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humanistic on the world episode 23. He gets us. What the hell?

0:09

Welcome to the episode of humanistic on the world. I'm Dustin and joining me is Lauren.

0:16

Oh right, so yeah, sorry about it taking a while to get to this. There's some of the family health

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stuff has definitely been making a little harder to do the show. Well, yeah, I'm tired all the time.

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Yeah, and so yeah, so okay, we're here now. Yep, we are. And yeah, hopefully, you know,

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roughly once a month or twice a month is good for everybody promises. But one problem with

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going, you know, taking so long is it's a little less relevant right now. But I really want to

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talk about all this stuff from the he gets us campaign. Yeah, anybody who any of the US who

1:05

was watching the Super Bowl and was actually paying attention. Oh yeah. It wasn't. But apparently

1:10

everybody else knows these the Jesus commercials. There was what? Five or six of them. Yeah,

1:18

plus they've been all over YouTube and Reddit, Reddit. And some of these actually started early

1:25

last year in case you missed them. The basic idea is, you know, showing people in very modern

1:33

situations, refugees, political, political protests, political protests, and divisiveness,

1:42

and the rebel and like a bunch of other bullshit stuff and saying, oh, the sad state of affairs

1:50

that we are in now. But then saying that, you know, he gets us trying to talk about Jesus,

1:56

make all that stuff about Jesus. Let's try to make it relevant, right? Jesus would totally be

2:01

relevant in the modern day at age when not true. But okay, sure, I can see what they're trying to do

2:08

here. When, okay, if you you actually look at the stuff, so okay, the refugee one, if you believe

2:18

the Matthew version of Jesus's birth story, not the Luke version, right? Because there's

2:26

multiples, there's multiple ones. So yeah, so the Matthew version, they fled Jerusalem and

2:33

went to Egypt for two years, which would make him a refugee, except that was all before he was

2:41

five. And then he just went back home to the town where he lived. So yeah, no, he doesn't have

2:50

experience with that. I mean, not really. I mean, yeah, I mean, a two year old refugee is still a

2:56

refugee, though. Yes. But as far as understanding what it's like, when you're that young, you don't

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really understand anything shoes. The political stuff, the protests, you know, okay, if you look

3:13

at the Jesus story, heck, even flip the tables at the temple. We definitely need to bring back

3:20

table flipping, by the way. Yeah, flipping the tables of the money grabbing greedy assholes.

3:29

Yeah, but it's the whole thing with it is just weird. Well, I mean, the whole concept is very

3:36

forced. Trying to make Jesus relevant to the for the modern age, it's why you can't do it,

3:45

because it's just doesn't, it just doesn't work. There is, but the reason why is pretty obvious.

3:52

Millennials and Gen Z. They're not going to church. Don't go to church in any meaningful

3:59

rates. And attendance has really, really, really, really dropped since the start of the pandemic,

4:05

especially considering how many churches went full on QAnon. Yeah, but this is the same old

4:10

same old. This is churches have been doing this for hundreds of years, trying to stay relevant

4:15

to the population so that people will go to church to make them care. It is a enough to go. And it's

4:20

just it's been landing flat for hundreds and hundreds of years, actually trying to make the

4:25

church relevant. That's a pretty relatively new concept from the second grade awakening. So,

4:32

okay, not hundreds and hundred years before that, if you were not going to church, you might get

4:38

burned at the stake or thrown into jail. Like, that's how they handled it back in the old days,

4:45

if anybody even cared, which for the most part, they didn't, except for the Spanish

4:49

Inquisition. Because nobody expects to. Yeah, yeah, we got that. Because in that case,

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they were trying to take care of having a country full of Muslims and Jews and make them all Christian.

5:01

Right. So that's a whole other issue. Yes. So he gets us. Oh, it was actually only two ads during

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the Super Bowl. Oh, okay. And how I missed it, because I was not paying attention.

5:15

But is he eating? That was all a part of a one hundred million dollar media spend.

