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Defalco Moves to Victory Boat In Class 1 Series

Class 1 race team Defalco Offshore Racing has announced that it will be competing in this year’s UIM world championship in a Victory Class 1 boat, with throttleman Billy Moore alongside New York-based owner and driver Mike Falco.

Acclaimed Throttleman Grant Bruggemann to Join Willy Cabeza in GC Racing

Offshore multi World and National Champion Grant Bruggemann of Grant's Signature Racing has signed on as throttleman for Willy Cabeza's GC Racing team in 450R Factory Stock class.

Fountain Debuts 43 SCX Center Console at Miami Int'l Boat Show

Fountain Powerboats of Washington, NC, unveiled its new 43 SCX center console today during the opening hours of the Miami International Boat Show.

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Issue 188 now on sale

Welcome to Powerboat and RIB magazine. We deliver the best boating journalism on the planet.

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Boat Test: 2024 Bayliner Trophy T23 Pilothouse

The new Bayliner Trophy T23 Pilothouse gives anglers a boat capable of extending their season on both ends.

What to Do if Your Boat’s Engine Dies

Losing power while boating can be a daunting experience if you’re not prepared. Here are four tips to improve your safety.

Boat Test: 2024 Nuova Jolly Prince 33 CC

The Nuova Jolly Prince 33 CC combines superb handling with a variety of creature comforts in a package that’s a ton of fun.

ProTournament Elite Gen 3 Chargers

ProTournament Elite Gen 3 battery chargers are packed with tech features to deliver the fastest-possible recharge times.

Boat Test: 2024 Starcraft SVX 231 OB CC

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I Learned About Boating From This: Capsize, Rescue and Lessons Learned

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Boat Test: 2024 Regal 38 Surf

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Boat Test: 2024 Bennington S20 Swingback SPS

Style, function and brand swagger converge at a surprisingly affordable price on the Bennington S20 Swingback SPS.

Boat Test: 2024 Highfield Sport 800

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Boat Test: 2024 Boston Whaler 210 Vanatge

This family-friendly dual-console can be towed behind a typical SUV to your favorite fishing spot or watersports lake.

Boat Test: 2024 Scarab Jet 195 ID

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Using Hydrofoils to Improve Boat Performance

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Six Boats Built for Adventure

A new generation of Nordic-inspired boats awaits those searching for their next great adventure on the water.

Hyper Electric Marine’s Electric-Outboard Pontoon Boat

Hyper Electric Marine is pushing electric-boat tech forward with its pontoon boat equipped with a Tesla motor and battery.

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38 Top Make-Ready Tips for the Spring Boating Season

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On Board With: Andrew Robbins

Andrew Robbins is president of the Princeton Electric Speedboating Club which set a new UIM record in October 2023.

How to Apply the Propspeed Antifouling System

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We Test Interlux Trilux 33 Aerosol Antifouling Paint

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Bob Nordskog: Honoring a Legend

For us at Powerboat, there were two sides to Bob, the publisher/boat tester and the racer. The story of our Performance Trials is chronicled annually. After launching the magazine in 1968, Bob, who also owned a marine dealership in the San Fernando Valley area of California, developed his own rigorous test program to help improve the quality of the products being sold to the public. During the next 22 years, he evaluated 1,196 pleasureboats, everything from tournament inboard ski boats to runabouts to performance tunnels to monster 47′ offshore wave mashers.

When I came out from the East Coast to interview with Bob and our current publisher, his son, Jerry, in early 1991, Bob the boat racer won me over. He had just given me the tour of his famed Competition Center, where he kept all his raceboats in Van Nuys, Calif., and told glorious stories with charm and intensity. It was like a walk through powerboat racing history, a selection of endurance tunnels, flatbottoms and Cigarette, Scarab and Fountain offshore boats covering the immaculate floor. T-shirts from all the events the Nordskog Racing Team competed in were folded and framed on the wall when you first walked in, and there was a trophy and photo room that was mind-boggling. I consider it an honor that I was the last editor Bob personally hired. He did it with a handshake and a smile, saying, “Welcome aboard.” It was clear that counter offers wouldn’t be entertained. Bob’s offer was his offer, and you either took it or you didn’t.

