Podcasts/GodlessRebelution-Ep177

Godless Rebelution Ep. 177 - Lucien Greaves at Utah State University
Oct 19, 2017 00:38
It was kind of a last minute thing, but we were able to record Lucien Greaves' recent presentation at Utah State University. Huge thanks goes out to the members of USU's Secular Student Alliance who set up this event!
https://godlessrebelution.podbean.com/e/177-lucien-greaves-at-utah-state-university/

Transcript

[WIP]

Unknown Speaker 0:00 This program contains adult content. Is there a god? Big atheist? Really? What am I an idiot? But yes, it would be nice if you could throw your sins and your responsibilities on someone else. But it's not true. It looks like far left lunacy. I don't believe that it's true that religion is moral,

Unknown Speaker 0:22 or it's not good intelligence. If someone doesn't value logical consistency, what logical argument are you going to give them that will demonstrate that they should

Unknown Speaker 0:39 welcome to the godless revolution. My name is Dan Ellis, and this is episode 177. The intro I'm recording right now is being done well into the recording process for the episode. So you may notice that the sound for the intro is different than the sound for the presentation, which is different than the sound for the interview. That's because we used different microphones had different setups for all this kind of stuff. So I apologize that the audio is not quite ideal. The bulk of what you're going to hear tonight is a presentation by Lucien Greaves from his recent talk at Utah State University on Friday, the 13th of October, the event was organized and hosted by the fine folks from the Utah State University's Secular Student Alliance. We also had the opportunity to sit down with Lucien for a brief interview after his presentation. And before we all had to the after party, we weren't sure what to expect. So our setup wasn't entirely ideal. Ryan brought a wireless mic solution. So his audio is pretty good. But the audio for some of the video clips he played during his presentation wasn't picked up very well by the microphone. So some of it doesn't sound terrific. Wherever possible, I've gone through and re recorded and inserted the audio from those videos. But there were a couple that I couldn't find online. So the audio for them is well, not, it's not so great. I'm sorry about that. I did what I could tried to clean up all the audio to make it sound as good as possible. But there are some spots where where you'll notice pop, like as like a staticky sound from Lucians mic, or that the audio from one of the videos isn't very good. And that's just that I tried to clean it up as well as I could, but you know, I just I couldn't get a good sampling of the audio. There's also a portion of Lucians talk where he plays a video for the after school Satan club. And that video doesn't have any audio in it other than like a music underlay for the actual video that's playing along with just text overlaid on the video. So there's like a minute, minute, maybe a minute and a half section of his talk, where it's just the audio from that, just letting you know ahead of time that you know, it's not missing any dialogue. There's no real dialogue in the video itself. And I didn't want to just yank it out of the episode because then it doesn't really flow as well in that particular section. So just bear with bear with it for the minute minute and a half that that's playing. I think the rest of it is fantastic. His presentation was just packed with a lot of great information. Like I said, I tried to clean it up as well as I could hopefully you won't be pulling your hair out at too many points during the show. Tonight's episode also won't include breaks in his presentation, or the usual drops and quotes and stuff like that, that we usually have. Of course, we'll have our contact information and stuff like that. But I'm not going to barge into his presentation on our interview with him and interrupted with with any of the other stuff that we do in regular episodes. So you're welcome. I'm sure you're all excited to hear what he had to say. So without any further ado, I present to you Mr. Lucian grieves from the Satanic Temple.

Doug Misicko 4:07 Hello, Mike from working hours everybody. Is tonight also LDS date night? In Are any of you going to that? I don't know if there'll be any overlap. Why thank you very much for missing that for this. I really appreciate it. I was going to fill you in on some of the recent things happening to us. I don't know how much you follow the Satanic Temple in the news. But the most recent big news that we had is that our reproductive rights case in Missouri is going to the Missouri State Supreme Court as the Washington Post pointed out

one of the nation's longest waiting periods for an abortion will face the scrutiny of the most Supreme Court after a state appeals court ruled in favor of an inherence of the Satanic Temple which challenged the law on religious grounds. The western district of the Missouri Court of Appeals ruled last week in favor of Mary Doe, anonymous member of the Satanic Temple, allowing the case to be heard by the state Supreme Court. The hearing date has not been set. The suit challenge is Missouri's abortion law that includes a mandatory three day waiting period and requires that a woman seeking an abortion read a book with you and ultrasound and hear the fetal heartbeat. It alleges those requirements violate constitutional religious freedom. It's being moved up to the Supreme Court after it was originally dismissed by a smartass dickhead federal judge, who waited over nine months on the case, to deliberate and then said, because she wasn't couldn't be pregnant anymore, there was no relief that she could be granted. So the case was moves. The idea and legal terminology would be called capable of repetition, but withholding review. And that is, is not appropriate, of course. And I feel that that we have a very good shot in the Supreme Court and the lower court that hurt our appeal seems to agree, they say we have a substantial constitutional grievance that should be heard by the Supreme Court. So we're looking very forward to that. And it's very encouraging as well, because after Trump got elected, I guess you could say, into office. This emboldened some of the more theocratic of local governments to really crack down against abortion. Trump really kind of motivated people when he said during the second debate that he would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade. And immediately after Trump was elected, we saw that in Texas, or maybe it was Ohio, Texas, or Ohio. Oh, this was so hot. Texas was the burial bill. The heartbeat Bill declared that a woman couldn't get an abortion after detection of a heartbeat and the ultrasound, and we were going to fight that also if it were enacted, which it wasn't on religious grounds. Because according to me, in the Huffington Post piece to us, the heartbeat is irrelevant to a claim of personhood. We do not advocate for belief in the soul. Therefore, we feel that complex cerebral functions necessary for perception are what makes a person a person. The non viable fetus, the fetus that cannot survive outside the woman's body is we feel a part of the woman's own body is her choice whether or not she continues the pregnancy, our tendency to serve bodily autonomy and uphold science as the arbiter of claims over what is true, which we give deference in our decisions. As the Ohio bill is imposed for no medical purpose, and presents no compelling state interest. It is simply a violation of our free exercise, we will fight back against it, and we will very likely prevail. Even though this bill wasn't passed into law, I feel there's a very, there's a very distinct need to put these messages out while they're being deliberated upon, so that the courts know what they could be dealing with. And this could could affect their decisions later on. And as I touched on, Texas, around the same time, tried to put forward a law that would say that a woman having an abortion would also have to pay for a proper burial for the aborted fetus. This was just another way to tack on exorbitant fees, and make people acknowledge the fetus as a distinct, individual human life in putting this kind of so called dignity upon its by by shaming a woman from having undergone the procedure.

In there, it said, Texas Health officials are boldly imposing the view that the fetal tissue is elevated to personhood, a religious opinion that conflicts with our own. That's what I was quoted as saying, If Texas is going to treat the disposal of fetal tissue differently from the disposal of any other biological material in contradiction to our own religious beliefs, they need to present a compelling state interest for doing so. Of course, there is no such state interest, it's perfectly clear that the the demand for fetal tissue burial is a punitive measure imposed by sadistic theocrats, it's clear these officials deem harassment an acceptable form of pushing their misguided religious agendas. And what it comes down to is the idea of where does life begin? does life begin at conception or does it not? And if you can't elevate your point of view on that to a scientific absolute, then you must be willing to concede that that's a matter of religious opinion and as such, our religious point of view on it is deserving of protection. And the state has no place and imposing a different religious point of view. And the state imposing a religious point of view is far clearer in the Missouri case where we're going to the Supreme Court I just thought some of the right to life news headlines were funny. Satanic Temple says humane treatment of aborted babies contradicts their fundamental beliefs, that this is just one spin on it. And of course, the headlines that put us in league with Planned Parenthood that has caused a great deal of confusion, we've had to make it very clear that we're not, we're neither colluding nor competing with one another. But Missouri's informed consent booklet, very explicitly puts forward what we feel is a religious point of view. And it does so when a woman goes into clinic and at the time we were we were pushing we originally filed the lawsuit, there was only one clinic in Missouri, when that meant that a woman might have to travel five, six hours just to get to the clinic. I believe the I believe the most recent research shows that somewhere around 59% of women who get abortions already have children. So they may have to get daycare, they may take time off their jobs, they may have to stay at somewhere in the vicinity of the clinic. Because the informed consent booklet is meant to be deliberated on by the woman for 72 hours, three days, she has to receive these materials. The idea is that she'll read them and really consider whether she wants to do this at all. And then three days later, if she if she has this informed consent booklet that she had to come and getting person can't look up online, then she can get the procedure. And that that makes it very prohibitive for a number of women. But the the booklet itself, demands that it be it be shown to the woman that this statement that the life of each human being begins at conception in abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique living human being. We think all those points are arguable. The idea that life begins at conception, life didn't stop or begin. It's all biological material. There's not not a magic spark where you can say that that life began in Oui oui. As said in the earlier press release, we placed personhood in, in complex cerebral functioning. And even the idea of a separate unique living human being is debatable as well, because that before the cerebral functioning is present in the fetus, you do have a blueprint of life that could split off and become twins. So the idea of uniqueness is definitely open to debate as well. But as I said, if these points are debatable, and you're coming at them from your own religious perspective, the government has no place in putting its religious point of view, imposing its religious point of view into the decision you make. Another thing we did recently that got a lot of press was we made some commentary on this on a trial that's going to the Supreme Court that you probably heard about. Recently, a baker is taking his case the Supreme Court, fighting to defend his right to not make cakes for gay couples. And in order to kind of point out his certain disparity here. We were making the point that religion is a protected class, one cannot turn down somebody based on their religion for coming into a bakery. So a gay Baker couldn't turn down the same theocrats who turned down their wedding cake. So we were saying that if gay couples were going to go into a bakery that refused to serve them, we would go to them and make them make a cake for Satan.

