- TikTokification of our language.

Trent Horn (00:36:55):

Oh, it’s the worst. It’s the worst. So for me, for example, what I worry about, and you can help me with this, is that, okay, well, let’s look at the empirical data and the consequences of it. Especially for men who engage in frequent anal sex with one another, they have a 2000% greater chance of contracting anal cancer. So do you think that would factor into saying that this behavior doesn’t contribute to human flourishing?

Cade Bradley (00:37:25):

It’d be a great conversation to have with one’s doctor. And if you are having a lot of negative health outcomes with that particular way in which people can engage in sexuality, it’d be a great thing to have a conversation with your doctor about to avoid that outcome.

Trent Horn (00:37:42):

But you wouldn’t say, as a society, we should disapprove of this because it’s

Cade Bradley (00:37:47):

Bad for people. If you do it poorly, you’re going to get poor results. If we want to get into the particular ways in which someone can practice same-sex attractions, there’s a lot of considerations that we can have. Well, let me give you

Trent Horn (00:38:02):

One. Would you be in favor of society disapproving of sex outside of marriage? And we’re using your definition of marriage, which would be man, woman, or two men or two women. Would you be in favor of society saying, “Hey, we don’t want people having sex outside of marriage because sex is for marriage.” And the men who probably are 2000% more likely to get anal cancer are probably these … Well, I’m just going to be frank with you, these unmarried, same sex attracted men, but it’s really an open secret that within the self-identified gay community, gay men, non-monogamy tends to be more the norm. Monogamy and exclusivity tend to be values associated with women more than men. Do you think?

Cade Bradley (00:38:55):

What do you propose somebody with same-sex attraction does? Because you can go down two routes and I’m thinking- Well, no, before we get to,

Trent Horn (00:39:03):

I’ll answer that. But I’m just saying, I gave you an example of just

Cade Bradley (00:39:05):

Disapproving

Trent Horn (00:39:05):

Of sex outside of marriage because you were even saying like, “Hey, I want lifelong and fulfillment and all these things.” Okay, why don’t we just say that for everybody, whether they’re self-identified, gay or straight, don’t do this outside of marriage. As society, shouldn’t we come together and say, “Don’t do this. These are bad health outcomes, whether you’re gay or straight. Don’t do this.

Cade Bradley (00:39:25):

” I think something like sex outside of marriage is a neutral zone for society. We can encourage one thing and we can discourage- Oh,

Trent Horn (00:39:34):

Come on. No,

Cade Bradley (00:39:36):

There’s a very easy thing where you can say marriage is awesome and you can look at a behavior of sex outside of marriage and then you can decide do we stigmatize it or do we treat it as a morally neutral zone? And I think as long as someone is aware of the pros and the cons, I don’t think our options are either enshrine it in law and have it be the ideal or stigmatize it. There is room in the middle between those two sides of the equation on what society permits. But

Trent Horn (00:40:04):

It just feels like as we’re talking about this, you’re hesitant to want to tell someone that they’re bad, that they shouldn’t do this, “Hey, knock it off, don’t do this. ” It’s just basically like essay and bestiality, but it’s like when we look at the data, for example, of children who are conceived out of wedlock, for example, I mean, you would agree children fare much more better where they’re conceived in marriage with their biological parents, bonded in marriage versus we have a lot of social problems from children who are the byproducts of fornication, right?

Cade Bradley (00:40:38):

Yeah. I think children have the best outcome when they are in a stable union inside of- A married union. Yeah. So if we’re looking at a definitionally stable union, yes, children in marriages do better. I wouldn’t deny the data that children born outside of wedlock or raised by single parents- Bad outcomes. … on average do worse, but our options here aren’t only allow one thing or stigmatize

Trent Horn (00:41:07):

Single parents. I’m not saying to throw people in jail, but you talk about stigmatization as if it’s a bad thing. If we know something causes harm, do you think we should stigmatize smoking?

Cade Bradley (00:41:21):

I don’t think we should bully anyone who smokes. And I think conversations that start with you’re disgusting, you got to change when you’ve never met someone aren’t helpful. I don’t smoke or drink at all.

Trent Horn (00:41:31):

Should we stigmatize homophobia?

Cade Bradley (00:41:34):

Should we stigmatize homophobia? What does that mean in your mind when you say stigmatize it to bully someone that has a different belief? No, I’m not for a shouting people down method or

Trent Horn (00:41:46):

A calling people things. I’m not advocating for any of that. I’m just saying to tell people, “Hey, this action, well, I would say bad or wrong and also add in the part where you would probably stand more on causes harm.” You shouldn’t do this. We as a society don’t approve of this. We’re not going to celebrate it. We’re not going to affirm it and we’re also going to disapprove of it to various means. And I don’t see why … I’m trying to find common ground with you. We can just start with just sex acts outside of marriage because they lead to rampant STDs, especially in the gay community, but also among straits as well. Children who are conceived out of wedlock, 87% of abortions are obtained by unmarried women. And I know you’ll disagree on this, but I think babies being killed by abortion is a bad thing.

(00:42:39):

So it just seems like there’s plenty. What I worry is like, I will be honest with you, and you can call me out on it and that’s fine. What I worry is if you have a preexisting bias of saying like, “I don’t want to make people who fornicate feel bad, so I’m not going to be as concerned about these negative health outcomes.” But if there are people you interacted with more who were, let’s say, zoophiles, you might be different. I mean, that’s the same argument people used to make like, “Oh, you’re going to stigmatize gay people, know a gay person, you’ll change your mind.” People could say the same thing about zoophilia.

Cade Bradley (00:43:13):

I hope that people who are practicing zoophilia are in jail and not out there common in society. I find the framing of this issue for a great percentage of the population who experiences predominant or exclusive same sex attraction, what do we do? Because you can either talk about a different hypothetical or we can talk about if we want people to have lower suicide rates, better levels of education, better mental health outcomes, more fulfilled lives, there’s sort of one option here.

Trent Horn (00:43:46):

Okay, fine.

Cade Bradley (00:43:46):

Or stigmatization.

Trent Horn (00:43:48):

I’ll give you fine, the bare minimum than where we’re at. Just to say, what do we do with people who have same sex attractions as a society? And I’m just using the society that we have now. I would say that we could just treat it as that’s something you’re permitted to believe, you’re permitted to believe that that is moral, maybe even permitted to act on that. I was just listening to a great courses lecture on Supreme Court cases dealing with liberty. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Bowers versus Hardwick and Lawrence versus Texas.

Cade Bradley (00:44:23):

I know Lawrence versus Texas, but I’m not familiar with the other one though. I just got done reading with the recent Supreme Court case on conversion therapy, 35 cases that were all cited in the decision. So I know that my first amendment law, but not as familiar with Bowen’s bowels.

