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Baking Hershey's Kisses peanut butter blossoms is the perfect way to celebrate the holiday season with friends and family with their classic rich, creamy milk chocolate taste. There's no better way to heartwarm the holidays than by baking with Kisses chocolates. Find Hershey's Kisses holiday chocolates at your favorite retailer. We find Vecna. We end this once and for all together on December 25th. We have a plan. It's a bit insane. Everyone in he knows where we are. Watch out. Get ready for one last adventure. We stay true to ourselves, stay true to our friends. No matter the cost. Found you. Stranger Things Season 5, Volume 2 begins December 25, only on Netflix. A lot of you are headed home for the holidays and for some of you, that's not entirely pleasant. I get a lot of questions about how do I talk to my mom? How do I talk to my family? Do I need to cut them off? And today's topic is hopefully gonna help arm you a little bit for those conversations. The question is how do I talk to my conservative family? Or maybe it's your co worker or it's a friend. And we've seen the dangerous movement of Christian nationalism gaining steam in America. A lot of data denial, a lot of demonization of education and often the Bible being used to justify it. It's really important that we have accurate information on this topics. I hope today is informative for your own personal beliefs as well as equips you to have these really important conversations because we don't have the luxury of silence. And this episode is really going to be a lot more conversational than my typical episodes. And I'm going to focus specifically on Christian nationalism because with Christian nationalism what they will do is instead of interacting with a topic, they will say the Bible says blah blah blah, and typically it really doesn't. So we're going to address those arguments so that you can get to the meat and potatoes of the conversation. This may be a great episode to bookmark and come back and listen to again as you practice learning it and being able to have these conversations over and over and over, even if it means that you don't change their mind over but you plant the seeds. Thank you for joining me today on Flipping Tables. Hello and welcome back. First of as always, I want to say an immense thank you to those of you who listen to the podcast, have rated and commented on it. Thank you so much to my Patreon subscribers who are such a big part of the reason that this show is possible. Um, and if you'd like to support my work, you can subscribe@patreon.com Monty Mater heading into December, Patreon users, we're going to start doing some really cool bonus episodes around history, women's suffrage, and also kind of some extensions of the Bible studies that I've been doing. And speaking of the Bible studies, twice a month I do a scholarly study where we just talk about the information that we have around a topic or a specific book or an author and really break down what is the information available, what is my decision based on that information about what I believe. And those replays are always available on Patreon. We do use the Crowdcast link to be able to do those. You can find those in my link in bio on Instagram and other places. But it's completely free. Those studies are always free. The replay is always up for at least 24 hours. And then Patreon users have unlimited access to that. I'm actually going to use a lot of that information from some of those studies today to share with you. And of course, again, over the last decade, we've watched extremist views founded in fundamentalism really gain steam in the United States. We all remember Pete Hegseth sharing Doug Wilson's opinion that women shouldn't have the right to vote. And now we see all these comments and tweets about men saying, well, women's suffrage didn't work, we should take it away. And what, they don't have any data behind that. It's just, well, the Bible says this and then we see that with abortion, the LGBTQ community, and it's caused a lot of harm. And especially it's not that I believe. I don't like the idea that we have to have conversations around the Bible to talk about policy. But unfortunately, we are in that situation because the Bible is being used to justify movements that cause hate, oppression and harm to others. And it's absolutely mind boggling to understand how people who profess to be Christians actively participate in it. And again, a lot of times what they'll put in front of you is this speed bump will the B says, well, I'm a Christian. So therefore, and unless you can hold your ground in these conversations, it's often impossible to get somewhere. And I know some of your family's not going to listen to a thing you have to say, but if this conversation helps you feel a little less backed into a corner, a little less afraid to go home, a little less afraid to stand up for what you believe, then that's the point of it. And remember, that this comes with practice. I just got back from the protests in D.C. the weekend of November 12th, 22nd, and a young woman came up to me, and she was like, what do you tell someone who's afraid to speak? Speak like I am. And I hope I didn't come off as too harsh. I felt like I scared her a little bit. I said, well, you kind of just have to do it. And what I mean by that is start small. Start speaking up. Your voice gets stronger. The reason I'm so well versed in the things that I'm talking about is not because I always knew them. Obviously, I was a former fundamentalist, a former Christian nationalist, But because I've practiced with them, I've practiced these ideas. And when I had another question, I went back and I looked some more. And when you start to practice with it and it becomes second nature, you become a lot more confident. The reason that certain people are so, so powerful, like James Talarico, for instance, are so powerful when they speak is because they are so sure about what they believe. And I'm hoping that this will help you get through the holiday season, help you feel more confident, but also help you with your certainty about what you believe and what you don't believe, and hopefully open the door to conversations to really help people so that we can stop seeing the Bible and Christianity being weaponized for harm and so that we can actually talk about things like the separation of church and state and equal rights for all. And as my following has increased, we're over 2 million now, which is just insane. I've noticed that there are three specific groups of people that have really come into my content and have really become, like, these large. These large percentages. And the first is. Is Christians or Christ followers, people who truly believe in and love Jesus, who believe in his mission and don't understand how their faith has gotten hijacked and attached to such hateful movements. The second is what we call exvangelicals, or Christians who have deconstructed from their faith due to seeing the hypocrisy and the misuse of Bible and religion. And many of them walked away from the faith entirely. But some of them are on the range anywhere from spiritual to atheist. And the third group is the LGBTQ community, which I love, who've been directly impacted by the harmfulness of these beliefs, sometimes in extreme ways. And I think that this topic directly impacts each of these groups for many in many different ways. And it affects their families, who are still deeply conservative, and obviously their relationship with their families during my deconstruction. My dad passed away pretty early in my deconstruction and I had lost my grandparents and I didn't know my mother. So. But I ended up losing a lot of my friends and I lost all of my church connections. And for a period of time, none of my siblings would speak to me. And it was something that I had to accept because I had to make the decision that the truth mattered more to me than those relationships. And thankfully, some of those relationships have been able to be rebuilt with me being able to stand on my beliefs and share the truth with them. And today's episode is by no means going to be comprehensive to every belief held by these movements. I'm really going to focus on the major ones that overlap this Christian nationalism with politics and a lot of what they use to excuse authoritarian tactics, a lot of why they justify voting for someone who is a pedophile and a rapist and a racist. A circle around these issues. We're going to talk about abortion, the Bible and the LGBTQ community and things like immigration because these are core issues that have now been brought into this Christian quotation, Christian sphere to justify these actions. It's not going to be comprehensive, but I'm going to try to hit kind of the high points and give you some tools to have the conversations and again, to make sure that you don't feel backed into a corner. And this will be a great episode to re listen to and learn the information. And I hope that this empowers you to have important conversations because we have to have them. And I hope it also makes you want to learn more. I've seen so many people message me about how to talk to their MAGA parents. How do I get them to change their minds? And the first thing is that these conversations are necessary, but they are not. It doesn't mean that you're going