I was asked to go on Tucker Carlson and talk about that and that was not the that was not the first time I was on Tucker Carlson the first time I was on the Tucker Carlson show. We were talking about a monument we had made for veterans in Belle Plaine, Minnesota. And in Belle Plaine, Minnesota. They had a a park of Veterans Memorial Park where they had put up a Christian Memorial with a large cross somebody complained a local complaint to the Freedom From Religion Foundation in the Freedom From Religion Foundation, wrote to the officials in Belle Plaine, and said that this was a violation of the establishment clause for them to have a particularly particular religious point of view endorsed on public grounds. So they took the cross down. Some outside evangelical mitigation group came up with a clever idea that they should push the city council and Belle Plaine to open up the veteran's Park as a free speech zone. So private donations for MoMA for monuments could be put there and then the cross could go back and this happened they opened it up as a free speech zone the cross went back up so We applied to put a satanic Veterans Memorial there as well. And they approved us and we built it. And then after some hundreds of Catholics defend descended onto the, onto the park and protested the City Council removed to shut down the whole free speech zone entirely rather than have us there. Tucker Carlson had me on his show, and his whole argument was that we weren't really a religion, and I didn't have time to explain him. The reasons I think we are because he was going to interrupt anyways. So I decided to exploit what cognitive dissonance I could give him by holding fast to the Free Speech grounds, said it really didn't matter if we were a religion or not, or if we fit his definition of religion, free speech zone is a free speech zone, we could be non religious Satanists, and we would still have just as much rights to the the free speech zone is everybody else. And I think it really hurt his feelings that he was forced to agree with me on that. So he wanted to have me back on to talk about the, the cakes, and that this was only a couple of weeks ago, and I'm still kind of baffled by the whole interaction. So I decided I'll show it to you. The Satanic

Unknown Speaker 16:17 Temple it's based in Salem mass, is encouraging its followers to find Christian bakers and ask them to bake cakes honoring the prince of darkness as a show of support for gay couples who've been denied cakes for weddings. Lucian Graves is the co founder of the Satanic Temple in Massachusetts. And he joins us tonight, Lucian graves, thank you for coming on tonight. I've mixed views on this. I mean, part of me wants to take it seriously, because there are real legal questions here. But then part of me wants to tell the truth, which is you're just a troll. And working out and happy.

Doug Misicko 16:49 Define for me what you what you think a credible religion is at this point. And then maybe you should thank organizations like Liberty Council or the Alliance Defending Freedom, when they put forward legal cases claiming that they're taking a religious point of view. And the Supreme Court just taking those at face value. The fact of the matter is we do have affirmative values. These are an expression of our deeply held beliefs. And I think that's all anybody really need. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 17:15 Right, yeah, blah, blah, blah. But I mean, in the end, this is about getting publicity and hassling people, if you really have sincere beliefs in your work, it's worth it. issues. I mean, I honestly, I honestly think not to play shrink. But it has to do with what was clearly not a happy childhood. But I guess my my question is, if you have these sincere beliefs, if this is a real religion, then why not practice it? Why waste all this time bothering other people who are minding their own business?

Doug Misicko 17:48 Are you saying why don't we practice it in private and in our own churches and in our own homes? Because then I would say, I'm completely on board with you. And that's exactly pretty much the message we're putting out, you don't see us going into public forums where there isn't already religious representation, what we're doing is we're upholding pluralism. And even in the cake case, with a K, you're

Unknown Speaker 18:08 not upholding pluralism, you're going in you're seeking out people to bother. And you're you're not hacking a small bowl, or we're not. We're not, we're not the one meeting this mystery. We're

Doug Misicko 18:21 not the ones opening up the forum. Do you ever have an evangelical on and ask them why they need to force their Bibles into schools, why they need to put up across on public property when they have churches all over the place? I mean, when you open up that forum,

Unknown Speaker 18:37 or not, they're not doing his show on that. So they're not what they're not doing is showing up at your house and saying, you know, say the Lord's prayer with me, Lucian graves, and if you don't, then I'm going to sue you or I'm going to get the government to launch a suit against you. You're seeking your you say you and your followers the extent you have any are seeking out small businesses that don't want to accommodate you, in order to force them to violate their own beliefs. That's my understanding

Doug Misicko 19:06 it well, it highlights a disparity. The fact is that religion is a protected class sexual orientation is not. If you want to be able to deny people service, Fine, let's be consistent. The gay hairdresser shouldn't have to dress the hair of the evangelical theocrats who wouldn't serve my cake, then we're on an equal level,

Unknown Speaker 19:27 then. I kind of that I'm fine with that. I mean, I think if it's your business, and you're being asked to violate your beliefs, I think and they're sincere beliefs. And I think

Doug Misicko 19:38 troubling questions, though about protected classes.

Unknown Speaker 19:41 It does bring up it does actually, yes, it Yes, it does. But one of the reasons that this was not an issue after the Civil Rights Movement, I mean, now no one's defending denying people service on the basis of their race, which is clearly immoral and wrong and illegal and it should be. But questions like that. bakery out in Colorado. One of the reasons those haven't arisen in the last 50 years is because people had a sense of decency and politeness. And they didn't feel that it was the right thing to get in someone else's face and forced them. For the sake of making some kind of public statement to violate their beliefs. You see them saying like they didn't behave like here, then

Doug Misicko 20:19 we should, then then the gay Baker shouldn't be forced to make make a cake for the evangelical theocrats. And then

Unknown Speaker 20:25 I kind of agree I actually kind of No, but here's the difference. I haven't seen a single case of an Evangelical, forcing any kind of bakery to bake a cake that violates the Baker's personal beliefs. And if there was such a case, I would come down on the side of the bakery, because why do you back off and let people live their lives? In fact, why don't you do that Lucian graves,

Doug Misicko 20:49 because religion is a protected class. So

Unknown Speaker 20:52 what I either take your way, making a nonsensical boring and I think you should crawl back into your hole. Thanks for joining us. insider trading is illegal, don't try it. You'll go to jail. Unless you work for the Congress that do it a lot. And they get away with it. Talking to Peter Schweitzer next he wrote a whole book about this, the practices widespread, it's appalling. And we've got to tell them, we'll talk to a Civil Rights Commission.

Doug Misicko 21:15 That's really the best sell for and say you should crawl back in your hole. Thank you very much for coming on. But this issue of our authenticity comes up. All the time, people question whether we're just whether we're just activists, whether we're just, we're merely political or we're religious, and we don't see any of those things as mutually exclusive. Our tenants are as follows One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason, the struggle for justice is an ongoing necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions, one's bodies inviolable subject of one's own will alone. And that's what we invoke with a bodily autonomy cases, including the the, the reproductive rights case and in Missouri, the freedoms freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offends to willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of others to forego your own. We should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world, we should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs. And that's another core tenet that's invoked in our lawsuit in Missouri, people are fallible. If we make mistake, we should do our best to rectify it and resolve any harm that may have been caused. Every tenant is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought, the spirit of compassion, wisdom and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word. And a lot of people see and hear that and then they wonder, well, what does that have to do with Satan at all those all sound very reasonable, but the idea that Satan should be attached to it seems outright counterproductive because of the reaction. It provokes. And there seems to be this kind of prevalent notion that we must have sat around one day and decided the best deity to attach this, especially being that we're openly non theistic. We don't believe in a personal Satan, we're atheistic. We're a non theistic religion, and we renounce supernaturalism we renounce any type of supernatural explanation for for any any events or occurrences, but

some of us have a perception of human history, the Dark Ages, and then the the Enlightenment thereafter. And put that in kind of a metaphorical construct in religious terms, the idea that the Dark Ages were the time of Jehovah very feudalistic time, very theocratic time, the time of the autocrats and in a time that was very much against scientific advancement and progress against the arts and creativity, then again, in very much out of tune with today's values of individual liberty. And when the Enlightenment came around, a lot of people did invoke the symbolism of Lucifer and Satan as a harbinger of a new era of enlightenment, one cultural mythological backdrop that would embrace pluralism in a, in a new kind of mythological constructs that would, that would serve as the backdrop for people to understand this new world better and, and accept diversity. And this plays out in people's individual lives as well, when people grow up in a religious environment. And they feel rather oppressed by it. And they come away from it. Sometimes, like I did, reading these different mythologies and thinking differently about who actually is the good guy. When you begin to see God and I and I fully recognize as different people look at these mythologies in different ways, but sometimes you can't separate yourself From the introduction you had to it or what you see certain mythology is doing in the world. But I see this kind of god characters a very oppressive force, whether I believe in a personal God or Satan or not, which I don't. So it resonates very deeply with me, even though I'm not theistic, and I think it does for everybody who really identifies with the Satanic Temple as well. But further, we just simply don't think that superstition, you should have more benefits in a pluralistic society over non theism. And we're willing to fight that fight and fight for the deeply held beliefs of non believers to be on an equal level of anybody have any other religious point of view. And one of the ways we do kind of challenge that cultural mythological backdrop is through these kinds of icons were willing to put up on the public grounds when theocrats try to enforce their own exclusive point of view. In in Oklahoma, we made a good deal of headlines, international press, when we sought to put up a monument alongside a 10 commandments monument that they had erected. The the Oklahoma House and Senate passed a bill that allowed for the erection of a 10 commandments monument on the Capitol grounds, claiming that because it was privately donated similar to the Veterans Memorial situation, that this constituted something of a free speech zone for donated monuments. The Capitol grounds did. And furthermore, the 10 commandments were not supposed to be of religious significance, but it was supposed to be honoring the the primary basis of constitutional law. And if you compare the 10 commandments to the Constitution, you realize there's not any similarity between the two, and that they very much conflict with one another. But there they had opened the door trying to avoid an establishment clause case for a free speech zone on the Capitol grounds. And they weren't, they weren't assuming I'm sure that anybody would call their bluff and actually offer something else. Well, we did.