Trent Horn (00:44:39):

Bowers. Bowers. Bowers is a 1986. So Lawrence versus Texas overturned sodomy laws. Bowers versus Hardwick, I want to say it was a Georgia case, 1986, where this guy who was supposed to come to court, he doesn’t show up, cop goes to get him from his apartment, doors ajar, goes in, find the guys engaging in sodomy, and then calls the DA. The guy’s mouthing optimist, he’s got marijuana on him. We bring him in for anything and like, “Well, sodomy’s technically illegal okay, we’re ringing you in. ” And then the court upheld the sodomy laws in Bowers, which were overturned in Lawrence. So when it comes to the question then of engaging in the act, I would say at the very least, for any sex act, private, not public, don’t be doing it on the beach, don’t be doing it in … Although this does play into other issues, I would say people should be held, they should not be engaged in public nudity, public lascivious behavior, or public sex acts.

(00:45:40):

That should be kept behind closed doors. Would you agree

Cade Bradley (00:45:43):

With

Trent Horn (00:45:43):

That?

Cade Bradley (00:45:43):

Yeah. I don’t want to be walking down the streets and see someone with their dangly bits out.

Trent Horn (00:45:49):

I mean, but there are gay pride parades where it’s pretty darn close to that.

Cade Bradley (00:45:54):

I mean, there’s all sorts of crazy things that people do on both sides of the equation. There’s crazy Catholics that believe that marital rape isn’t a thing and is perfectly fine.

Trent Horn (00:46:03):

And I would say that they’re wrong and if any of them rape their wives, they should go to jail. So I’m willing to hold my side accountable. But what I would say though is then it has to go to the other side. I’m not aware of people, but I would say also if there was another back in my day moment, before we had OnlyFans, we had a thing called Girls Gone Wild. Have you ever heard of this?

Cade Bradley (00:46:23):

I have heard the phrase, but girls on the internet is not the thing that I tend to be searching up.

Trent Horn (00:46:28):

No wonder you haven’t heard of this. Along with, but other guys your age of the other orientation, it’s a dated unc thing if you want for that kind of content was what they would do is they would go to spring break, drunk girls, get them to show, take their tops off, videotape it. Certainly blurring the line of consent here. If people have been drinking a bunch, sign a form and they end up on these DVDs that get sold. I would say if straight people are public nudity, public sex acts, I would say, yep, we’re bringing down the law on you for that. I would just want it across the board that just like … I just don’t know very many parade or celebratory things versus gay pride parades where you’ve got people that are out. At the very least, couldn’t we just say there, “Hey, man, you can’t be wearing just like 2% leather chaps and there’s kids here looking at this.

(00:47:17):

” Yeah,

Cade Bradley (00:47:18):

I do not support public indecency and exposure.

Trent Horn (00:47:21):

Perfect. And all I would want is just like, then it should be equal across the board. I think the other thing then, another thing for me that I would want is I would want schools to not teach sex values beyond the bare minimum of consent, don’t essay people, and to not show pornographic images to students. I mean, there have been cases where you’ve got books, which are clearly meant to affirm same-sex, sexual intercourse and acts where you’ve got kids even in elementary school and they’re like using cartoons to depict oral sex acts and anal sex acts.

Cade Bradley (00:48:04):

I

Trent Horn (00:48:04):

Would say we shouldn’t have any of that in schools. Shouldn’t be doing that. Would you

Cade Bradley (00:48:08):

Agree with that? No. Showing kids porn, we can also agree on that one.

Trent Horn (00:48:11):

Okay. But I mean, I would love to have your … Because there will be cases, you can look at it online where someone will go to a school board, start reading this cornographic material and they will get thrown out that’s in the school library and they’ll get thrown out of the school board for reading inappropriate materials. And you would say that’s totally inconsistent then, right?

Cade Bradley (00:48:35):

I haven’t read many kids’ books since I was a kid and I want age appropriate materials, whether they’re straight or gay or whatever it is. We need to keep things age appropriate. We know that early exposure to pornography for kids is a very, very negative outcome and I want to make sure that doesn’t happen. Yeah.

Trent Horn (00:48:54):

Okay. Well, we’ve covered sex, SSA. Oh, the other thing about empirical harm, the other thing that concerned me, if that’s all it is, it’s like, well, look, we’re just going to disapprove of acts that cause negative consequences. My concern is someone could say, “Well, if there’s an act that has negative consequences, we could approve it just if we found a way to change the consequences.” So there are people who might say sex acts with minors, if we just removed the stigma involved and we did all these other things, maybe we could do it in a way where there aren’t longstanding negative consequences. And so if someone came to me and said, “Would you support sex acts with minors, even like prepubescent, provided we had social engineered it, anatomically engineered it, where we do studies and they’re no different than anyone else who doesn’t engage in these acts, would you be in favor of these with like six or seven year olds?” My position would be help F, no, because it’s an unnatural non-procreative sex act and children were not designed or made for sex by the designer and creator, but I worry that your position is susceptible to the hypothetical of, well, we’ll just social engineer, you do other therapy, other things like that to try to say, “Oh, it doesn’t actually end up harming them anymore.” And then under your view, if all the social scientists came together and said, “Yeah, we’ve studied the issue and we’ve intervened and now we agree it doesn’t cause harm,” you’d have to say, “Oh, then I guess it’s okay.”

Cade Bradley (00:50:38):

And if my grandmother had wheels, she would be a bike. If we define away all of the conditions that we use to say something is harmful, then it’s no longer a relevant question in a certain sense to bring up. I was asked in the debate about slavery. Well, what if the slaves wanted to be slaves? And then the answer would be, then you no longer have slavery, which is sort of definitionally wrong. “Well, what about this hypothetical? I don’t find illustrative because if we got to cook up a hypothetical about a hypothetical in this other hypothetical, it’s no longer helpful when we’re trying to look at something right in front of

Trent Horn (00:51:12):

Us. But it’s not this random thing. When you read people … There was a professor at University of Minnesota who put forward a very controversial book. I think it was called Harmful to Minors, where she’s arguing that what causes harm to sex for minors is not the act itself, it’s the stigmas we put around it. So there are academics who … You can’t just write it off like, ” Oh, this is just a crazy thing that’s out there. “There are lots of people who try to say,” Oh, well, it’s the stigmas that cause the problem. “And it’s the same thing. It’s like prior to 1973, the argument was, ” Well, homosexual acts are wrong because there are these negative consequences. “And then it’s like, ” Oh, nevermind. It’s not wrong because we have new data that says there aren’t negative consequences, even though I’ve given data that there are still.

(00:51:58):

I would just say you’d have to admit. So your response is, yeah, if that hypothetical were true, my position would have to say there’s nothing wrong with acts between adults and minors, but you’ve given a silly hypothetical that’s just not going to obtain. “That’s saying to your response.