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I love it. I love it when church is spend that much money on pointless junk. It's like, all right,

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you just keep flesh in your money away. I don't care. One of the biggest backers,

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the only one who has is not secret is David Green from Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby known for

5:49

putting Bible quotes on their stuff and. Anti birth control and. Anti birth control. Oh,

5:58

and what was it? Oh, what was that law that they put tons of money into passing the Utah anti

6:07

homosexuality? What was that? No, or was it California? Propate. Propate. Yeah. Yeah, they're just

6:15

Oh, in the museum, the Bible Museum with all the artifacts that they've been illegally smuggling.

6:21

God, a bunch of counterfeits and the rest are basically illegal.

6:24

Yeah. So he is the only backer who has actually been public about that brave enough or dumb enough

6:32

to admit to being a part of it. It was on Glenn Beck show in November 2022. Yeah, okay.

6:40

So dumb enough. If you're trying to make this seem like it's relevant to young Americans,

6:51

don't talk about it with Glenn Beck, right? The average age of listener for Glenn Beck is

6:58

probably what? 75? Yeah. Yeah, not exactly hit the youth there. That's not the point, you know,

7:06

that's not really what it's all about. The funding for this and actually the entire

7:13

he gets us campaign was a project of either the servant foundation, if you want to go with the name

7:24

that their spokespeople have been using in the media, or the signatory, if you want the actual

7:33

organization. Oh, why would they use different names like a shell company shell organization?

7:39

It's worse than that, which the signatory. Oh, and part of how I found this was the news article

7:47

on CNN talked about the servant fund or servant foundation. And then I did a

7:55

search for the servant foundation and found the website of the servant foundation, which had a note

8:03

on its website saying, we are not behind the he gets us campaign. That is the signatory

8:14

completely unrelated. So people went on and mentioned the one name because they were actually

8:19

misquoting. No, wrong information. No, this was an intentionally trying to make it less obvious

8:26

who it was. So they're lying. They're using a DBA name in some state without even bothering to get

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the web presence to cover it to make it a little bit less obvious that it's the signatory that's

8:46

behind it. So, okay, is the signal. So, okay, so why though? Because they're best known for

8:51

a donor campaigns, they do to raise money for the Alliance Defending Freedom,

8:58

which the Alliance Defending Freedom is the one who will file lawsuits for anybody who wants to

9:05

do prayers at schools. Okay. Like the old Bremerton coach. Okay. They're the ones who back a lot of

9:14

really bad laws. Okay. So that's the signature. The signatory. The signatory. So they put a

9:25

bunch of money into this camp. This he gets this Jesus campaign puts up a website says, Oh, it was

9:32

not us. No, doing it under a different name. No, the the servant foundation foundation. There is

9:40

another servant foundation. Okay, that's that actually has the website. And they kept on getting

9:47

contacted about this campaign they're running, which they aren't. That wasn't us. That was this

9:53

group, this fake, this different servant foundation that's run by this other foundation. Got it caught

10:01

up. It's a shell game. I would be mad. Wow. You know, you have someplace, something called the

10:09

servant foundation. You make a website, you have this whole thing going and then somebody coops

10:13

that your name and does this. I would I would be suing or something. I bet they are probably trying.

10:21

One Christian foundation suing another Christian foundation is not a thing that happens that often.

10:28

Yeah, until you get media banging down your door, trying to get ahold of you.

10:34

Now, I wouldn't be surprised if the servant foundation has the actual servant foundation has

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asked the signatory for some money to help cover their web hosting. There you go. Boosted traffic,

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that's for sure. Now, the signatory itself is very confusing to figure out what it really is

10:56

because it's a donor advised fund sponsor. I don't even know. Those are English words,

11:07

but when you put them together in that order, I don't know what that means. They make it very,

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also make it very clear that they do not meddle in the activities of the organizations that they

11:22

sponsor. They're very proud of the fact that they don't meddle in the internal workings of any

11:31

of the ministries that they sponsor. In the 22 years that the signatory has existed,

11:39

they've given out over $4 billion in grants. That's impressive. They have a 68% lifetime grant

11:48

flow-through rate, which would mean a 32% overhead cost. Somewhere in the ballpark of $6

11:57

billion in gross revenue over 22 years, it's a lot of money supporting evangelical causes.

12:06

The donor advised fund sponsor part is a little confusing. I think it's intentionally confusing.

12:19

The ministries can set up a fund. Donors get to pick what they support.

