Today, I’m in Boise, Idaho, but just yesterday and the few days before, I was in Washington, D.C. And as I left Washington, there was a fascinating news story I really want to bring to our attention. It has to do with a proposed Smithsonian Institution Women’s History Museum. Now, just a few days ago, The Washington Post reported that this issue, the possibility of a women’s history museum there in the area of the National Mall, as connected to the Smithsonian Institution as a whole, we’re told that it is basically now stalled on the floor of the House of Representatives. Okay. Listen to this. Representative Teresa Leger Fernández, Democrat of New Mexico, said, “Women deserve to tell our own story. That’s why the Democratic Women’s Caucus and the House Democrats worked tirelessly to block the radical, divisive Republican amendments to the Women’s History Museum Bill that gave Trump and his ballroom buddies control.”

Okay. This came after a vote. And in that vote, it became very clear that the Republicans were not going to move ahead with a proposed Smithsonian Women’s History Museum that wasn’t about women. So just consider this “Two months ago, the legislation appeared to be on a glide path to establishing the museum’s future home. Introduced in February 2025, the bill had racked up support from more than 230 members of Congress.” Okay

What’s coming is a big problem. The story continues by saying, “In a recent markup, Representative Mary E. Miller, Republican of Illinois, introduced what Democrats called a poison pill partisan amendment, adding the anti-trans language and provisions, giving Trump ultimate control over the museum’s site.” Okay. So what is the language here? Well, the language is that the women’s museum has to be about biological females. And right now, that’s a killer in the Democratic Party. It has actually killed this proposal, because the Democrats basically have withdrawn their support. It’s because when they say women’s museum, guess what? When they talk about the distinctive contributions of women, guess what? They don’t have a definition of women limited to females. And I appreciate the fact that President Trump and members of his administration have called that out, and Republicans in the House of Representatives have said, “An end to this insanity. We’re not going to support any women’s museum when it doesn’t even have a clear category of who a woman is.” Let’s just say that’s a problem in more ways than one. 

For one thing, it is not true that women are absent from the other Smithsonian museums, including the Museum of American History. There are big exhibits and periodic exhibitions and big displays that have to do with women as well as men. But let’s face it. This is coming from the argument that there’s an insufficient attention to women. And so, the Smithsonian is now the subject of legislation, and Smithsonian staff are working with it to try to come up with a women’s museum.

But you’ll also notice what has happened to the word woman, especially on the political Left. It now doesn’t mean just females of adult age. It means those who identify as female, who are otherwise biologically male. You now have, in particular, Democratic women members of Congress going around saying, “This should be a bipartisan issue. It once was a bipartisan concern.” It is Representative Debbie Dingell, she’s a Democrat of Michigan, who said, “We don’t look at this as Democrats and Republicans. We look at it as people in this country should know the history of incredible women.”

Another Democratic member of Congress said, “We have a lot of bipartisan support for the idea.” Well, as you know, it really becomes a very interesting revelation, as The Washington Post reports, “Creating a new museum and especially finding space for it on the National Mall takes years of effort.” And they go on to tell us that the push for a women’s history museum really began to gain stream in 2014. We’re also told that Congress had, at that time, created a bipartisan commission to study the idea.

It was called by some long overdue, and then there’s more: “Congress authorized the museum in 2020 as part of a massive spending bill alongside a companion institution, the National Museum of the American Latino.” We’re then told, “Both were modeled on the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016, after more than a decade of planning and construction,” “The Smithsonian named an advisory council that includes tennis great Billie Jean King, fashion designer Tory Burch, and actress Lynda Carter.” And by the way, those are famous women, of course, but they’re also not particularly, let’s say, experts in museums. But we’re told that this particular group had selected two sites on the Mall as candidates for the two museums.

Well, now, we’re talking about absolute turmoil, and it is because the Republicans are simply saying, “We’re not going ahead with a women’s museum that’s not limited to women, that’s not limited to females. That makes absolutely no sense.” But you also see the line in the sand is really being drawn by the Democrats who say, “Okay. Then we’re not going ahead with it. If women is not a fluid category that means, well, whatever anyone means, or particularly what we mean by the category of women, we can’t go forward.”