By the time I started at Powerboat, Bob spoke in a soft voice thanks to vocal cord damage sustained bv shouting over open exhaust all those years. People still listened to the charismatic, Seattle-born Californian with the slicked-back hair and blue eyes. When you put a camera or microphone in front of Bob, he knew how to make the best of the opportunity, promoting his racing teams, his magazine or his various campaigns in the name of safety on the water.

At my first Performance Trials in 1991, all the other members of the Test Team hazed me, telling me Bob hated it when people get seasick or messed up in the test program. “Don’t screw up,” said Bob Teague, now our lead tester. “He hates to have to do things twice.”

The other rule at The Trials was never be late. When you were late at the Trials, Bob said you weren’t just holding up the Test Team, you were holding up the hundreds of employees back at Nordskog Industries, because you were keeping Bob away from the office longer than he had to be.

After a sleepless night, I climbed into my first boat with Bob at The Trials. I had five pens, a tape recorder, backup tapes, batteries for the recorder and every other accessory I could possibly need. As for the seasickness, I had never suffered from it, but I was concerned that looking down at gauges and trying to write down data while a boat is being whipped through turns could be a nasty catalyst.

Turned out we made a pretty good team. Bob cracked jokes and had fun, loving every minute of being in the boats. In those days, we did our speed runs by driving close by an anchored boat and having a team member on that boat shoot us with a radar gun. One time, we came a little too close and clipped the anchor line with the drive. No one was hurt, but the guys on the anchored boat were rattled. Bob looked over at me and giggled, “Guess we came a little too close.”

Another time, a boat started chine-walking. Having never experienced this, I thought that for sure we were going to get wet. Bob reached over, tapped a button and, voila, no more chine-walk. He had an uncanny way of making boats work.

Another time we were in the middle of a particularly stormy week at Cypress Gardens in Winter Haven, Fla. Within seconds, the rain turned into torrential downpour. Bob looked over at me and told me to figure out how to get back to the docks. While he drove, I stood up, pelted in the face with pouring rain at 50 mph, and proceeded to get us lost even worse. Eventually we lucked into finding the docks.

Bob felt his Performance Trials and Awards For Product Excellence Program were the most important in the marine industry, and he let the manufacturers know they should promote the honors they received. Almost of them did and still do, recognizing that to this day we still conduct the. Trials in the tradition Bob intended, putting the boats up to the harshest scrutiny in the business. The United States Coast Guard recognized Bob’s contribution to the marine industry, presenting him with a citation for his dedication to advancing safety.

Those who spent time with Bob Nordskog have plenty of colorful memories. We asked former Nordskog Racing crew members and competitors to recall special moments.

We were running in the Long Beach to Ensenada race in the early 1970s. We had never made the Mexican waters, and Bob was so upset about all his inboards breaking in previous races he fired everyone except Norm Teague. So Bob bought this outboard-powered Magnum and decided we were going to race it in the Ensenada race. I made the charts and had them all laid out. It’s not too complicated. Keep the Americas to your left. I made this big chart and screwed it down on the deck. We’re going along just a-hitting and a-getting, and this deck is just wobbling back and forth like Jello. Just as we crossed the border, the chart started lifting. All of a sudden the thing just took off. Here I am in Mexican waters knowing I have to keep the land to my left, but I had to clear the Toda Santos Islands that I had to keep to port. Right alongside were the Witt brothers. I hadn’t seen what I thought was the Toda Santos, the Witts are heading in and Bob’s going crazy. It was all I could do to keep him going. Finally we saw our rocks and then we turned in. We were the only ones to get to Ensenada. We won. -Noel Younger , navigator, 1964-1981, and vice president of human resources, Nordskog Industries.

I’d have to say the best was when we crossed the finish line for the San Francisco to L.A. run, setting the record at 5 hours and 57 minutes. It was the best record we ever did. -Norm Teague , crew chief, 1968-1992.

I can’t believe how we thrashed in the Parker Enduro days, racing three KT boats at once. The teamwork, everyone working together. Then there was the time we went down to Salton Sea for a week to set diesel speed records, working in the dirt and sand and changing motors at a truck stop. -Bob Teague , crew member and navigator, 1971-1991

The race that comes to mind was the one at Marina del Rey, which was Bob’s last race (victorious). It was smooth water. Both of us ran hard, and we were side-by-side. Racing against him is what made it fun because he had raced for so long. –  Carson Brummett , Super V-class competitor, 1990-1991.