Cade Bradley (00:52:19):

I don’t find that hypothetical about a hypothetical to be at all relevant to an actual discussion that we’re trying to have on what do we do with current realities, right? We can cook up hypotheticals all day long about hypotheticals and go down a route of what it could or should have, but we know what the data says is that we’re going to keep more teenagers alive and happy and healthy by providing an infirming environment. Whatever harms we want to talk about, the biggest predictor of mental health outcomes and lifespan for people who experience same-sex attraction is family support, it’s affirmation, their environment growing up, it’s access to healthcare and opportunities and jobs and education and the ability to grow and thrive and engage in romantic relationships with marriage on the table. We know this across a lot of different data sets, and I find that to be a much more important discussion about what decisions do we have here and now versus a reductio at absurdum about a hypothetical that definitionly gets rid of everything that’s involved in the hypothetical to find some operative principle out there when we can look at what’s happening right here, would you admit or in your worldview, would it matter if kids have better mental health attempts or worse mental health outcomes by and large when it comes to how supportive their families are?

(00:53:45):

Is that relevant in how you make those moral determinations?

Trent Horn (00:53:49):

Oh, sure. And when you look at the morality of any act, there are three elements. There’s the object, the intent, and the circumstances. So there are some acts, it doesn’t matter the outcome, even if it were producing overall human flourishing. For example, if enslaving 5% of the population vastly improved the welfare of the other 95%, that wouldn’t make it moral to do that. The act itself is wrong. But there’s other cases where you have acts where, oh, this is a morally neutral act. There’s two morally neutral acts. One produces some wellbeing and other produces way more wellbeing. Oh, well, we should go with that act. Or like parenting styles. So for example, should you be a permissive

(00:54:34):

Authoritarian or authoritative parent? If you look at child psychology, it’s like there’s the parents kind of let kids get away with stuff, the ones who are like real strict, and the ones who are reasonable in their strictness, that’s authoritative, that tends to be the best one, but none of them are abusive so that we wouldn’t say it’s criminal or wrong. It’s just more or less effective. So yeah, I would say there, “Oh, well, we actually look at outcomes will help us determine since all three of them are permissible.” When we look at the outcomes, the authoritative kids tend to turn out the best.

(00:55:03):

But then there’s some where it’s like straight up, oh, it doesn’t matter what the outcome … Usually the outcomes will be bad, but even if they were okay, if it turned out, oh, well, if they engage in sexual grooming or something like that and it turns out they’re okay, that’s one where I would say, “Okay, see what you’re saying.That’s a weird hypothetical because the data shows that incestual acts clearly really, really harm people and it’s not something I’d have agreement with you there.” But then we’re going to get other cases where you’re just going to … I’m worried you’re going to give the same kind of dismissive response,

(00:55:33):

Like genetic sexual attraction. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this, but we’re seeing this more with children who are conceived by sperm donors. So because that’s become much more common now, people donating sperm, lots of people realize they have half siblings and they didn’t know it. And so they get in a relationship with, they didn’t know it’s their half sibling and they’re in love with this person, then they find out. So if they continue this incestual relationship, is that immoral? Because normally we say the crime of incest is wrong because of grooming and manipulation in childhood. It’s really tied a lot to child essay, but we have adults who people reconnect in adulthood and that never factored in my view ordered towards … I think it’d be even more than procreative, non-procreative, it’d be ordered towards the divine ordering of the family and really divine commands about incest, frankly.

(00:56:26):

But I feel like the empirical harm element really can’t give you anything to say that that’s wrong.

Cade Bradley (00:56:33):

Does it matter to you that we know- And that’s not

Trent Horn (00:56:35):

Hypothetical. People that really do

Cade Bradley (00:56:37):

Struggle

Trent Horn (00:56:37):

With this now, it’s happening more and more.

Cade Bradley (00:56:38):

And I think we do need regulations on sperm donation to limit the total number of times that someone can donate for hypothetical, or not even hypotheticals, a rare subset of cases exactly like that. I don’t tend to have a worldview, which is it’s either one option or the other. I think especially with sperm donation, there are common sense safeguards that a lot of people want around that industry. But to the larger and more relevant discussion, does it matter to you if we can reduce suicidal attempts by eight times by having affirming home environments for people

Trent Horn (00:57:12):

Growing up? Well, let me ask you though about people with same sex attraction. So your position is that, because you don’t like the terms right or wrong, but you’re still using normative language. I think you’d use the normative language of society should not disapprove of same sex acts or you might go one further and say society should affirm them because we could also just be neutral and not talk about it. You’re probably more on the affirming side.

Cade Bradley (00:57:38):

I would say then I want kids who grow up regardless of if they’re attracted to members of the same sex or the opposite sex, who feel affirmed, supportive, to have an imagination about what their future can look like. I don’t think that we need to do a reverse conversion therapy and make a certain percent of kids gay or whatever it is. I haven’t

Trent Horn (00:57:59):

Proposed that. I’m just saying because you could discourage or you could be like, “Don’t ask, don’t tell. We don’t talk about that. ” You’re gay, that’s something we just don’t talk about, which would be like a neutral position, but then there’s the suffering and silence argument people will make and I don’t have anyone to look up to. So my question for you would be, you have a normative position, society should affirm same-sex attraction and acts. Is there any empirical data if we could discover it that would falsify that normative position?

Cade Bradley (00:58:27):

Yeah. If a study came out that the best outcomes came from discouraging people experienced same-sex attraction from acting on it, and it reduced suicide rates, it led to better mental health outcomes, that would change my position, but the overwhelming amount of research shows that with someone who experiences same-sex attraction, we have this sort of what to do question, which is do we want to affirm and we know that it’s reducing suicide rates by a staggeringly high rate. And not only does it reduce harm, but actually these people’s lives are made better by being able to date, to adopt, to live out their lives. And the other option is discouraging it or not talking about it. And we know that leads to worse outcomes. It leads to … One of the interesting things within a religious context is that when kids know that they can talk to their parents about same-sex attraction, they disclose that earlier and parents are able to teach their particular set of values much more readily when kids are aware of that.

(00:59:32):

So I don’t think we can just say, “Well, we’re not going to have an opinion on this large percent of the population.” Not that I’m saying it’s the majority by any stretch, but it’s something that we are faced to confront. And once we’re in that position, we get to figure out, so where do we go from here? And it seems like we have an option that leads to flourishing, an option that’s untenable with worse outcomes. And I think anyone with common sense is going to go like, “Yeah, we want the better Or by any metric outcome versus the worst by every metric outcome.