And we wrote a letter originally, that just said, we are seeking to put a satanic monument on the grounds alongside the 10 commandments monument. And they, Oklahoma was very reticent to deliberate on this at all, the ACLU had a case in process against the 10 commandments, monuments. But the prospect of a satanic monument caused a lot of consternation amongst the public and not all of it was bad. A lot of people were were against the satanic monuments to the ends that they were then willing to consider that maybe monuments of religious significance didn't need to be on the public grounds, which I think is perfectly fine. And we made it very clear that we only wanted our monuments to be there on those grounds. Because the 10 commandments are there. If the 10 commandments weren't there, we would never seek to have our monument there exclusively. So when we were coming up with the design of what our monument would be, we thought bathmat was perfect because this sabbatic goat has been Satan, Satan eyes image for some time, but it has a lot of binary elements. We didn't want to engrave our tenets on it or anything of the type because our final tenant is about being able to revise your beliefs based upon new evidence. So for that matter, we don't, we don't really the idea of things etched in stone don't really appeal to us. These things can be repealed or revised at any time. But what bathmat is supposed to symbolize is a reconciliation of opposites you have is part animal part human, you have pointing above and below you have the two pointed star in the background and one point up on the head and you have the male and female on either side, and to fulfill those obligations of talking about how it spoke to the codification of law. We said it also paid homage to those who were hunted and killed unjustly during the witch hunts. And that this this monument in symbolizing that symbolizes also the codification of secular law and innocence until proven guilty, the burden of proof those types of things, these were all informed by the witch hunts have passed. So I felt like we had a solid argument maybe even a better one than the 10 commandments had when they were trying to say that it wasn't a religious significance. And I think what was very troubling To a lot of the people in support of the 10 commandments going up was kind of grassroots support we ended up getting and you can see that even in local news reports at certain points.

Unknown Speaker 30:12 The person behind the proposed satanic monument at the state capitol claims his plan is gaining support. Heather hub spoke with the leader of the group from New York who's trying to make that statue a reality car while

Unknown Speaker 30:23 many Oklahomans including legislators feel the satanic monument will never come to pass at the Capitol. There are some who feel acceptance is changing. And the group's leader says he's been flooded with support.

Doug Misicko 30:35 It's really encouraging. It's it's really moving. And we do get a lot of messages that start out with the caveat. You know, I am a Christian, however, and they explained they appreciate what we're

Unknown Speaker 30:46 doing. Satanic Temple spokesman Lucien Greaves says support for monument at the capitol is growing by the day, it would be placed next to the 10 commandments.

Doug Misicko 30:55 We've gotten a lot of messages from people saying that they've served in the they served or are serving in the armed forces. And they feel that these values are exactly what they fought for.

Unknown Speaker 31:07 And they're not alone. There are some Oklahomans who support the idea.

Unknown Speaker 31:11 I think Oklahoma is becoming more of a progressive state. It definitely happened. This is kind of what America was based on freedom of religion, and for us to say whether you believe in it or not, that it shouldn't be there is kind of wrong, but many

Unknown Speaker 31:23 say the statute goes against core Oklahoma and beliefs of having little kids around it. That's just ridiculous. I mean, I don't I don't understand where they come from. Our whole judicial system is based on the 10 commandments, whether whether you like it or not, it's our judicial system.

Doug Misicko 31:39 We have to let this play out. However it plays out. We'll keep pushing to make sure that it's going ahead.

Unknown Speaker 31:48 The Satanic Temple leader says they submitted designs to the Oklahoma capital preservation commission, and they hoped construction will start soon. Heather hope News Nine.

Unknown Speaker 31:57 Heather thank you in the group's leader says even if the proposal is shot down, the statue will be placed somewhere for the public to view the commission has delayed making a decision while a lawsuit against the 10 commandments monument is making its way

Doug Misicko 32:10 through the courts. So that kind of reaction can be horrifying to people who thought that the Satanist would never have any any public support whatsoever. And then to see that the law is being used against their what they imagined would be their exclusive privilege in the public grounds. As it turned out, well, while we were actually gearing up to sue Oklahoma for not replying to us on our request, after a while, they suddenly after a Supreme Court, state supreme court ruling, finding that it did violate their state constitution prohibiting this kind of merged blending of church and state, they took it down. And a close up of that picture reveals the kind of subliminal messaging of the homosexual satanic agenda at play. That was not lost on everybody. But the governor of Oklahoma couldn't, couldn't stand for this and Scott Pruitt, that dumb fuck, he's, he's actually he was the attorney general in Oklahoma at the time. Now he's the head of the EPA. So that tells you something more about the quality of the Trump administration if you can, if you didn't already know. But Governor Phelan tweeted that the people of Oklahoma should be able to vote on whether to bring the 10 commandments monument back to the Capitol. So essentially, she's saying she doesn't understand the limits of her own authority or the authority of even the voters when it comes to overturning the constitution. So what did happen some years later, like couple years later, up into recent times here was the Oklahoma State Senate tried passing a bill that would allow for the placement of historical monuments on the Capitol grounds. It didn't address any of the issues that have the 10 commandments originally taken down, which indicated it would have been taken down again because they hadn't addressed them. But they simply said in this bill, that monuments of historical significance could be put on the Capitol grounds, such as a monument of the Magna Carta, a monument of the Bill of Rights or perhaps a 10 commandments monument as well. So obviously, this was just another ploy to try to put the 10 commandments monument back up, but they were more specific this time it needed to be a historical document. So I started thinking immediately about about what kind of historical document could we possibly put up and they had already specified some historical documents and I thought they might be able to turn us down and hold strong that only those should apply. In. Eventually I came up with what I thought was a brilliantly simple solution. Here was the rendering, I came up with this would be the front of our proposed Magna Carta monument, where the Magna Carta would be, it wouldn't say that it would actually have the text of the Magna Carta on a slab like that, in the back of the monument would be this they didn't put structural limitations on it so that that would have been the idea. And I at that point I really wanted to go through because I knew they look at the application say fuck but before we were able to even submit that I guess somebody had some sense in Oklahoma and decided that that that bill needed to be killed. So that brings us to Arkansas. Little Sunday School Jason raper there with his family. He also has a ministry. He is very openly a theocratic and is trying to push a religious agenda on the public grounds and is very open about using his office to do that. And he plagiarized the Oklahoma bill up to to allow for the 10 commandments monument to go up in Arkansas. So we also we applied to put bathmat there because bathmat now just resides with us at our Salem headquarters, and it's just waiting to be dispatched for this type of duty.

So they said to me that, that Arkansas has been very, very much more communicative with us than than Oklahoma has been. But they they immediately said about changing the rules. And they said before we could be considered. We also needed to have a bill passed to have our monument put up. And in order to have a bill passed to have our monument put up somebody in the state or in the legislature Senate need to sponsor this bill. Now that's just another way of deferring the viewpoint discrimination to somebody else and it's not. It's not legal either, and we have a legal case. But in order to establish we have that legal case, we need to show that discrimination happens. So we wrote to all the representatives and it said Dear, honorable lawmaker of Arkansas. This is a follow up to a previous letter you received from the Satanic Temple offering you the opportunity to sponsor our monument for representation on the state capitol grounds. My apologies if you've already replied to the previous letter, we are simply establishing our due diligence after multiple appeals for sponsorship we expect will establish that the bureaucratic process employed by Arkansas for monuments approvals is indeed discriminatory. When one monument of religious significance is sponsored to the exclusion of another and the legislative process is openly abused by self serving politicians like Senator Jason raper, we feel it our honorable duty to challenge this constitutional corruption. To reiterate from our previous letter, if you wish to maintain an argument for the legality of the 10 commandments monument on Capitol grounds, consider sponsoring our bafflement monument for inclusion on the Capitol grounds as well. Otherwise, we are confident the 10 commandments monument will be deemed illegal and will come down, please reply by the end of the week, Friday 21st April 2017. Love Lucian grieves in this went through a few iterations because my lawyer didn't like the more aggressive tones. We got one message back we got several messages back but Senator Linda Collins was funny one one of the senators actually wrote us back and said, there is no way in hell, I'd sponsor your legislation. You can quote me on that. And it was because we were saying this and we are going to quote her in a fucking federal lawsuit. And we can't believe they actually gave us this material. We had actual representatives telling telling us that they were discriminating against us. And because we were us, they wouldn't allow our monument to go up. They have no legal setting. And then she wrote back and said, When contacting the legislature, it is proper to include your full contact information, including address phone number and where you live, including Senator Robert in this email as you use his name. Now I knew this was in reference to Senator raper going off in these press conferences and saying that because I use a pseudonym, I'm probably also a criminal and that he claims that it's in his mind, it's illegal that I use a pseudonym at all. And that's something something nefarious, something more nefarious and Satanism is going on here. So I wrote her back and I said hello Linda. Perhaps your grasp upon the content of the email is only as intellectually informed as Senator rapers grasp of the law. The email was in regards to the satanic temples request to place our monument on Capitol grounds. The Satanic Temple has a public address. And we have been in correspondence with Arkansas not only via email, but via post. If you're trying to be intimidating regarding real name claims of fraud, please know that here again, Jason raper is simply plain ignorance. Many religions indeed many professions take different names, and were not used for purposes of withdrawing from personal responsibility, nor engaging in fraudulent activity is also not illegal. If you have physical mail you'd like to send us or would like to discuss your sponsorship of our bathroom at Monument over the phone knowing as you must that it's your only chance of keeping Stanley's monument standing. Jason report sexual names please let us know if you're still confused as to what the previous email was trying to convey. Please have somebody read it to you slowly. Failing that, feel free to reach out to us with any further questions happy to help you love Lucian grieves. At which point I admitted to my lawyer I said that was an admitted failure of diplomatic demeanor on my part, he was getting a little upset by the BCC emails. She said, you obviously have no understanding of proper etiquette. Without your full contact information when contacting the legislature, I will assume you are not a serious inquiry. And this is spam and wasting time. My contact information is public as an elected official.