to make them change their minds. You can give the most well placed, data filled, heartfelt argument and some people still won't listen. You need to have the conversation anyway. I think that's on all of us. And I do have a couple disclaimers. I think that these conversations are so important, but don't waste your time with people who are openly hateful. If you have someone who is trolling you online or someone who, you know, who goes into explosive, violent rhetoric, threatens physical harm, don't put yourself in that position. Those people are not willing to have a conversation with you. It's not a conversation worth having. If anything, it's going to put your Physical and mental safety at risk. And second, for the people that you do feel like you can talk to, that you feel like you confide in, even if it's not received favorably, I want you to again understand, in many cases you will not be able to change their mind. But planting the seed is so important. The smallest seeds of doubt can grow and change in a person's life because many of these people do have doubts. They are just so bought into their in group thinking. They are so afraid of what happens if they detach themselves from the group that they don't voice those doubts. So for me, I had a lot of conversations in my deconstruction that people didn't realize they were helping me with, people I even argued with, that helped plant a seed of doubt that made me a little more curious. And I started asking questions and I started reading more. It's really important. And they may change down the road, they may never change, but you have the opportunity to try. But we have stood silent for too long without addressing these issues. And that's part of the reason that they've been able to grow into the monster they've become. And even though sometimes it doesn't seem this way, I want to be clear that most people in these various in groups are not intentionally hateful people. And I know that that is really hard to hold on to, especially when we see such hate in these groups. And, and I've had so many. A very common message I get in my DMs is my mom is such a kind, caring person, but she's attached to this movement. I don't understand. And of course, again, there's always those violent, vitriolic people. I'm not talking about them. You know, clearly this movement is connected to white supremacy groups, lots of violent rhetoric. But the overwhelming majority of people in this group are not that. This is about belonging. It's about wanting to be loved. It's about being part of an in group. It's about having certainty about happens, what, after you, after you die. It's about a lot of fear, a lot of indoctrination and a lot of control. We have to understand that the conversations that we are in, these conversations that we're approaching people who for the most part have been indoctrinated since they were children. My indoctrination started from when I could speak. I was in these circles and I had limited output for anything else. I went to all Christian nationalist schools, could only listen to Christian music, could only watch movies that were vetted by my dad, was Only in churches and with teachers and other adults who believed all of the same thing. And I was not allowed access to external media, external music, external talking points or varying beliefs. I had no reason to believe that all of the adults in my life were lying to me. And they, these, these people have often been told the same set of beliefs. They've not got, they've not gotten out of their own intellectual circles. And dismantling these beliefs dismantles the foundation upon which they've built their life. It's also the foundation of their community. Many of these people believe that taking this specific stand on these various issues is directly linked to whether they get to into heaven or not. And if you, like me, have deconstructed fundamentalist Christian, Christian Christiology, Christianity or Catholic doctrine, you know how hard that journey is, how destabilizing it is. We're motivated by fear in these movements. White supremacy has always been rooted in the fear of losing power and wealth. The fear that what white people have done to others might wait, might wake its way back to them. And because of these issues, they've been extricably linked to politics. People believe their standing with God is impacted if they deviate from a set of political beliefs. People are afraid of what's different. We have always been that way. People are afraid of change. And we see a perfect example of that in Republican propaganda around undocumented migrants, which we're going to talk about today. In order to rob and subjugate people, you have to distract them with a common enemy. Make somebody the scapegoat. We talk about this all the time, that it's really not left versus right, it's top versus bottom. Because when the Republicans say tax cuts, tax cuts, it's not coming to us, it's coming to the wealthy. And we know that trickle down economics isn't real. So when the average person is struggling to pay for their doctor bill and their groceries, it's so much easier to point at undocumented migrants, or whoever the scapegoat of the day is, and say it's their fault, blame them. When in reality the person that's being pointed out as a common enemy is typically has a lot more in common with you than they do. Indifference. And some of the topics today that I'll be talking about from Republican platforms and many issues that Republican and MAGA supporters voice as their most important voting issues. Some of the topics will also be things they don't say out loud that we can historically show are related to this movement. And for the sake of Today's episode, when I reference maga, I'm specifically referencing Republican fundamentalists, in particular, Christian nationalists, because the fundamentalist movement is the driving force behind this, is the driving force behind the Heritage foundation and the ideologies that have created such a dangerous avalanche of policy, especially in Project 2025 and also throughout today. When I reference Christians in this movement, I'm not talking about Christ followers. I'm referencing Christian nationalists. So let's dive in. We're gonna talk about the Bible, we're gonna talk about abortion, the LGBTQ community, and specifically the trans community. Immigration, gender roles, complementarianism, and a little bit of white supremacy. And again, this list is by no means comprehensive, and I can't cover each topic from end to end. But I'm hoping to give you kind of a study guide and a cheat sheet to learn from, to have some things in your back pocket, to have these conversations. Do not enter these conversations with the expectation that someone will change. Our job is to speak truth and let the truth do its own work. I hope this encourages and inspires and strengthens you. And the first thing that we have to talk about is there's a couple Bible myth busters that we have to talk about. This came from my very first Bible study that if you want to re watch the whole study, you can go to Patreon, and it's available there with my notes. So there are three things about the Bible that Christian nationalists promote as kind of their escape. All to be able to justify whatever they believe the Bible says or whatever they have interpreted it to believe. And these three things are inspiration, inerrancy, and univocality. So let's talk about inspiration. First they reference second Timothy 3, 16, which says, for all Scripture is God breathed. And then verse 17 says and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. Inspiration is the idea that the biblical authors were so deeply influenced by God that their composition is effectively the actual words of God. Well, we have a problem here. So the first problem is that second Timothy was not written by Paul or any other primary apostle. This is an example of Pseudepigrapha, meaning that it was written under a false name. This was a common practice in the ancient world where someone would take the name of someone, a famous apostle or a famous teacher, so that their writings would be promoted. How do we know that second Timothy wasn't written by Paul? Well, first thing is that 30% of the language in second Timothy was never used by Paul. It's a very different speaking style the second thing is, is that second Timothy wasn't written until the second century. It specifically references things that did not happen until the second century. Paul was killed in the 60s CE, and to my knowledge, it's pretty hard to write a book when you're dead. This was included in the Bible later, even though there were early church historians and theologians who disputed first and second Timothy and Titus being included because they were written by Paul. But specifically with first and second Timothy, it was very convenient to claim the absolute divinity of the Scripture as well as misogynistic standards around women being silent in church, even though Paul had nominated female church leaders. So Second Timothy is not written by Paul is our first problem with that. But if we go with Second Timothy 3, 16 and says the Bible is all scripture, is God breathed, then what about the fact that the Bible allows for polygamy, slavery, sexual assaults? I'll give you a specific example. This comes from Deuteronomy 21, verse 10. It says, when