You also see the fact that the Democratic Party, and remember that they’re getting advice. We talked about this on The Briefing, even this very week. The Democratic Party is getting advice to go quieter on so many of these divisive issues and, in particular, the transgender issue. The party is so captive to the entire LGBTQ movement that it can’t backtrack. It can’t even be quiet about this, because, well, even when it comes to a women’s museum, the transgender issue, the nonbinary issue, the gender revolutionaries, they blow the whole thing up.

That’s exactly what’s happened even in recent days. The editorial board of The Washington Times, the more conservative paper in Washington, D.C., says, this is actually a good thing. And the editors write, again, this is coming from the conservative side, “House Democrats did the right thing for the wrong reason. Last week, the House voted 204 to 216 against legislation authorizing the construction of a new American Women’s History Museum on the National Mall in Washington,” “For Democrats, the sticking point was a clause in the bill limiting exhibits to biological women. They are outraged that the transgendered, men who think they are women, would thus be excluded, proving once again that their party is captive to political correctness.” They go on to say that in terms of polling, we’re talking about an 80/20 issue. Only 20% of Americans are in favor of this gender insanity. 80% have the sense not to be.

The Washington Times, however, goes on to say, the problem is larger than this, however, because this Smithsonian Women’s Museum would be captive to progressivist and leftist ideological causes even if the T, as in transgender, is not a front-and-center issue. And that is because of the way the progressive left, the ideological left tells the story, for instance, of women’s rights and the women’s movement. It turns into ideological gender feminism. And thus, you would have a very, very progressivist, ideologically distorted view of women even if it’s not biologically corrupted.

The Times editor stated, quote, “There’s also the very real concern that a women’s museum will be captured by feminists and used to lionize radicals such as abortion rights and eugenics advocate Margaret Sanger.” Skipping to the end, the editors wrote, “An American Women’s History Museum would be strewn with ideological minefields. Let Democrats have their victory, killing the project to defend transgender rights.” 

In other words, conservatives should look at this situation and declare a very genuine victory, and we need to be ready at every turn to remind Americans that it was the Democrats in the House and, in particular, the Democratic women in the House who killed this, because they cannot agree that women are to be limited to those who are biologically female. That, perhaps more than anything else, tells the story of our ideological and worldview division.

Okay now, before we turn to questions, let’s turn back to another story. We discussed just in recent days the fact that former Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, who was even then, days ago, under hospice care, he died on May the 19th, by the way, just days after we discussed his latest news on The Briefing. This latest news has to do with the fact that he has written a book, and the book, of course, is now going to be published after his death in which he offers advice from a very liberal perspective in the Democratic Party.

And, of course, we’re talking about with Barney Frank the first to voluntarily come out of the closet and declare himself a homosexual, later marrying a man. We just need to understand, he’s warning the Democratic Party that, on something like transgender issues, they’re out ahead of the curve, and he’s warning that that could be politically disastrous. It is unlikely that Democrats are going to heed that advice.

It is interesting that Barney Frank made the advice, and, of course, Barney Frank has died. He had a very long tenure in the United States House of Representatives, he was in the Democratic leadership. He was very gifted as a debater, a very colorful personality, that’s for sure. But I want to come back to something even as we note his recent death, and that is the fact that when you talk about Barney Frank, you talk about something else as well, and that is the moral transformation of Washington, D.C.

And I know that’s a lot to say, but I really do think that’s important, and it is because when you come to Barney Frank and you come to a man who’s the very first, we are told, history will record, voluntarily to come out of the closet, so to speak, to identify himself as openly gay, the fact is that he was also involved in a massive sex scandal during his congressional career.

His obituary in The Washington Post includes this information, “There was a time when such longevity seemed in doubt. A decade into his career, Mr. Frank received an official House reprimand over his involvement with a male escort,” that’s a euphemism there, “who had operated a prostitution service from Mr. Frank’s Washington residence.” So let’s just understand this was a gay prostitution service operated from the home of a member of Congress. “Mr. Frank had previously confirmed his homosexuality in a 1987 interview with the Globe.” That’s The Boston Globe. “He was not the first openly gay congressman. In 1983, another Massachusetts Democrat, Gerry E. Studds, had disclosed his homosexuality when he admitted having an earlier relationship with a 17-year-old House page.” But Mr. Frank, “who did not disclose his sexuality under pressure from a scandal was often described as the first member of Congress to voluntarily reveal that he was gay.”

