SKILLET's JOHN COOPER Says DEMI LOVATO's Pro-Abortion Rights Song 'Swine' 'Encapsulates So Much Evil'

In a recent interview with Plugged In director Adam Holz, John Cooper, the frontman and bassist for the Grammy-nominated Christian rock band SKILLET, was asked about the difficulties Christian parents face in trying to help their kids embrace their values, particularly when it comes to "striking that balance between helping our kids genuinely love people who maybe have a totally different perspective but not caving into some of those woke and progressive pressures". Cooper replied in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I think that — this isn't what you asked, but I think this is a really good example to explain to people that might not quite understand why this is such a big issue. What I call 'wokeness,' maybe you refer to as 'being woke,' wokeness is a totalizing worldview, and a lot of Christians still don't understand that. They think we're just — 'Why are you harping on culture war? Why are making such a big deal about the fact that…?' One of the things that happened with me recently with drag queens coming to the Christian music industry calling themselves Christian drag artists. 'Why are you making such a big deal about this culture war?' What they don't understand is that wokeness is a totalizing narrative. And that is the reason that everything is being — in other words, it's not just views of sexuality that are being upended. It's not just political views being upended. It's not just views on the Middle East that are being upended. It's every single aspect of your life because wokeness is a totalizing religion. Christianity is a totalizing religion. The kingdom of God is a totalizing kingdom. Christ is king over everything. That's the reason it feels like I can't even watch the news. I can't even have a conversation. Everything's exploding."

He continued: "I'd like to share something that I wrote in the book that might help parents, maybe. It helped me. When I was a kid, it used to annoy me so much when my parents would say, 'Don't wear your hair long.' And I'd be, like, 'Why? Why?' And they'd be, like, ''Cause I said so. I'm the parent. When you get your own house, you can wear your hair long.' … But you kind of extrapolate that conversation on to more important topics. 'Don't watch pornography.' 'Why?' 'Because I said so.' 'Don't blah, blah, blah.' 'Why?' 'Because I said so.'

"Here's what I wanna share with parents that I really think could help, is that the Bible gives us God's moral law," Cooper added. "That's what theologians always call it — moral law. But God tells us how we're supposed to live. 'This is how you please me. And when you don't do these things, you're sinning. You're outside of my will.' That moral law coincides with the world that God created. So when God says don't do a thing, he's not just saying, 'Cause I said so.' Now he is the boss and he did say so, and that's good, but there's also a reason why. And when you do that thing, there are consequences. It hurts you. It's bad for you. So, yes, it's because it's God saying, 'Here's my rule of law. I want you to obey me because I'm righteous and I want you to live righteous. But also things go better for your life.' 'Cause he designed it. So the world works in a certain way to work with us.

"One of the examples I like to give, 'cause I think it really helps people is if your kids are, like, 'But I'm being told that homosexuality is just like heterosexuality," John said. "It's just you're born this way, and it's not this and the other.' And then Christian parents say, 'That's not what the Bible says.' But there's a deeper answer to that. And one of the deeper answers would be this. I want parents to imagine that the only way to produce children — let's just say — the only way to produce children was in a same-sex union. Two men come together and they produce children, or two women come together and they produce children. But it's impossible to produce children with one man and one woman — let's say that. But the Bible still says that sex is to be between one man and one woman. Well, that would be really weird. God would be saying, 'I want you to do this.' And you'd say, 'Why?' He'd say, 'Because I said so. Things don't go good for your life if you do that. You'll never have children. You'll never have the amazing joy it is to have a kid. And you'll never experience that oneness, and yada yada, but that's the way that I want it to be.' Well, that would be really frustrating. But God doesn't do it that way. So I think that we can begin to have these conversations. It's gonna require work on the parents' part to dig into God's world he created so we can begin to understand.

"Here's the reason. Of course, we don't hate gay people. We don't hate anybody," Cooper continued. "That's what it means to be a Christian. Of course we don't want to just yell at people and tell them this. It's for their own good. They are missing out on God's design, on the beauty of the world he created. And we could do the same with pornography, just so people don't think we're picking on one particular sexual sin. Pornography is the same. You probably know better than me — the statistics I've read of the amount of college-age men on erectile dysfunction meds, it's nearly 30 percent of college kids. And a lot of the psychologists, even the secular psychologists, are saying there's something happening with pornography at a young age that is messing people's brains up. Well, we know that because we're Christians. And so it's not just because I said so. This is gonna benefit you."