Nordskog By The Numbers:

• Number of Pleasureboats tested: 1,196
• Fastest Boat Tested: Douglas Skater, 102 MPH, 1992
• Age Started Powerboat Racing: 36 in 1949
• Age in First Offshore Race: 49
• Age in Last Offshore Race: 79

– Article by Powerboat Editor Eric Colby, published in Powerboat Magazine August 1997

Also see The Lure of Powerboating from The Saturday Evening Post (Nov/Dec 1991)

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I’m an Orthodox female rabbi, but I’ve had to leave my unwelcoming synagogue behind

An outdated approach to women and children keeps me from my place of worship. Without more openness, it has no future

I vividly recall the moment I made the decision to stop attending synagogue. It happened in 2023, a few months after welcoming my fourth child.

My husband and I had managed to get our children dressed and out of the door that Saturday morning – a feat any parent with small children will recognise, and we arrived in time for the synagogue’s children’s service, a segment lasting about 30 minutes of the larger 2.5-hour service. But our plans were quickly derailed. The children’s programme concluded earlier than anticipated and the playroom was closed, under instructions from the management.

I felt trapped. I knew that my young children would inevitably make noise, attracting disapproval from older men in the main sanctuary. Determined to find a resolution, I approached a synagogue rabbi and requested that, for that week, he would allow the play area to remain open. He agreed and I breathed a sigh of relief.

But a week later, the president of the synagogue called to reprimand me for being rude and demanding. Wow, I thought, frustration surging within me. I had reached my limit. If advocating for a space for children to play, allowing them to actively participate in synagogue, is deemed demanding, then I want no part in it, I thought.

The exchange strikes me as an accurate example of the outdated approach of too many synagogues that do not take women and children’s needs into account. Although some are making efforts to improve their amenities, many older ones still have outdated facilities that overlook the necessity for adaptable spaces capable of accommodating noise, children and their caregivers.

Some buildings lack ramps for people with disabilities or accessibility for those that require it. Breastfeeding mothers often have no access to private space to nurse their children. Instead of embracing the lively sounds of young children, indicative of continuity and a growing community, elderly men persistently shush any children who make noise. Many women I know, especially those with one or two children, have simply stopped attending because the conditions make it impossible.

In Orthodox Judaism , the practice of separate seating places the ladies’ gallery out of sight, contributing to women feeling like mere spectators, a concern frequently overlooked by those leading the services. Hardly any Orthodox synagogues have women in leadership, and even fewer have female presidents.

Even with awareness of these limitations, for many years, my desire to attend synagogue each week persisted. To me, showing up represented a form of leadership. Indeed, in mid-2023 I achieved a significant milestone as one of the world’s first Orthodox female rabbis . While women are unable to hold leadership positions in the synagogue, I am able to teach Torah, answer questions about Jewish law and provide pastoral support on matters of faith and tradition.

But, despite progress in some areas, it is clear that there is still a hostility towards women, children and their needs. Synagogues, like many other religious places of worship in the 21st century, are grappling with membership challenges. A significant number of them face the issue of ageing congregations, with entire generations of young people, unlike their parents and grandparents, showing little inclination to purchase memberships. Some synagogues have had to sell their buildings, other congregations have merged and many are desperate to fill their pews on a weekly basis.

I live in Melbourne but this is a global problem, and a quick peek into any synagogue in most places will show you that they have rows of seats to fill. But I’m not sure how synagogue leaders anticipate filling the pews if they are intolerant to the joyous noise of children – the next generation of potential members.

While many communities like to hold roundtable conversations about why young Jews are no longer going to synagogue or considering buying memberships, I can tell you first-hand that there is not a lot of introspection about how they treat the women and youngest Jews who come through their doors.

Sometimes my husband still goes to synagogue with the kids, but I choose to sit it out. Other times, I take my children to the park or attend a more informal, ad-hoc service outside a synagogue with my friends.

My generation of young Jews envisions a dynamic Judaism that isn’t tethered to a physical building but understands the need for synagogues to adapt if they are to survive. Owning expensive properties and buildings isn’t enough; leaders must take thoughtful measures to make both inhabitants and guests feel welcome, especially women and children. Synagogues and their management have a lot more work to do to meet 21st-century standards.