Unknown Speaker 41:34 To which I said

Doug Misicko 41:38 as seems the norm for a disturbing number of your peers and especially Senator raper, you seem entirely unable to distinguish your personal preferences and ad hoc self serving Lee imposed unofficial rules from actual protocol and law, as explained you previously and it's entirely ponderous, that you would even suggest you're unaware of this, or monument request is on record with your Secretary of State's office, given your failure to acknowledge this however, in the implication that you have some type of professional relevant answer to give. If only you knew who you're addressing, I represent, and I gave the full title, address and phone number. If you require a local representative in Arkansas, we have that too. However, that's not who you're in correspondence with now, we've already established local standing, you failed to describe in any credible way, why this issue of an address and phone number is irrelevant to the immediate discussion. I would further advise you that your intimations that we are not following proper protocol or otherwise or are otherwise outside of legal boundaries are embarrassing and indicative of your general failure to understand not only the law, but the very nature of your office as a public representative. I assure you, our own potential lawsuit in Arkansas has been discussed with lawyers who agree that our approaches sound and their request for sponsorship can't arbitrarily be ignored. exchanges such as these, assuming any future litigation on the matter are likely to become a matter of public record. So it might behoove you to reply with professionalism, address the actual question asked, and otherwise try to lessen the shame surrounding the revelation of prevalent constitutional ignorance and the Arkansas government that seems right for inevitable exposure. Thank you in advance for your reply that will hopefully finally address the question of sponsorship. Again, if you have any further questions, I'm delighted to help love. And she said thank you for writing me about things important to you. I received your request. Respectfully, Senator Linda Collins. So then, they put up their 10 commandments monument, and somebody ran it over. And it was a crazed Christian A born again, Christian actually, and Senator raper. In a press conference talking about this went off on some digression about again about how I'm a criminal, impossibly insane. He was talking about me, and I'm not even sure why because it wasn't even the question. But he was trying to put the blame before the 10 commandments monument being run over somehow on the actions of the Satanic Temple on the ACLU, because we inspired such hatred against it. Because it was run over and we were actually going to file our lawsuit the next day, we had to withhold our lawsuit because it could be thrown out on standing grounds. If the monument isn't actually up, they can say you don't actually have a grievance. So they can throw the suit out. And then they put the monument up the next day. But we're waiting now for that monument to go back up, and then we will sue.

But you do see when we do the things that there's a certain issue of public education on these matters. And when people will fight to have prayer in school Bibles in school in God, we trust on money. These are not benign things. And I've come to realize that more and more seeing what we're doing, because when we've offered to give invocations before City Council sessions where they open them up with Christian prayer, and they're not supposed to discriminate against other religious groups, giving those invocations The public gets very upset. And they obviously get very upset thinking that, us speaking before the city council is a reflection upon the city as a whole. They must think that in the reverse as well that when a Christian vocation is given that this is a message out there that this is the endorsed religion of the city, that this is the the officially sanctioned religion, and they get very upset that another voice can come in, then it really shows you a certain value in the separation of church and state. And perhaps people shouldn't be fighting these fights in the public forums anyway, and leave them somewhere outside. In nowhere was this more apparent than in Arizona and Phoenix when we offered to give the invocation there. Originally, our chapter our Arizona chapter offered to give the opening invocation for a city council meeting and it was it was approved as a matter of bureaucratic course, and not much was said. And then sometime when the date was approaching, it suddenly caught a lot of attention in the news blew up over it. And Phoenix was in chaos. I had no idea that that Phoenix could degenerate into an old school kind of tent revival the way it did. But in the session before the meeting, in which we were supposed to give the invocation, they decided to deliberate on whether they would keep the invocations happening at all, or they would migrate over to a policy of having a moment of silence, a neutral, secular moment of silence before the city council deliberations. And this is a clip from some of the rhetoric that was being stated by the public in trying to make the arguments that we had no right to speak and ironically, they were saying that we had no right to speak because they speculated that we were trying to censor religious speech. And and they also it was really bizarre. They allowed some woman to speak for about 10 minutes and she was talking about how we're misogynistic hate group. Because our chapter had a woman in Arizona who is always our chapter head, she does modeling and sometimes she does nude modeling and sometimes somehow this is an application of violence against women.

Unknown Speaker 47:26 The Constitution rated American Constitution is substantiated, sustained by God. The First Amendment Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Satanism is not religion.

Unknown Speaker 47:50 Silence is silence out there by mistake. People actually out the dollar deal or the money in their pocket.

Unknown Speaker 48:14 I do believe in God we trust you're already demonstrating. Stand up for guy and right now. They are Hebrew and specifically, they are a misogynist skirt. You will see images of the shell short in bondage in all kinds of positions that are not appropriate. promotes violence against women. Their main goal is to silence any expression any religious expression in public.

Unknown Speaker 48:58 I want to drive this is to silence the other side. To be members of city council to pick and choose who they want to give me an indication generally like those people, it has to be open in this country was founded on the principles of Judeo Christian principles. practice our religion behind closed doors and behind the church's practices right here at City Council. Don't sell your soul our nation founded on Judeo Christian values and prayers, if we abandon Him, He will abandon you will answer and represent Jesus.

Unknown Speaker 49:58 Jesus Christ So if you're Muslim or religious everybody or you have no those that believe in God bless everyone when you send it out and believe it or not I believe a single person

Unknown Speaker 50:44 the motto of our nation is in God we trust this is all about us individuals this is crazy because I don't need a middle layer I don't need a high priest

Unknown Speaker 51:14 irrelevant proud and I'm here to ask you as government officials to honored minority minority in this community this is a spiritual thing this isn't a spiritual round round around you may want to get a

Unknown Speaker 51:55 good idea in each separate religion I possess three that are bound right now does that make me lose your room close the door Ray your father your Father who sees inclusion first prayer is prayer bound to happen I was not to shut down are going to shut down their agenda which is to bring destruction over

Unknown Speaker 53:17 here he's the rest of us are here to open their Bible and find the word democracy because they're so on our second our city of citizenship it was Champika my children business in regulating it either was there same restriction here an indication to protecting the Constitution United States

Doug Misicko 54:58 I know it wasn't what they were trying to do when they held up the money, or said that they took their citizenship oath in the name of God, but to me that says that those things should not be, and that they should leave those divisive religious questions alone. And we see that, that this idea of public indoctrination into the idea of exclusive privilege for one religious viewpoint is very much now being pressed into schools and Satanic Temple is doing a lot to push back against that. One thing we do, where we invoke the same kind of claims based on our tenets for bodily autonomy, is we challenge the states, in the school districts that have that allow corporal punishment, there's still 19 states that allow the administration to administer punitive beatings, and we do have an exemption form for that available online, that kids can take to the school and say that it's it's against their religious persuasion to be beaten. And so if that kid is beaten, identifying with our tenants, then we will sue. We haven't been able to test that one out yet. But the the evangelicals, real fundamentalist types have recently or not too terribly recently, but at some point, they isolated the four to 14 window. And that's the idea there is that you have to catch a mind between the ages of four and 14. Because if you don't catch them, then you're never going to be able to truly indoctrinate them. And they push very hard to get to get their materials into schools. And we see similar poise to those that had the Christian monuments up on. In free speech zones, we have passive distribution of religious fundamentalists literature at schools. And the idea is that anybody can set up a table and allow the children to come and take it, you're not allowed to actively go in, force it into their hands, but they're able to able to take any of the material. So these evangelical groups will go and they'll set up Bibles and Jesus literature and things like that. And in Florida, that was going on with some Gideons type group where they had a bunch of biblical material. And then we asked to be able to put our activity book there. And the original, the original flurry of press, this provoked, of course, it initiated a lot of outrage. But the school district kind of kept their poise with media. And they said that they reserve the right to turn down any material that they didn't deem appropriate. So they were putting forward this idea that they would be able to turn us down somehow. And that would be legal, because they somehow had that, right. And they they had that right to a certain degree if it were pornographic, or really demonstrably offensive in some way and inappropriate for children. I mean, let's not get into what the Bible says in it. But, but they they may have grounds to turn us down there. So we ultimately turned in something that was so inoffensive that they there was just no way they could turn it down. And the only reason they wanted to was because it was going to be distributed by the Satanic Temple and had some satanic symbolism in it. But otherwise, there's absolutely nothing offensive about it. So in order to not have this, the horrors of this activity book come into their schools, they shut down the forum entirely. And here are some of the clips from that

Unknown Speaker 58:49 controversy in the Lando but the issue is a lot of people that live in like the Orange County, snowboarders etc, changing his beliefs regarding religious material decorate rural mobile segments. And I was in Canada, a coloring book, we put up a slot for allowing other religions or other religious groups and so the Bible's focus on education in America often uses coloring books to teach young Americans about natural science and current events. This year, a new book filled with beings and lessons about Satanism are being distributed to students attending public school in Florida's Orange County in Tempe each satanic children's April of activities features characters named Annabelle and Damian will demonstrate Satanism, expanding the wealth of information for America's allies. Orange County School Districts allow groups to disseminate Bibles and other materials in schools that other religious and evening Israel should be given the same origin, material, and followers of the Antichrist.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:11 Temple tells your story that in a public school mores always allow these Bibles to be distributed to students. As is the case in Orange County, Florida, we think the responsible thing to do is to ensure that these students are given access to a variety of different participants as opposed to standing idly by while Mormon is already set ways that this force delivers propaganda. Uncle Bob was causing problems. Without NAT binary controversy. The surface is warm slough this alumni received close to 11,000 years and more for me on this issue, and it gives you an idea of the level of disruption that was causing a small portion for the Satanic Temple says it's laughable that religious groups can dominate the distributor reserves exclusively, is discriminatory against suppose to those who may never have excited for Christianity or singers or our scene in India?

