In this conversation, Trent Horn and Cade Bradley go head-to-head on some of the hardest questions in modern sexual ethics: whether morality is grounded in natural law or human flourishing, whether affirmation actually improves outcomes, and whether data alone can settle moral debates. They also clash over same-sex relationships, public norms, schools, DSM history, transgender questions, and the limits of harm-based reasoning.
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Trent Horn (00:00:00):
Like as a society, shouldn’t we come together and say, “Don’t do this. These are bad health outcomes, whether you’re gay or strict. Don’t do this.
Cade Bradley (00:00:05):
We can encourage one thing and we can discourage-
Trent Horn (00:00:09):
Oh come on.
Cade Bradley (00:00:10):
No, it’s a very easy thing. What do you think the studies say about fulfillment-
Trent Horn (00:00:14):
I don’t care. We shouldn’t chop people’s peepees off. Welcome to the Council of Trent. Today, my guest is Cade Bradley. He goes by the handle Gayx Trad, right?
Cade Bradley (00:00:29):
Yeah, that’s the actual @. And then my name on all the platforms is Cade Bradley.
Trent Horn (00:00:33):
Cade Bradley, but goes by the moniker, Gay X Trad. We’re going to get into the history of that. He’s been on Jubilee a few times. He’s had dialogues, had a dialogue with my colleague, Joe Heschmire, talking about religion, sexual ethics, and we’re just going to have a chat about that today. And this was also recorded, by the way, before my conference. This is actually the day before. And you’re stopping by, right?
Cade Bradley (00:00:55):
Indeed. I’ll be there all day.
Trent Horn (00:00:56):
Dude, I’m excited.
Cade Bradley (00:00:57):
Yeah, it’ll be fun.
Trent Horn (00:00:58):
Oh yeah. Because the goal of the conference, really anybody could come and feel at home because the theme is just online evangelism. How do we do it? Right. How do we do it? And I always think when I go to conferences, I always have in my mind when I give a talk to assume not everybody there is Catholic or Christian. If you assume that, it’s so awkward. Yeah. When somebody who is not Catholic or not Christian like yourself, because you identify as an atheist, correct? Yeah. Yeah. It’s super awkward. You’re bashing these people and they come up later. “What’d you think of the talk? “Well, I’m one of the people you were ripping on. Has that ever happened to you?
Cade Bradley (00:01:34):
Yeah. I’ve been at conferences both with people that I agree with and disagree with. And there’s times where it’s like, ” Man, I don’t think you’ve ever tried that talking point to someone who doesn’t already agree with you. “And I think online we sort of get this feedback which is like, ” Oh, I’m doing well because there’s views, but I know people who get a ton of views and they’re the most off-putting people on planet earth and those talking points never work with an average person. But online it can seem like, oh, this is a great talking point. “Yeah.
Trent Horn (00:02:00):
It reminds me because I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a little bit of Muay Thai. So I enjoy grappling,
Cade Bradley (00:02:06):
MMA,
Trent Horn (00:02:06):
That kind of stuff. It reminds me that there’s two kinds of MMA or fighters. There’ll be people who will demonstrate cool moves online. And I think to myself, you’ve never been in a real fight with someone.
Cade Bradley (00:02:18):
They’ll
Trent Horn (00:02:18):
Be like, ” Oh, you have to do. It’s just when they have the knife like this, just there you go. “I’m like, ” That would never work in a real fight. You will get stabbed and you will die. “And then there’s people I see who will demonstrate here’s what you should do in an interaction. And I can see it. I’m like, ” Oh wow, they’ve been like a thousand fights. They actually know what they’re talking about. “And I think you see that, but the problem is the people who, the fake fighters to someone who doesn’t know how to fight, it’s like, ” Wow, that was really awesome. Only someone who’s been in it. It’s like, oh no, that wouldn’t work at all. “And you’re the same way. It’s like you’ll hear people come up with probably religious arguments, ethic arguments, and there’s some that probably challenge you and others you’re like, ” Dude, have you ever talked to somebody like me?