Trent Horn (01:00:04):

What do we do with mixed outcomes though? For example, what if we say, when we look at the empirical data, when you affirm same sex behavior, suicide rates go down, but cancer rates and lifespan is in general shortened. Like the stat that I gave that those who engage in anal sex between men are 2000% more likely to have anal cancer. So I don’t think like when you try to say, oh, if we affirm we have all these good things and if we discourage, we have all these bad things, it tends to be more a mixed bag. Like you discourage, yeah, maybe suicide rates will go up, but then the cancer rates go down. So it’s like, oh, well, if it’s the more number of people, if the group ends up living longer on average, even if for some individuals it’s worse off, what if we end up showing, oh, well, the group overall as a whole is better off?

Cade Bradley (01:00:57):

We know that lifespans increase on the affirming side of the equation. We know that in affirm environments when people get access to healthcare, cancer rates go down, heart attacks go down, STD rates go down and lifespans go up as well as the actual subjective wellbeing and stats around self-actualization. So it’s not an either or equation here. You’ve brought up one stat, which is a study that I’m not particularly familiar with. We know cancer rates go down in an infirmed environment versus a non-affirming one.

Trent Horn (01:01:33):

Or what do you make of the statistics that people who identify as LGBT are much more likely to have diagnosed mental illness even in countries that are extremely LGBT affirming like Scandinavia and other European countries, wouldn’t that point to that perhaps there’s something within this orientation and act that has a negative effect on mental wellbeing? Because we even see it across the board even in very affirming countries.

Cade Bradley (01:01:58):

We know that when someone’s in an affirming environment, they do better than a non-affirming environment. When we talk to someone with same-sex attraction or with gender dysphoria to compare them to the general population is unhelpful because they don’t have that as an option. We know that in countries in which there is affirmation, people do better have less negative mental health outcomes. So we can’t compare apples to oranges on these stats. We have to look at for someone with a stable sexual orientation or gender identity, what’s before them? And the answer is way worse mental health outcomes, way more diagnoses when they’re not in an infirming environment and we have better outcomes on nearly every single metric when they are an affirming environment. And so what are we going to do with those people moving forward? I think is a more pertinent question than, well, if we compare someone in Sweden versus someone in America 50 years apart is slightly less salient to our decision making matrix.

Trent Horn (01:02:59):

Yeah. But going back, I know you wrote it off as just these random hypotheticals, but I feel like I could really make the same argument you made about bestiality to say, “You know what? When we don’t stigmatize people who have sex acts with animals, when we don’t stigmatize them, we show them care, when we teach them how to engage in acts with animals that doesn’t cause injury, we find that suicide rates go down, self-harm goes down, lifespans go up, and we find that they tend to do better with that response versus being thrown in jail, losing their careers, losing their livelihoods. So all in all, we should provide an affirming environment to people who engage in bestiality, teach them how to treat animals to not cause injury, but just mutual pleasure. And we’re going to see better outcomes for them than just throwing them in jail.

(01:03:44):

Wouldn’t that be the consistent way to apply what you’re valuing here?

Cade Bradley (01:03:49):

No, because if you want to be the groundbreaking researcher pioneer on bestiality, that is your prerogative and you can go out there to investigate what all of those hypotheticals might like. Like

Trent Horn (01:04:01):

The people 50 years ago who are groundbreaking on homosexuality.

Cade Bradley (01:04:06):

You can throw all sorts of similarities between all sorts of dissimilar groups by analogizing them. What we found in 1973 when people looked at the research was, cool, sexual orientation is a remarkably stable trait in humans. We have two paths moving forward. It definitionally involves consenting adults into the equation and we have vast amounts of data and a vast amount of the percent of the population on this or the steality.

Trent Horn (01:04:35):

So in the DSM, I want to say it was three. I think the diagnostic and statistic manual of the American Psychological Association. What specific study was done to conclude homosexual acts are not harmful and so the definition should be changed? Can you cite what study they did?

Cade Bradley (01:04:50):

Yeah. So they’re looking at two main researchers are sort of what got in DSM-1 and DSM-2 on labeling homosexuality as a mental illness, which was looking at rates of mental illness. They were talking about a number of sort of absurd theories about the etiology of how a homosexual orientation is formed. Into 1973, I forget the researcher’s name, but she started looking at what are the rates of sexual orientation? What does the research actually say in the here and now about how people are raised? And so the APA took a look at some of these large data sets that seemed to indicate one direction and the existing data set from the earlier iterations was based off of some quite debunked research.

Trent Horn (01:05:38):

But I’m not aware of any study that was done in that interim in the early 1970s, that it was

Cade Bradley (01:05:43):

Essentially

Trent Horn (01:05:43):

Just a lobbying effort. It’s not like they did a new sociological study on the matter.

Cade Bradley (01:05:48):

So they were looking at the data that was out there at the time, right? Because as a researcher, the APA as an institution is not the one doing all of the research. They have their scientific panels, which are then conglomerating all the studies that are out there. And then even you think we’re in the DSM-5 now, and they’re looking at dropping certain diagnoses or changing the diagnostic criteria, and that’s based off of a lot of research from all of the parties involved in the equation for them for the APA to create these guidelines at the end of the day. So it’s not that in 1973, they did a two-day study in the middle of it, but that those people who were involved in the efforts showed up with their suitcases full of data and the preexisting- Their interpretation

Trent Horn (01:06:33):

Of what was already there.

Cade Bradley (01:06:36):

So when you’re looking at these groups of studies, you can look at the objective data, you can figure out who has the better side of the equation to make a determination from there. In the same way that when we look at updating research on LGBT topics, we know that the DSM changed the diagnostic criteria between three and four on gender identity, which then yields different results. We’re looking

Trent Horn (01:07:00):

At- Well, let’s talk about gender identity because that was the third prompt we wanted. I want to get into that. Yeah. So what is your view on … Let’s say you have a biological male XY chromosome presents with male phenotype and says,” I identify as a woman, and so I want to be treated in society as a woman. “T question is, how should society treat a person like that? Let’s say you.

Cade Bradley (01:07:30):

I think if one of my friends came to me and said,” I would like to be referred to with other pronouns and I feel like they are genuine, I am going to try my best to use different pronouns to use the name of their choice in the same way that people change their names in adult life. I’m going to treat my friend with dignity and respect. If I thought they were pulling a prank on me, I might try to figure out, is this some sort of prank? “But if they’re genuine, I’m going to give them the basic modicum of respect of trying my best to use the new pronouns.

Trent Horn (01:08:03):

How do you determine between genuine and sincere? Talking

Cade Bradley (01:08:08):

To someone.

Trent Horn (01:08:09):

I

Cade Bradley (01:08:09):

Mean,

Trent Horn (01:08:10):

Don’t you think you could risk, that could be really offensive to people who identify as transgender to say,” I know you say this, but I don’t think you’re really genuine about this.

Cade Bradley (01:08:18):

“I think you would determine it in the same way that people have tried to make films impersonating or claiming to be trans, and then people go like, ” This is clearly for a documentary. This is clearly not genuine, “I think by and large.

Trent Horn (01:08:32):

Okay. So let’s restrict it then to someone who sincerely

Cade Bradley (01:08:35):

Believes.

