Cartoon Nate scratches his head over Gloria Steinem CIA files, Utah anti-VPN rules, and an arrest scene.

Gloria Steinem Dies at 92: Was Her Feminism a CIA Op? Plus Utah’s Anti-VPN Law

What happens when a feminist icon dies at 92 and the obituaries gloss over her CIA paycheck? Nate opens this episode of the Ask A Christian Podcast by reading NPR’s glowing tribute to Gloria Steinem—then immediately undercuts it with the documented record of her early work for the agency. The Gloria Steinem CIA connection is not conspiracy folklore; it is public fact from the late 1950s and early 1960s, when she helped run the Independence Research Service, a CIA-funded group that sent American students to disrupt Soviet youth festivals. From there the conversation ranges across population-control advocates like Paul Ehrlich, Utah’s latest attempt to kneecap VPN privacy, and a self-described Christian LGBT podcaster arrested for threatening to kill President Trump. Here is the biblical and cultural recap.

Gloria Steinem CIA: The Biblical Bottom Line

Scripture presents the family—husband, wife, and children—as the foundational unit God designed for human flourishing, not an optional lifestyle to be dismantled for economic or ideological ends. Steinem’s public advocacy for abortion, the dissolution of traditional roles, and the mass entry of mothers into the workforce ran directly against that design. Nate notes that her own illegal abortion at age 22 became a defining narrative she later celebrated, while her magazine and activism normalized the idea that a woman’s highest calling is found outside the home and away from children. The result, as the episode observes, is lower wages for everyone, children raised by paid strangers, and a larger tax base for the state—precisely the opposite of the fruitful, God-honoring household described in Genesis and the New Testament household codes. For deeper doctrine on these core biblical beliefs, see our Ask A Christian Church Statement of Faith. Paul Ehrlich’s population-bomb rhetoric from the same era simply supplied the complementary side of the same anti-family coin. Readers seeking related discussions on faith and public policy can explore our Politics & Faith category.

Utah VPN Law and the Purity-Ring Double Standard

Nate turns next to Utah’s age-verification statute that treats any resident using a VPN as still subject to the state’s rules, effectively pressuring platforms to block or log privacy tools. The stated goal is protecting children from pornography; the practical effect is another step toward mass surveillance under the banner of safety. He contrasts this with ordinary parental responsibility—filters, device controls, and locked-down home networks—rather than handing more power to the state. The same episode includes a brief but pointed reaction to a critic who calls purity rings “creepy” while remaining silent on drag-queen story hours and explicit material in elementary schools. The asymmetry is hard to miss.