The Post obituary goes on to say that the House reprimand, quote, “stemmed from his relationship with this man, a prostitute he had paid for a sexual encounter in 1985. Mr. Frank went on to employ him as a personal assistant, hoping,” he later explained, “to change the man’s troubled life,” “But he eventually came to see this man as a ‘very good con man’ and dismissed him after complaints about suspicious traffic at the residence when Mr. Frank was away. In 1989, in what Mr. Frank said was a bid for revenge, this man offered his story to The Washington Times,” “A House Ethics Committee investigation found no evidence that Mr. Frank knew of the prostitution operation in his home, but the panel determined that he had fixed 33 parking tickets for this man, who was running the operation in his home, and ‘used congressional letterhead to communicate with court officials overseeing the man’s probation,'” “In 1990, after an emotional debate, the House voted 408 to 18,” let’s just say that’s overwhelming, “to reprimand Mr. Frank, a measure less severe than censure or expulsion.” Now, it gets even more interesting in moral terms. We are told that the congressman told the Globe that he was, quote, “overwhelmed with guilt at first.” Okay. Overwhelmed with guilt at first? “I felt terrible that I had put at risk some of the things that I thought justified my public career.” And he went on to say, quote, “I knew that other gay people were going to suffer because of me.”

Then the Post says, “But he quickly rebounded, easily winning reelection, and moving forward with his legislative agenda, which, over the years, included pushing for the repeal of President Bill Clinton’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy for gays in the military and working cautiously for the legalization of same-sex marriage” Okay here’s what I want us to see. When we talk about how moral revolutions happen, we have to watch some of the details, because in this case, as we understand, the normalization of homosexuality is itself a massive cultural moral shift, and one away from what we believe to be a rightful morality. But then you also note that when you shift to a new morality, there are still things that people consider wrong.

In this case, it was running a prostitution ring, a gay prostitution ring, out of a congressman’s home that was considered maybe over the line, even in today’s tolerant, openly gay, and, for that matter, seemingly all-embracing moral worldview and political reality. It still comes with limits. And running a prostitution ring or allowing or even not knowing that a prostitution ring is being run out of your home, and then fixing traffic tickets and intervening in other ways, it turns out that these things are still over the line.

But let’s remind ourselves, those things were also a part of a process in Congress a generation ago. Where would we stand now? And by asking that question, I don’t just mean with reference to Congress. I mean with reference to the entire civilization, our entire culture. We are moving deeper and deeper into a moral rebellion that also takes turns and twists that, by the fact that they are so ludicrous, help to make the point indelibly. This is a lesson no honest person can possibly miss.

Okay. Now, let’s turn to questions. I appreciate all the questions sent in by listeners, always cover a wide waterfront of issues. A very interesting question came in from a listener in Idaho about artificial intelligence, and he says this, “I often hear artificial intelligence compared to the Industrial Revolution because of how it will transform job sectors and our overall view of work in society.” He said, “I think that’s a fair comparison. However, the more I learn about and experience AI, the more I see it resembling the invention of the printing press.”

He went on to say that, “The printing press made information far more accessible to everyday people, allowed ideas to spread much more quickly.” He mentions the impact of the printing revolution on the Protestant Reformation and the American Revolution, both of those, by the way, profoundly true. He says, “When I think about AI, particularly large language models, available at our fingertips, I see a similar dynamic.” He goes on and says, “AI can present information and ideas at whatever level of understanding the user has in a way that’s tailored and easy for individual users to grasp.” Okay. So let me just point out at this, and it’s a very well-constructed question, and it raises a host of dimensions related to this question. But I want to deal with the question as he asks it directly, and that is whether or not it’s legitimate to see that artificial intelligence is more as a metaphor properly related to something like the invention of the printing press.