you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives. If you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and you are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife, bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails, and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month because you just killed them, then you may go to her and her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. But you must not sell her or treat her as a slave since you have dishonored her. So if we're going to talk about the Bible being the literal word of God, while the Bible permits the kidnapping and rape of a prisoner of war, we have a problem. So inspiration is not verifiable. Because if it. If we truly believe that the Bible is 100% inspired, then we also have to acknowledge that the God of the Bible is allowing for these horrible, horrible crimes. This ideology leads to our second myth about the Bible, which is inerrancy. Again, all scripture is God breathed. If every word written by these mortal men is the actual words of God, then that means these words are inerrant. That's the belief. It logically follows that then to defy or question this word is to defy God. How convenient. How convenient when a Bible is built as a doctrine for the faith right, to give the church power and control, to be able to establish that if you question this, you're directly questioning God. There's a few problems with this inerrancy claim. One, many of the biblical authors don't make that claim. They don't make the claim that this is all perfect and wonderful and unchanging. The Bible contains a lot of different forms of literature put together over the course of a thousand years. The Bible contains myths, legends, contradicting history. The authors contradict each other. Poems and prophecy. How does one determine that a myth or a poem is inerrant? You'll hear them say things like, well, God's word says it. That settles it. Does it though? Does it though? We know that Genesis 1 and 2 is a myth very similar to creation myths in Macedonia. And Genesis 1 and 2 contradict each other. They contradict each other in the order of creation and how man and woman were created. The legend of Lilith comes from trying to reconcile the difference between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Genesis 1 being where male and female are created at the same time. Genesis 2 is where the woman is created from the rib. And the reason for this difference is because Genesis is made up of three different manuscripts that were put together over time, over the course of several hundred years. And the legend of Lilith was trying to say that the woman in the first chapter was Lilith, Adam's first wife, and that Eve was the second wife in chapter two. But it was literally a legend built to solve that discrepancy. We know the Bible is not inerrant. We also know that it has a lot of unverifiable history. And then the last myth around the Bible is univocality, which is one voice, meaning that since the Bible is the actual physical words of God, therefore all the writings come from one single divine source and speak with one unified voice that never disagree or contradict each other. Again, we run into a problem of data. The oldest biblical text we have is around 1200 BCE, which is the song of Deborah in Exodus 15. And the latest New Testament book was between 110 and 120 CE, which is second Peter. This means that biblical composition spanned 12, about 1300 years. And all of these, these different authors had different belief systems. The early ancient Israelites were polytheistic. They had many gods, including Asherah, who was the wife of Yahweh. We have Jeremiah, who believed in one single God, Elohim. And we have the Apostle Paul, who believes that Jesus Christ is the Savior. And I wouldn't start your conversations here, but the reason that these are important is because the, the, the, the doctrine that has created this sense of, well, the Bible says it, that settles it. I can't disagree with it. I can't question it, because I'm questioning God is built on three ideologies that are absolutely not verifiable. And again, with this univocality, this idea of one voice, we have the duration of exile talked about in Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 25, verse 11, exile is going to last 70 years. But in Ezekiel 4, verses 5 through 6, it says 390 years for Israel plus 40 years for Judah equals a total of 430 years in the New Testament. Matthew 27:5, Judas hanged himself versus Acts 1:18, where Judas fell headlong, burst open, and his intestines spilled out. We also have a lot of discrepancy. Every gospel has a different resurrection account. In Mark, which is the oldest gospel, Mark 16, one angel, the women flee in fear and there's no resurrection appearances. In Matthew 28, there's two women at the tomb, one angel, and Jesus appears to the women. In Luke 24, there's two angels. Jesus appears to the disciples in Emmaus, in Jerusalem. In John 20, Mary Magdalene is alone, there's two angels, and Jesus appears to her directly. It changes who was there, how many angels, where did Jesus appear? And the reason I'm starting here is because when we, when you are either deconstructing or you're trying to have these conversations, you first need to understand that they believe that the Bible, Bible is inerrant, that it is inspired and that is univocal, and that none of those things are true. We don't have any data to support that. We actually have a lot more data to the contrary. So in order for you to be able to maybe unpack fundamentalism in your life, you have to address those contradictions and to be able to understand where other people are coming from when they have these conversations, it's really important that you know, okay, they are coming from the place where they think there is no possible way that anything in this book is wrong. How do I approach this conversation with that in mind? And it also lends to. When you're like, I don't understand why they won't listen to reason. A lot of it is founded on these beliefs. So we're going to start with the issue of abortion. Obviously, it's a big topic and it's really important. Right now we are seeing the systematic rollback of women's rights in South Carolina right now with SB323, which thankfully did not make it past committee. But that bill Made an attempt to make the pill and IUDs illegal by reclassifying them as abortive fashions. And anti abortion advocates are now coming out and saying birth control was the target the entire time, which I have been telling people since Roe fell. And everyone thought I was insane. But it is true because the goal of this is control. How do we force women inside of the home, out of education, out of the workforce? But let's do a little brief, a very brief history about abortion in America and then we're going to talk about what the Bible actually says. Right? Because they make this claim if you're a Christian, you have to vote pro life. Do you? What does the Bible say about that? But let's, let's talk history first in abortion in the 1800s, early it was legal. In the early 19th century, abortion was generally legal in the United States before the quickening, which is the point at which fetal movement is felt. This is typically around 16 to 20 weeks. It was common and relatively unregulated. It people saw it as a private matter. You get to make your decision. It was legal. The reason there was a shift is in the mid-1800s, the newly formed American Medical association led a push to criminalize abortion. Why? Doctors argued that it was unsafe and wanted wanted to professionalize medicine. And when I say professionalized medicine, I mean they wanted male doctors to take over medicine, sidelining midwives and traditional female healers who performed abortions. This was partly about consolidating power for male doctors as well as reflecting Victorian model values emphasizing women's roles as mothers. If you look at the Victorian model for women, there was the same thing we see now. An emphasis on thinness as a moral quality, the self subjugation of women while society subjugated them on the outside. As well as a woman's moral good, her moral highest purpose was as a wife and a mother. We see that reoccur in the 1950s. By 1900, nearly every state, thanks to the American Medical association, had passed laws restricting or banning abortion, except to save a woman's life. These laws didn't stop abortions, but pushed them underground, leading to unsafe and illegal procedures for much of the 20th century. And then we have Roe versus Wade. In 1973, the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide and Roe versus Wade, ruling that a woman's right to Privacy under the 14th Amendment included the right to terminate a pregnancy up to viability around 24 weeks. Roe sparked immediate backlash from Catholic groups. But white evangelical Protestants initially had little interest in abortion. Their main Political issue at the time was school segregation. So in the late 1970s, evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell and political strategists such as Paul Weyrich began using abortion as a rallying cry to unite conservative Christians under the pro life banner. Now, a little note here on Catholics, because evangelical leaders used to consider this a Catholic issue, even for Catholics. St. Augustine said that abortion was not murder until