Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - June 06, 2018


Ep 13 ｜ Two Gay Men + A Christian Baker Walk into a Courtroom


Episode Stats

Length

33 minutes

Words per Minute

184.98294

Word Count

6,233

Sentence Count

335

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

19


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to episode 13, I think it's, I think it's 13, of CRTV's Relatable with me,
00:00:07.420 Allie Stuckey. For those of you who don't know, this is a podcast that discusses relevant
00:00:12.500 cultural, political, and theological issues from a conservative and reformed Christian
00:00:17.840 perspective. Last week we talked about free speech, what it is, what it isn't, why it's
00:00:23.180 important, and we touched on another part of the First Amendment, which is religious liberty,
00:00:27.860 and that is what we are going to focus on today, at least partly. We are going to discuss the
00:00:34.040 Masterpiece Cake Shop Supreme Court case, which involves two gay men and a Christian cake baker,
00:00:40.240 as well as a lower level case taken on by First Liberty Institute about Sam Blackledge, the
00:00:46.460 valedictorian at an Illinois high school who was censored at graduation for planning to include
00:00:52.260 remarks about his faith in his commencement address. And then I will touch on a couple other
00:00:57.740 topics in the news, including Bill Clinton and Miss America. I will also answer a couple of
00:01:02.500 your questions that you guys sent me. You sent me a ton of really good ones, but I only ever have
00:01:07.320 time for a couple. So I'm going to answer one regarding the morality of birth control that I
00:01:12.200 think I got last week, and then another question involving Catholicism. But first, before I do any of
00:01:18.660 that, I want to point out a mistake that I made on last week's podcast regarding the religious
00:01:22.860 liberty report I cited. I said that Secretary Pompeo released a religious liberty report last
00:01:28.200 week, which he did, but that was not actually the report I read from. I read from the 2017 United
00:01:34.920 States Commission for International Religious Freedom, which is different and also not the
00:01:39.580 most up-to-date report, which is their report from 2018. All of the facts that I read to you are
00:01:44.160 correct, but I somehow, and honestly, I don't know how. I am not careless. I don't know how it happened.
00:01:51.560 I cited the wrong report and said inaccurately who actually released the report, so I apologize for
00:01:57.100 that, but I just wanted to let you guys know. Okay, moving on. Let's get into the Masterpiece
00:02:02.960 Cake Shop Supreme Court case, the ruling of which came out this week. Those of you who have been
00:02:08.360 following me for a while might remember that I made a GoFundMe page last fall to raise money for
00:02:13.900 Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cake Shop, who lost a lot of business due to the bad PR
00:02:19.660 surrounding this case. And on that point, just a note, I've gotten a lot of criticism from people
00:02:25.080 saying, oh, well, that's just the market doing its job. Who cares if he's lost money? Why would you
00:02:29.900 start a GoFundMe page? Aren't you a conservative? And okay, you're right. I am. I'm totally fine and for
00:02:36.680 the market responding however it wants to to service that it deems bad, even if I don't agree that it's
00:02:41.860 bad service. But another part of the free market is that people can give charitably to causes that
00:02:47.000 they care about. And that's what we did with the GoFundMe page. So yeah, don't try to out-capitalist
00:02:51.940 me, okay? I know what I'm doing. Anyway, the case against Jack Phillips was filed by two gay men,
00:02:59.960 David Mullins and Charlie Craig, who went into the cake shop in 2012 to order a cake for their wedding.
00:03:05.380 Jack Phillips said, I will bake you a cake. I will make you cookies. I will sell you brownies. I will
00:03:10.460 make you anything in this whole store. But sorry, I do not make wedding cakes for same-sex couples.
00:03:16.460 Phillips is a devout Christian who believes in the biblical definition of marriage between a man
00:03:20.760 and a woman. He was not rude from what I hear. He did not refuse them service. He just said,
00:03:27.180 for this particular occasion, it would go against my sincerely held religious beliefs to use my
00:03:32.620 artistic expression to render you a cake that celebrates something that I consider to be sin.
