Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Let's get to this week's. Think fast. There's been a lot going on. We were trying to decide what to talk about, the LA riots. There's just not much of an interesting angle. So we want to talk about Simone Biles and Riley Gaines, the controversy over male athletes and female sports. But there's an interesting angle on this one. It went a little different direction than many of these things have. Will, did you have that pulled up?
[00:00:24] Speaker A: I do, yeah. So originally she tweeted on.
It was last Friday, it was the sixth. Tweeted in response to Riley Gaines, called her a bully, all those things. Well, yesterday, I'm sorry, not yesterday, two days ago she.
And so the, the context of this is she was getting absolutely dragged on social media for about three or four days straight. Like even, even people on the left, of course people on the right were just destroying her.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: She.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Not a lot of positive. Obviously there were some virtue signalers that were very, oh, good for Simone for standing up. But a lot of people were just, you know, she was not looked highly favor upon.
So lo and behold, at 11:12am two days ago, she says, I wanted to follow up for my last tweets. I've always believed competitive equity and inclusivity are both essential in sport. The current system doesn't adequately balance these important principles, which often leads to frustration and heated exchanges. And it didn't help for me to get personal with Riley, which I apologize for.
She continues to go on about kind of what specifically her objection was, but kind of a. Not a full retraction but pretty significant. Like she came out guns a blazing last Friday at Riley Gaines calling her a bully. And there was a follow up tweet about you basically pick on somebody your own size type of thing. And to read the apology tweet that was very much kind of like reserved and, and scaled back quite a bit. You could very much get the sense she read the tea leaves a little bit more, read the room a little bit and realized I am not exactly getting praised and worshiped kind of as much as I thought I was going to be. And so yeah, Jack, I don't know if you had a question in there, but I think there's a couple interesting angles to this. The first one that I'll bring up is just kind of the, the irony of. So Simone Biles was somebody who stood up against Larry Nassar, was the, I think the gymnast gymnastics coach, the US Gymnastics coach who apparently sexually abused a lot, you know, a lot of those girls in 2017. It all kind of came out. Simone was one of the ones that testified against him, and rightly so. He did some just horrific things. But the irony of that. But yet Simone Biles is perfectly fine with a biological male being in a woman's locker room, exposing himself, you know, to her, and, you know, like, it just, it. It doesn't line up logically. Those two things don't make sense. To be kind of the face of this, you know, action against Larry Nasher, again, rightly so. I'm not at all defending him, but at the same time, I'm also not going to defend a male competing in women's sports. And yet Simone Biles was. And so a lot of people really. Of course, that thought is not original to me. A lot of people hit at that irony.
But that was one side. And then, Jack, I think what you were more so getting at is like, how if this was 10 years ago, Simone would have gotten worshiped and praised for a week straight, essentially by the media, and she just wasn't this time. So, yeah, those are kind of the two angles. Joe, what thoughts do you have on this?
[00:03:12] Speaker C: No, I was interested in listening. I wasn't as plugged into this. I knew that it happened, but I hadn't read the tweets, anything like that.
I was very interested. We already talked about this, I think, last week.
Tom, the tide turning, Jack's article, great article on it. This is another indication that the tide is actually turning, in my opinion. Things are changing the Internet, and you can make a case that this is just on X, that there's more conservatives on there now or whatever else, but I don't think so. I think people are genuinely sick of this. Of like, hey, stop. As we talked about, I think the trans movement is part of what caused this, this whole LGBTQ movement to jump the shark. To get to the point where people are just not with it anymore, is you really started picking on young girls, bringing males into young girls sports. Like, you don't do that.
There's a lot of dads out there that, you know, hey, do what you want to do in the privacy your own room. You don't do that. That's where the buck stops for them, is you're not about to bring a boy onto the softball field and beat my little girl type of thing.
So to me, I think that's an interesting angle. What you said on the hypocrisy there, all of this is formed in hypocrisy. All of the. The entire logical.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Like, it's just illogical. Yeah.
[00:04:21] Speaker C: Correct. I mean, there's. So I don't have a ton more to add from that. Jack, what are your thoughts?
[00:04:25] Speaker B: The angle that's most interesting to me is as apologies, as retractions, as change of heart start to happen, and I. It's blowing with the wind. I don't think Simone Biles suddenly got religion here, but it is, as people do come to this side, we're gonna have to start accepting that. I, you know, I think it's very fair to say.
Okay, you just showed you have really bad judgment and need to sit on the sidelines, keep, you know, lay low for a while. But we also need to have a path toward. Yeah, we want you on our side. Not. Nope, stay over there. You are forever, you know, cursed and forgotten because you were on the bad side of this issue. It's. Yeah, that was pretty crazy. Give that up. Come over here.
And so as.
As the right side of history, I'm going to steal their terminology, as history is coming back our direction, as it should, as it does, because God created history.
I. I think we need to think through how to welcome people back into the fold, how to make a path toward reconciliation, how to say, yeah, you got duped.
You know, that's because of that, you don't get to be a spokesman for anything anytime soon. But, yeah, we're glad to have you. And.
[00:05:35] Speaker C: And welcome. Welcome to our side.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: When trans people start detransitioning and want to come back to church, that's going to be really weird. That's going to be a challenge. That's going to be something uncomfortable in the church. We're going to have to find ways to handle that. But we need to be ready to do it, because I think it's almost like the fog is lifting. The veil is coming off of people. You know, the blindfold is coming off of people.
And, you know, I'm glad to see it. But we do need to figure out what is reconciliation and getting back on the right side look like and how welcoming and all of those things.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't have a lot to add there.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: All right, well, we're going to wrap right there. That's our thing. Fast. As always. I'm doing the double close here. The podcast, if you haven't. If you're catching the. Think Fast. The podcast is about 10 church. Don't be that guy. Church member edition. 10 church members. You don't want to be. So look out for that on Monday if you're catching this at the end of the podcast. Thanks for tuning in. As always. Join us for the deep end on FOCUS plus, where you get the deep end, devos, sermon casts, Bible class, studies, things like that. Going up all the time. So focuspress.org/ and we will talk to you guys on the next one.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Sam.