after the quickening, which was the commonly held belief. It wasn't until 1869 under Pope Pius IX that that changed. It was Pope Pius who decided that abortion was going to be like murder after conception. So initially for evangelicals, their major cause was defending segregated Christian schools. But abortion was strategically chosen because it was a morally charged unifying issue that appealed to a broader audience and appealed to the evangelical demonization of feminism. By the 1980 presidential election, the religious right had made abortion a central issue, helping to elect Ronald Reagan and shaping conservative politics for decades. So let's talk about what the Bible says. I just want to quickly establish ancient Judaism, like the Old Testament, and when life began. So the Hebrew word for life is hayim. And there's two words that are used to designate essentially the breath of life. There's ruach, which is spirit or wind, and then nephesh, which is soul, neck, or breath. Adam was not alive until he breathed. The most essential feature of human life in ancient Judaism and in the Old Testament is breath. And the. And when we look at the Old Testament, it gives us very specific criteria for life. And a lot of times people will lean on the Old Testament, claiming that it supports this idea of being anti abortion. Well, the Old Testament not only doesn't talk about abortion, but in ancient Judaism and in the Old Testament, nothing was alive until it was born. It was not alive until it breathed. And we see this most clearly, and this is a great one to write down. This, I think, gives us the most clear description of how life was viewed in the Old Testament. In Exodus 21, verse 22, it says, if people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely, but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, and bruise for bruise. So this clearly lays out that if the woman is struck and she miscarries, it is a loss of property to the father. But if she dies because she is breathing and living and she is Given the designation of human life, then it is a capital crime. A very clear distinction in the Old Testament. Now, a lot of people who are going to argue this point, it says, well, the Bible says you should not kill. And that's Exodus 20, verse 13 in the Ten Commandments, which is kill is a very terrible translation. It should be either murder or unlawful killing. So general killing could be used in reference to, say, hunting. But murder or unlawful killing meant that you killed another being that had human life, which again, by their standards, was breath. And the other thing that they'll bring up is they say, well, God says, you know, you knit me together in my mother's womb, or that I know the plans I have for you. These come from Jeremiah 1:5 and Psalms 139, 13:16. But what's interesting about these is that in both of these, David and Jeremiah are trying to point out why their relationship with God is special. Jeremiah is saying, see, God appointed me special Jeremiah as a prophet. And that's why you have to listen to me. If this applied to everyone, it wouldn't make Jeremiah special. And it's the same thing in Psalms 139, 1316, where we see, you knew me, you knit me together in my mother's womb. Is. It's talking about this intricate weaving, this ver. It's a verb, it's an action. It's really talking about this very unique relationship that David, who, again reminder, is a rapist and a murderer, has with God. And then the lastly, in Leviticus 27:1 through 7, it gives monetary value for each person. Each person of a certain gender and a certain age is given a monetary value with the assumption that if you were to sell or buy someone, again, we have to let the Bible be what it is. If you were going to sell or buy someone, this is how much it would cost to buy them. And in Leviticus 27, no monetary value as a human being is given below one month. So it is not until breath has passed. And in Leviticus 27, a month of life has passed. You can make that decision. And also in the Old Testament, the only people who had full agency of any kind, sexual agency, financial agency, were free men. Even slave men didn't have that kind of agency. So when you're having this conversation and people want to argue, the first thing I would say to them is, well, what did Jesus say about that? One of the best ways to have these conversations is to. Is to have them argue with Jesus and not you. What did Jesus say about that? And they're Gonna go, what? And when they go to the Old Testaments, you can say, well, actually, in the Old Testament, life didn't begin until first breath. And I would say, again, Write down Exodus 21:22 through 25. Learn that story, because it's a really clear parameter of it. And then if they bring up Jeremiah and Psalms, say, yeah, those were to denote a very special relationship that the prophet had, which was why he was anointed to speak and why David was able to have the relationship with God he did. And when they keep pushing that, you can also say, well, if you believe that, then do you also believe that you can sell your daughter into sexual slavery? Do you believe in polygamy? Do you believe in raping prisoners of war? Because the Bible also permits those. And I know they're difficult conversations. And what I would say is, as I go through each of these topics and learn one thing, one thing that you think will be helpful in these conversations, take that one thing with you and build from there. Again, as you revisit these topics and you start to talk about it more and more, it's really going to become second nature. And if you're wondering, well, if life doesn't begin till first breath in the Old Testament, then where did this idea of, you know, conception come from? This is Greek philosophy. So Greeks were debating, when does ensoulment happen? And there were three primary schools of thought. There was Stoicism, which believed that it was contact with the heir at birth that marked the joining of the soul to the body and the initial achievement of personhood. There was the Epicureans and the Pythagoreans, who thought ensoulmen began at conception. And there was the Aristotelians, which thought that human ensoulment began around day 40 of gestation for men and 90 days for women, because Aristotle believed that women were deformed men, that we needed longer to bake. And it was the Aristotelian view that was actually the most popular in the early Catholic Church with St. Augustine. So these views come from Greek philosophy. This was never a Hebrew Bible or an Old Testament tenet. And in the New Testament, they don't talk about it at all. There's no conversation about this whatsoever. And the only interactions we see Jesus having with women is to elevate women and try to give them more autonomy. Jesus tries to give women equality in their marriages. He has female disciples. Mary Magdalene was considered the apostle to the apostles. She's the only person that was present in all of the resurrection accounts. And Then later we see Paul, who nominates women to places of leadership. Phoebe's the only church deacon that we know of by name. He also talks about female apostles, church planners and disciples. So the New Testament doesn't really touch on this at all. This is based on a twisted interpretation of the text where people have taken it and they've negotiated it to say what they want. Because remember, after Roe was passed, the Southern Baptist Convention released three churchwide edicts declaring their agreement for the text for the passage of the bill, saying that nothing superseded a woman's right to choose. Essentially that if a woman's life was going to be at risk, it was her decision to decide if she was going to take that risk. And for people that argue for small government, there would be something to say about. Do you really think that a small government is a government that gets to make your medical decisions? We also have another conflict here. The God of the Old Testament murders children at will, doesn't treat all human life equally and condone slavery. Ancient Israel believed that life began at breath versus Greek philosophy. Cultures had three dominant and wildly different views. And the Bible never directly addresses abortion and neither does Jesus. And again, I could talk about this for an hour, but I'm hoping that that gives you a little bit of fuel, a little bit of things to talk about and have these answers with. And again, when you're starting these conversations, I would always start with, well, what did Jesus say about that? What did he say about that? And also recently, we've seen Obergefell, which allows for gay marriage in all 50 states, come under attack. Thankfully, the Supreme Court decided not to hear that argument this time, but it is going to come back. This is a huge Christian nationalist sticking point. Not just the demonization of trans people, but because of the gay agenda and they're corrupting our kids. Meanwhile, they're openly defending a pedophile who has made it his mission to cover up the Epstein files, which even after they were signed, to be released. Now, there's an ongoing investigation, but for Christian nationalists, this is a huge sticking point. This is another one they will sell to their congregation as a deal breaker in the Christian faith. So instead of paying attention to the 2000 plus times that the Bible says to take care of the