Share

cover art for The gay rights movement got it wrong - Julie Bindel, Matthew Vines & Ronan McCrea | Maiden Mother Matriarch Episode 177

Maiden Mother Matriarch with Louise Perry

The gay rights movement got it wrong - Julie Bindel, Matthew Vines & Ronan McCrea | Maiden Mother Matriarch Episode 177

•

Give the gift of everyday luxury and make every moment comfortable. Head to cozyearth.com and use my code COZYMMM for 20% off sitewide. And if you get a Post-Purchase Survey, be sure to mention you heard about Cozy Earth at the Maiden Mother Matriarch podcast.


MMM is sponsored by 321 - a new online introduction to Christianity, presented by former MMM guest Glen Scrivener. Check it out for free at 321course.com/MMM. Just enter your email, choose a password and you’re in — there’s no spam and no fees. 


We have seen an extraordinary change in attitudes towards gay and lesbian people over the last half century in the West. Within living memory, homosexuality was criminalised. Now, same-sex couples can get married and share custody of children. This is nothing short of a moral revolution. 


Plenty of progressives think, not only that this change was inevitable, but also that further liberalisation is inevitable. My guests today are not so sure. 


They note that, for the first time in a long time, younger people on average are less accepting of homosexuality than are slightly older people. Perhaps this is a result of immigration patterns. Perhaps it's a result of strategic errors made by activists. I'm joined by three people who all agree that something has gone wrong, although they disagree – subtly – on exactly how and why. 


Ronan McCrea is professor of constitutional and European law at University College London and the author of 'The End of the Gay Rights Revolution: How Hubris and Overreach Threaten Gay Freedom.' 


Matthew Vines the the Founder and Executive Director of The Reformation Project and the author of 'God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships.'


And Julie Bindel is a journalist, broadcaster, author, and the co-founder and co-director of The Lesbian Project.


All of these guests share a concern that the wins of the gay rights movement are very fragile. There is a very real possibility that we will look back on the early twenty-first century as an historical blip – a brief moment of victory that was squandered. We ask how that fate might be avoided. 


Discussed in the show: 

More episodes

View all episodes

  • English rebels

    18:00|
    In this bonus episode, I spoke with Nina Power about the English village that is seeking independence from the UK in protest at a local asylum seeker accommodation centre. We discussed the issues with asylum policy, the growing spirit of rebellion in sleepy rural places, and whether the UK government is guilty of institutional misogyny.

  • Children should read fairytales | Maiden Mother Matriarch 207

    01:17:36|
    Humans love stories. Long before writing was developed, stories helped people to preserve knowledge, transmit moral ideas, warn against danger, and psychologically prepare for future ordeals. The most enduring stories are those that organise experience into meaningful patterns, communicating through symbolism that often operates on a subconscious level. My guest today argues that these old stories do something important to us, particularly as children.Today we discussed fairytales and the Bible. We also discussed a lot of modern stories: Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, American Psycho, The Wizard of Oz, Christopher Nolan’s new adaptation of The Odyssey, and many more stories that play with symbolism. These cultural products have moral messages that we ought to pay attention to, particularly in an era when the subversion of old stories has become a part of the progressive political project.Jonathan Pageau is a Christian artist. You can find his podcast, writing, and teaching courses by going to thesymbolicworld.com, where you can also buy Jonathan’s illustrated editions of classic fairytales.

  • Louise & Helen review 'Obsession'

    11:04|
    For this bonus episode I spoke with Helen Roy about the new cult horror movie ‘Obsession.’ Helen can found at Helen Roy Writes.

  • In Defence of Stay-at-Home Parents | Maiden Mother Matriarch 206

    01:19:34|
    Feminists have been arguing about the politics of homemaking for a long time. In her 1963 feminist classic, The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan famously compared the suburban American home to a “comfortable concentration camp”, arguing that homemaking was not just a waste of a woman’s talents, but a form of degradation.Maternal feminists reject this characterisation. But they also highlight the ways in which stay-at-home parents – mostly, but by no means exclusively, mothers – are made vulnerable, particularly financially. My guest today is focused on how public policy can best reduce this vulnerability.Ivana Greco is a homemaker and homeschooling mother of four. She has a degree from Harvard Law School and practiced law for ten years. She now writes about issues impacting homemakers, women, children and families.

  • The Lucky Country? | Maiden Mother Matriarch 205

    01:12:37|
    I’ve just moved to Australia. I wrote a column about our move in the Wall Street Journal, which was also published in The Australian, but I haven’t otherwise spoken about our reasoning, and a lot of listeners have been asking. So today’s episode is about Australia: the issues the country is facing right now, why British people are so often attracted to moving here (including yours truly), the cultural differences between Britain and Australia, and the big political challenges that both countries are facing: immigration, economic stagnation, ageing populations, housing crises, and the rise of the populist Right.I’m joined by the perfect commentator with whom to discuss the state of Australia right now. Claire Lehmann is the founding editor of Quillette and also a columnist at The Australian newspaper.

  • The loss of Ann Widdecombe

    21:25|
    In this bonus episode, Ed West and I discussed the apparent murder of Ann Widdecombe, the role that she played in British public life, and the responses to this atrocity.

  • The politics of the downwardly mobile class

    18:05|
    In this bonus episode, Rob Henderson and I discussed a recent viral article in The Cut titled ‘It’s Hard to See My Parents Live So Lavishly While We’re Struggling’ and the broader issue of wealth inequality within families. Is it really true that millennials have it harder than boomers? Are downwardly mobile younger generations right to feel resentful? And how should wealthy parents protect their children from becoming spoilt and entitled?

  • Why we're still obsessed with the fall of Rome | Maiden Mother Matriarch 204

    01:19:17|
    The empire that once controlled all or part of forty modern European, Asian, and African countries no longer exists. Rome didn’t fall all at once, and it didn’t fall for any one simple reason. But it did fall. And people down the centuries have been drawn to the story of Rome’s decline and fall with a mixture of fear, curiosity, and an irresistible desire to draw parallels between the fate of the Roman Empire and the present day.Today I’m joined by Edward J. Watts, professor of history at the University of California, San Diego, and the author of many books, including ‘The Final Pagan Generation’ and ‘The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome.’

  • How Hitler replaced the Devil

    57:15|
    Alec Ryrie argues that the age of Hitler is not the 1930s and 1940s, it is our own lifetimes. As the influence of Christianity receded from the 1960s onwards, the figure of Hitler stepped into the breach – the most potent possible symbol of evil, around whom the Western moral imagination was structured.But as the Second World War recedes into history, this anti-Nazi moral consensus is unravelling, which means that our whole system of morality is coming under pressure. What happens when the Age of Hitler comes to an end? Alec Ryrie is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University and author of ‘The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It’.
Copyright Louise Perry
Hosted with ❤️ by Acast