Trent Horn (01:08:36):

I’m going to add the adjective sincerely. Man, X, Y chromosome, male phenotype, sincerely believes he is a woman. And you’re saying, okay, they say,” Call me she, call me Madison, call me whatever female name, you’ll do that. “But society, should society as a whole treat this individual legally as a woman?

Cade Bradley (01:09:03):

I think legal questions on gender identity and sex are much more complicated than we have time to go into.

Trent Horn (01:09:10):

Well, let me just get your thoughts on this though. So for example, do you think that it’s fair to say, look, you have a male body, you have male hormones, you cannot compete in this female athletic division. I think that

Cade Bradley (01:09:25):

Sports are a great question and I don’t think we have time to even begin to get into that research.

Trent Horn (01:09:32):

You said, how should society treat people with gender dysphoria? And those are, the problem isn’t so much like the pronouns are one thing. Well, I mean, pronouns and things like that, do you think people should be … Well, I guess society should. Am I free to say, all right, you believe that. You believe that you are a woman and I believe you are mistaken. So I am not going to refer to you with female pronouns because that would be me lying and I believe lying is wrong. Is that a fair position for me to hold? I

Cade Bradley (01:10:10):

Think it is your right with freedom of speech to be able to use whatever pronouns you want in referring to someone. I think using the term lie isn’t particularly correct here because the reference of pronouns is not someone’s genitalia chromosomes. Right when I say he walked into a room talking about my friend, I’m not referring to chromosomes or to genitalia. I’m looking at appearance, I’m looking at what he’s told me, I’m going off of social cues. And so it’s not lying to use preferred pronouns because I’m not fact checking pronouns in day-to-day life by doing random genital inspections.

Trent Horn (01:10:46):

No, I think it would be communicating a falsehood because in many of these cases when we … No, sometimes we use the pronoun he in an inclusive way to refer just to either an unknown person, male

Cade Bradley (01:10:57):

Or

Trent Horn (01:10:57):

Female. But if I said to one of my friends, “Hey, I know someone for you to go on a date with, I think you’ll really like her.” And then the guy goes and it’s just another man, he would accuse me of falsehood saying, “You said her.” And so I rightly assumed that would be a woman, not a man. Well, it’s just appearances and why would you make that such a comparison? I mean, there’s a lie, I would say speaking of falsehood, that people are either men, women, or there are cases where we aren’t sure they’re in a very, very small minority,

(01:11:33):

But it does get into a lot of how should society treat these people. And I think this is one reason that LGBT, I feel like in the last two years, two or three years, LGB would really like to just disconnect from T. We’re now seeing public opinion turning against the idea that a person could just, if they identify as a woman that makes them a woman, and so society ought to treat them in that way. So I guess that is the bigger question to say, well, society can allow you to believe whatever you want, but society doesn’t have to treat you as a man or woman unless you biologically are a man or woman. Isn’t that just a sensible way to move forward?

Cade Bradley (01:12:17):

I think how we treat people generally in society is not by checking their genitals at Starbucks. And how we treat people is not tied to their anatomy or physiology or chromosomal makeups. I think with someone who’s experiencing gender dysphoria, once again, we can sort of move forward in a number of different ways. We have one way of affirming that’s going to lead to better mental health outcomes, better health outcomes. The studies overwhelmingly show that affirming someone and having social support, access to healthcare is important and leads to staggeringly better outcomes than telling someone that they just got to deal with gender dysphoria and tough luck is in particular at all. Well, it’s saying that person,

Trent Horn (01:13:02):

They can dress up like a woman, they can call themselves a woman, the barista at Starbucks is going to use their name. I feel like you’re just going to say, “Oh, well, there’s just these hypothetical cases. In general, we don’t talk about genitalia.” And you’re right,

Cade Bradley (01:13:14):

The

Trent Horn (01:13:15):

Problem is just those infrequent times when genitalia come up, they are very, very important and it shows the problem of just following what someone’s identity claim as being the overarching thing that governs reality. So for example, let’s take mental health outcomes. Once again, we have balancing outcomes. You might say, “Well, if this man who identifies as a woman, treating him like a woman will have better health outcomes.” So letting him attend an all female gym and change in the locker room, that’s going to make him have just general outcomes better. Okay, but what about the negative outcomes for all the women in the locker room who didn’t really want to see a penis that day? Or if they’re a minor female, we talk about crimes against minors and you agree like, “Hey, the reason that stuff is wrong is because you ought not assault minors in this way sexually.” Well, minor females in a locker room seeing male genitalia, that’s extremely harmful.

(01:14:12):

So in balancing that, wouldn’t we say in those cases, we have to enact a policy that causes less optimal outcomes for someone who has gender dysphoria to protect the rest of society?

Cade Bradley (01:14:23):

Yeah. I think in cases in which genitals and chromosomes are important, like healthcare in locker rooms and sports are a very different question than society at large. I think I have quite nuanced opinions on a lot of matters in which those things are important, but I think by and large, it’s not do we try to eradicate transgenderism from public life or do we find stories on Reddit of crazy transactivists saying X, Y, and Z? I think that we can come to the middle here, which is people with gender dysphoria should be able to transition, they should be respected, they should feel affirmed, and we can decide sports and locker rooms and all of those things as a separate matter.

Trent Horn (01:15:08):

Should we follow the data that says surgical interventions for minors who experience gender dysphoria tend to lead to negative outcomes rather than positive outcomes?

Cade Bradley (01:15:22):

The data doesn’t say that. I think talking about minors is once again, sort of a side question to by and large that we know with adults that health outcomes, mental health

Trent Horn (01:15:33):

Outcomes- We say it doesn’t mean better. The data of what we see, that’s why in Europe they’re pausing and in Europe, which is much more liberal on the question than we are, they are pausing interventions on children because the majority, if not the vast majority of children who identify as having gender dysphoria no longer identify that way after five or 10 years.

Cade Bradley (01:15:52):

Those studies are based off of from 40 individuals in a cohort from the 70s that wasn’t actually measuring gender dysphoria. It was looking at equations of gender non-conformity and so we know that desistance rates are not that- I can

Trent Horn (01:16:07):

Play this game too, because here’s the other problem I have with, well, we’ve seen to follow the studies. Like many of the studies that try to claim that, oh, same-sex parenting produces just as good outcomes as opposed to sex parenting. Often those studies have a selection bias where people identify and they advertise in a gay newspaper, “Hey, we’re doing a study on same-sex parents.” So the healthy parents are going to volunteer and you get studies based on 12 couples. So what I worry that we have to build offense about good and bad things. Your offense is being created out of studies and I really feel like studies can be massaged and moved and failed to replicate. We have the replication crisis. Have you heard of that? You can’t replicate sociological studies to prove almost anything. Whereas that’s why I would prefer, while you’re dismissive of it, a robust ethical principles to guide the foundation of what we’re doing, because people can jerry rig studies to prove almost anything sometimes.