widow and the poor and the helpless, they ignore all of that. Don't want to vote for that. Can't help those poor people. We saw that with snap benefits, right? All of these nationalists online mocking people who can't eat. How very Christian of them. The most they are the Most frequent set of commands is to take care of the widow and the orphan and the helpless and to welcome the foreigner. But Christian nationalists will fixate on abortion, and then their next is the LGBTQ community. And what they will propose is that biblical marriage is one man, one woman, one lifetime. They've got all these really catchy phrases, and they get this from Genesis 2:24 through 25, which says, that is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. So that. There's a couple issues here. The first is that this does not give a restriction to. That is the only place marriage can happen. Can happen also. Again, Genesis 1 and 2 are both myths based on Macedonian creation tales. But when someone presents that to you, so when they give you that one liner again, you can always start with the question, well, what did Jesus say about homosexuality? Nothing. Crickets. But when they say that, they're going to give you, it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Or they're going to say, one man, one woman, one lifetime. And you can ask them, well, Abraham. Abraham molested Hagar, who was a mistress. Jacob had two wives. Solomon had 300 wives and 700 concubines. David had a very questionable relationship with Jonathan, eight wives, and raped Bathsheba and then murdered her husband. Which. Which biblical marriage do you meet? And often many of these people will also be married multiple times. And you can say, well, doesn't that make you an adulterer? Because according to the Bible, if you divorce for any reason other than marital unfaithfulness, if you do remarry after a divorce, you commit adultery. Because the reality is, is that this is all a reflection of selective literalism. They go to the Old Testament, which we're going to talk about some of these gotcha verses around the LGBTQ community, they go and they. They pick out these verses. See, the Bible says this. Look at Leviticus, but they eat bacon, they wear clothing of mixed linens, and they'll things like, oh, well, the difference between the holiness standards. The Bible makes no such distinction. So it is. It is an intentional hypocrisy, is an intentional selective literal literalism. They want it to be literal when they want it to, and then they can make justifications for things like slavery. Because you remember that chapter in Exodus I told you about with the pregnant woman, Exodus 21. The immediate passage following that is, is how much you can beat your slaves. Like, they had a parameter to how much, you could beat them. So if we're going to go selective literalism, if we're going to go fully literal 100% of the Bible, we have to justify a lot of evil and claim that God is good, or we have to acknowledge that there's been a lot of selective literalism used from Scripture. And we also have to acknowledge that. Is there a better way to explain this? Is there a better way to do this? The Bible can be an incredible life changing text and can be messy because it is an ancient text built over 1300 years and we have to let it be that way. And when they want to take this idea of biblical marriage is one man, one woman, one lifetime, when they're married to their third wife, we can also talk about that. The sexual ethic and the marriage ethic changes throughout the Bible, especially around divorce. So in Deuteronomy 24, the original divorce laws, if we start in 24, verse one, it says if a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her and he writes her a certificate of divor, gives it to her and sends her from his house. And if after she leaves his house, she becomes the wife of another man and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends it from her house, or if he dies, then her first husband who divorced her is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the Lord. So essentially this divorce lies, saying that a man can throw out a woman for any reason he wants. He just can't remarry her if she's been with another man, but he can remarry her if she has. The irony of this is that Kim Davis, the woman who is bringing this case to challenge Obergefell to the Supreme Court, you know, being able to deny gay marriage on the basis of religion, is remarried to her second husband. So she's had four, he's two and four. So she, she clearly violates this law here. And in Matthew 5:32, condemns divorce except for marital unfaithfulness and calls remarriage adultery. We don't follow that ethic. How many remarriages do we know of in the church? And then there's Paul's sexual ethic in First Corinthians 7:1 16, where Paul calls for celibacy, Paul calls to remain unmarried. Peace is the priority if separating over religious core beliefs. Paul had no issue with divorce over Core beliefs if, like the unbelieving partner wanted to leave, but his. His command was that he hoped people would be able to remain single and celibate as he was, and serve God. So let's talk directly about some of the gotcha verses that they're gonna throw at you, because we know that the LGBTQ community has always existed through the ancient community. And we also know that the sexual ethic is very, very important in the ancient. In ancient cultures. And it's very different from what we understand today with the Bible. Understand that the word homosexual didn't appear in the Bible until 1946, and it was originally translated into 1 Corinthians 6, 9. Now this, this was originally translated by Martin Luther as boy lovers. It was. It was thought to be pedastric male prostitutes, child prostitutes. And we know that the word homosexual wasn't what they meant because the word itself didn't appear until the 1860s. It first appeared in print in 1869. Coined by Hungarian writer Carl Maria Kurbentli and a pamphlet arguing against Prussian anti sodomy laws, it combined the Greek homo, meaning same, and the Latin sexualis sexual. Though its early uses is often carried medical and pathological connotations, the concept of sexual orientation as a psychological category emerged later in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So this word didn't exist. So it's not what they meant. It's clearly not. And one of the things to understand when we get to the Old Testament is that they're not referring to orientation. When we read the Bible or we look at these scriptures, it's important that who was this written for? What language was it written in? How would have the original hearers heard this word? And their idea was very different. They didn't have an idea of sexual orientation. Their idea of sexual agency was very narrow. And in ancient cultures, the only people that had sexual agency were free men. And a sexual act was a sexual agent, meaning the man committing a sexual act on an object. Object which was typically a woman. But that object could also be an enslaved man. It could be an animal without harming the man's masculinity because he was taking the insertive role. The consent of the object was a non issue because the object didn't have agency. A good example of this is in David and Bathsheba when the prophet Nathan comes to confront David about what he's done. Nathan describes this. He gives this parable of a rich man who steals a ewe lamb from this poor man, when the ewe lamb is all he has and that was to describe Nathan's sin. What Nathan is describing is your sin was taking the property of another man. It was never about kidnapping Bathsheba from her home and raping her. That is, that is a very good reflection of the sexual ethic. So when we get into these chapters in Leviticus, what they saw that as was effeminizing, abusive toward another man and it disrupted the social hierarchy because you were taking sexual agency from the man. It's the reason that the Old Testament never condemns female same sex interaction because it wasn't about the sexuality, it wasn't. Same sex between women wasn't considered a problem, it wasn't considered a threat to the hierarchy and it didn't take away power, the insertive role or sexual agency from a man. And the Old Testament only references same sex intercourse twice. So for them to be hyper fixated again, we're going back to selective literalism. They're going to pick and choose verses. We've got over 2,000 saying you're obligated to help the poor and the widow and welcome the foreigner. Nope, we're going to focus on the two times in the Old Testament it condemns same sex intercourse. And we see both of these times happen in Leviticus, Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13, which were actually written by different authors, they come from different manuscripts, but it was really about the hierarchy. Again, women are never condemned for same sex interactions because it's an even playing field. And in Leviticus 18 specifically it says, the phrasing which is clunky in English is lie. The lyings of a woman, which means taking the female role in sex, taking the receiving position. It was all about social hierarchy, which is why even though female same sex interaction is never condemned, bestiality is in verse 16 of Leviticus 20. The reason it's condemned is because of the social hierarchy. Because only above animals