Doug Misicko 1:01:37 Well, it's true. They've all seen the biblical material before I think everybody would have been hoarding our table. And I think that was the real fear that we were going to be far more popular. But there's been far more insidious and destructive ways that theocrats have been encroaching into the schools. And in 2001, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the child Evangelism Fellowship to be able to run after school clubs and in public schools that put forward a very distinct fundamentalist evangelical point of view with a curriculum that teaches children that they must either step in line with their religious precepts or that they will burn in hell. There's a great site that talks about these good news clubs are called The Good News clubs in the run by the child Evangelism Fellowship. And they went through the curriculum and they looked at the thematic frequency of certain things. The the obsession with obedience, sin, the dark heart, I believe, was some kind of personal blame upon upon the child punishment and how it's a very destructive supernatural way of thinking. And it's a very guilt ridden way of thinking. And the problem is, is that they run these after school clubs. And something we found is that you have some school districts that get have an early day, out of school, I don't know what you call it in service or whatever. But say in Arizona was one of the school districts, school would let out an hour early and that our gap was filled by a good news club. And some parents had no choice but to have their kids go to The Good News Club is a type of daycare, they would also set up back to school tables where they would kind of try to coerce children with cookies and candies and balloons and other fun activities. And they put forward this propaganda that claims they're completely nondenominational and they, they just kind of teach good character building values. And they're nondenominational in the way that they will accept a child from any religious background to be indoctrinated into their evangelical way of thinking. But what's but again, what's good for them is good for us. So last year, a year ago, we rolled out our program and I worked with a journalist at Washington Post's to first introduce the idea and we released it with a rather catching kind of meant to provoke video that we knew would kind of shake people into questioning the wisdom and allowing this open doors to any group to come into the schools. And this was when we introduce the after school Satan clubs

backwards masking just for

Unknown Speaker 1:06:58 just for emphasis.

Doug Misicko 1:07:02 So anyways, no fucking way right. But

beyond that the kind of curriculum we put forward was actually very straightforward based on critical thinking, fun activities, thinking skills. And we actually did develop a good deal of interest from parents and educators, specifically those who had been screaming for a long time about the good news clubs and seeing nothing done about it. And I have to congratulate us on being very keeping it very onpoint. With the media, we made sure that people knew exactly what the good news clubs and what they were about and why our club was important in relation to it. And we're still kind of fighting that fight. Now, we've opened the we're still yet to file suits against some of the school districts that just simply refused to have us even though they had good news clubs in their facilities. And now we've opened up the curriculum to a volunteer network previously, last year, it was only being run by chapters, they need to be chapters in the Satanic Temple. Now, it doesn't need to be chapters, people can get on our insurance policy they can apply. We'll walk them through the curriculum. So if anybody's interested in you know, have a good news club in any of your schools or any other evangelical group that's pushing its agenda into the schools. Let me know, and we can give you our volunteer manual. But before I close, I wanted to tell you about a project we work on, that a lot of people are completely unaware of, because it's kind of a complex issue. And a lot of the headlines we get So of course, are are people writing clickbait materials and they just want to write something salacious about about Satan is fighting against the state or whatever else. But one thing we're doing is we're fighting back against the propagators of Satanic Panic. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that term, but there was a moral panic in the 80s and 90s, known as a Satanic Panic, and it was in part fueled by de Beaune pseudo scientific, therapeutic practices in the mental health community designed to recover repressed memories of trauma that would sometimes develop into these wide overarching conspiracy narratives related to satanic cults that never existed. It was similar for the movement that believe that people were being abducted by aliens, but they're still in practice today. And I work with a bunch of people who talk to people who have undergone this kind of this kind of destructive therapy that's really kind of ruin their lives and has given them memories of traumatic abuse that never happened and many of them realize they haven't happened. And you still find a very, a very delusional deranged fringe of people within them. Mental health field who still have their licenses and when mentally vulnerable people come to them instead of giving them better grounding in reality they give them a crippling paranoia related to Satanists the Illuminati or whatever else and this isn't hyperbolic we we've gone to some of the conferences in recorded what's happened and Religion Dispatches wrote this kind of confusing piece confusing I think to people outside satanist infiltrate ritual abuse conference in Oakland, your God guide to what happened and why he went on to go into a q&a format. Who goes to an event like this some people believe they suffered abuse they cannot remember have alternate personalities which they are unaware of, or even committed crimes they cannot recall all because of sadistic rituals inflicted on them in the form of mind control, who do they think is responsible for the psychological abuse? Usual Suspects include unnamed call to CIA and alleged conspiracy of organized criminal status. And then actual Satan has showed up they did. Amidst all this paranoia, Satan is actually had infiltrated the conference. And they went public with the reason why and a twist worthy of a bad M Night Shyamalan film, the Satanist claim that they are the ones exposing a dangerous Cabal. And that is the conference organizers who are abusing their patients. You have professional organizations like the International Society for the Study of trauma and dissociation. And they still host these special interest groups that talk about mind control in ritual abuse. This was some of the footage, some of our gray faction people got from going to one of these ritual abuse conference in the person who was talking it was a conference organizer. And he was obsessed with people touching their faces, and that if they touch their face, they might be trying to cue trigger certain cueing and people's mind control that would make them revert to some government Mind Control programming. I should you're not. I mean, imagine people like this working at rape crisis counseling centers and getting people in distress who don't really have a context for what's going on and then being exposed to this kind of insanity. As I said, the International Society for the Study of trauma dissociation on its veneer is this kind of respectable mental health organization. But they do run this organization. They have this sub organization, the ritual abuse, Mind Control, special interest group, and in it until we kind of did some expos a work on her. They had as their contact a woman named Ellen lachter And if you looked at her site, she was very invested in Illuminati stories and stories of witchcraft cults and satanic cults. And she has this bizarre to arrange website where she was obviously walking around the woods and around her or her home or somewhere local to her and inferring all these things about satanic practices, or whatever else. She's a deeply disturbed woman and it was our own research that revealed her role in the death of the eight year old, or her her possible role in the death of his eight year old autistic child Jude Mira, who was murdered by his multimillionaire mother, Gigi Jordan in New York. Believe in 2008, Gigi Jordan, was under the impression that her child was not severely autistic, but was somehow acting out against secretive abuse that was taking place against him by some kind of unseen satanic call, even though she admitted she was always with a child and had witnessed this herself. She thought that this was taking place when she was going to get psychological help. If she had encountered somebody with, with some kind of rational hold upon reality rather than Ellen laughter, we believe that she might not have killed her child as her reasoning for killing Jude by forcing an overdose of of Xanax and Klonopin, some other mixture, Ambien button vodka and bunch of other stuff or justification from this was that she was preserving him from future tortures at the hands of some kind of satanic cult. We wrote up a petition to have her license reviewed and hopefully repealed by the State of California at 2009. Supporters by the time we were done with it, and then it we said that we request that Miss lacquers possible cultivation of GG Jordans philosophical delusions be investigated for suspicion of gross incompetence, if not abetment of murder, and that her mental competence be professionally evaluated. We are not interested in the testimony of Miss actors current or past clientele is it seems a common element of conspiracism that the imagined revelation of an overarching delusional truth claim can be believed as freeing or healing even while placing one in a subjective universe of suspicion. crippling fear and hopeless withdrawal from reality. Again misled actors own professional materials are, in our opinion, self evidently indicative of mental illness and her incompetence as a mental health care professional insofar as her ability to act as an arbiter of rational truth claims are concerned. It is our opinion that evidence strongly suggests that Miss lacquers mental illness contributed to the murder of an eight year old child Jude, Michael Mira, he further contend that the very public nature of slackers delusional claims call into question competence of the oversight processes that continue to allow her licensure. After some nine months, I think of sitting on that they essentially sat us sent us or sent me a form letter that can be summarized as fuck you, because it said nothing. And it said nothing specific. So they looked at it, and then they closed the case and forgot about it. And she's still in practice, and no more has to be said about it. I hate to end on such a negative note is that, but I bring it up because it's a very important project to us. Like if people interested would check out Gray faction.org. And of course, when I speak to a crowd like this, so students and and professionals, if you have any advice to give or services to offer to this and that you'd like to volunteer, talk to me or email info at the Satanic Temple calm, and let us know. Thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:33 If you have questions, comments, concerns, compliments corrections, criticisms or concepts for content, contact the show via email at godless revolution@gmail.com by text or voicemail at 33081 Rebel, or Twitter, the Twitter a tgr podcast. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:49 Hey, everybody, this is Dan popping in again to let you know that we're now going to take you over to the interview that we did with Lucian, this interview was done just with my little portable zoom h6 digital recorder. So the audio is not great, because we didn't have individual mics hooked up for it or anything. It's just one of the microphones that comes with the zoom. And we're in a large area, that's a little bit echoey, there's a bunch of people milling around. And because it's later in the evening, there's also cleaning staff coming through. And they they started vacuuming, rolling around garbage cans, all that kind of stuff. So you'll hear some of that noise in the background. But the audio, most of the audio for the interview is pretty good. Just wanted to let you know that there is a bunch of background noise here in there, he may hear like tapping on the table, stuff like that. Also, you know, this is later in the evening, Lucian has been up and traveling all day long, he typically stays up really late at night, and then had to get up super early to catch his flight out to Utah, his entire stay here was pretty much just a fly in delivers thing, go to the after party, go to sleep, wake up a few hours later and fly back home was just a super quick in and out kind of flight and stay here. So he was pretty wiped out. We were pretty tired, because we had done our regular stuff during the day and then driven the two hours to logon to go and record this. And you know, set everything up record everything. Oh, Ryan also got some video of the event that I'm sure we'll have a video posted out to our YouTube channel. When that happens. I'll be sure to make a post for it with a link to the video out on our Facebook page for anybody who would like to see video of the presentation. So we'll get that out to you as soon as possible. And I'll just shut up now. And you all can listen to the interview. Well, hi, how you doing, man?

