¶1This past weekend, Christopher Nolan's adaptation of the Odyssey grossed over a quarter of a billion dollars, and even conservative commenters are praising the film and encouraging people to see it. But not me. I will not see this film in theaters because I refuse to support the destructive propaganda that is intrinsic to the film's casting. In particular, it's the casting of Elliot Page, aka Ellen Page, a woman pretending to be a man after subjecting her body to gruesome mutilation that in recent years has become a socially addictive fad among young people, especially young women. In fact, Page's character wasn't even in the original Odyssey, but instead was featured in Virgil's Aeneid, another epic tale of travel after the Trojan War that was written 700 years after Homer's Odyssey.
¶2Of course, my main beef is that Page is a woman pretending to be a man in real life who is now pretending to be a man in Nolan's film. >> I'm a dude playing a dude DISGUISED AS ANOTHER DUDE. >> WHAT? >> This casting decision is part of Hollywood and modern culture's desire to normalize transgender ideology, and it works if films featuring these casting decisions do well at the box office. So, I cannot in good conscience spend money on something that will lead impressionable children into thinking irreversible sex change operations, including the removal of breasts and genitals, is a healthy decision.
¶3Just because a Hollywood celebrity did it, and they see this celebrity in a film everyone is fawning over. Promoting films like this normalizes mental illness. And because I love everyone made in the image and likeness of God, I do not want to encourage something that brings misery rather than authentic health. As you can see in videos where people who identify as transgender go ballistic when people supposedly misgender them. >> Can we get another unit to deal with um Jay Lee here?
¶4He is having a BREAKDOWN AND >> [screaming] JUST SAY THE RIGHT PRONOUN! >> TRANSGENDER ideology not only harms people who accept it, it can harm people who oppose it because, as I showed in my previous episode on transgender terrorism, when people who identify as transgender are not affirmed in their identity, they can threaten violence against those who don't affirm them, like when Matt Walsh was threatened in Australia by a transgender person who basically said that they wanted to fight Walsh in the parking lot. >> If God loves you, wouldn't he want you to live in accord with reality? >> But like >> to me out in the car park? You want to say that to me out in >> I mean, yeah, kind of.
¶5>> It's just because >> Or consider several years ago when Ben Shapiro debated Robert Tour, the guy who filmed the O.J. Simpson chase, who later pretended to be a woman named Zoey Tour. Here's what he said to Shapiro when Shapiro rightly asked about his chromosomes. >> But even so, you have uh thing like Klinefelter's syndrome. So, you don't know what you're talking about.
¶6You're not educated on genetics. >> to do with discussing genetics or not? >> Well, no, no. >> What are your genetics, sir? >> I So, let's stay away from the genetics and go back to the brain scans.
¶7>> You cut that out now, or you'll go home in an ambulance. >> Yeah, that seems mildly inappropriate for a political discussion. >> No, I know. Well, but wait, to be fair, but to be but to be fair, wait, but to be fair >> But to be fair, you're actually being rude. >> No, no, no.
¶8And that's not fair. >> I'm sorry, it's not rude to say that someone who is biologically a male is a male. Someone who is biologically male is a male. >> But Mr. Shapiro, you know you knew very well that saying that to Zoey would be would be egregiously insulting.
¶9>> It's not hard to find posts on social media arguing that supposed transphobes deserve to die, as can be seen in memes that include guns and other acts of violence against those who reject transgender ideology. In fact, most transgender humor are just fantasies about murdering people who disagree with transgender ideology. And sometimes the fantasies become reality. In 2023, a transgender nurse in Austria killed a patient that brought up her true gender identity. Rejection of trans ideology may also have been a motive in a 2023 Nashville shooting at a Christian school by a woman claiming to be a man, or this 2026 school shooting in Canada.
¶10>> The person responsible for Canada's deadly school shooting has now been identified as an 18-year-old trans woman, Jesse Van Roosevelter. Her first victims were her stepmother and her stepbrother at the family home, and then five students and a teacher at Tumbler Ridge High School. >> And of course we shouldn't forget the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Prosecutors are now arguing that Tyler Robinson, the man on trial for murdering Charlie, was motivated by his disagreement with Kirk on issues related to sex and gender. No doubt spurred on by Robinson's lover and roommate, who is a man that pretends to be a woman and identifies as transgender.
¶11>> Those were views that were opposite of Charlie Kirk's on issues such as LGBTQ rights. This is the first time we are hearing the state bring up a potential motive for the shooting. >> But for some reason many people on the right are not seeing Charlie's death as an opportunity to galvanize people in opposition to LGBT ideology, but instead as an opportunity to promote ludicrous and gravely sinful conspiracy theories about Charlie's wife and company being involved in his murder. So yeah, I'm not going to see a movie that is used to normalize a mental illness that causes real harm. Harm that is detailed at length in Abigail Shrier's book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.
¶12Now, some critics may say that I've just cited a few bad apples, and most people who identify as transgender or support transgender ideology do not openly threaten or commit violence. And that's true, but so what? Most people who identify as white supremacist don't openly threaten or commit violence either. But the critics who say I'm cherry-picking would have no problem with me calling out the threats and violence of white supremacists, even if most white supremacists aren't violent. If I can call out the evil of white supremacy in this way, then why can't I call out the evil of transgender ideology in the same way?