did a woman have higher sexual agency. It's really important that we let the Bible be what it is, that women had no agency, no choice, you did not have the right to consent. A man could rape you and as long as he bought you from your father, you had to be his wife. A man could marry you, decide he doesn't like you, throw you out of the house and leave you destitute. And it was no longer his problem. When we are really honest about what these ancient ethics were, it becomes really problematic. The Bible is not a good moral standard for 2025. It's really not. And people coming and choosing and picking and choosing what they're going to use to demonize people is, is, is cruel and it's unfair. Again, we know that homosexuality didn't appear in the Bible until 1946. We know that the ancient sexual ethic is not talking about consensual relationships. It's also not talking about orientation. So this idea that this, this one issue that's mentioned very rarely in the scripture is the go to issue is just a deflection from Christians not wanting to deal with the fact that they're protecting child predators, the amounts of child abuse materials found on pastors computers, the fact that they're cheating on their wives, the record rates of adultery, domestic violence, because all of those are more problematic than a consensual loving home like homosexual or gay relationship. But what they want to do is use the sin that they are not, quote, openly committing to demonize other people. And then we can talk about First Timothy again. There's another passage in First Timothy 1, 9, 11 where the word homosexuality was added after 1946. We already talked about Timothy wasn't even written by Paul. Paul had a very unique sexual ethic. Paul was a voluntary celibate. He believed that Christians should be celibate as he was, so that they could focus on God. This also comes from Greek philosophy. When Greek philosophy took center stage, they saw sexual desire as a base urge that should be suppressed as much as possible. Except for needed procreation. Sex during menstruation was actually illegal. Some authors claim sex during pregnancy or after menopause was not permitted. This is also why you look at the statues. For the Greeks, like a small penis was considered favorable. It meant that you were in control of your urges, that you were intellectual, that you were highly evolved and if you were well endowed, well then you weren't. It was a reflection of you're being controlled by this base desire. And so this is why Paul's sexual ethics, again we have this contradiction. Paul is saying, hey, this is, this is what you should be doing. This is a base urge, only do it if you absolutely have to. And this is also though where some people get the idea around, well, sex should only be for procreation. And they'll make that argument that the reason if you ask them, well, what is the, what is the non biblical reason that you don't think gay people should be able to be together, be married? They say, well, they can't have babies, you know, sex should only be for procreation, which tells you how much fun they are in the bedroom. But also it asks the question okay, so you want to tell Christian husbands that after menopause, their wife isn't supposed to have sex with them anymore because she can't have kids. The arguments start to fall apart. And if you sit with these things long enough and you massage them, it really becomes abundantly clear where the choices are coming from, where the demonization is coming from. It's the demonization of other. So that you're not looking at the sin I'm committing. It's selective literalism, and it's just meant to be abusive. And the reason that I'm just having this conversation is because it's so important that if you are a member of the LGBTQ community, know that God does not hate you. God made you this way. And that there is no biblical reason that you should be demonized. Especially when we take the Bible as it is. There's a lot of terrible shit in the Bible, a lot of terrible ethics, a lot of terrible standards that they had. And we get to look at that and say, wow, that's fucked up. I am so glad we don't do that anymore. And it could just as easily apply to all walks of faith. All sexualities and Christian nationals are choosing not to because they need a group to demonize instead of love. And lastly, in Romans 1:26 through 27, which is where Paul's talked about they exchanged their. Their natural lust for unnatural ones. What he's talking about is limited passion versus wild passion. This is in a chapter about idolat. It's recognizing there was these large feasts that would happen for Bacchanalia Floralia that would include like huge and very extensive orgies, like wild, lustful parties. And the. This is the only time in the Bible where women are mentioned and he says, exchange their natural usefulness. How awful. Exchange their natural usefulness. Their usefulness in being a penetrable body that does not have agency. Their usefulness for reproduction. And it just carried over that prejudice in the Greek world that women were not worth as much as men. So if we want to look at these and we say, when I'm reading some of these, and I'm sure some of you are like, wow, this is. This is a lot. And I know, but how narrow minded to look at these. These views in 2025 and say, well, this is what the Bible said, while ignoring all historical context, while ignoring the fact that the ancient sexual ethic was so perverse and so violent and cruel. But you can also see so much in here about how the incel. Movement, the Christian national movement, has taken a lot of these. Also you see why they're not really opposed to someone beating their wife because the foundation of these arguments demonizing the LGBTQ movement is that men own women. Meet the computer you can talk to with Copilot on Windows. Working, creating and collaborating is as easy as talking. Got writer's block? Share your screen with Copilot Vision to help spark inspiration and use Copilot voice to have a conversation and brainstorm ideas. Or maybe you need some tech help with Copilot Vision. Copilot sees what you see. Let Copilot talk you through step by step guidance so you can master new apps, games and skills faster. Try now@windows.com copilot Wayfair's big sale is returning. Get ready for way day for four days only, score up to 80 off all things home with free shipping on everything from October 26th through 29th. Score Wayfair's best deals like up to 80% off area rugs, up to 60 off mattresses, up to 60% off bed, bedroom furniture and more exclusive door buster deals. So mark your calendar and shop Wayday starting October 26th at Wayfair.com Wayfair Every style, every home and that for a man to not take sexual agency over a woman is wrong and it gives them an other. It gives them someone to attack. I think that quite personally I think that the gay community was put here to show people how to love and a lot of people are missing the mark. And there's this idea around the procreation argument again. This idea that since only male and female can reproduce, then that must be the only allowable sexual experience. The lots of problems there. One is that rules out any sex for pleasure. Again, I would love for you to tell married husbands that it rules out sex to strengthen an intimate relationship and it rules out anything other than vaginal sex. If you're making the argument that procreation is the only reason for sex, that rules out anything that's not PNV and probably missionary style if someone's having that argument. Paul had no idea that non heterosexual orientations existed. He also was not particularly interested in sex as a whole. He thought sexual desire itself was bad. We can we can look at the Bible for what it is and allow for science and psychology to increase our knowledge in the human race. Always ask the question is there a better way to do this? And Paul was wrong about a lot of the natural order. We've learned so much since then. It doesn't make any sense that we would abandon this. So I'M going to talk about a couple. Another. Another big, big one. They're going to talk about Sodom and Gomorrah, which is in Genesis 19, if you want to read it. But the thing is, is that someone who makes the claim that Sodom and Gomorrah was about homosexuality hasn't actually read the Bible. Bible, because the Bible itself expresses that this was not about homosexuality. And if you're like, I don't know what the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is. Recap. Abraham, the biblical figure, his nephews in Sodom and Gomorrah. It's an evil, wicked city. Abraham pleads with God to save Lot and his family. God sends two angels. The two angels get their. Lot welcomes them into his home. And then a group of men come outside the door, banging on the door, saying, bring these men out to us so we can rape them. Lot says, don't do this terrible thing here. You can have my virgin daughters instead. And thankfully, the men did not take him up on that, but he did offer his daughters up, and that was never condemned. But in Ezekiel 16, it talks about that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was pride, excess and refusal to help the poor because one of the highest ancient values was of hospitality and protection. Sodom and Gomorrah is all about hospitality and also agency. Why? Because the angels were presenting as men. There was no