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The way it's all worded on their site, it really sounds to me like the donors are not going to be

12:42

meddling in what they're supporting. It's literally just distributing funds.

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They're the financial pass-through, the financial middleman, largely for rich Christians who want

12:56

a little bitch. They want to be able to say where they want their money to go without it being

13:00

traceable on papers to where their money's going. Yeah, well, there we go. No shock there.

13:06

A bunch of Christians who want to support the Alliance Defending Freedom, who do not want to be

13:11

actually directly linkable to the Alliance Defending Freedom, can do that through them.

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That's a big part of what this exists for. He gets us- politicians love it.

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Oh, yeah. He appears to be something different where the signatory created the hit he gets us

13:34

campaign and is fully funding it through donors like David Green.

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They claim that they have no involvement in the working of the campaign.

13:50

Okay, so they're bankrolling it, but have nothing to do with it.

13:54

They set it up and supposedly they set it up. There was a team of creative people who wanted

14:01

to make some videos. So they wrote a blank check and they wrote a check for a hundred billion

14:07

dollars. That's so much money. Wait, 100 billion? That does not sound right. 100 million is what

14:16

you said before. 100 million dollars. You need to hold your pinky up to your mouth. You want

14:24

a million dollars? However, I have also seen the number of two billion that this will be getting

14:33

for the entire campaign. The he gets us website makes it very clear that they are completely

14:42

independent, that they are not left or right. They're not part of a political organization,

14:50

or they are not a political organization, and they're not affiliated with any church or denomination.

14:57

Good old-fashioned evangelicalism that just is. They just are. Okay, they just are.

15:03

They just exist to spread the news about Jesus to people who know enough already.

15:10

Right. Okay. It's not like Americans don't know about Jesus. Realistically, this is the perfect

15:22

the perfect campaign. You create a thing that will get rich church members to give you money,

15:31

because you're going to reach all of these unchurched people. Now, unchurched

15:37

is often a word used for stuff like that, which literally just means anybody who isn't going to

15:43

church. Yeah. You can craft the message to the donors that you're going to be reaching people

15:53

who have never heard about Jesus before, where you're going to get all the unbelievers when all

15:59

you're really promising is to net a particular amount of unchurched people, which this year is a

16:08

very easy thing to do, and generally is pretty easy to do when you find people who get tired

16:17

of the pastor at their evangelical church, and they stop going to church, and then something like

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this comes up, and it prompts them to try a different church. But will it probably the idea?

16:32

It will probably get some backslidden evangelicals to go back to church.

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You know, the particular population I'm thinking about now is in their 50s and 60s.

16:45

Okay. Fair enough. 50s, 60s, and 70s. But that was standard through the 80s and 90s.

16:53

It was every evangelistic series was supposedly to get the convert non-Christians. In practicality,

17:05

it was getting people who stopped going to church. Then I'm back and start paying their

17:10

tithing again. And in particular, it was getting people who had stopped going to church in the last

17:17

six months to three years. These weren't people who were no longer Christian. They were just

17:24

Christians who stopped going to their particular church. Yeah, that sounds much more realistic.

17:30

That's what anything like this has ever really worked been successful at. The number of genuinely

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not Christian people that they can get has always been very, very small.

17:44

Yeah. It is funny that they made a point of saying that they're apolitical, neither left nor right.

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So apparently, that's caused a bit of a problem in the past recent weeks,

18:00

is that the hardcore conservatives who saw these ads were like, well, that's not my Jesus.

18:08

This is too woke. This is woke Jesus. Yep. So they've had to like backslide their campaign.

18:14

The woke Jesus. Try to win those guys back over.

18:18

The woke Jesus from David Green and the people who fund the Alliance Defending Jesus.

18:25

Yeah. Politically, right leaning campaign designed to be to attempt. It is an attempt

18:36

to be appealing to liberals. Yeah. Liberals were like, no, thanks. And the right wingers were like,

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Oh, whoa, wait a second. That's too, that's too liberal for us. And they're stuck with this

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campaign that realistically just pissed off everyone and reached no one. Yeah. So good job,

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guys. Way to flush that money down the toilet. Now, if you've read a news article about it,

19:02

you will, because if you go to their website, you're not going to find it, their main website,

19:11

you will find reference to the Lucean covenant. Right. Now, I, Lauren saw that and wanted me to

19:19

look into it. And I tried looking into it and that got into this huge rabbit trail.