Cade Bradley (00:02:57):
“Yeah. It’s the same thing in reverse where I know a lot of progressive people where they just sort of talk among themselves and then they keep workshopping more extreme takes and they’re like, ” We’re going to win by saying X, Y, and Z. “And you’re like, ” You got to be controlled opposition because if you want to lose, that’s the exact hockey point to use if you want to be as off-putting as possible.
Trent Horn (00:03:16):
“Well, it’s like these kind of people they think, ” Well, there’s New York and San Francisco and I don’t think there’s anything in between here. So what does it matter? “The forget,” Oh, there’s like normal people who find this really off-putting. “So let’s dive in a bit. So we’re going to talk about sexual ethics today. We’ve got three prompts we’re going to go through. Why don’t you give a little bit of a background to our listeners about, because you identified not just as a Catholic, but as more of a traditional Catholic, right?
Cade Bradley (00:03:43):
Oh yeah. I was a big Latin mascue. I grew up sort of nominally Catholic. We went to Masso almost every weekend into middle school. I started going down the apologetics rabbit hole and bought most of the books from Catholic answers. I was listening to podcasts all the time and loved theology. St. Thomas Aquinas was my confirmation saint and my goal in life was to become a Catholic priest, was looking at the karmelite order that ended up not panning out. So went out to college to get and pursue degrees in philosophy and filmmaking. And then I was about 20 at the time when I started going, ” Do I have answers or do I have good answers to a lot of these questions? “Left religion about three, I think almost four years ago now, and then started doing YouTube a year and a half, two years ago, thinking through a lot of these big questions at life and wanting to have some really fruitful discussions.
Trent Horn (00:04:35):
And then the question of how you identify with your sexual orientation, where did that fit into that journey? What age or what stage I would say?
Cade Bradley (00:04:44):
I think it was at middle school that I started realizing that I was gay, wasn’t acting on it, wasn’t sure what to do with it. And then once I became super Catholic, I heard the talking points of, ” You can experience these attractions, just don’t act on them. “And so when I was Catholic, I was very Catholic, living a traditional sexual ethic, wasn’t living any sort of crazy double life. And at the time I was like, ” I’m happy I’m fulfilled. This is what chastity means. “I think my perspectives on that have shifted after leaving religion. But yeah, so I sort of realized beforehand while I was Catholic, was like, ” I’m same sex attracted, but not acting on it. Maybe the Lord will make me straight someday. “That didn’t end up happening. And then after leaving religion, I was like, ” Oh, this is actually a great part of life going on dates, falling in love.
(00:05:33):
All the things that I’d heard about the beauty of marriage from Christopher West and theology of the body and how amazing relationships can be, I found that in more sense leaving the church while appreciating a lot of the beauty and the Catholic teachings out there.
Trent Horn (00:05:46):
Okay. So your departure then from the Catholic faith into atheism, it wasn’t motivated by understanding your sexual orientation. It sounds like there were other intellectual objections you had that you couldn’t get over, I
Cade Bradley (00:06:02):
Guess. Yeah, correct. Yeah, because I had realized my sexuality before becoming Catholic class. But you were
Trent Horn (00:06:06):
Prepared to live just a chase Catholic life.
Cade Bradley (00:06:08):
Yeah. That’s what I was expecting to do for the rest of my life, whether it’s the single life or the priesthood. And then after leaving for sort of intellectual reasons, I came out and things have been great since. Not that they were terrible beforehand. I don’t think that … I’m very appreciative of the Catholic phase of my life and there’s a lot of things that I learned and shaped me into who I am. I’m also very grateful to be on this side of the equation now.
Trent Horn (00:06:37):
You’re not like one of the new atheists that has a perpetual chip on their shoulder about religion. We don’t have to get into it too deep because I want to talk more about sexual ethics, but what were some of the intellectual objections that kind of it would’ve pushed you out of not just Catholicism, but Christianity and theism?