00:03:38.620 He didn't think anything of his interaction, apparently, until, of course, Mullins and Craig
00:03:45.040 sued him. The couple filed a charge with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, accusing Phillips
00:03:50.700 of violating the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. The state of Colorado ruled in favor of Mullins and
00:03:55.740 Craig and said, no, Jack Phillips, you must make gay wedding cakes no matter what your religious
00:04:01.160 convictions are. Well, this case made it to the Supreme Court, who is supposed to determine whether or not
00:04:06.660 Phillips is protected by the First Amendment to choose to not make this cake due to his religious
00:04:11.720 views. And they did and they didn't. So this was a 7-2 ruling in Phillips' favor, meaning that, yes,
00:04:20.120 technically, this means that Phillips' First Amendment rights prevailed. I tweeted as much when
00:04:25.040 it happened that this is a great day for the First Amendment, and I believe that. However, others on both
00:04:30.880 sides of the aisle would say that it was not a great day for the First Amendment, and I will explain
00:04:34.880 why, because I also partly agree with that. You've probably read headlines calling this a, quote,
00:04:40.140 narrow ruling, even though it was a large majority who ruled in favor of Phillips. But what they mean
00:04:45.440 by narrow is the scope of ruling, not the number of justices in the majority. So here is why people
00:04:53.020 are saying that it is a narrow ruling. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion. Justice Kennedy was
00:04:58.540 nominated by Reagan and has written the majority opinion for quite a few major cases, like Planned
00:05:03.820 Parenthood v. Casey, Obergefell v. Hodges, which was the case that ruled that gay people have a
00:05:09.540 fundamental right to marry. He has been a swing vote in quite a few cases. A lot of conservatives
00:05:14.480 don't like Kennedy. A lot of people say that he's not a good justice, but he wrote the majority. He
00:05:19.640 wrote what people are calling the very narrow majority opinion of the court on this masterpiece
00:05:24.660 cake shop case. And that's because the opinion Kennedy wrote did very little to actually secure the
00:05:29.820 rights of religious people from being forced to compromise their religious values to appease the
00:05:34.900 gay community or any community. The main reason Kennedy ruled in favor of Phillips, according to
00:05:40.260 his written opinion, was not necessarily because of his First Amendment rights to bake cakes that align
00:05:45.500 with his conscience, but because the Colorado Civil Rights Commission in the state of Colorado were
00:05:50.660 hostile towards Phillips and his religion in the original case, proving themselves to be biased.
00:05:55.940 Um, as Kennedy notes in his opinion, the state of Colorado said that Phillips, his faith is
00:06:01.040 despicable, implied that it was just rhetorical compared his religious belief to justifications
00:06:06.220 for Jim Crow and the Holocaust. And this treatment Kennedy said, and I think rightly so proved that
00:06:11.560 Colorado and the Civil Rights Commission was not neutral as they were supposed to be to Phillips's
00:06:17.200 faith and made moral judgments that they should not have made and certainly should not have
00:06:22.480 affected the ruling. Um, so here's why conservatives in particular though, are calling that a narrow
00:06:28.000 ruling. Kennedy didn't have much to say about Phillips's right to bake the cake based on his
00:06:32.380 religious views. Uh, the contention was with, like I said, how the court treated Phillips, which
00:06:37.080 doesn't lay very much groundwork for future rulings to protect religious people from being forced by the
00:06:42.660 government to provide a particular service that contradicts their faith. It had more to say about how the
00:06:48.360 court handled the case than the case itself. Some people, uh, particularly conservatives are going
00:06:53.540 so far as to say that this ruling did and said nothing about religious freedom. And I disagree with
00:07:00.140 that. While I do think he certainly could have gone further to emphasize Phillips's first amendment
00:07:04.960 rights. I do still think that Kennedy very obviously regarded religion in this opinion, um, as something
00:07:11.240 that should be taken seriously, that should be respected as something that should never act as a deciding
00:07:17.280 factor in a person's honesty or decency when it comes to rulings. Uh, he called out the clear
00:07:22.600 anti-Christian bias in the Colorado courts and reproved the state courts for not respecting
00:07:27.680 Phillips's religious freedom. So I don't think that this case did absolutely nothing for the first
00:07:32.680 amendment. It did highlight the wrongness and the unconstitutionality of a court ruling against a
00:07:37.660 person because they believe someone's faith is either insincere or inherently bigoted. I think that is at
00:07:43.900 least somewhat of a win on the religious freedom front. Um, but the majority opinion by Kennedy
00:07:50.800 didn't cover the important topic of free speech protected by the first amendment in this case,
00:07:55.120 but justice Thomas, a conservative justice joined by Gorsuch, uh, wrote a concurrence that while
00:08:01.320 obviously it agreed with the ruling that the court came to added breadth to it by discussing the issue
00:08:07.660 a free speech. Uh, basically Thomas emphasized that no law, obviously we know by the first amendment,
00:08:14.460 uh, no law a state makes can abridge free speech and artistic expression qualifies as free speech.