19:25

The links are in the show notes. I think it was New York Times.

19:30

CNN also referenced it. No, maybe it was CNN. It was CNN made somebody, somebody made a

19:35

reference to it. They didn't mention Hobby Lobby, but they did mention this other group saying,

19:39

they're not associated with any church, but they do follow these covenants. And I'm like,

19:43

interesting, I've never heard of these covenants. So I looked at the Wikipedia page and I'm like,

19:47

this is, this is literally a nothing. There's like no information there. Yeah. So I'm like,

19:52

Dustin, what is this? He's like, I've never heard of it. So he looked into it.

19:55

So if you go to the he gets us.com website, you will find no mention of it. It is,

20:05

it is a website that is basically denying any association with anybody other than Jesus.

20:13

Which I mean, that's not sketchy at all. Jesus. If you go to he gets us partners.com,

20:20

that's where you get how churches can join and get members out of this.

20:28

Ah, there we go. Okay. And they have their whole story and you know, they're not trying to rebrand

20:35

Jesus. Even though they are, but they're just, they're just focused on sharing Jesus's openness

20:43

to people that others might have excluded. Yeah. I mean, that's actually a good call out to

20:50

most modern day Christians, right? You guys have excluded a lot of people that would probably

20:56

be going to your churches if you weren't being such dicks about it.

21:03

Then you get to the very bottom of their about page, our beliefs.

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And I'm going to cover the last paragraph of the two paragraphs first.

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First, he gets us as an initiative of servant foundation, a designated 501c3 organization

21:21

with a 100 out of 100 charity navigator rating, which again, but not the one that you were going

21:27

to Google. If you Google servant foundation, and you look for the servant foundation's website,

21:35

you will find not affiliated with he gets us misdirected, which means, yeah, there is

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a 501c3 organization created specifically to be a shell company to distance themselves from

21:54

the alliance defending freedom and other lobbying groups.

22:00

Yeah, Christian right, right wing Christian nationalist lobbying groups.

22:05

But so our beliefs, he gets us as chosen not to have our own separate statement of beliefs,

22:10

each participating church slash ministry will typically have its own language,

22:16

which is a good way to not exclude anybody on accident.

22:20

Meanwhile, we generally recognize the loose and covenant as reflected as reflective of the

22:26

spirit and intent of this movement and churches that partner with explorers from he gets us a firm,

22:35

the loose and covenant. Very strangely worded.

22:39

That was not grammatically correct.

22:42

No, churches that partner with explorers from he gets us.

22:48

What? Explain.

22:50

A firm the loose and covenant.

22:53

Okay. Okay, explorers from, oh, wow, it's just like, yeah, way to jumble up those words.

22:59

Anyway, but the. To which to me sounds also like it is that was intentionally an intentional grammatical error

23:07

to be even more wishy washy.

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Yeah. And for greater obfuscation, which the whole thing,

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when you try to look into what's behind this, they've done everything they can to obscure

23:22

who's behind it. Because that's what you do when you don't have nothing to hide.

23:27

So yeah, so the loose and covenant.

23:29

It was a July, 1974 religious manifesto.

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By the way, if the word manifesto is in it, it doesn't end well for anybody.

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Except for the humanist manifesto. They should not have called it a manifesto.

23:46

I'm sorry. All I imagine is feces or blood riding on the wall of some crazy person's basement.

23:53

Okay. Okay, Ted Krugacinski really, really messed up.

24:00

The word manifesto. I know. It's just got this colloquial 17 minutes.

24:05

It was fine until the Oklahoma City bombing.

24:08

Yeah. It hasn't aged well.

24:11

It has not aged well. Anyway, yes. Okay.

24:15

So it was a conference in Lausanne, Switzerland.

24:19

That sounds nice. Where 2300 evangelicals from all over the world, at least 150 countries.

24:29

Well, they use the word nations. 150 nations, which that is carefully selected language.

24:40

That's the difference for the country and a nation. It depends on how you define each.