Doug Misicko 1:18:57 All right. How are you?

Unknown Speaker 1:18:59 I'm doing really well. It's so good to see you here.

Doug Misicko 1:19:03 The American Atheists Yeah. Conference. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:06 So how did they How did this all come about? And how did you first how are you first contacted about coming here to Utah for this event? Should

Doug Misicko 1:19:15 I don't remember. I think they were a couple of them. A couple of the organizers from Secular Student Alliance were at the Secular Student Alliance conference in Columbus. And then they said to have me here. So I just flew in, got a flight at 7am this morning, layover in Chicago and then got here and they came to this venue. So I fly out tomorrow. So forgive me. I'm a little slow. at all last night, because I can't I usually go to sleep at like 4am Anyway, so that was about time I was getting up yesterday. sucks. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:50 A little hard to sleep. It says uh, hard for you to sleep the night before you're doing a presentation or public speaking thing.

Doug Misicko 1:19:55 No, I'm used to that now. But laying over in Chicago is never fun. Yeah, that's like, the, like the airport is like five square miles, you know, in no matter where they land you, they managed to land you on the opposite side every time of where you're connecting thing. connecting flight is you have to wander like, you know, a good, it's a wonder if you're gonna make your connecting flight if it's an hour off, you know, fuck Chicago.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:25 Well, you, you mentioned during your talk that you never really envisioned that you would be doing a whole lot of public speaking or anything. That's, that's not something that you ever figured you would be doing. It seems like you've adapted to it pretty well? Or is it to the point yet, where you actually like doing it? I think you mentioned that. It's your least favorite part of working with the Satanic Temple?

Doug Misicko 1:20:49 Yeah, you know, I think I just gotten used to the idea that I hated it. And now I've stopped to reconsider. I'm not sure myself if sometimes I like it. Like the first couple times I did Fox News, you know, Megyn Kelly, and the first time I was on Tucker Carlson, there's a real feeling of terror in doing that, because you know, you're going into a hostile situation, you don't know what they're going to try to throw at you to try to discredit you. But you know, they're going to try to discredit you. And, you know, you're not just speak it at least, if you're me, you're not just speaking for your own personal project, but you feel that you're speaking on behalf of an entire movement as well, in one bad performance, you know, in front of millions of viewers like that can really just just sink you permanently. And so I was really worried about that the those times, but then the last time I was on Tucker Carlson, you can see I was just kind of laughing at him as I went along. And I felt really comfortable. And it already hit my stride. So it's like with me, I feel like I feel all the pressure at once up front. And then it's, it's kind of fun. Once I broken the ice, I'm much better off. But I feel like I've kind of gotten my stride. Particularly, you know, with my presentations now. I mean, I talk about this stuff enough. So I should know my material, even when I'm always sleep deprived as I am now. But I don't, I don't really write notes anymore. Just in here, I had a list of what slides I had and what order they were in. And that's all. I think that helps make it more conversational. A bit more sleep might help me not stumble over my words occasionally, as I do, but I still think it's far better than reading something word for word or whatever else. So yeah, I've gotten a lot more comfortable with being up on stage. Usually, the worst part is with the thing surrounding being up on stage. I mean, it's nice meeting everybody, but I'm like, I'm pretty. My natural demeanor is not not too terribly extroverted. So there's something kind of exhausting about me, even when I like everybody I've met, you know, and appreciate it. Like being around people all day long can can really can really where where I'm at. But I'm getting better at that too. But yeah, I'm really somebody unlikely to become a public person or for a public speaker or the center of some crowd attraction. I saw you visited you to tell me how I've adjusted to that. You know, I think

Unknown Speaker 1:23:30 you do a great job. I love hearing interviews with you. I think one of my favorites was when Megyn Kelly was interviewing you. And you You explained a bit of law to her during that interview. I thought that was awesome.

Doug Misicko 1:23:46 Well, I wanted I wanted that to go on a little longer. And I feel like I've adjusted my tactics so that I could take one message and put it up front and not try to lay traps because they can cut the interview like she did. I wanted her to say because I felt like it would have been a legitimate defense but I just wanted to Fox News talking had to say it. I wanted a Fox News talking had to say that the state needed to yield to a federal ruling on constitutional issues. Just because they have that whole kind of anti federalism you know, message that seems to be prevalent amongst their talking heads when it skates. Yeah. When when it's when it's convenient. But she didn't do that. She just cut the interview head. I know when she cut the interview, I would take the art the argument, a different place. So I was disappointed with that interview. But everybody seemed to think I it made her look like a fool. Which was, you know, I do feel though, that Tucker Carlson looked like a fool. You pretty much did that to himself.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:50 Yeah, I agree with that. I bought wanting to jump through the computer screen and punch him for you. Yeah, yeah, he

Unknown Speaker 1:24:56 acted like just a petulant little deck like he He didn't really have any valid points at all. He just wanted to call you names and try to make you look bad, but in the process ended up just looking like a schoolyard bully who didn't even really know what the fuck he was talking about.

Doug Misicko 1:25:11 Yeah, and he didn't try to try to reconcile that I, I just really think he got really pissed off when he saw that. He was the second time I was on a show. And I think he was upset that the first time I forced them to agree on the free speech issue. I think he thought he'd have me on this time, and there was nothing I could force him to have to agree on that was going to conflict with his values, or make him look like a fool. And I think when I turned it around, said, Okay, let's make it consistent. You know, take away the protected class for religions. I think that's when his demeanor changed. And he thought, god dammit, here it is, again, you know, I hadn't thought this through. And now I'm being faced with something I hadn't fully considered. And I think that's what caused him to go off the deep end, tell me crawl back into my hole before saying, but thank you for being on. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:01 Like he's yelling at you to crawl back into your hole, and then ended with and thanks for coming on. Thanks for so much for coming on.

Doug Misicko 1:26:08 Oh, can you do? Like

Unknown Speaker 1:26:09 does he does he figure that he just wanted to end the interview looking like a nice guy, or? I mean, it had been just something that was a knee jerk reaction that he you know, he still used to saying that at the end of all of his interviews, I imagine that that's that it just popped out of his mouth rather than maybe wants to keep the door open for

Doug Misicko 1:26:29 around three.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:33 I would love to see round three.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:36 I would love to see, well, round

Doug Misicko 1:26:38 three, I would definitely have to be more aggressive. You know, I would have to I'd have to hold him to answering some of the questions I asked because he noticed I threw some questions out there and he just ignored him next time, I'd have to really press him on it. Like, I don't think I could be as polite on my end. But actually being polite really does seem to work. Well. For me, though, you see a lot of the commentary. The best part is when you see comments on YouTube on the conservative pages, or you know, on the Fox article that embedded the video and people saying, despite how much they love talker, they felt they look bad in that one. I think that's those are the best comments, you know, because there's a lot of preaching to the choir, there's I get messages from Fox viewers who say I look like an asshole or whatever. But the best are the fox viewers who think like Tucker Carlson still acknowledging what I can answer.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:30 Well, it would be, it'd be great if during any of his interviews, he would actually have a conversation or a dialogue with somebody. But it seems like whenever he has somebody on there, who has a point of view that he disagrees with, he's not there to talk to you or with you, he or he's not there to talk with you. He's there to talk to you. He wants to tell you exactly what he thinks and not really even allow you to get anything in and then it becomes a question of why the hell does he even have anybody on his show that he disagrees with? Because he's not really looking to get your viewpoint or explored for you to explain your side of anything. He's just set out on a mission of trying to make you look like an asshole.