issue. There was no issue brought up in the Bible anywhere about Lot offering up his daughters to be gang raped. And there's a. There's other stories like that in the Bible where a woman is offered in one. In one story, she is gang raped to death and dies. And the man who does that to her is never condemned because she's his property. We have to let it be what it is. And then the last one that's sometimes brought up is Jude 1:7, which uses the phrase unnatural lust or other flesh. This has nothing at all to do with sexuality between humans. This is a reference to. And actually most of Jude is a reference to the Book of Enoch where they're talking about angels having sex with human women, which was forbidden. They created a race of giants called Nephilim. And if you're listening to this being like, what? I know, I know, I know. But understand that this entire book is talking about Enoch, which is an apocalyptic text where they're referencing angels having sex with human women. Jude 1:7 is quoting Genesis and 1st Enoch 1:9. So when people come to you with this, I'll recap this a Little bit, because I talked about a lot. Again, the first question asks is, well, what did Jesus say about this? That nothing. And then they're going to say, well, one man, one woman, one lifetime. It's like, well, the Bible never gives a prescriptive that that's the only relationship that can exist. And then you can talk about the sexual ethic. Well, do you, do you believe that if a man rapes a woman he should be able to buy her? Do you believe that women should be able to give consent? Talk about, hey, you're pointing out these Levitical texts. Why don't you follow the rest of them? And easily enough. Homosexuality did not appear in the Bible until 1946 because the Word and the idea didn't exist until the 1860s. And that really, when the Bible's talking about condemning same sex interaction in the Old Testament between men was it was condemning male insertive sex, abusive sex against another man or a guest, or unbridled lust for men and women in idolatry in the New Testament, Old Testament, not concerned with women having sex with women at all. And then in Paul's case, he's only concerned when it's unbridled lust. This base urge that he sees as evil, especially as it relates to, to idolatry and lust. And also our sexual ethic around adultery, polygamy or polyamory in religious contexts. Remarriage, child marriage, non marriage and childlessness have all changed because we have evolved as a species. Why is that the one thing that can't change? It's cherry picking and it's identity politics. The LGBTQ community has been vilified, harmed, or have been encouraged to self harm, which is in direct conflict of Jesus's primary command of love the Lord your God and love thy neighbor. Especially when these same people are willing to overlook other biblical principles and ask them, do you believe in people having SNAP benefits? Are you voting to help the poor? Why are you so willing to ignore all these other biblical commands? But this is the one you're going to die on. This is the one hill you're going to pledge allegiance to. It's a biblical position that is socially constructed. It is the, this is the same type of argument, biblical argument that was used to endorse slavery, that was used to oppose women's suffrage. We see that coming back and it is the same one used to defend child marriage laws. And with the history in both the Catholic and the Evangelical church, I'm sure that's not a surprise to anyone. Matthew 25, verses 41 through 46 says, Then he will say to those on his left, depart from me, you who are cursed, into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a foreigner and you did not invite me in. I needed clothes and you did not clothe me. I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me. They will also say, lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison and did not help you? He will reply, truly, I tell you, whether you what you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me. And then they will go away into eternal punishment. But the righteous to eternal life. Last one I'm going to cover in depth is really around immigration. Again. These are, these are kind of the top three ideals that I see outside of. We'll do a little brief ending around Christian nationalism and white supremacy where these are these big topics. You know, you saw the Trump rallies where they're holding up the signs for mass deportations. And biblically speaking, Matthew 25 is really the home run on for that, on me. Not, not just Jesus saying that loving your neighbor, you know, loving God and loving your neighbor sum up the law and the prophets, but that Jesus specifically states that welcoming in a foreigner is a core value to enter the kingdom of God. And some Christians will say, well, that that passage is about how I treat other believers. Well, over 75% of the people that we see being kidnapped and drugged from their homes are believers. In fact, ICE has announced, as of this recording, they announced it yesterday, they will be raiding churches over the holidays, Spanish speaking churches. So when someone attacks you with the biblical, someone is saying they're standing on Christian principles and they're talking about immigration. Matthew 25, they're like, well, they should have came here legally. Say, oh, is that why ICE is taking them from their immigration hearings? But here with immigration, because the Bible is so clear, I mean, over 2,000 times says to welcome the foreigner and help the poor. And that's. That is a great thing to lean on when you're having these conversations. Say, hey, especially if you are someone who identifies as a Christian or a Christ follower to say, hey, this is the top commandment in the Bible. This is what Christ said. This is what I follow. I follow Christ's teachings. I read the red words. And I know that some of that's cliche, but especially if you were just learning how to find your voice in these. And you're just like, Monty. This is a lot of information. Do those small things make them argue with Jesus? Not you? I always say, try Jesus, not me. But one of the things I wanted to spend a little bit of time here is talking about some of the stats around undocumented migrants and why they're so important to the economy. Because the economy is the other one, right? I'm just doing what's best for the economy. So. According to a 2024 report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented migrants paid an estimated 96.7 billion DOL in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Of that total, about 59.4 billion went to the federal government. 37.3 billion went to state and local governments. On a per person basis, that is $8,889 per person in tax payments. Where are we going to replace those taxes? And ask them, say, hey, they're paying this many billions of dollars. Our economy is dramatically in debt. How are you planning to replace who's going to pay that tax bill to make that up? Because also, $25.7 billion of those taxes went into Social Security payroll taxes. About 6.4 billion went into Medicare and 1.8 billion into unemployment insurance taxes, which, by the way, those undocumented workers do not qualify for any of those services. At the state and local level. In 2022, sales and excise tax accounted for about $15.1 billion. Property taxes, 10.4 billion. Personal and business income taxes, 7 billion. This report also modeled a scenario that if all undocumented migrants were granted work authorization. Hear this. Their tax contributions would rise by an estimated $40.2 billion a year, bringing the total annually into the US to $136.9 billion annually. Like just this idea of they're stealing our jobs. What jobs? You're not. You don't want to go into a strawberry field for less than minimum wage. They're paying taxes. And remember that I've talked about in previous episodes, where the information that they're getting is skewed, right? If they're listening to. If they're reading Breitbart or they're watching Fox News, they are not getting this information. They likely don't know that undocumented migrants pay taxes. They likely don't know that it costs tens of thousands of dollars to go through the immigration system. They likely don't know know that it takes years. You can be doing it right going through the system and be undocumented. A recent Estimate from the budget lab suggests that unauthorized immigrants paid about $66 billion in federal income and payroll taxes in 2023. That's just federal, not state. They also fill, and we saw this in Texas, as like the construction industry immediately went into an uproar when they lost all their work workers. They fill critical roles in the US labor force, particularly in sectors like agriculture, construction and healthcare support services. One source states that 1 in 7 construction workers, 1 in 8 agricultural workers, and 1 in 14 hospital workers are undocumented migrants because they pay taxes but are often ineligible for benefits from those taxes. It's actually helping pay for shortages that we have in the United States economy at a state and local level. They also contribute via consumption, like sales tax to bolstering local economies. And so though, and those are just a small measure of the number, because the idea that has been built around undocumented migrants, one completely leapfrogging over