24:47

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

24:49

Technically, a nation is a group of people.

24:53

A country is a region of land.

24:57

Okay. Nation's really simple, but nation states are what most

25:03

quote unquote countries or nations are.

25:05

Okay. But even within the US, we have tribal nations.

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We've got other things that we would.

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Okay. Yeah. Got it. It's a way to boost your numbers.

25:15

So saying more than 150 nations, which that's a way to make it sound like somebody from

25:21

every UN member state was present when that's not what they not the case at all.

25:29

If you had somebody from England, someone from Scotland, somebody from Wales, somebody from

25:36

Northern Ireland, somebody from the island of man, there's five nations represented.

25:42

Got it. If you've got somebody from the Cherokee nation and the Hopi nation and the United States

25:49

and the Sioux nation, there's four nations.

25:54

That's an intentional usage of a vague word to make the number look more important.

26:02

Okay. Prorogative.

26:05

Yes. I've read the covenant.

26:10

It's land. And okay.

26:13

So Eric, the conference was organized and directed by Billy Graham.

26:21

Oh, that's right. Billy Graham. I haven't heard that one thrown out in a while.

26:25

And the covenant was written by a committee chaired by John Stott.

26:30

That one I'm not familiar with. I am.

26:33

I have read at least one of his books. He was a British theologian who was an evangelical who advocated for staying in the Church of England.

26:46

He was the main leader of evangelicals within the Church of England.

26:51

Because evangelicalism is a concept of the second great awakening in the United States.

27:00

Yeah, that's not seen in the Church of England.

27:03

1820s US, it grew slowly, very slowly through the 1800s.

27:11

It continued to grow slowly through the first half of the 1900s.

27:17

It wasn't until about the 1970s that it really started to grow within any Christian churches.

27:27

And evangelicalism has never been a church.

27:30

No, it's more just a type of religiosity.

27:36

Are you spreading the word or are you not?

27:39

Are you born into the word? Are you?

27:42

Well, so, okay, to be a adherent to the Lucent covenant, for one, you can't be Calvinist.

27:52

You have to believe that you can choose to be a Christian.

27:57

That is actually a large part of what evangelicals were trying to push that the evangelical movement

28:06

was the opposite of, is, and most Baptist churches over the last 150 years

28:18

switched from Reformed theology or Calvinism or Determinism to Free Will Theology.

28:26

If you look at Baptist prior to 1800, they are 100% deterministic.

28:33

By 1950, 90% of Baptists are Free Will.

28:39

That is something that I just finally wrapped my head around last week.

28:44

Oh, okay. It had been bothering me for a while.

28:48

When did Baptists become Free Will? Okay, it was before my lifetime, but still, as somebody with a minor,

28:55

major in theology and minor in history, that's kind of important.

29:00

That was a thing that I didn't learn, and a particular gap in my knowledge.

29:08

There are still Baptists who are deterministic.

29:13

Most of those are Reformed Baptists or various other types of Baptists,

29:19

because there's like 20 different types of Baptists. Southern Baptists and independent Baptists

29:25

are virtually all Free Will. That is the vast majority of Baptists you'll find around the US or probably elsewhere in the world.

29:35

They're the evangelicals. The Methodist Church just had a schism where the evangelical half of the Methodist Church

29:45

split from the not evangelical rest of the Church.

29:52

The impetus for that split was overordaining married gay clergy.

29:58

The more liberal Methodists didn't have any problem with it.

30:02

The evangelicals all did. And that environment is the difference between the liberal Methodists and the conservative Methodists.

30:10

Yeah, I mean, that's a line that everybody pretty much is familiar with.

30:14

Conservative and evangelical are synonymous at this point.

30:20

The Episcopal Church in the United States and to a lesser point, the Anglican Church around

30:27

the world, but not really in England, went through a schism about 20 years ago

30:35

over the same issue. The conservative evangelical members of the Church were not comfortable

30:43

with gay bishops and split the Church over it.

30:48

So that's so funny because the idea of spreading the word of your religion to convert.

30:57

Why is that tied so closely with what we have come to conclude is the more conservative

31:05

stance of being anti-homosexual, um, tending towards misogynistic and overall more liberal?