Doug Misicko 1:28:11 Right and the buyer set pretty low. He you know, you go into a situation like that's why it's terrifying at first, because they have all the advantages, right? Oh, no. Three spin on TV, they do it every day, they can fuck up an interview and their viewers, you know, they just move on to the next one, saying it would sink me or whatever. If I completely looked like an asshole. I'm one of those interviews. But, you know, you see he sets that he sets the pace. He says when it's when it's over, he interrupts when he feels like it. So first time I was going on a show I was I was nervous because I started looking him up. I wasn't really aware. You know, I knew I thought he was an asshole. Because he had actually talked about this before. And, and then the first time he talked about us was in Florida, when one of our chapters offered to put up a holiday display where they had put up Christian holiday display. And Tucker Carlson, on his show, was ranting about that. And that time he didn't have me on was invited on. I didn't know he was talking about his. He had a pastor from Florida and he was asking the pastor, what why we were doing this, you know, so the pastor was putting words in our mouths. And then you know that that irritated me. And then I was on the Tom Hartman show. And Tom Hartman brought up Tucker Carlson, they said in Tucker Carlson's whole argument with when he had the past Ron was that we weren't real religion. And I had said on the Thom Hartmann show that I felt it was really ironic for a fake journalist to sow a judgment upon the authenticity of our religion. So I had no idea of Tucker Carlson knew about that. So when I was invited on a show on the first time, I started looking him up to see like, what his background is this New Yorker piece that talks about how I practice public Politicians, you know, seasoned debaters are afraid to go on his show, and they won't, because he has a history of demolishing people and staining their reputations because he, you know, he crushes them, and that there's some kind of Reddit thread where it's like, they put up memes of people from a show. And it's like, it says, like, owned or something across them, or something similar to that, just thinking, Oh, shit, you know, and then I was reading that he had this actual, credible career as a journalist before doing this, and why am I doing this, you know, and you know, then they have that kind of whole home court advantage or whatever. But I don't know, maybe you get on Fox a little bit, you do it night after night, it's easy to get lazy, you know, you get this kind of practice stupidity. But he does, he does just kind of come off as stupid.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:51 I mean, they've got homecourt advantage, they've got the advantage of being able to edit the interview, however they want afterward, you know, in, if it's a live show that goes out, then they've got to be a little more careful. But even afterward, then they can just cut up clips and post them out however they want. They try to get you to cede certain points, and then they'll just play that over and over. It's just, it seems like a pointless exercise. Unless there's somebody as sharp as you who can actually get him off balance a little bit, get him on, get him, you know, on his off balance to where he has to acknowledge that he's not making really great points at all, and is coming off like an asshole. And so I thought your interview with him was terrific.

Doug Misicko 1:31:40 Yeah, I think there's a lot of people who could, you could do a lot better on his show that he does make look bad. And just a lot of that is just having the presence of mind and not to not lose your presence of mind when you're when you know, you know, it's that magnitude of audience and I sit in the green room, and I watch the shows, and I see these people on practice on the media come on and fall apart. And that said, you know, that's a fox is a horrible, disgusting beast. But you do wonder, like, what are people learning from this? That's, uh, that's, that's something you know, I try to when I'm, when I'm going into an interview, and I know it's gonna be about five minutes. And I can only make one point, it can be a good should be a good point. You know, you come away from that, looking at the bigger picture and wondering, why does it have to be that way? Why can it only be like trying to force in one point, you know, usually, it's just people yelling back and forth, people come in, decide the interview to take whatever course it's going to take, in many times, a point isn't made at all, except that they know somebody they're supposed to disagree with was denigrated, and assaulted. And they feel that kind of vicarious thrill at somebody, you know, somebody being somebody's being made to look bad on TV. And the real sad part about this is people watch that, that mistake themselves for being politically informed. And I think that's a large part of the problem today is that people are actually, people actually think that they've learned something by watching this, and there's certainly none the wiser for having seen it, you know, like, I get messages from Fox viewers who are like, you know, yeah, Carlson really told you, it's like, well, he could have anybody on and tell them to crawl back into their hole. You know, if that's what it takes to win an argument, then you're not really, you're not really engaged in any rational discourse, or critical thinking, Are you it's one of the biggest disappointments of the Internet era that we're this polarized now. And that this is the quality of news we're receiving when we have these kinds of utopian ideas so that the information influx was gonna make everybody so much better informed or wiser in their decisions.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:02 It's the negative quality or the quality of the news that's that's out there, you're able to find your own void to sit in. So if you want to be a Fox News lover, and just watch nothing about that, yeah, of course, when someone like you goes on their show, they're gonna like, oh, yeah, you slammed me slammed them good. And it's like, did you even hear what happened? Or did you just hear and make the one insult at the very end and disagree with that?

Doug Misicko 1:34:26 Yeah, well, and that's, that's the thing if people are old enough to know better, and they don't know better, they don't know better of what what a reasonable dialogue is, they don't know. They don't understand when a logical point has been made in. And I mean, look, we got Trump elected. Yeah. You know

Unknown Speaker 1:34:45 what it seems like so many people just they're not even, like I said, like, like going on Tucker Carlson show. He's not really interested in having a conversation with you. He doesn't want to understand your point of view. He doesn't want to engage in a civil discussion with you really he wants he wants to get his point across. And it seems like people that come on his show and you know, a lot of the other Fox shows and stuff like that, that they're used more as a prop than anything else. Do you? Do you feel that when you're on a show like that, that it's that it's just, of course, it's the Tucker Carlson show, but he turns it into the Tucker Carlson show? Do you feel like it's a waste of time in going on shows like that? Or do you think it's a valuable use of your time to make appearances on shows like that,

Doug Misicko 1:35:35 I feel obligated to answer those invitations and try to put forward the one point that I can get across in I feel vindicated in that, like I said, when I see the messages from people who say that they that they love Tucker Carlson for whatever reason that they they watch a show all the time. However, they thought he really fucked up in that interview, and that he looked like an idiot. So it does give me some hope that the fact that I actually had a message, and he did not, he did not have a rebuttal to it and wasn't able to kind of wasn't able to reconcile his his differences with the point I was made into his his claims of being the being the upholder of freedom for everybody, you know, in not accepting a few, but then finding where those where those boundaries are that he hadn't, he hadn't quite considered yet. So, I mean, I feel like it's my job. And that's, that's something I have to do. But we'll see ultimately, if it's worth anything or not.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:41 I mean, I know I love seeing you on those type of shows, especially Fox News shows, because it's, it's a narrative that they often don't like, come on the show, but I also really hate when they keep saying, You say, Well, no, we are a religious organization. And Tucker Carlson will say, Well, no, you're not

Doug Misicko 1:36:56 right. No, no, right. It's just we're not because he says, so I asked him even to qualify what? What would legitimize their religion? What are the basic core elements of that? And he just he evades that one. So what you do, you do have to hope that some people watching actually catch that? And they think, Oh, that's a good question. And wonder themselves, you know, like, what, what would? What would I say those elements are before I would say that somebody doesn't have equal access, you know, or should anybody be denied equal access simply because they are or aren't a certain religion? Yeah. And you know, some people will always come down on one side of those arguments, but there's still some people who haven't even have the time, the inclination, the impetus to think about these things and just have to hope that you know, something you do make some think about it. I mean, we have people here today, we're guy came up to me afterwards and said, he said, he's a Christian, but he came with an open mind loved everything I said, it sounded like, by his telling, he had come to this event, more on one side and then falling on the other. That's, you know, that's pleasant. Oh, yeah. And the bigger crowd you reach, the more opportunity there is for some of those people to reach. I know, they're likely a minority, most people are already deeply embedded and whatever side they feel they belong to, but there are those who are still looking at the evidence, apparently.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:26 What is the what is the most frustrating bits? Of, of being the spokesperson for Satanic Temple? What? Is there any particular question that you get tired of being asked or any, any particular point that somebody tries to make about the Satanic Temple? What it you know, what it is what it stands for? How it's defined? That, you know, just gets a little grating? After a while?

Doug Misicko 1:38:52 Yeah, well, I mean, just by virtue of being asked again, and again, that question of, well, why did you choose Satan becomes really tedious. And, you know, it's not necessarily that I think the person asking it is an idiot for asking. And maybe it's my fault, because I haven't managed to articulate it as well as I should yet. But just that notion that it's a completely arbitrary designation, and that we must have sat around at some point, because we're non theistic and said, Well, you know what, Satan is very shocking. And that's why we're going to use it, in that it means nothing to us internally, but it's all about how we want people to react externally to what we're presenting. And that is, I guess, the most difficult hill to climb is trying to explain to people what it means to us, you know, whether or not we're engaged in these public activities, that it does mean something to us and we can't just rename it something else, you know. So, I try to get some of the those kinds of explanations across as I as I do these things, but You know that I'm sure it could be a full two hour lecture of its own. And probably most people want to hear about the public activities we've done too.

Unknown Speaker 1:40:10 Yeah, I know, I get really frustrated by people who don't, who don't bother to even try to find out what the Satanic Temple is. And then tell people who are involved with the Satanic Temple, you guys are x, you're doing this because of x, when they don't have a fucking clue. For any of your motivations, they've never, they've never gone to the website, they don't know about the tenets, they've never seen the FAQ, they don't, they haven't watched any interviews. They really have no fucking idea what the Satanic Temple is all about. And they'll admit that, but then at the same time, say I disagree with what you're doing in the text and the techniques you're using

Doug Misicko 1:40:50 at the same time to put words into our mouth. But there's another double infuriating because they'll do that all the while. Well, ignoring those same questions in cases like, I mean, to me, the hobby robbing Hobby Lobby ruling was egregious, you know, here you have a corporation being considered to have a religion in wearing the fucking this religion, do you? Do you interpret this idea that a for profit corporation shalt not pay for health care benefits to for conscious that include contraceptives, like, that is such a stretch of tenants in and you know, everything's supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law. But you know, fucking Well, we would never get away with saying, like, it's nowhere in our tenants, it's nowhere, you know, it's, it's nowhere in our practice, or behavior, or nothing we can point to, but because we claim were religious, you know, we're going to make up something completely new that we for for our, for our benefit, you know, for on a whim, essentially. And yet, so, you know, to then come and scrutinize us and say, Well, how authentic is your religion? Or, you know, or can this tenant really be applied to something like, like abortion restrictions or whatever else, that I think that ship is fucking sailed. You know, as soon as the Supreme Court started taking bizarre claims, like Hobby Lobby at face value and ruling in their favor. They, those questions towards us have lost all credibility. I mean, at that point, even if we were satire, even if this were just an elaborate prank, you think they would have lost all rights to ask, you know, and, you know, I know, spaghetti monster in certain instances, has lost cases. But I really think it was because I really think those cases were was people trying to represent themselves pro se, I think, spaghetti monster churches is, as an organization might do better than some of those those cases brought to the court. But you know, that they're openly satirical. And in I know, but I know some people really, really take it seriously as well. And it's, it's difficult than to measure somebody's authenticity, where, you know, it doesn't matter where they started from, you know, what matters is where they are now, when they're making the claim. And I just really feel that, you know, at least at the Supreme Court level, they've lost all credibility and calling those claims into question. It's just, it's gone too far. If they start cracking down now, because of organizations like the Satanic Temple, you'd really hope that people would hold them to putting the same level of scrutiny onto organizations like Hobby Lobby asking that like, Okay, how are you Christian? You know, how is your corporation Christian or even individuals making the claim? Okay, are we going to start measuring how often you go to church? How literally, did you take the Bible? That's another thing when it comes to the non theistic aspect of the Satanic Temple. People act like that's very black and white. Well, you either believe in a higher power you don't? Well, you know, there's a lot of gray area there too. Do you believe in the story of Genesis or do you believe in evolution? And are we actually going to preference people who don't? Don't know that evolution is a fact you know, who don't know that? Yeah, the unifying theory of biology by this point?