Cade Bradley (01:17:06):

We know that the best studies and the overwhelming majority of studies and the studies that are involving the most number of participants overwhelmingly support that affirming environments are better for people on nearly every metric because sociological data can be complicated and there can be plenty of problems with any study that’s out there, but the studies with the biggest gaps in knowledge, the studies that are the least replicatable and the worst studies are ones that say, “Well, people desist from gender dysphoria at a 90% rate.” That’s based off of a very bad and very flawed study. We know that the studies that enroll tens of thousands of participants, the studies that have the most random selection to them overwhelmingly support affirming environments. And so we have to look at the data and we have to weigh it, but do we look at two bad studies or do we look at a thousand high quality studies?

(01:18:02):

Even if you can say, maybe the thousand. I’m not

Trent Horn (01:18:04):

Going to concede to your estimate of the numbers there on that at all. And I’m happy to, perhaps I’ll just engage in a future episode, I’ll throw it all. I’ll even send you the script and we’ll put it all there and people can make a judgment on that. And I love sending scripts to people now because it’s like, here, I’ll send it to you and you can, here’s, we’ll put … Because anybody can say study, study, study. And we’ll cover that in a future exercise. But what I am truly concerned with is that … I appreciate I can have a frank conversation with you, by the way. Of course. It’s kind of like when I do jiu-jitsu and I roll with people, we can go hard with each other, just like, and then after they’re like, “That was a good role. It was good times.” You’re a shrewd operator.

(01:18:48):

I think not that you’re disingenuine, but you even earlier in the conversation, you said to your liberal allies, “Guys, we want to make progress. We can’t be crazy. We can’t be looking crazy to people. ” You remind me of … You ever heard of the book called After the Ball?

Cade Bradley (01:19:02):

I’ve heard of it, yes.

Trent Horn (01:19:03):

By Kirk and Madsen. So this is after the ball, how America will … I’ll find a PDF copy. It’s out of print.

Cade Bradley (01:19:11):

I’ve watched your video on it from out four years ago or something. The playbook for LGBT framework or something, whatever you would

Trent Horn (01:19:18):

Tell us. I’ll send you the PDF because it’s out of print, but you will be like … Because it’s a retro book, it’s published in 1989.

Cade Bradley (01:19:26):

Yeah.

Trent Horn (01:19:26):

Okay. Remember, this was Bowers vs. Hardwick three years earlier says states can criminalize sodomy. There are people who went to courthouses to get same-sex married, not going to happen. And they’re like, “What are we going to do? ” And so Kirk and Madsen are telling the pro LGBT movement at that time, they were advertising executives. So they were involved in advertising and they were saying, “Look, people in the movement, we have to be smart about this. “

(01:19:57):

So they said, “Stop doing parades wearing just leather chaps. We have to present ourselves as Pete Buttigieg.” If they could have had a perfect image of how here’s what we need to be, they would have picked Pete Buttigieg. If you’re a man, speak in more of a baritone voice, you’ve served in the military, you’re not flamboyant, you’re not presenting wild and crazy things to people. And they said, “We have to incrementally engage people. ” And they had all of these little manipulative tactics and things. And what I feel like is that if you were, because there’s other people that I engage, like when I engage destiny, for example, on whatever, he just bites the bullet on bestiality. He’s like, “Yeah, it’s not wrong.” And I remember because he said, “Well, I’m just not religious.” And then I snapped and I said, “No, you’re just not sane.

(01:20:47):

You’re an insane person.” One

Cade Bradley (01:20:48):

Of the very few Trenthorn Crash Outs from the whatever podcast.

Trent Horn (01:20:51):

It was 100% justified. I love the comments like, “Only Trenthorn crash out I ever saw. Totally worth it. ” But I feel like, yeah, I don’t want to accuse you of anything. I think you really do have a visceral reaction that certain fringe, non-procreative sex acts are bad, really bad. So I don’t want to accuse you of anything. I would worry that there’s somebody who’s like, “They’re not really bad, but I got to say they’re bad and I got to set up this image or people will think I’m a freak and our whole movement’s going to collapse.” And then once society changes enough, I’m going to hop on the train like, “I was for it the whole time.” It’s like Obama. So in David Axelrod was a chief of staff for Obama and in his biography of Obama, he said at the beginning of Obama’s term, he was for same-sex marriage, but he would not publicly say so because not enough Americans were for it yet and he politically couldn’t do that.

(01:21:49):

And so that’s why for me, honestly, I’d much rather interact with people that are like, “Yeah, I know my beliefs are crazy, but here they are versus…” And I’m not saying you’re this,

(01:22:02):

But then there’s another group of people who might be like, I guess within the LGBT community, there are the academics, the culture warriors, people are like,

Cade Bradley (01:22:10):

“Ah,

Trent Horn (01:22:10):

Do whatever.” And then there’s the pragmatists that want to win. And so it’s like, I would even rather for me talk to people like, “Yeah, here’s what I think, man. Take it or leave it. ” I’m like, “Okay.” Versus like, “I’ll put the perfect little thing together so I can get our movement forward.” And I don’t know, maybe I’m mini crashing out here, but that’s what I worry about. At least you tell me, you see the concern I’m coming from.

Cade Bradley (01:22:34):

I think when we engage in online culture wars and we find the most archetypal, crazy things from both sides, we have incredibly unproductive conversations. I don’t think that … As funny as many people found something like, “What is a woman?” I don’t think it engaged these major issues in the same way that I’ve been to left wing conventions where they seem to not engage in anyone in the middle ground. I think that a lot of these conversations are much more nuanced and less black and white than we want to think, right? Engaging the data on LGBT studies. I in the past few months have read I think upwards of 200 different studies on the topic. I’ve gone deep into the ones that oppose sort of what I’m wanting to put out there and have found issues with those. I find the data to be a very interesting place to start the conversation.

(01:23:25):

Not that I think our hands are tied to data, but when we have something like the National Transgender Survey that shows among 90,000 participants, we have a regret rate of half a percent when we’re looking at cohorts of a few hundred people at a time who experience gender dysphoria in youth. We have a one out of 300 rate of desistance. When we talk about gay marriages, we know that they perform as well, if not better. I’m very much engaged in what is the data on the ground because when I was in the church, I was told the natural law says we are going to harm ourselves and harm others by engaging in these types of acts. And I think we need to form hypotheses and then test them. Otherwise, we just have hypotheories. I think what we put out there, we want to test to see if it’s true.

(01:24:14):

If it is true, then we get to proceed to sort of a lot of these ethical claims and what art society do. And I really, really want to make sure that we don’t have young people that are growing up that are told that their attractions are intrinsically disordered, that there is no life path ahead of them, that they just have to sit in silence and suffer. I want people to live happy, healthy lives inside of religion, outside of religion. That’s what I’m fundamentally interested in. And the data I think supports that.