Nomi Kaltmann is an Orthodox female rabbi and the Australian correspondent at Tablet Magazine (NYC)

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Larsa Pippen and Marcus Jordan ’Started to Grow Apart’ Before Split: What Went Wrong? (Exclusive)

Larsa Pippen and Marcus Jordan were out of sync leading up to their split.

“Larsa and Marcus have broken up in the past but this time feels different,” a source exclusively tells Us Weekly . “Larsa and Marcus started to grow apart and had been spending less time together. She realized they want different things out of life and weren’t on the same page in a lot of aspects.”

The insider adds that when it comes to Larsa’s career goals, the Real Housewives of Miami star, 49, “wants someone who’s just as motivated” as she is, and she “didn’t feel that with Marcus.”

Despite their different priorities, the source says there is “no bad blood” between the exes.

Related: Larsa Pippen and Marcus Jordan's Relationship Timeline

“They both handled the split like mature adults,” the insider shares. “They’re not completely closing the door to a friendship down the road, but right now, they’re just taking their time apart to get some space on their own.”

Us confirmed last month that Pippen and Jordan, 33, called it quits after Pippen removed all photos of Jordan from her Instagram profile. The pair also unfollowed each other at the time.

Days later, Pippen re-followed the former college basketball player, and the duo were seen spending time together on Valentine’s Day. However, the reconciliation was short-lived.

Related: Larsa Pippen’s Dating History: Scottie Pippen, Marcus Jordan and More

Fans noticed on Wednesday, March 20, that Pippen and Jordan had unfollowed each other on Instagram once again. The social media change came after Entertainment Tonight reported that the twosome had split for good .

Us broke the news that Pippen and Marcus were dating in September 2022 after they were seen getting cozy at Catch Steak in New York City. The athlete and the reality star started out as friends before their connection turned romantic.

“They’ve been friends for years,” a source told Us in January 2023. “She’s super comfortable with him and has always said he’d be a major catch for anyone.”

The insider added at the time that Pippen and Jordan’s “chemistry is off the charts and they’re crazy about each other .”

Related: Celebrities Who've Dated or Found Love With Athletes

Prior to their split, the former couple appeared on season 2 of The Traitors together. During a joint Parade interview published in January, Pippen said that the show, which premiered that month, had “changed” her and Marcus’ relationship.

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“We had to have this conversation, and we’re basically like, ‘Hey, once we get to the castle, I’m Larsa and you’re Marcus, and we’re not necessarily a duo anymore. You’re on your own. I’m on my own,’” she said of the reality competition series, which follows a group of “faithfuls” as they try to uncover the murderous “traitors” in their midst.

Pippen continued: “It has changed our relationship being here, but it’s in a good way, you know? I feel like we’re both growing individually. This is our path, and I think it’s super fun to be able to experience this with someone you care about and at the same time be challenged in your relationship.”

Larsa was previously married to ex-husband Scottie Pippen from 1997 to 2021. They share sons Scotty Jr., 23, Preston, 21, and Justin, 18, and daughter Sophia, 15.

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Piety and Profanity: The Raunchy Christians Are Here

In the Trump era, a surprising number of evangelicals are rejecting modesty and turning toward the risqué.

By Ruth Graham

Ruth Graham is based in Dallas and writes about religion, faith and values.

The “Conservative Dad’s Real Women of America” 2024 pinup calendar features old-school images of sexiness — bikinis, a red sports car, a bubble bath.

The models are influencers and aspiring politicians familiar to the very online pro-Trump right. In one image, a BlazeTV host in a short skirt lights a copy of The New York Times on fire with a cigar. Another model, the former N.R.A. spokeswoman Dana Loesch, hoists two rifles.

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Published by a “woke-free beer” company hastily launched last year as an alternative to Bud Light, the calendar was clearly meant to provoke liberals. But when photos of it began circulating online in December, progressives did not pay much attention. Instead, it sparked a heated squabble on the right over whether “conservative dads” who happen to be Christians should reject the calendar on moral grounds, or embrace it as an irreverent win for the good guys.

Allie Beth Stuckey, an evangelical commentator and podcaster, condemned the calendar as “soft porn” marketed to married men, and saw it as proof of growing polarization between Christian and secular conservatism. Other prominent Christian conservatives joined her in expressing their disgust.

But the calendar itself suggested that Christian and secular conservatism are not exactly as distinct as Ms. Stuckey and others might wish. The calendar’s cover model, Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer and activist against transgender women’s participation in women’s sports, frequently speaks at church events and evangelical conferences, and frames her cause as a “spiritual battle.”