31:16

Why did those two, why did that pair up when it seems to me like the idea of being an evangelical

31:24

has nothing to do with whether or not you who doesn't matter who you sleep with,

31:28

but you can't be like you cannot be a gay person who goes out and spreads the word

31:36

because you'll be driven out of your house and home in church.

31:41

It's just odd to me that this line has developed.

31:45

This was something that got a lot of study in the 70s and 80s to find, you know, continues to

31:53

get some study less so now, but it was looking into what churches are growing and what churches

32:00

are dying and what they found was the churches where it's easy aren't doing well.

32:08

The churches that are hard are gaining members.

32:12

That's what she said. Sorry.

32:14

There was a particular point in the 90s where late 90s, early 2000s,

32:19

where there were only three denominations that were growing in the United States.

32:27

They were going to be the more conservative, the more.

32:29

It was Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormons.

32:33

Okay. The ones who were dying the fastest were the most liberal.

32:39

Because those people decided to stop going to church altogether.

32:42

Yep. Okay. And if you are like we've already discussed, if you are trying to recruit members using

32:54

evangelistic methods, the basic cell is you are a sinner, you will burn in hell or in the Adventist

33:10

version. That part of the cell doesn't quite work in the Adventist church.

33:17

It's going to get really, really bad. It has nothing to do with you personally, but it's just things are going to get really bad.

33:23

And we have the solution for that.

33:26

And if you are okay with everything that is accepted by the general society,

33:35

then there is nothing you can call out as sin.

33:38

Oh, okay. Yeah.

33:40

You can't tell people they're broken and that you have the fix if they generally are okay

33:45

with the broken parts. Yep. Yes, prohibition, sorry.

33:50

With prohibition, the prohibition movement prior to actual prohibition, a large effort for

33:59

for the people called out as sinners by evangelists would have been drunkards.

34:03

I'm sure they kept up with that during prohibition as well, because alcohol sales did not go down.

34:10

Yeah. But they'll pick whatever is the thing that they can get away with picking.

34:16

Whatever the current fashionable sin is.

34:19

And right now that trans is so hot right now.

34:23

Yeah. Yeah, okay.

34:27

Okay, so that was quite the rabbit trail into evangelicalism, which is awesome.

34:31

Um, well, evangelicalism actually sucks, but the loose,

34:35

loose and covenant is viewed as the defining thing of evangelicalism,

34:43

at least by everybody who has accepted the loose and covenant.

34:46

At least anybody's ever heard of it to be even knows what it is.

34:52

And it's, it's basically it starts with repenting for not working with other Christians to spread

34:59

Jesus's message and pledging that you'll do better.

35:03

Okay, so they're trying to, I guess, unify for the cause.

35:08

Yeah. Yeah, okay. I can see that.

35:11

Trying to unify all evangelicals throughout all the different churches,

35:15

to all work to spread God's word, so that eventually everybody will hear the message.

35:22

Because according to some religions, it doesn't matter whether or not you convert as long as you

35:26

have heard. Yeah, you can choose not to convert, but as long as you've heard the message,

35:31

that clears away for the second coming. That's, that's the only goal.

35:34

Yeah. There you go. Superbowl ad just covered a bunch.

35:38

People who've already heard about it. But anyway, it was an interesting rabbit trail.

35:43

Oh, yeah. I'm sure I am. How much of that did you get from the Wikipedia page versus like the, the

35:50

the Wikipedia page is four paragraphs. I mean, it was like, it was weak.

35:57

I got virtually none of this from the media page.

36:00

That has been watched. I don't know how many people have edited that thing, but anybody who has put like,

36:06

there's, there's no, there's no information.

36:08

And that to me is so suspicious.

36:10

Like I saw that and I was like, wait, there's this whole like religious movement.

36:14

And it's, there's like a holy couple paragraphs about it.

36:17

This has been edited.

36:20

Okay. So it got a lot of edits.

36:24

March 24, 2022 and June 15, 2022, which would have been around the time that they were starting.

36:32

The he gets us campaign initially.

36:35

And this is why you need to check your sources and not use Wikipedia.

36:38

Well, well, at least not exclusively exclusively.