Okay. So let’s just understand for a moment, the massive impact of movable type, the development of what became known as the printing press that led to the printing revolution. Let’s understand, this was a major, major factor in shaping the Western mind, and that’s because until the invention and indeed the wide distribution of the printing press, the fact is that most human beings had only very rare encounters with the written word, if ever. And so, the existence of books, as we think about books and the book culture, that’s all really a product. Other than in monastic libraries or royal homes or something like that, the existence of books like that really was impossible until the invention of the printing press. And in terms of the economic revolution, let’s just understand, not only did it create massive enterprises and a publishing industry, it also brought the cost down, such that eventually, in a matter of, say, a couple of centuries, you had a middle-class, literary-reading culture that in Protestant lands and, in particular, a place like England. You could have the average middle-class home owning at least some books, including, in all likelihood, the King James Bible, something like John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and perhaps, in Anglican homes, a Book of Common Prayer, a similar thing such as that. You also have the use of the printing press for this rapid dissemination of information, and it came with theological debates and, again, the Reformation.

Andrew Pettegree, I did a Thinking in Public with that professor. Interesting thesis he presents. He’s at the University of St Andrews, that in his book, Brand Luther, he makes the point that, historically, Luther really understood the printing press and the printing revolution, and he used it in order to further the expansion of the Reformation. He wanted to reach hearts and minds. He wanted to do so through the printed text. And by the way, history will record, he was phenomenally successful at it. Very similarly, political revolution and the dissemination of political ideas began to ride on the printed page. 

But here’s the thing. Here’s the distinction I want to make in my response to this listener, and that is this. When it came to the printing press, the printing press was not arranging characters on the tray. A human being was doing so. The printing press was not generating text. It was just generating copies of what was a human-created text. When it comes to artificial intelligence, there’s a quantum difference, and I mean that almost literally, because you now have the development of these large language models that are generating text. They’re generating ideas. Now, yes, I know, they are simply just basically taking existing texts, existing massive and untold billions and billions of pages of information, and assembling it and reassembling it.

But still, you are looking at some text that is now generated by artificial intelligence. That just wasn’t the case when it came to the printing revolution, but I appreciate the fact that this is a listener who’s thinking carefully about these technological developments. I think the big problem with artificial intelligence is when people say it’s tantamount to a consciousness. It’s tantamount to human intellect, and human intelligence, or when we fail to distinguish between, say, machine-generated ideas and human-generated ideas, or when we have a confusion of the distinction between human beings and machines.

I think all of these are huge problems that will inevitably come to us in the artificial intelligence, AI revolution. I appreciate the way this listener is thinking through the issue, and just keep these thoughts and keep these letters coming. 

Okay. Very different question coming in from a Southern Baptist church member, a member of a Southern Baptist church in Illinois. He says he’s the lead pastor of this SBC church. “Currently, one of our bylaws reads, ‘The ordinance of baptism shall be conducted by the pastor or other duly authorized, ordained person.'” He says, “We are currently revising our constitution and bylaws, and discussion about who can baptize has ensued.” He says, “Some of the church see no problem with, for example, a father baptizing a son. However, not only because it has been the historical practice of the church, but also because I think there’s precedent in the New Testament.”

He says, “I’m leaning in the direction of the church’s pastors remaining the only ones who can baptize.” He says, “Am I often assuming this precedent and pushing for this practice?” I want to respond to this pastor by saying I’m thankful for the fact he’s very thoughtful in working through the issue. I also want to say I appreciate the fact this is a church that takes baptism seriously. This is a church that identifies as Southern Baptist.

I want to go back to the existing bylaw that’s under revision or under reconsideration. It says, “The ordinance of baptism shall be conducted by the pastor or other duly authorized, ordained person.” Here’s where my Baptist theological sensitivities just pick up a bit. It’s with the word ordained, “another duly authorized ordained person.” One of the things that’s been characteristic of Baptist understandings of the ministry and Baptist understandings of church is that ordination does not create a class of persons. And instead, it is the recognition of investment in an office, the office of pastor or the office of elder in a church. And thus, I have to pull back a little bit when I see bylaws that say a duly authorized, ordained person, because ordination in this sense does not create, in Baptist theology, a special class. It is rather the assumption of a special responsibility and in recognition of that calling.

So let me put it specifically. I think that baptism is a congregational act in Baptist polity, which means it’s the congregation that authorizes the baptism, and the congregation can authorize, I guess, anyone the congregation wants to conduct that baptism. But baptism is a teaching ordinance. Let’s just remember that. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are teaching ordinances, and it is primarily pastors who are called to teach, and I would say pastors and elders, and this is where in, I think, so many Baptist churches, it’s being better understood that the elders of the church would authorize whoever does the baptizing. And primarily, that’s going to be the pastor or one of the elders of the church, one way or another. It’s going to be someone who is going to understand that this is an individual the church has set aside for a teaching role and a teaching responsibility, and this is a teaching ordinance. And so, that’s what’s happening.