the Christian standard of welcoming the foreigner and fighting for the abused and the poor and the homeless and the ostracized and giving justice to them, which are other very big biblical commands. But also this idea that these people, these beautiful human beings, are somehow parasites, when in reality they're giving us a lot more back than they're getting. They don't benefit from Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security. They don't get tax benefits, but they're paying into it, filling the gaps for those of us. Because, let's be real, I'm a millennial. There's not going to be Social Security left for me. I know that. Especially with the big ugly bill that got passed, which is going to dramatically increase our debt in the next 10 years. There's not going to be social services for people like me. And so we're going to get rid of the group of people who are actually helping close the gap even a little bit, even marginally. So when understand that all of these ideals, and I know that this is kind of a quick summary of all of these things, things, all of these ideals are religion or quote, do things the right way to guise. White supremacy is really what this is. It's about white supremacy, specifically the control of women. When you look at any fundamentalist religion, any religion, any fundamentalist version of any religion across the world, the one thing they all have in common is the subjugation of women. But also because they've been able to, to establish this white replacement theory that the white race is being replaced. We're already outnumbered. I don't know why they think we're a majority. We're not globally, but it's this idea of the whites quotation mark. The whites and the Christians are being persecuted and they're being exterminated and we have to do whatever we can to prevent that. So what do you do? Well, to control the birth rate and the access to wealth, you have to control birth control. What better way to do that than to prevent women from having equal opportunity in education and in the workforce by rolling back DEI policies? Prevent them from accessing health care, birth control, because the thing about the women dying because they can't access life saving abortions, they don't care. The ultimate goal of this is to force white women who are not having as many babies as they would like to have them, whether they want to or not. The ultimate goal of this is to have control. It's about using dressing their opinions and their hatred and their prejudice in Bible drag and then saying, well, the Bible says so God's on my side, so he allows me to take away your civil rights and enact violence upon you because if you're not on my side, you're an enemy of God. Interesting how that works. So just to recap some of these because again, I know you're going home for the holidays, I know these issues are going to come. If you're a Christian or a Christ follower who really wants to do the right thing, just start with listen. Jesus said to love God and love my neighbor. I live by the red words. I'm going to do that. The Bible commands us 2,000 times to take care of the poor and the needy and welcome the foreigner. And I'm going to choose to do that every day and confront them. Say, you are disobeying the commands of Christ. If God so loved the world, that means your black neighbor, your gay neighbor, your trans neighbor, everybody. 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And now you have the tools to actually talk about, about the history of the abortion argument in the US which white evangelicals didn't care about until they could no longer segregate Christian academies. You now know that the Bible is actually very clear, that life begins at breath if we're going to lean on the Bible, but also that we know better now as a people that every single person should be able to make their medical decisions. And if someone is claiming they favor small government, but they want government in your bedrooms and in your hospital room, that's a little. A lot of hypocrisy. And for the LGBTQ community, understanding that the Bible is not talking about consensual, like homosexual orientation or queer orientation, they didn't understand what that was. The Old Testament was talking about abusive relationships that disrupted masculine hierarchy and abused other men. And in the New Testament, again, Paul's not talking about consensual relationships. He didn't have any concept of that. He's also a man who believed that sex, a sexual urge itself, was evil, that people should be celibate. If we're gonna go with Paul's argument, then why don't we just decide? Everybody gets to be celibate, child free, unmarried ladies. There you go. There's your argument. But ultimately understand that this is all around fear. This is about fear of being replaced. This is about fear of losing control. We see a lot of, you know, red pill, incel, ultra conservative men movement who. The reality is they don't want to evolve. They don't want to be better partners. They don't want to have to put more effort in. They want to be able to abuse their wives, bring home a paycheck, and that's all they have to do. And I want you ladies to know out there, I know it feels discouraging being on social media. There's a lot of great dudes too. I was at this protest last week and there was a whole bunch of influencers and activists and all these people and we, you know, everyone would go out at night and one guy got out of line. Line. He stepped out of line with this girl. And when, when I tell you, when the other men found out about it, they shut that down so quick. They did not let him slide. They confronted him, they called him out and ended that behavior. And that's what that Looks like. That's what advocacy looks like. And I hope that you see that all of this, all of these arguments are selective literalism of the Bible. It's cherry picking, especially from people who typically are married multiple times or they're having sex outside of marriage, or they're not following any of the other Levitical codes. So if you are someone who's been deconstructing and you've been wrestling with those, I hope this gave you some relief of like, oh, this is just manipulation, because it is. And if you're someone who wants to start taking those steps to start having these conversations, I hope that this gives you a template template. This gives you some things that you can use. And just start small. Start with something simple. The Exodus 21, if you're talking about abortion or talking about homosexuality, didn't appear in the Bible till 1946. Start small, come back, and you're gonna have to study these things kind of over and over to really get the hang of it. There's some books I would recommend. The Bible Says so by Dan McClellan, the separation of Church and State by Randall Palmer, the Separation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang, and the Making of biblical womanhood by Dr. Beth Allison Barr. And really start. When you start to really study this, it really falls apart pretty quickly. And you're gonna find more soon than not that you can have these conversations, that you can start to push back, that you can start to stand for yourself and other people. Because if we want a better world, that means it has to be a better world for everyone. Everyone. For every single person. And for those of you that have maybe been struggling with your place in all of this, know that there is, there is no good God who would make you less than. There is no good God who would make half the human race inferior. There is no good God who would say you're better because of your race or your sexuality or your gender. That's not real. That's prejudiced people creating God in their own image. And a lot of this is founded on this idea of white supremacy, which is quite frankly, pretty laughable. But they've been able to get away with it for a long time. So as you go home for the holidays, stay informed, take breaks when you need it again. Don't engage with violent people, but do engage, push back. Do not let people back you into a corner, especially with some sham of faith that isn't real. And I want you to know that I'm proud of you. I'm proud of this community And I hope that you do have a great holiday. And for those of you that are like, you know what, I'm not going home to visit family. Find a community that you can build up with, that you can be proactive with, that you can fight for people with. And I encourage you this season, don't spend any money on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Don't buy from these major corporations if at all. You can avoid it. Find local artisans, local shops. I'm actually not buying Christmas gifts at all this year. I'm designing a clothing line that is going to be all Jesus quotes that is going to go straight to charity. And if you're on my Instagram, you'll see it. It'll be in my newsletter as well. And I'm going to organize community events and spend time with people and maybe there's a way that you can apply that in your community. Thank you so much for joining me. Excuse me. Thank you so much for joining me. Please always, like, share the show. Please write a review that helps me stay up in the playlist. Share this with someone. Talk to your family, talk to your friends. We're way past the point of being silent. And thank you for joining me on this episode of Flipping Tables.