00:08:21.920 Jack Phillips is an artist and in being forced to make a wedding cake for a gay wedding,
00:08:26.060 he would have been through expressive speech, condoning the gay marriage that he religiously opposes.
00:08:31.940 Uh, here's how Thomas worded it forcing Phillips to make custom wedding cakes for same
00:08:37.500 sex marriages requires him to at least at the very least acknowledge that same sex weddings are
00:08:43.600 weddings and suggest that they should be celebrated the precise message. He believes his faith forbids,
00:08:49.760 uh, the first amendment prohibits Colorado from requiring Phillips to bear witness to these facts
00:08:55.160 or to affirm a belief with which he disagrees. Uh, he based much of his argument off of a 1995 case,
00:09:01.620 Hurley, the Irish American gay lesbian and bisexual group of Boston, which ruled that private
00:09:07.140 organizations are permitted to exclude groups. If those groups communicate, uh, messages contrary
00:09:12.480 to the one, the organizing group wants to convey. So in this particular case, it was a parade that was
00:09:18.200 allowed to exclude this gay group because to force them to include the group would have meant that the
00:09:23.240 state was forcing them to express something that they didn't want to express. They said that a parade,
00:09:28.140 the court said that a parade is a form of expression. And in the same way, Thomas is arguing,
00:09:32.540 so is a cake. Now, of course there are opposing views on this. The majority opinion said that
00:09:37.940 Colorado treated Phillips differently from other bakers in previous cakes who also refused to bake
00:09:44.140 cakes that offended them. That's why they said, Hey, Jack Phillips wasn't treated fairly. Look at this
00:09:48.860 previous cases. Um, there were these three cases in which bakers were asked to create a Bible shaped
00:09:53.560 cake that explicitly stated homosexuality is a sin. And those bakers refused yet they were not sanctioned by
00:10:00.220 the Colorado civil rights commission. Um, so they concluded that this, the court concluded that this
00:10:05.820 was a violation of Phillips first amendment religious expression rights. However, the dissenting argument
00:10:11.840 by Ginsburg and Sotomayor said that this case was different, uh, because Phillips refused to perform
00:10:19.460 a particular service to the customer based solely on their identity, not write a particular message that
00:10:24.820 he didn't like, um, HuffPo, which I know they are crazy a lot of the times, but they summed up the
00:10:30.120 dissent pretty well. Uh, they said there's an important difference between a bakery that refused
00:10:36.940 to make a cake for anyone with anti LGBTQ language on it and a bakery that refused to make a cake for
00:10:45.200 someone in particular, which they would have made for others because that someone was a member of the
00:10:51.000 LGBTQ community. While the former is not discrimination, the latter is that's what HuffPo says.
00:10:56.600 But in my opinion, it all goes back to whether or not you believe that the making of a cake is
00:11:01.620 religious expression or, uh, just any kind of expression, which is exactly why Thomas's
00:11:07.040 conclusions make more sense and hold more water. In my opinion, the Kennedy's do who really focused
00:11:12.000 on how the courts disrespected Phillips's religion, not how the case itself affected his religion,
00:11:17.420 religious expression and free speech. That is why people are saying that this was narrow. Um,
00:11:22.540 of course though, the reaction to the ruling by many on the left is absolutely absurd talking about
00:11:30.500 how this is a step back, how discriminatory this ruling is against gay people who just want to love
00:11:35.540 who they want to love. No, it's, it's actually not. It's really not. Kennedy is the guy who wrote the
00:11:42.740 majority opinion on the case that ruled that same sex marriage is a fundamental right. He is down with
00:11:48.120 the LGBT community. So this is not about that. Gay people can love who they want to love in this
00:11:52.860 country without fear of punishment, but they via the state should not be able to force someone to
00:11:57.900 communicate a message through their artistic expression that the artist does not agree with.