In another image, a crucifix hangs prominently on the kitchen wall behind a woman in a tiny skirt, apron and platform heels. On the platform X, the model — Josie Glabach, who goes by “The Redheaded Libertarian” — said she was working to provide for her family, and defended her conservative bona fides in part by referring to her family’s Catholic faith. Using vividly vulgar language, she wrote that she doesn’t care “if the fact that I look hot doing any of it offends your senses.”

Such a debate would have been unimaginable at the turn of the millennium, when the best-known evangelical Christians in America were the evangelist Billy Graham, George W. Bush — the embodiment of establishment Republicanism — and Ned Flanders, a character on “The Simpsons” known for his cheerful prudery.

As a core faction in the Republican coalition, conservative evangelicals have long influenced the party’s policy priorities, including opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. And the influence extended to conservative culture, where evangelical norms against vulgarity were rarely challenged in public.

In some ways, they remain intact. Most pastors don’t cuss from the pulpit, or at all. Mainstream conservative churches still teach their young people to save sex for marriage and avoid pornography.

Yet a raunchy, outsider, boobs-and-booze ethos has elbowed its way into the conservative power class, accelerated by the rise of Donald J. Trump, the declining influence of traditional religious institutions and a shifting media landscape increasingly dominated by the looser standards of online culture.

When Mr. Trump was elected president in 2016, winning the votes of about eight in 10 white evangelicals, many observers saw it as an essentially transactional relationship. Mr. Trump, a twice-divorced reality television star from New York City, had promised to appoint conservative judges and to defend Christian interests. But he rarely showed up in church, and he defended a recording of him bragging about grabbing women’s genitals as “locker-room banter.” He pitched himself as a protector, not a pious fellow traveler.

But it’s hard to remain fiercely loyal to a figure like Mr. Trump without being changed by him. Eight years after Mr. Trump first secured the Republican nomination for president, it’s clear that the aesthetics, the language and the borders of public morality in evangelical America are shifting.

“As with so many things with Trump, it’s a longer history, but he has also changed the game,” said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a historian who has studied evangelicalism and masculinity. She cited gleefully combative talk radio of the 1990s as a touchstone in the coarsening of evangelical mores.

The shift is perhaps most visible in politics. Representative Lauren Boebert, who has called for an end to the separation of church and state, was caught on a theater security camera in September vaping and groping her date. (She later blamed her “public and difficult divorce” for her behavior, and said the behavior “fell short of my values.”) Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has embraced the label of “Christian nationalist,” drops vulgarities in hearings , on the House floor and in conversations with reporters .

Last summer, Nancy Mace, a Republican representative from South Carolina, joked about premarital sex and cohabitation, once obvious taboos, from the lectern at a Christian prayer breakfast in Washington. Praising the event’s host, Senator Tim Scott, she opened her talk by saying she had made a special effort to arrive early.

“When I woke up this morning at 7, I was getting picked up at 7:45, Patrick, my fiancé, tried to pull me by my waist over this morning in bed,” she told the audience, which included her pastor and Mr. Scott, an outspoken evangelical. “And I was like, ‘No, baby, we don’t got time for that this morning.’”

She added: “He can wait, I’ll see him later tonight.”

Ms. Mace later brushed off backlash to the remarks, writing on X that “I go to church because I’m a sinner not a saint!”

A New Set of Incentives

Well into the 21st century, conservative evangelicals maintained their reputation for strict standards within their own churches and schools around language and public displays of sexuality.

They did not avoid just profanity, but often also mild transgressions like “wuss” and “darn.” Evangelical Christian schools enforced strict dress codes focused on modesty, especially for girls. In the 1990s, teenagers attended conferences and wore “purity rings” to pledge their commitment to wait until they married to have sex.

There was a widespread agreement that the Bible was clear on these matters. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths,” the Apostle Paul wrote in the New Testament book of Ephesians. And elsewhere: “Flee from sexual immorality” and “abstain from all appearance of evil.”

But for some conservative Christians, the stakes of the moment are now high enough that a certain amount of vulgarity is not just tolerated, but also required as a form of truth-telling worthy of the prophets. At a conference in Nashville in 2020 hosted by a right-wing Christian network, an Arizona pastor named Jeff Durbin described institutional evangelicals as captive to secular ideals, comparing them to “a slut who lies down in the middle of a burning city, spreading her legs to the rioters and looters.”