Trent Horn (01:24:42):

Yeah. And I would say that the data supports someone with gender dysphoria, for example, telling them this is often transitory and many cases, we should look at what are underlying factors here. Is there a social contagion? Is there a comorbidity mental diagnosis like autism, for example? Or is there saying, are you making a confusion between gender dysphoria and gender nonconformity? That many people might say, “Oh, well, I’m not a woman. I identify as a man.” Well, maybe you just have … That’s a hard one to do. Are you really transgender or you just have non-stereotypical goals for yourself that don’t align with a lot of women, but you can still be a woman. You’re just gender nonconforming or just all of the cases of detransition. But what I worry is, I agree with you, data’s important, but without first principles, the data can lead us into madness.

(01:25:39):

So with dysphoria, it’s like, what do we do with people who have, for example, body identity integrity disorder, people who say they want to be amputated or paralyzed because they identify in that way. That’d

Cade Bradley (01:25:52):

Be a great thing to do research into doing. Well,

Trent Horn (01:25:54):

But I mean, let’s say the research says, “Oh, it turns out they are actually happier if we cut their spinal cords and mutilate them.” At the end of the day, sometimes it isn’t as important if people are happy versus that we don’t mistreat them.

Cade Bradley (01:26:09):

I think mistreating someone is sending them down a path that leads to a shorter lifespan, a less fulfilled lifespan, and worse mental health outcomes. I think that is definitionally mistreatment, and that’s what I’m interested in.

Trent Horn (01:26:24):

What if they’re happy? There’s that meme of just the guy sitting in a chair with a machine masturbating him, VR goggles and an IV drip of wine.

Cade Bradley (01:26:35):

It’s a crazy route on the internet to go down.

Trent Horn (01:26:38):

No, but that’s where I feel like it’s going. You’re

Cade Bradley (01:26:40):

Basically

Trent Horn (01:26:41):

Saying like, “Look, what will make these people the happiest?” But the problem is you could do something that makes you happy that is a very unfulfilled life.You could be very happy with an automasturbator, VR goggles and an IV drip of Sangria, but it’s like, wow, this person has really failed to live out the fullness and goodness of a human life. I think it was John Stewart Mill even, the utilitarian, who said it is better to be Socrates unhappy than a pig happy. So what do you think of that?

Cade Bradley (01:27:13):

I think that having a fulfilling life is an important thing. And I think that’s exactly why I have my position where it’s not about transitory happiness and it’s not about pleasure. It’s about an idea of utimony. It’s an idea about authentic human flourishing. I think the unfulfillment in life is found when people are told that because of the natural law or because of these philosophical arguments that are out there, you can never get married or you can never transition or whatever it is. We know that that leads to unfulfillment and we know that when people are involved in an affirming environment, that people are able to access gender affirming care, that they have not just are they happier, but they have much more fulfilling lives, they have much more self-actualized life, they have much more healthier lives and they have much longer lives.

Trent Horn (01:27:56):

Is it fulfilling if someone who thinks he’s a woman has his genitalia removed and a cavity is put between his legs that’s constantly filled with a reinfection that he has to keep clearing, can we not just say we’ve mutilated this poor person?

Cade Bradley (01:28:12):

What do you think the studies say about fulfillment for people? I don’t care

Trent Horn (01:28:15):

We

Cade Bradley (01:28:15):

Should

Trent Horn (01:28:15):

Chop people’s peepees off when they’re functioning normally, otherwise we’re going to do the automasturbator and the VR goggles.

Cade Bradley (01:28:23):

I haven’t seen that yet from any gender affirming care clinics that are out there.

Trent Horn (01:28:28):

Of taking off people’s

Cade Bradley (01:28:30):

Pieces? No, of auto masturbators.

Trent Horn (01:28:31):

No, but I mean-

Cade Bradley (01:28:32):

Those are clearly two different things because they’re not offered in conjunction. You don’t get a discount on the auto masturbator after going to Planned Parenthood.

Trent Horn (01:28:38):

My point is that you talk about things being, are they leading a fulfilled life? And there’s someone, and what I worry about is someone could just delude themselves into even having to answer on these studies. “Oh, I’m totally happy. I’m totally happy with my void that’s constantly infected in my pseudo vagina to clear out because they have to be on the team because if they said they weren’t happy, they realized they made a horrible irreversible mistake and now they’ve got to just go along with the program or else like, ” Oh my gosh, what did I do?

Cade Bradley (01:29:09):

“All of the studies from gender affirming care clinics that are looking at a few thousand patients show a half of a percent of a regret rate. The larger studies where we have 90,000 plus people involved in these data sets show a 1% regret rate and of that 62% of those people detransition for reasons not related to the actual care itself, that by and large we know how these things turn out. We don’t have to sort of philosophize and analogize in order to figure out what the reality on the ground is. Somehow either people are convincing entire stadium’s worth of people to all systematically lie on surveys, which would be a remarkable feat to put out there. It would be the conspiracy theory of the century.

Trent Horn (01:29:55):

No, we have a society that goes overboard or indeed a few year Years ago, I think there was the tipping point when you have, I would say pro- transgender propaganda to tell you this is great and everyone’s in favor of this and these winner of the beauty pageant is transgender so- and-so. And it’s a social programming that’s bigger. But I tell you what, to pull it together, I think a good part two would be, I think in an episode I will explore the sociological data. I’ll run it by you, run the script by you and we’ll present that and I’ll be able to flesh out a few more things and the conversation will continue. So I think there’s two separate questions. The question is what does the sociological data say? And then the other question is, what are the methods we should use to arrive at what is right or wrong?

(01:30:45):

And that’s the other big disagreement that we have. For me, it’s partly sociological, but for you, it’s like very almost 80, 90%. And I think that will shift a lot on that. So we’ll have to revisit it. I think that would be the best way to do it. But last words.

Cade Bradley (01:31:02):

I think the sociological data can help us figure out the reality on the ground. And we obviously still at the end of the day make moral determinations after reading studies. I think the very difficult thing about LGBT topics is that certain people can have a disgust reaction. They go, “I feel this way.” And so that’s the reality on the ground where people are unfulfilled by being in gay marriages or they’re unfulfilled accessing gender-affirming care, gender-affirming surgeries. And so I don’t want to look at the data at all. I want to look at, we have this percent of the population and they have options in front of them. We know that they’re not going to desist, generally speaking, from being gay or from feeling gender dysphoria. I want to keep those people alive. I want to make sure that we don’t have empty spots in our pews.