00:12:02.720 No matter what you think about the actual ruling of the case, no matter what you think about Kennedy's
00:12:07.220 argument, the point is this, we should not have to live in a country where the government can not
00:12:11.740 only tell you that you cannot conduct your business in a way that aligns with your sincerely
00:12:16.400 held religious beliefs, but also that you have to use your talents, your artistry, your expression
00:12:23.320 to convey a concept idea or message that directly contradicts what your faith teaches. I mean, is that
00:12:29.820 what we want? That is censorship. Remember Jack Phillips did not refuse them service. He said, I'll make you
00:12:37.680 anything but a wedding cake. He's not discriminating against them. He is discriminating, if you will,
00:12:44.740 against the specific act of marriage between two people of the same sex, which is simply living
00:12:50.320 according to the Bible, which he happens to follow very closely. So for anyone saying that Phillips is
00:12:55.920 a bigot for not condoning same-sex marriage, I say he's no more of a bigot than you are.
00:13:02.400 You don't agree with his lifestyle. He doesn't agree with yours.
00:13:05.320 See, here's the thing. So many non-religious progressives expect Christians and religious
00:13:11.140 people to fall in line with their set of morals. And if we don't, we are the mean bigots. Like,
00:13:16.640 they don't understand why we take the Bible seriously, why we have a set of biblical principles
00:13:21.120 we adhere to, because they don't. But what they don't realize is that they are just as much zealots
00:13:27.320 as any Christian. They are just as adamant about the correctness of their own religion as we are.
00:13:33.620 They demand tolerance. They demand inclusion. They demand acceptance. They demand we latch onto
00:13:38.040 their definitions of love and hate. They are the actual bigots. They are the ones who think that
00:13:43.600 they are better than Christians because of their set of beliefs. I don't think that I'm better than
00:13:48.260 anyone because of my Christian beliefs. I just want to adhere to the Bible. I'm pretty sure them
00:13:52.900 believing that they're better than me because they believe something different than what I believe
00:13:58.340 is the definition of bigotry. Nevertheless, though, Phillips won. He was treated in a hostile
00:14:03.760 manner by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. His religious views were respected by the Supreme
00:14:08.240 Court. It affirms that we still respect as a rule people's religious views in the court of law,
00:14:13.500 even though it may have failed to fully ensure religious people's right to express themselves in
00:14:18.140 a way that aligns with their faith in the public sphere. No doubt we will be seeing
00:14:22.760 more cases like this, I think, in the years to come. I do believe that Christians are under
00:14:28.260 attack. I think that we will continue to be under attack. It will continue to be hard for Christians
00:14:34.000 to speak out about and live out their faith, especially in the face of the sexual revolution
00:14:38.540 that's been happening over the past 10 years. We will incessantly be labeled as bigots for believing
00:14:43.680 in biblical marriage, and we have to stand strong and stay faithful and most of all know that our hope
00:14:48.240 isn't in the courts or in government, but in Jesus's return and his ultimate restoration of all
00:14:53.720 things. Now, moving on to our next case that has not yet made it to the Supreme Court, the case of
00:14:59.820 Sam Blackledge, co-valedictorian at his Illinois high school, where his school censored his religious
00:15:05.480 statements before he delivered his long-planned commencement speech. I interviewed one of the
00:15:10.060 lawyers on the case from First Liberty Institute, and here it is.
00:15:14.000 Keisha, thank you so much for joining us. If you could tell us quickly who you are and what you do.
00:15:20.380 I am Keisha Russell. I am the Associate Counsel at First Liberty Institute in Texas,
00:15:25.120 and we are the largest legal organization that's dedicated exclusively to protecting religious
00:15:29.860 liberty for all Americans.
00:15:31.680 And tell me about this Sam Blackledge case. That's the case that I am fascinated in right now.
00:15:38.040 So Sam was the valedictorian for his May 2018 class at West Prairie High School in Illinois.
00:15:46.800 He was asked to give the valedictorian address, and just minutes before his speech, they told him
00:15:52.900 that he would have to remove all the references to his faith and religion out of that speech if he
00:15:57.660 wanted to give it.
00:15:58.520 Okay, so he couldn't talk about the thing that's probably most important to him, even though he had
00:16:04.000 earned the right to do that by being valedictorian, and they didn't tell him until the very last
00:16:08.680 second. Why did he wait so long?
00:16:11.000 Well, Sam gave the speech to the school officials earlier that day, assuming according to the
00:16:17.720 criteria that they asked. And they told him right before he was going to deliver it that he couldn't
00:16:23.420 deliver it in the way he wanted it to.
00:16:26.300 Did they tell him why? Is it a rule that he failed to follow?