Most transgressions come not from the pulpit or the podium, but the keyboard. There was Jerry Falwell Jr., then the president of evangelical Liberty University, tweeting that pastors like David Platt, a prominent Virginia evangelical leader, need to “grow a pair.” He later deleted the tweet. ( Mr. Falwell resigned from Liberty in 2020 in the wake of a sex scandal).

The influential Idaho pastor and author Doug Wilson, whose profile has risen in the Trump era, casually uses vulgarities like “gaytards” online, and has used an obscenity on his blog in reference to a Lutheran pastor.

Some Christian conservatives argue that the degrading of expectations around crude language and sexual exhibitionism started on the cultural left and cannot be blamed on Mr. Trump.

“I consider Trump a product of the changes in the world,” said Aaron Renn, a conservative writer who has written about Mr. Trump’s appeal but admonished Christians to “ reject vice .”

After flirting with running for president for decades, Mr. Trump finally ran seriously in 2016 because “he sensed the world is different today, the old standards that meant someone” like Mr. Trump “would no longer be considered a viable candidate are no longer operative in society at large,” Mr. Renn said.

Others see the cause as partly technological. Evangelicalism is a decentralized movement, and has always embraced new technology as a way to reach more people. But the old institutions and personalities that defined the culture are fading: Church attendance has declined at the same time that several lions of the movement have died , retired or been felled by scandal . Influencers and outsiders have filled the vacuum.

Online, “the way you stand out is by being the most devoted, the most extreme in the cause,” said Jake Meador, editor in chief of the evangelical publication Mere Orthodoxy, who has been critical of the blurring of evangelical and secular standards.

“That creates totally different incentives,” he said, than the consensus-building of the era when a local church was the primary source of Christian authority and community.

‘Wholesome’ Lust

As for behavior in the bedroom itself, the old stereotype of the Christian prude belies the complex recent history of evangelical frankness around sex in certain settings.

In the late 1960s and ’70s, evangelical authors and publishers produced stacks of “marriage manuals” that were, in practice, sex advice books. The genre had become popular in secular culture in the context of the sexual revolution, and many Christians sought their own guidance in a cultural moment in which many felt threatened by feminism and shifting gender expectations. (One of the best sellers, “The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love,” was written by Beverly and Tim LaHaye. The latter would go on to co-author the “Left Behind” series of apocalyptic thrillers.)

The manuals were deeply conservative in their way, with prohibitions against sexual activities outside the heterosexual marital bed (and some activities in it). But “there’s an automatic assumption that men are more sexual than women and they have this hypersexuality that is natural,” said Kelsy Burke, a sociologist at the University of Nebraska — Lincoln who has written about evangelicals and sexuality. A certain amount of lust is “a sin that they acknowledge but is also part of the natural male condition.”

This generation of evangelical leaders was easily teased for its puritanism, and, whenever a sexual scandal erupted, for its hypocrisy. But they were trying to thread a difficult needle, maintaining high community standards without withdrawing from an ever-coarsening mainstream American culture.

With a mission to evangelize that culture, they also wanted to remain relevant and appealing, communicating that you don’t have to give up fun and good sex to become a Christian. It was a complex balancing act between an acknowledgment of basic human urges and the dictates of their faith, whose strictures around language and sexual behavior they saw reflecting deeper theological commitments.

But shared fears can make some vices look like virtues. In a moment in which some Christians feel the world has become dangerously unbalanced, piety can be framed as “wokeness,” and breaking taboos as bravery.

The partial embrace of vulgarity, Dr. Kobes Du Mez pointed out, is happening in a moment of deep conservative outrage, an often visceral disgust, at rising rates of nontraditional gender and sexual identities, particularly among young people. In that context, an indulgence in heterosexual lust, even if in poor taste, is becoming seen as not just benign, but maybe even healthy and noble.

Part of the reason transgender identities are considered a threat is that they blur gender difference, Dr. Kobes Du Mez said. “Against that backdrop, it’s a wholesome thing for a boy to be lusting after a very sexy woman.”

Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst .

Ruth Graham is a national reporter, based in Dallas, covering religion, faith and values for The Times. More about Ruth Graham

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