(01:31:53):

I want to make sure we don’t have empty spots in our classrooms. I know in my own experience that coming out and falling in love has been the best thing that has ever happened to me. I have met so many amazing gay couples that love each other, that have adopted kids and have provided them an incredible life. I know people who have transitioned and they are nothing but happier and credit that to saving their life. I want happy, healthy, fulfilled lives where people can figure out the big questions of life. And I think when we look at the data, the overwhelming majority says we have an option that keeps people happy, healthy, and alive. We have an option that philosophically might work out, but leads to death, destruction, and despair. And I don’t want people to be forced to go down that route.

Trent Horn (01:32:38):

Yeah. And I think that we should follow reason that we can follow evidence, we can follow reason, and we can use natural law. We can use logic to determine how is the way the world’s supposed to be. And I want people to be happy and fulfilled. I think that true happiness so is only going to be found ultimately with that which is the Supreme Court itself with God. So people might be mad at me like, “Oh, we didn’t talk about that. ” That’s a whole different chasm between us because you’re an atheist, I’m a Catholic. You’re still Catholic. You have the indelible mark.

Cade Bradley (01:33:12):

It’s not going to work.

Trent Horn (01:33:13):

It’s not going

Cade Bradley (01:33:13):

Anywhere. So there’s- Michael Knowles did tell me that I should … He would do anything to erase the ex- Catholic to my identification and make me a Catholic once again. It

Trent Horn (01:33:24):

Wouldn’t

Cade Bradley (01:33:24):

Be the first time.

Trent Horn (01:33:25):

Yeah. So I think though that that does factor in. And so that gets into a larger question of if God exists, has revealed himself that where we do find an ultimate happiness versus other things within a humanist framework. But yeah, I think to continue the conversation, I would encourage people to say, “Hey, follow the first principles. How do we draw that fence around sexual ethics in a consistent principled way that keeps in the good, leaves out the bad?” And I don’t think the data is something you have to be afraid of either. So we’ll have a follow-up and I’ll run some of the data by you and we’ll go from there. But I’m glad. I didn’t mean to ever be too hard on you, but I think it’s good that people can see, hey, we can have a vigorous disagreement while still maintaining a civil order.

(01:34:19):

These are important issues. I think both of us would say life or death. For you, it’s like someone who might take their own life. For me, it’s also someone who might take their own life because of transitioning to be a woman and realizing they made a horrible mistake or a lifestyle that is more prone to certain cancers or other diseases or lack of fulfillment. So I think both of us, any of this conversation, we’re going to approach it like we feel like it’s life or death for people. And it is. So that’s why we just can’t sweep it under the rug. We got to talk about it.

Cade Bradley (01:34:45):

Yeah. I think conversations are important. And I heard so much about the world in the Catholic groups that I was in, listened to all sorts of talks on LGBT topics, all of the books that are coming out, your books included in that. And then I left and saw that the world might have been different than I anticipated it to be. And I think it’s important to have these discussions on it. And

Trent Horn (01:35:09):

I think that for me, I want to keep people Catholic. Right now for every one person who enters the church, eight people leave. “Oh, that stat’s not really true.” I’m like, “I’ve

Cade Bradley (01:35:18):

Looked at it. ” Joe Heschmeyer would disagree with framing at that

Trent Horn (01:35:20):

Point. Well, but now I think we have more data from Pew that actually backs up what I said. So I might have to do another follow up with that. See, don’t take it personally I disagree with you. I get mad at everybody. Even my friends, I’m like, “No, that’s not correct.” It’s still huge number leaving. And I think for a lot of them, if they grew up in youth group in a sheltered home and people identify as gay or the boogeyman, it’s like then you meet the people. That’s why I want my kids to meet people of different religions, people who have different sexual orientations and know like, “Hey, people can be really nice and friendly and still lead a life that is engaged in moral wrongdoing.” For example, I think that you might, in some states … I try to make a parallel by the way, same sex marriage.

(01:36:07):

Why wouldn’t you be affirming that? You wouldn’t even go to the wedding or you could be that cruel of a person, da da da da. Well, what if you knew somebody who was getting married to a 14 year old?

Cade Bradley (01:36:15):

I would report them to the police as a mandated reporter.

Trent Horn (01:36:18):

No, because in some states, with parental permission, a 14 year old can get married. And

Cade Bradley (01:36:23):

Those laws should be struck down. I’m against child marriage and I think that the code of canon law should upgrade the minimum marriage to 18.

Trent Horn (01:36:29):

And I agree with that. I agree. Let’s boost it. The canon law worked when 14 year olds went into the minds 200 years ago. I understand. Although then it was 16 still for men, 14 for women. But that’s a good analogy there just to be like, “Hey, I don’t care if it’s legal. It’s wrong.” And I can’t go to a purported wedding to support that thing if it’s where someone, you can still legally, many states legally marry a 14 year old even if you’re like 40. And I would agree, don’t like this. And so I would say people who have same sex attraction when we be mad at Catholics, if you would have that view like, “Hey, this sex act is wrong, what you call marriage, this is wrong. I’m not going to support that. ” Even if it’s legal, that is also what for Catholics we would say for so- called same sex marriage.

(01:37:19):

So I find it helpful when it’s like, “Okay, at least I see you’re not a hateful person. I see where you’re coming from. I just think you’re

Cade Bradley (01:37:26):

Mistaken.”

Trent Horn (01:37:26):

If we can get to that point on each side, I always think that’s a big improvement.

Cade Bradley (01:37:30):

Yeah. I think we most certainly need to be able to talk about these conversations in society to go into the data. I don’t think everyone that disagrees with me is the worst person ever shows up with bad intentions.

Trent Horn (01:37:42):

Some people might be.

Cade Bradley (01:37:43):

Yeah. Some people absolutely on all sides.

Trent Horn (01:37:45):

And on the other way, there’s people on your side, I’d be like, “You are a bad person.” So I think it’s just like, we should always judge each side, best argument to best argument, best spokesperson to best spokesperson. And you’ve been a great spokesperson. I’m glad you’re here.

Cade Bradley (01:37:58):

Too bad I don’t get paid from the LGBT mafia. It would be a much more lucrative career.

Trent Horn (01:38:03):

You can call up human rights campaign, get a

Cade Bradley (01:38:05):

Little change from them. No, HRC is … They get a lot of funding. I sadly don’t get money. They’re chinsy. I know. They could write me some crazy check would be nice, but instead I on average, I think from my debates on YouTube, I make about 50 cents an hour, which means if I just find more hours in a day, I might be able to afford Chipotle once or twice a week. One

Trent Horn (01:38:27):

Day. One day. Yeah, one day. Don’t blow out

Cade Bradley (01:38:29):

On avocado

Trent Horn (01:38:30):

Toast. That’s what killed our generation. That’s true. No double meat on Chipotle. Don’t make our mistake. Thank you guys so much for watching. I’ll link to Cade’s channel below and hopefully we’ll continue the dialogue. Thank you guys so much. Hope you have a very blessed day.