00:16:30.520 No, it wasn't a rule he failed to follow. They said they didn't want the graduation to
00:16:34.960 turn into, quote, a religious ceremony because of the references to his faith and his speech.
00:16:40.060 So what did he end up doing?
00:16:42.040 He gave the speech in a redacted form. So there were quite a few paragraphs that he had to eliminate
00:16:48.040 from the speech. And he was very upset about it. But he gave the speech and he wanted to respect
00:16:54.100 their wishes and not be, you know, insupportant.
00:16:57.020 Yeah, I think anyone would be upset about that after all of that hard work. He obviously was
00:17:03.200 because he reached out to First Liberty Institute. And what have you guys done for him?
00:17:07.260 So we wrote a letter to the school district explaining the Constitution and that Sam was
00:17:14.220 well within his rights to express his religious beliefs and his graduation speech. And we asked
00:17:22.460 them to amend their policies to properly reflect what the Constitution allows and also for them to
00:17:30.740 apologize to Sam.
00:17:32.120 And have they done any of those things?
00:17:35.120 No, they have not responded yet.
00:17:38.540 Okay. Do you expect them to respond anytime soon? I mean, I don't really know what the norm is for
00:17:44.460 these kind of things.
00:17:46.020 Well, we've asked them to respond by July. So they have some time to think about it and figure out
00:17:52.740 what they want to do. We hope they'll respond. We can't guarantee that they will. But no matter what
00:17:58.840 they do, we're committed to protecting Sam and students in that position in the future. So we'll do
00:18:04.460 what we have to do in order to make the message clear.
00:18:06.700 And what does that entail? Say they say, no, we're not going to do that. Or they just don't respond by
00:18:12.020 July. What do you guys do?
00:18:14.260 Well, we escalate the matter. And that can include a few things. I can't say exactly what it would
00:18:19.940 entail, just because I'm limited to what I could say about it. But you know, we're willing to take
00:18:24.580 it all away if we have to. So we're hoping that they will be amenable to our request.
00:18:31.420 And these kind of cases that you guys work with, are schools typically, are they typically compliant
00:18:37.160 in these kind of things? Or do you guys get a lot of pushback?
00:18:39.900 It depends on the school. Yeah, it definitely varies. You can't put it in one category or
00:18:46.820 another. We're hoping that they'll fall into the category of the school districts that have in the
00:18:51.420 past been, you know, just very apologetic and gracious about it and willing to move forward.
00:18:56.980 Yeah, that's the goal. I mean, you guys probably don't want to have to take it to
00:19:00.820 the Supreme Court. But you know, you will if you have to. Will you explain what exactly
00:19:07.900 religious liberty, freedom of speech, the First Amendment means? Because it gets conflated with
00:19:12.860 all these other speech issues that we have going on in the media. Tell us what it actually is and
00:19:18.880 what it is not. So, you know, religious expression, freedom of speech, those things are pretty widely
00:19:24.660 protected. So I'll sort of narrow it into the context of school, public school in particular.
00:19:29.520 So private religious expression by students is fully protected.
00:19:34.900 And what is private religious expression versus public?
00:19:38.440 So and what I mean, I mean, private speech, meaning a speech that is attributable to a student
00:19:44.620 and they're allowed to express that speech in public. So I'll make that clearer.
00:19:49.000 Gotcha.
00:19:49.580 So, yes, there's cases that say that neither students nor teachers shed their constitutional
00:19:53.660 rights at the schoolhouse gates. That means just because a student goes to school,
00:19:57.280 that doesn't mean that you can now squelch their freedom of speech. Okay, there are certain
00:20:02.040 instances where schools are allowed to censor speech if it's lewd or profane or something like
00:20:06.760 that. But religious speech is completely protected. And students are allowed to share their faith with
00:20:12.180 their classmates and in public and school and at graduation ceremonies. There's a Department of
00:20:17.640 Education got some guidelines on that on their website that have been there since 2003
00:20:23.020 that state that as long as students are selected with neutral criteria and the student's speech is
00:20:30.860 they have primary control over the speech, they're allowed to give it in public and the school should
00:20:35.300 not censure.
00:20:36.200 So can you explain the difference between this happening at a public school, which Sam's school
00:20:42.080 is public, versus this happening at a private school? If I went to a Christian school and I was
00:20:47.780 valedictorian and I wanted to go up there and say there's no such thing as God, the private Christian
00:20:52.880 school would be able to tell me, you know, you can't say that because they're private, right?