The very words that are used in introducing and fulfilling a baptism, the very words that are used in the Lord’s Supper, those are teaching words. And so, I appreciate, I think, where this pastor is coming from. I just want to say, I don’t think it’s the ordained person that is the issue, because Baptists have a very weak theology of ordination. We have a very strong theology of the local church and a very strong theology when it comes to the office, a pastor/elder/overseer, and especially, I think, with the recovery in so many churches of the understanding of elders bearing that New Testament responsibility. And thus, it’s not just ordained persons, but persons the church has set aside, in the office, an official function of teaching, because these are teaching ordinances. And so, I am very thankful for a local church that takes these issues seriously and a pastor deeply invested in leading his church in this situation. So I want to speak out to this pastor and say, thank you for sending this, and I do hope my response is helpful.

Okay. Another really good question coming from a listener, in this case, in Costa Rica, and I’m very thankful to have listeners in Costa Rica, and he’s writing about the moral issues about trading and investing. Here’s what he says, quote, “I believe investing can be a perfectly acceptable activity based on Jesus’s parables in the Scriptures. However, I want to make certain that if I participate in trading or investing, I do so in a way that’s consistent with biblical principles.”

He says, “Specifically, at what point does investing or trading transition from a God-honoring activity into gambling?” He says, “I’m thinking particularly about factors such as the time frame of a trade, reasoning behind entering or exiting a position that could be tied to changes in a company’s fundamentals, market conditions, or et cetera, et cetera.”

Okay. So I just want to back off and say there’s a lot more in this question, all of it good, but I think the bottom line is this. Christian considerations of this issue have often come down to this basic distinction between investing and gambling. Investing, rightly defined, is in something real. Now, that reality doesn’t have to mean steel or iron ore or automobiles. That real can be a real business model that does lead to a real product of real value. So it’s not just speculative value. It’s based in the understanding of real value. Now, that real value may be realized in the future. I realize I’m using the word real a lot here, but it has real value. And so, the idea behind, say, an invention or something like that, an investment to help make it possible, that’s not gambling. That’s investing in something that, if it turns out, will actually be of real value, not just imagined value, not just a game.

When it comes to gambling, by definition, you’re talking about radical speculation, often in terms of things that aren’t based in any value at all. There is no product. There is no possession. There are no assets. And so, it is a difference that sometimes requires some very careful thinking. And this is where I want to say, I think the development of prediction markets really confuses the issue. And I think in terms of prediction markets, which are often defined as investing, I think in reality, they do function more or less as forms of gambling. I think they need to be called out just that way.

And by the way, I think they need to be legally regulated, if not restricted, in just the same way. I think the public needs to be warned that there is, in many cases, nothing much more than just gambling that’s going on here.

All right. For today, I want to end privileging a question from a seven-year-old girl who writes in, “Why didn’t Jesus stop King Herod from killing John the Baptist? Why did John have to die?” What a sweet question. What a good question. It’s an honest question. I think it’s astounding that children ask such clear and such important questions. “Why did Jesus let John the Baptist die?” And, of course, it was King Herod who brought about the order for his execution. Here’s the thing, and I have to keep this simple and I have to keep it short just for the sake of time, and sometimes that’s a good discipline. So let me put it this way, Evelyn. Christ Jesus promises to keep us safe in Him as His people forever. When we belong to Jesus, we belong to Jesus forever, and we are with Him for eternal life forever. That doesn’t mean that Jesus keeps His own people from dying, not in terms of physical death, death in this world. If John the Baptist hadn’t been killed by Herod, he would still, at some point, die.

And by the way, the New Testament shows that Herod’s killing of John the Baptist helped to bring attention to the message of John the Baptist and then to the very message and gospel of Jesus Christ. That was not his intention, but it was the effect. Here’s the thing to understand, Evelyn. In Jesus, we are absolutely safe, no matter how long a believer may live.

I want to thank listeners for sending in questions, listeners of whatever age, but it is a particular honor to receive such questions from children.