36:42

Yeah. It's just, I thought that was like, huh, this is suspiciously blank.

36:45

I'm going to give this to Dustin. Yeah.

36:47

Hey, give him research. All right.

36:49

And we have one news story that I'm wanting to cover today.

36:53

Okay. There was another news story that I saw that will bring back a topic that I've tried to record

36:59

a couple times now, but that is still to come.

37:04

As we all know, state legislative bills are terrible.

37:18

Yeah, they are. They are horrible.

37:21

There's just a mess. It's fun to watch.

37:23

They are the test tube of democracy.

37:27

And fortunately, most of them get dumped down the drain.

37:30

Yeah. Yeah, I'm really hoping this bill from Florida State Representative Alex Andrade

37:37

building off of a suggestion from Governor Ron DeSantis

37:43

would make it so that you can sue journalists publications or social media users

37:51

for defamation. If they say that you discriminated against somebody or said something discriminatory,

37:59

when you did that because of sincerely held religious beliefs.

38:05

Oh boy. So if you just discriminate based on sincerely held religious beliefs,

38:10

which you can basically say about anything, then you can sue or get sued.

38:17

Sorry. Because I mean, what discriminatory things are not tied to religion in some way?

38:23

Basically, half of the episodes I have ever recorded would be grounds for lawsuits in Florida

38:32

if this were to pass, which is the point, right?

38:36

I mean, half they would lose their politicians.

38:40

They would lose everything. It's not just journalist bloggers and whatnot.

38:43

They would lose everybody because everybody posts every thought that they have on Twitter.

38:50

Now, here is the unfortunate thing.

38:52

If you produce stuff on the internet, it is available everywhere,

38:59

and you can be sued anywhere it's available in state court.

39:05

So there is nothing to say.

39:10

So any blogger, podcaster, social media account, social media account holder,

39:18

and definitely the actual journalistic organizations could be sued in Florida state court.

39:24

Anywhere, no matter where they are. And having to respond to that, if you don't have a organization with a large liability

39:34

policy is impossible.

39:40

So it sounds to me like Florida would rack up tons of lawsuits.

39:44

And then let's say somebody who's us in Florida, and we would just respond saying no.

39:51

How many years would it take for them to actually get through that list of all the people that

39:55

they've just sued to actually go after people?

40:00

They would never do it. They would never be able to get through it.

40:03

I'm sure the Alliance Defending Freedom would help them out with a lot of those cases.

40:07

Maybe and keep working them. Probably the point, though, is this is the religious slap law.

40:15

Yes, it's not about the actual lawsuits.

40:19

It's about threatening the slap suit to demure people and keep them from saying

40:24

nasty things about the scientists. It's literally you set up a law that makes it so that somebody can threaten to sue.

40:32

So instead of us actually getting sued, we would get a letter from a lawyer saying,

40:39

you must take down this episode, or you must end your podcast, or we will sue.

40:46

If I were given the choice between deleting the podcast and having to respond to a lawsuit in Florida,

40:56

there is no real question there.

40:59

Financially, there's no way I could handle a cross-country.

41:06

Well, there's no way we could handle a lawsuit.

41:08

It couldn't handle a lawsuit anywhere. Now, fortunately, so far, nobody has really gone after a small podcast.

41:19

Steve novella has gotten sued for things he said on the skeptic-guided universe.

41:24

They also named his employer Yale.

41:26

And he has a large enough podcast, he was able to raise enough money to actually

41:34

between the parties they were able to defeat that suit.

41:40

Small podcasts don't get sued because there's no money.

41:43

There's no money in it. It's simply about shutting people down.

41:47

This could change all of that. Yep, which is why it will get shut down.

41:53

That's not going to get anywhere. Hopefully, but we all know how DeSantis has been.

41:59

Yeah. Catering lately. All right, so on that note, we have no new feedback, no new patrons.

42:08

If you want to contact us, you can use the feedback form at htotw.com slash contact.

42:15

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42:20

Or you can use the Speakpipe button on the website.

42:22

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42:28

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42:31

And you can find the links at htotw.com slash donate.

42:36

Lauren, thank you so much. Yay!

42:39

And until next time, remember, not all those who wander are lost.

42:43

Shh!