00:20:58.760 Yes. And the difference is that the Constitution protects us from government action. And there's
00:21:05.120 instances where it does apply to private entities. But in this particular situation, the First Amendment
00:21:10.940 protects you against government action. So a private school is not government. A private school is private.
00:21:16.520 But public school, high school, like the one Sam goes to, they're a government entity. So they're not allowed
00:21:22.280 to squelch your free speech.
00:21:24.400 Are you guys seeing an increase in the infringement on religious liberty at public schools?
00:21:31.600 Increase? I would say yes. I think it sort of seems to go with the trends in the public sector. So right now,
00:21:41.080 a lot of religious views are in contention with the views in the public sector, with secular views. And so it just so
00:21:48.480 happens that Christianity and the tenets of the Christian faith sort of require you to be more vocal at times. And that
00:21:55.140 sometimes can, you know, cause a lot of conflict, particularly in schools. And then you have school officials that are
00:22:00.900 trying to reduce that conflict in some ways, or in some cases, stay out of the possibility that someone is
00:22:09.020 going to charge them with establishing religion in some way, just because they allow a student to say
00:22:14.080 something. But allowing a student to say something is not endorsing religion. That is allowing the student
00:22:20.800 to express rights that there are viewpoints that they have that are totally protected under the Constitution.
00:22:26.140 So it's very different. Yeah. I mean, the First Amendment doesn't condone speech. It just allows
00:22:31.200 you to express speech or express your religious views. And I don't know about you, but I just get
00:22:36.760 a little bit worried when I see what's going on on college campuses and even in high schools,
00:22:41.120 how quick we are to censor speech, not just Christian speech, but any kind of dissenting viewpoint.
00:22:47.700 And to me, I mean, that's what America was founded on. So do you guys worry about this upcoming
00:22:53.340 generation not knowing how to properly debate and take on an opposing idea without just shutting it
00:22:59.800 down completely? Yeah, that's our hope is that you will get to the place where we understand how
00:23:04.600 important it is for us to have this kind of discourse, especially in educational institutions
00:23:08.660 and public and schools at all levels from elementary to the university level. It's really important that
00:23:14.840 we encourage that kind of conversation so that these students who end up in some cases running the
00:23:19.800 country will be able to tackle these issues in a way that is constitutional and is, you know, according
00:23:26.940 to all the premises that we founded the country upon. It's important, I think, that we continue to
00:23:32.380 champion that and continue to advocate for that kind of freedom. Yeah. And I think what people need to
00:23:38.260 realize, and you guys do a good job of, I think, emphasizing this, is that this is not a conservative
00:23:44.260 or liberal issue. People, a lot of times, I think they associate the First Amendment with, oh, conservative
00:23:50.280 Christians just trying to protect their viewpoints, when that's not true. I think it's, the First Amendment
00:23:55.940 was set up to protect all kinds of opposing ideas, and it shouldn't be a right or a left issue.
00:24:02.440 Unfortunately, it's become that, don't you think? I think so. And like I said, I think because the fact that
00:24:09.520 religion oftentimes is in contradiction with a lot of secular viewpoints right now, it becomes difficult
00:24:16.420 to see that just because someone doesn't agree, just because someone's religion is maybe in
00:24:21.760 contention with secular viewpoints, that doesn't mean that that needs to be silenced. We need to
00:24:25.900 encourage that kind of conversation and just realize that people are allowed to have those
00:24:30.460 different views, and that's why we live in America, and that's why it's so great, because we're allowed to
00:24:34.760 express those views without government retribution. Exactly, and that's what you guys are here for.
00:24:40.020 So what do you guys hope will happen in the realm of religious liberty, particularly as it pertains
00:24:45.360 to public education in the next five years? Well, I think, and going back to what we talked about
00:24:51.600 earlier, Ali, that we would love to see, you know, educational institutions respect the First
00:24:57.200 Amendment completely to allow full conversation and discourse about all of these topics, especially the
00:25:03.940 controversial ones, so that we can get our students prepared to have these dialogues in Congress or
00:25:09.720 to be able to vote in a way that they're informed and they can bring something to the table in the
00:25:15.000 future. I think it's going to be really difficult to do that and to have a well-informed population if
00:25:19.760 you squelch viewpoints just because they're not popular.