Unknown Speaker 1:44:35 Well, and do they have to buy into every single bit of everything that their particular feel theology teaches them? Right? Do they have to buy into every bit of the Bible? Do they have to buy into every bit of the Quran or anything like that? I mean, is the court going to hold that in order to be a true person of any type of religion that you have to absolutely believe in every fundamental bit of what that religion teaches through its holy books through its additional scriptures, through every sermon that anybody has ever taught. And then who becomes the arbiter of who's correct when you're interpreting different verses in the Bible, of what you should and shouldn't do, it seems that they're really going down a slippery road there,

Doug Misicko 1:45:18 right. And I think once you start having that dialogue, once you start picking these things apart, you'll find that the only reasonable territory in this thing is to just let it reside at people's claimed deeply held beliefs, sense of cultural identity in and start measuring, you know, at what level of superstition somebody must hold for their deeply held beliefs to be validated. That's, that's absurd. You know, when you start looking at it for what it is, it's it's utterly ridiculous. But I think we're getting to that point. And I think we're helping push that that point into, into surfacing and making it more difficult to ignore. I really, I mean, we're all very curious how this Missouri Supreme Court case will, will turn out, there's there's no way of telling, but the fact that it's going to be heard, Missouri Supreme Court is, you know, gives us a lot to look forward to

Unknown Speaker 1:46:14 what is, uh, if you had to pick one thing that the Satanic Temple is doing, or has done, that you would say you're most proud of, or that you're most most excited about, what would that be?

Doug Misicko 1:46:27 Hasn't happened yet? I don't think you know, we've gotten some, some kind of, you know, we've gotten some kinds of victories, but But no, no real knockouts against some, some theocratic encroachment. And we're still really waiting for that to happen. I think we've inspired a lot of open people that that will come in a lot of in gotten a lot of people thinking differently, and have them thinking creatively about how they can tackle these issues as well. In at this point, I think that's our greatest accomplishment. But I mean, to be honest, you know, day after day, there's constant frustration, you know, just the, as I said, you know, everything's supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law, but we see just how much that isn't the case. You know, we, we do know, we're being treated a lot differently in the courts and any other religious claim, and then Christian religious claim would be treated, and in ways that they, they pretend they're not, you know, they pretend they're not. They pretend that these are just the standard kind of kind of questions that are brought to bear. But but, you know, certainly if we win in the Missouri Supreme Court, that that will be a resounding victory that will have that will have long lasting effect on the entire dialogue, the Church State dialogue, the religious liberty, dialogue and the abortion rights dialogue in the US. And I think, however, it turns out, there are at least some benefits to be gained from that question being brought to bear at all,

Unknown Speaker 1:48:13 I guess even if they would choose to rule against the claims being brought by the Satanic Temple, at least then we would have a more clearly defined area that we would know exactly, you know, we would have a brighter line against against where we could find or or focal point of, okay, well, we've refined it here. And then we can continue refining the question, or at

Doug Misicko 1:48:38 the very least, you know, you'll see politicians become more circumspect about their ideas of expanding religious liberty, knowing finally, what they should have known all along. But that doesn't apply just to one religious voice. So if we're going to lose in court, and they're going to try to expand religious liberties in a way that we could re address an issue in when they're much less likely to expand upon religious liberties. And I think that would be for the better. I mean, this idea of religious liberty has, for the most part gone well, too far when it's become an excuse to discriminate against other parties when you have religion as a protected class, but sexual orientation not you know, and, and now that we're re litigating basic things like civil rights and people being treated like with dignity. That's, that's a real shame and shows that there's, it's time for the pendulum to start swinging the other way.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:40 If you had one thing about the Satanic Temple that you would want to clear up or one misconception that you hear a lot of the time what would that be?

Doug Misicko 1:49:54 Oh, I don't know. I've stopped looking at the messages in the mail or the The emails of other people doing that. I mean, we do get a lot of positive messages, too. I mean, I guess it seems like a lot of the people we actually write to us understand what we're, we're about, I just can't stand the notion that seems to be too much too, for a lot of journalists to process that. You, you can't both be a political group and a religious group, you know that they're mutually exclusive. And they're against a complete hypocrisy. When you look at organizations like Liberty Council Alliance Defending Freedom. These are very, very much defined as politically active groups working towards an evangelical agenda. And so I don't know, I don't see cases in which their political activity has ever caused people to call into question their religious authenticity. So it's really bizarre to me when alternative religions come around, and they're politically active, and people think, Well, okay, then they're using religion as a ploy. no more or no less, perhaps, then then these other groups that are whose claims are always taken at face value in the courts. It's just, I guess that's just that's people are kind of culturally trained to accept the claims of so called Christianity on their face.

Unknown Speaker 1:51:33 Well, I know that you have been up and traveling and doing shit since 7am. This morning, East Coast time. So I don't want to keep you much longer. I'd like to give you a little bit of time to wind down but I really, really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. Appreciate you coming out here. Good to see you again. We're gonna go to the after party in a little bit. Yeah, thank you so much for everything you're doing, man. I'm a huge supporter, huge fan. I am a bit of a fanboy for sure. When when coming out here tonight, Tracy said, Okay, make sure that you don't act like a total jackass. Because you're because you're a big fanboy or anything. And I'm like, I'll be alright. I'll be fine.

Doug Misicko 1:52:16 Why don't you guys before anytime, anytime you want me on? Anytime you have a slot to fill, want to be kept up to date on? And what's going out Satanic Temple? Let me know.

Unknown Speaker 1:52:27 We'll do all right. Thank you so much, man. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:52:31 Thank you to everybody who has rated the show on iTunes and Stitcher and are following us on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, and to all our Patreon patrons, you make the show possible.

Unknown Speaker 1:52:41 Well, thank you all very much for tuning in. Hopefully you've enjoyed the show. Sorry about the audio issues again. Like I said, I've spent a whole lot of time trying to clean it up as much as possible. So hopefully, as I mentioned before, you weren't pulling your hair out way too much during the episode. I want to thank everybody for tuning in tonight. I want to thank all of our supporters. These are our Patreon supporters. Atheist anonymous Larry Wilson. Marius kata BOOTREC. ASCII Dr. Dan Matt's boss from the to SC podcast whom we pledge loyalty. Janet uder let them eat kofi. Steven Andrus, Mo cowbell Christie Kobach Jolin summer Allen Firth, new mania, Rob auto Meghan Kennedy, Andrew vata pitch, Randy Hamrick. Jeremy Goodson, Angelica Pierson, Andy Faulkner, Utah outcasts, West Aaron, Matt Tueller, purple dragon and Taylor Grande. Thank you all very much. We really appreciate your support. If you too would like to become a patreon supporter of the show, you can do so by going to patreon.com/godless revolution, and pledging as little as $1 per episode. For all of this fine entertainment that we bring to you each week news and philosophy, and arguments and debates and interviews with fantastic guests and other presentations, all kinds of stuff. And let us know what else you'd like to hear what you want to hear in the future, what we've done in the past that you really liked. Reach out to us and let us know how you would like us to improve the show for you, dear listener. Well, thank you all very much for tuning in. And so until next week, crucify that like button, leave a review to achieve Nirvana and hail satan five times a day toward Mecca.

Unknown Speaker 1:54:37 Everywhere I looked there, the Galloway and Stephen Janis Joplin rotten always says you can't sustain the leopard spaces

Unknown Speaker 1:54:59 as mentioned mouthwash to Bob's gas or NAT a poor man's pocket smile as Misaki got a demo love the machines on crutches is counted or designed to drop out with the bleeding noses coming to town with the briefcase blues got a demo?

Doug Misicko 1:57:40 It wasn't just meant to be asked club

I just thought it sounded a lot better than Satan after school or, or anything else but but that worked for me either way, too. I was happy about that. And people kept asking who would sign up there? You know what kind of kid want to join this club? I was saying that I was I was that kid. Absolutely. I would have been in the amount of times people recognize me on the street is pretty. For me, it's disturbing. I'm just not that kind of person. Another thing we are looking to do is is open a religiously protected abortion clinic in Indiana where Mike Pence was governor and calling it Mike Pence his mom's satanic abortion clinic

Unknown Speaker 1:58:39 question is simple. optimist. And?

Doug Misicko 1:58:44 No. No, it's it's all it's all very much a nightmare. And sometimes I wake up wondering why at all and feel that I'm completely trapped in it and have nothing left to do but to try to vindicate myself from my own reputation by fighting the fight to the bitter end. But knowing that ultimately I'll lose and die in a pool of my own blood and vomit screaming the entire way.