¶13And if a famous Hollywood film casted a white supremacist in a role, liberals would say it should be boycotted for the reason of not wanting to support this kind of evil. In fact, white supremacy is evil because it perpetuates a lie related to biology that some races are morally superior to others. Likewise, transgender ideology is evil because it perpetuates a lie related to biology. Pope Francis even said, "Today, the ugliest danger is gender ideology that cancels out differences." Now, I don't think Christians who go and see The Odyssey are sinning or doing something evil. I just disagree with their decision.
¶14Also, I will point out though that choosing to support works like this because of their artistic merit is often why conservatives lose culture wars and liberals win. If Christopher Nolan had cast Ben Shapiro in The Odyssey instead, liberals would be up in arms. They would say this is a politically motivated, wildly miscasted role, and so the film should be boycotted because we shouldn't normalize the insanity of the right. Even if the film were an artistic masterpiece, the left would put their desire to stop what they consider propaganda ahead of their desire to see a good film. It's been said that conservatives care about being right and liberals care about winning, which is why liberals often win over public institutions, and they only lose when they throw caution to the wind and make absolutely awful films that are solely designed to push >> the message.
¶15>> And when they do that, they indulge in the conservative desire to be right rather than win. And so, what we're seeing now is the left's return to practical ways of winning the culture war. This is a strategy of not trying to be in your face, but to slowly and incrementally numb people to the disordered nature of liberal sexual ethics and LGBT ideology. I covered this in a previous episode linked below on a book written in the 1990s by two gay advertising executives called After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90s. In that book, the authors Marshall and Hunter said that the LGBT community shouldn't lead with over-the-top debauchery, but they should instead present an image of the community that is as close to normal as possible, and then shame people for not accepting this.
¶16And with The Odyssey, we're seeing this because it isn't an over-the-top casting decision. It's not like a plus-size transgender influencer like Alli Lopez, who the internet nicknamed Gorlock the Destroyer, was cast as Helen of Troy, but it's the subtle things that end up moving people. Finally, some people may ask me, "Are you never going to see a film if it has a self-identified gay person or a transgender person in it? Were you against men playing women in the time of Shakespeare?" Yes, I would have been against that because it was silly that in Shakespeare's time, characters like Juliet were often played by a young boy because it was illegal for women to perform on stage. In general, actors shouldn't dramatically differ from the character they portray unless there is a legitimate artistic or story-driven justification for doing so.
¶17But casting Paige in The Odyssey as a male soldier is solely meant to push this kind of propaganda, and so I have no interest in supporting it. I may even see a film like that just to review it if other people aren't discussing it and it's just going to bomb anyways, but that's not the case here with The Odyssey. And I would ask conservatives who go and see The Odyssey, where are you going to draw the line? Imagine if Christopher Nolan teamed up with Judd Apatow to make an Oscar-worthy sequel to the 2007 film Juno, where Elliot Page reprises his role as a mom who had a teen pregnancy, and the film gets a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. Are conservatives going to see Juno part two because it's pro-life and it's Oscar-worthy?
¶18As I said, I'd have to judge each film I see on its own merits, but especially in this case, I can't in good conscience support this film because Christians have made so much progress in reversing society's acceptance of transgender ideology. According to Gallup, quote, "In 2021, 46% found transgender ideology morally acceptable, and 51% found it morally wrong. Today, those numbers stand at 38% and 57% respectively." And much of this change was brought about by Christians courageously and graciously exposing the insanity of transgender ideology, which tries to make things like grown men exposing their penises in female changing rooms totally normal. Deep down, even people who identify as transgender know they aren't a real woman or a real man because they get upset when people don't notice they are a trans man or a trans woman, a situation they call stealthing. The only way to make a successful stand against this insanity or any kind of insanity in general is to use blunt language and not cover the evil with a euphemism.
¶19For example, instead of choice, we need to call abortion for what it is, the dismemberment of children. And instead of pride, we need to talk about the disordered nature of sodomy and the ugly consequences of anal intercourse. Ephesians 5:11 says, "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them." And we need to have the same attitude with transgender ideology. When I told my oldest sons, who were still elementary school about what was done to Ellen Page's body, they were horrified. They had no desire to see the Odyssey because it just reminded them of this grotesque procedure performed on one of the stars.
¶20And as adults, we have to be careful to not allow ourselves to be dulled to evils and lose this shock and horror, whether it's transgender ideology, abortion, or any other kind of modern evil. Now, I get though why people are excited to go and see a film that isn't just a bunch of CGI slop that we've been fed for the past decade. But as Christians, we should make sacrifices to not conform to the pattern of this world, as Romans 12:2 says. And this is one of those small sacrifices. So, I hope that fellow Christians, and really anyone who is firmly committed to the nature of reality, will continue to normalize what is normal and not patronize that which is trying to gaslight the rest of us about reality.
¶21For more on the subject though, I recommend my book Made This Way, co-authored with Leila Miller, and Abigail Shrier's book Irreversible, both of which are linked in the description below. Thank you all so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.