00:25:23.200 You said well-informed, and I think that's the thing that people are lacking is just proper
00:25:28.200 information. I know that my followers always ask me, where do you get your information? So tell us
00:25:33.300 about the resources that you guys have so people can just know what their rights are.
00:25:37.920 Yeah, absolutely. So firstliberty.org, you spell out first, F-I-R-S-T, and we have some protection
00:25:44.080 kits there. Under resources, you can see the First Amendment rights, the religious liberty rights for
00:25:49.940 students and teachers in public schools. We have a kit that provides all that information and explains
00:25:56.160 what you're able to do and not do and what schools are able to do and not do. We think it's important
00:26:02.560 that people look at these things and they know they're right so that they can identify when
00:26:08.220 they're being infringed upon.
00:26:10.800 Well, thank you for everything that you guys do. I think it's so important. It's probably
00:26:14.920 increasingly important, and I appreciate you taking the time to inform me and inform my audience about
00:26:20.940 the Blackledge case, and I look forward to continuing to follow that.
00:26:24.740 Well, I look forward to talking to you again, Allie. Thank you so much for what you do.
00:26:27.940 Thanks, Geisha.
00:26:29.480 So we will continue to follow the Sam Blackledge case like we heard in the interview. A public
00:26:34.200 school is in some ways an extension of the state and cannot, under the First Amendment,
00:26:38.240 stifle speech it doesn't agree with. Okay, I was going to talk about Bill Clinton and Miss America,
00:26:43.540 but I would rather get to your question, so I'll just sum it up really quickly. Basically,
00:26:47.460 Bill Clinton won't fully own up to taking advantage of Monica Lewinsky because he's gross.
00:26:51.700 And on Miss America, it's apparently no longer going to be a thing to judge girls based on their
00:26:59.840 appearance. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, yes, inward beauty is far superior,
00:27:05.120 and I do agree with taking away the swimsuit portion because I personally think it's objectifying.
00:27:10.500 I know people have different views on that. I just don't see a good justification for it. But
00:27:16.040 on the other hand, there's nothing wrong inherently with beauty, and I know pageant contestants who are
00:27:21.440 kind, smart, talented, virtuous, and are beautiful. They're the whole package, and I think that's
00:27:26.040 great. It is a beauty pageant. I just think that they went too far in saying that the exterior won't
00:27:31.980 matter at all. I feel like now they purposely won't choose pretty women, and that's not fair. It just
00:27:38.260 won't be a pageant, period, which is maybe the direction that we're going in, and I'm okay with that.
00:27:43.980 I have friends whom I love that have done pageants, but I personally don't see really what
00:27:50.980 good. They contribute to society. So in my personal opinion, it's fine if they are no more.
00:27:57.460 Okay, to your questions. One great question that I got. Birth control. Moral or not? This is a
00:28:04.920 difficult question, I think. It's a little complex. Also, I don't necessarily recommend listening to
00:28:10.540 this if you're a guy. I mean, you can, maybe, but especially if you're like related to me, and you're
00:28:16.320 a male, and you're not my husband. I don't know. Kind of freaks me out knowing that you're listening,
00:28:20.340 but I want to answer this question because I think it's good. On the one hand, I think God is
00:28:24.560 sovereign, and you will get pregnant when he wills. Obviously, we're talking about in the context of
00:28:28.520 marriage here. Maybe the advancement of modern medicine is a gift of common grace to women who
00:28:33.660 are married, having sex, but are not in school. They're in low-paying, or they are in school.
00:28:39.840 They're in low-paying jobs. They're not in a position to care very well for children.
00:28:44.140 I certainly know godly women who use birth control, and their relationships with Jesus
00:28:49.560 are genuine. I don't think that them using birth control means that they don't trust God. It just
00:28:54.920 means that that's where they are in life. I also know people who have been in very difficult
00:29:00.940 circumstances, who have been poor, who have been in school, who have gotten pregnant, and everything
00:29:05.700 has turned out great for them. It was hard, but it worked well. My parents, case in point,
00:29:10.960 when they first got married, my husband and I personally are not and have not ever been.