Later in the chat, Cooper segued into a discussion about abortion when he lamented the fact that some American university students were "cheering on baby murder" as they supported Hamas for beheading Israeli civilians and butchering children last October. He added: "Speaking of, guess who else cheers on baby murder — Americans. Eight hundred babies aborted a year. I looked it up. You realize that we — and this is not funny; I'm sorry I'm laughing because it's so shocking — but it's over a quarter, over 25 percent of babies each year are aborted in this country. It's absolutely crazy. But all of our celebrities cheer it on. Just like Hamas cheers it on… The point is that every day will give you new opportunities to explain to your kids, 'Okay, you know the celebrities that your friends all really idolize? You've gotta understand what they're actually saying — they're cheering it on.'

"I'd like to give one example, if I could, that is a little crass. You know the singer Demi Lovato. Demi Lovato released a song [called 'Swine' last] year on the anniversary of Roe [v. Wade] being overturned," he continued, referring to the Supreme Court's decision to end the constitutional right to abortion in the United States. "And it was her sort of anti-pro-life song. And in that one song, she encapsulates so much evil. In that song, she supplies us with the best pro-life argument we always give, which is that people are not killing their babies because they can't afford it. They're killing their babies because they want to have sex with 'whoever I want to, whenever I want to. I don't wanna use birth control. I should be able to do whatever I want.' It is pure narcissism, pure evil, and then she's screaming at all the people who are saying that this is murder. So she now is… This would be sort of like… I mean, I'm trying to… I don't wanna be too alarmist, but that is sort of like the Hamas crowd, the cheering Hamas crowd. We are standing up for something that's just — we think — even though it's really evil and wicked. Have those conversations with your kids. It's gonna require some work for you to understand the worldview. But for my kids, when they began to understand those things, they were, like, 'This is horrific. They're cheering on the killing of babies.' Their minds were just… I remember showing my daughter a video from Shout Your Abortion [a nonprofit organization that has orchestrated numerous abortion support campaigns since its inception in 2015]. Shout Your Abortion is the ones that they say, 'You shouldn't be embarrassed about it.' It's like we say with faith, like, 'Don't hide your faith. Don't hide your faith under a lamp. What good is that? Share your faith in Jesus. Be proud of Christ.' They do the same thing with abortion. I remember when I first showed my daughter Shout Your Abortion. It was one of those moments of, 'I had no idea people were capable of this kind of evil.'"

In the music video for "Swine", which was released in June 2023, Lovato appears in front of a table of men who seemingly represent the Supreme Court as she leads a revolution. At one point, she takes a document they signed and rips it apart — causing a group of people to rage and cheer her on.

"My life, my voice/My rights, my choice/It's mine, or I'm just swine," she sings. "My blood, my loins/My lungs, my noise/It's mine, or I'm just swine."

In various interviews over the years, Cooper has said that he "always had faith in God" and that his mother was a "Jesus fanatic." He also claimed that he was willing to put his career on the line to take a stand for Christ.

A month before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade that established the right to abortion more than 50 years ago, Cooper released a video message via his YouTube channel in which he said that this was "something that Christians have been praying about literally for 50 years. Okay, we can't exaggerate this — 50 years Christians have been praying about this. People have been begging and pleading God to intervene," he said. "People like my mom, who's with Jesus now, prayed and fasted and went to prayer meetings and went and handed out literature at abortion clinics trying to save babies. This was just a tradition that I grew up in. People in my family fight big time for the pro-life cause. My daughter volunteers at a pro-life clinic, as well as my church has a pro-life prayer meeting that meets every single Monday, week after week, year after year. People have been begging and pleading for this to change."

The 1973 Roe v. Wade court decision affirmed the right to receive an abortion under the 14th Amendment, ruling that abortions were constitutionally protected up until about 23 weeks when a fetus can typically live outside the womb.

John Cooper press photo courtesy of The Media Collective / Demi Lovato press photo credit: Angelo Kritikos (courtesy of Island Records)