Cade Bradley (00:06:53):
Yeah. I think the big thing for me was this idea of doagamo where we have beliefs that are absolute, that are sort of unchanging, that we hold in the highest regard. And I didn’t see a way to say, not only are we confident in God, but I can maintain or I have … Or it is objectively true that the Trinity is real or that the Catholic church is infallible in teachings of faith and morals. I like having a flexible worldview where we can have the weight of belief, stack up with the weight of the evidence that’s out there. I think if the religious claims were much more moderate about there’s something that’s supernatural that exists, but I don’t know the particular qualities, I’d be more inclined. Or if Christianity was to say, “We think Jesus was X, Y, and Z, or we tentatively hold this particular belief,” I’d be more inclined.
(00:07:46):
But the version of Catholicism that I was in, going to the Latin mass was very all in or very all out. And so once I started questioning things, I was like, “Well, I guess I’m all out. ” I looked at some other Christian denominations. Yeah,
Trent Horn (00:07:57):
Because I was going to say, why wouldn’t you just end up being somebody like Brandon Robertson, just super liberal, progressive. It all sounds very Christian. It’s basically universalist and I’ll believe whatever you want, kind of. But you didn’t want to go that route, you went just straight up atheist.
Cade Bradley (00:08:11):
I think every time I would go to a non-Catholic Christian church, I would just hear all of the Catholic talking points against Protestantism in my head. And so I went to a few different denominations. I didn’t find them any more compelling. You can take
Trent Horn (00:08:24):
The man out of Catholicism, but you can’t take Catholicism out of the man.
Cade Bradley (00:08:28):
It’s true. Yeah. Every time I’d go to these Protestant churches … One of the churches that I looked at as I was deconstructing, they were talking about the Last Supper discourse and I was like, “Oh, I’ve read too many books on this one to just sit here during the sermon and not analyze it. ” I think a lot of people find fruit in progressive interpretations of Christianity or sort of Christian agnosticism. I found that once I was out and thinking through the issues, I probably consider myself like a mere Christian for a handful of months. And then after a few months later, I was like, “I don’t think I believe at all. “
Trent Horn (00:09:04):
It’s so funny. I feel like basically you were raised in this trad mindset and I try to be always very gracious to be … I mean, I think it’s so funny, people on the outside will probably call me some kind of hardcore, traditionalist, insane Christofascist. And then if you ask the trads online, they think I’m a total liberal hippie, subversive converso. It sounds like you kind of kept the trad mindset because trads would say it’s Catholicism or bust. And so it’s like, oh, well, if it’s not Catholicism, then it’s bust.
Cade Bradley (00:09:35):
Yeah. And I found a lot of meaning and purpose or meaning and purpose took a while to sort of figure out what is the point of life, what is it that I care about outside of religion. And then that sort of took a year or two of visiting a lot of different religions or people into spirituality, got big into ultra marathoning the outdoors and have built a sort of much more integrated and fulfilling life now. I think a lot of people do stop in more progressive religious denominations and love that. I found I always wanted to pursue the truth wherever it led and was so deep into theology that I just couldn’t make those more middle of the road approaches work. Oh, you
Trent Horn (00:10:22):
Do ultra marathons. My spiritual director does ultramarathons. No thanks for me. I would rather fight a 300 pound black belt than run like 50 miles. I don’t know how you do it. It
Cade Bradley (00:10:33):
Gets crazy when you’re running a hundred plus miles. 100 plus woods.
Trent Horn (00:10:37):
Yeah. Man wasn’t made for that. All right. So here’s the first prompt. We had three prompts. The first one was just, how should society understand and parse out questions of sexuality? Hat should society do in relation to sexuality? Kind of a broad question. How would you answer that question?
Cade Bradley (00:10:57):
I would say I want people to be well. I want people to have authentic human flourishing, which I think is going to be a fine balance between a number of different things. I don’t think there’s easy solutions to a lot of these questions on sexual ethics when it comes to marriage and kids and dating. There’s so many questions to have. I like to often lead with the data, figure out like, are we just creating a hypothesis, but let’s test that and see if it’s real. But once we look at the data, we can figure out what’s the ideal outcome, what do we know works? What are the things tha... Read more on Catholic.com