00:29:17.220 That said, I do think it largely depends on your heart, and this was a lesson that was very hard
00:29:22.560 for me to hear when I first heard it. The Bible says that children are a blessing, and if you view
00:29:27.480 children as an inconvenience to your life, as something that you are putting off because you
00:29:32.940 want to accomplish some arbitrary checklist, then that is wrong. Now, I think that there's something to
00:29:38.680 be said for spending time with your husband when you first get married. We've been married for two
00:29:43.240 and a half years, and we don't have kids yet, and I'm very thankful for the time we've spent together,
00:29:47.060 but without getting into a lot of detail, we will see what happens in the near future, but I don't
00:29:53.180 want to, nor do I think it's right to put off kids just for your career. I say that as a career-oriented
00:29:59.780 person. Also, a note on birth control. Some birth control prevents fertilization. Some prevents
00:30:05.660 implantation, which means that a fertilized egg would not be able to survive in the uterus because
00:30:10.800 of the birth control pill. So depending on your view, that could be seen as an abortion, but it
00:30:16.160 depends on the birth control pill, so just make sure that you check into that. You don't want to be
00:30:20.260 accidentally, you know, making a moral decision that you didn't mean to make. Someone asked me this
00:30:26.580 question on Instagram, which is basically where I get all my questions, which I hope is a joke because
00:30:31.220 it made me laugh, but I'll take it seriously because I've been asked about this a lot. The
00:30:35.240 question is, when will you reject the heresy of Protestantism and join the one holy Catholic and
00:30:40.040 apostolic church? And that would be why I am not Catholic. I'm just kidding. I have friends that are
00:30:46.360 Catholic. I know a lot of very godly Catholics, so please don't say that I'm anti-Catholic. You have
00:30:53.120 your reasons, you Catholics out there, that you're not Protestant. I have my reasons that I am not
00:30:58.620 Catholic and I love you regardless of that. So please allow me, without calling this an attack
00:31:04.460 on Catholicism, let me tell you why I personally am not Catholic. Because I do have beef with
00:31:11.160 Catholicism, obviously, or else I would be Catholic myself. And my basic beef with Catholicism is
00:31:16.360 essentially the beef that Martin Luther and Protestants throughout the ages have had with
00:31:20.380 Catholicism. And that is, even though at its core, Catholicism believes that Christ is the only
00:31:25.320 means of salvation, it just puts too many obstacles in the way of the truth that, quite frankly, I don't
00:31:30.640 believe are biblical. The confession, the Our Fathers, the Hail Marys, they're not biblical. And they put
00:31:36.580 priests and people, Mary was just a person, by the way, in place of Jesus, who is our only intercessor.
00:31:43.060 I don't need a priest to forgive my sins. Jesus did that for me. I don't need Mary to intercede on my
00:31:49.020 behalf. Jesus did that for me. I don't need to pray to the saints. I pray to Jesus. Also, Catholics today
00:31:56.140 and their freedom to read the Bible, to interpret scripture, etc., can be owed to Martin Luther and
00:32:01.560 the Protestants who protested because the Catholic Church's hierarchy suppressed lay people, made them
00:32:06.900 pay indulgences to secure their salvation, and prevented them from their own personal relationship
00:32:12.040 with Christ. And while, like I said, I know awesome, godly Catholics and some not-so-awesome,
00:32:18.460 not-so-godly Protestants, that said, the Catholic friends I had in college had no idea that you could
00:32:24.840 have a relationship with Jesus on earth. It was like mind-blowing to them when I talked to them
00:32:29.540 about this. They thought that if you were just good, if you did the sacraments, went to mass,
00:32:33.160 confessed your sins, then you're good. You're fine. Catholics have done, by the way, though,
00:32:39.720 a heck of a lot of good. Charities, hospitals, so many organizations dedicated to humanity are run
00:32:44.880 by Catholics. Pro-life organizations run by Catholics. And that should not be overlooked.
00:32:49.660 There are plenty of Protestants, like I said, who are not really Christians, just as there are many
00:32:54.200 Catholics who are not really Christians. And to me, as long as you believe that it is by grace,
00:32:59.740 through faith, in that alone that you are saved in Christ, then you are a Christian. We can have our
00:33:05.520 liturgical differences. It's when we have serious theological differences about what
00:33:09.700 saves you that I get, that I have a more serious conversation. Anyway, that is all for now. I
00:33:19.800 love y'all. Email me, Allie at the conservativemillennialblog.com. Follow me on social media
00:33:24.200 if you would like. Leave me a nice five-star review if you would like. Share this with your
00:33:28.420 friends if you would like. Okay. Love y'all. Have a great week.
00:33:39.700 Bye.