Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 719 | Christians v. the State of Colorado… Again

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed.

Starting point is 00:00:33 You can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Religious Liberty is on the line once again in a Supreme Court case that is being argued right now before SCOTUS 303 creative via Alinas. This is a Christian who is just trying to represent her values in the workplace. This is a case to watch and to understand. So we will be discussing that today. Also, some interesting, interesting components that I missed yesterday from this whole Kanye story, some theological stuff, some cultish stuff. And so we will be

Starting point is 00:01:12 discussing that. And then I will also be touching on some interesting and very sad, disturbing aspects of the story of the little girl in Texas who was murdered by a FedEx driver. I have some questions and some recommendations for the state of Texas. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com and use promo code Alley. That's American Meat delivered. Go to good ranchers.com promo code All right, guys. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so much to talk about today before we get into it. Remember that we have amazing merch up for 20 percent off using promo code Alley when you go to shopblazmedia.com slash Alley. It's actually promo code Alley 20. And we will link it in the description of this episode. Also, I know that the large

Starting point is 00:02:13 in the green, a thrill of hope sweatshirt that you can see if you're watching on YouTube, is sold out. And I don't know when that's going to be coming back. It makes me very sad because that is the most popular item that we have, but because I know a lot of you want a large in that I asked you which color you would rather have or you want in addition to the one, the white one that we have. And most of you said navy. And so I think we're going to put up a navy crew neck sweatshirt with that design on the back in a size large so you can get it. I know it says on the website that it might take a week for you to get your sweatshirt. People are getting it in like 48 hours. So you'll have plenty of time to wear it before Christmas and of course you can get it after Christmas too. Relatable Bros.

Starting point is 00:03:01 Get your wife some merch from Relatable. She'll be really happy. Also speaking of that, we can take down the graphic. Speaking of that, we put up a poll on YouTube asking you guys what you would like to be called. I mean, four and a half years later, I figured we should finally come up with something for listeners. And most of you, I think the result, of the poll were, I think it was Related Bells. Is that correct? Can anyone tell me? 74 to 26 Related Bells. So it was Related Bells versus Related Gals. Related Bells just kind of seems obvious. It dawned on me the other day, even though I kind of liked Related Gals better, but the people have spoken Related Bells and Related Bros. So here we are, Related Bros. Get the Relatable

Starting point is 00:03:53 about in your life some relatable merch for Christmas. She'll be happy that you did. All right. Also, if you love this podcast, leave us a five-star review wherever you listen and subscribe on YouTube. If you haven't already. And it's end of year. And so I just kind of like to do an audit of the podcast. The podcast has grown so much since last year looking at our numbers. But I always want to make sure that we are growing and that we are improving. I want to make sure that I am serving my audience, the Related Bells and the Related Bros out there as best as I possibly can that I am giving you the content that you are looking for specifically when you come to my show. Relatable is very unique. As far as conservative podcasts go, there's not another show out there that

Starting point is 00:04:39 interweaves theology and politics in culture is heavily as we do. There are a lot of conservative politics or conservative shows that will talk about politics. And, and will sometimes bring theology or God into it. There are a lot of Christian shows out there that will sometimes bring politics into it and culture wars into it. But from the beginning, I have really tried to have this be kind of a worldview podcast from a specifically, uniquely, female Christian, conservative perspective. And the reason why it's called relatable is because I am navigating the chaos and the craziness

Starting point is 00:05:20 and the confusion of this world, just like all of you, simply by trying my best, of course, and perfectly to use the Word of God as our guide to make sense of all of it. And what I love to hear from y'all is that it sounds like I'm sitting down and that we're having a meal or that we're having a cup of coffee and that we're just talking about the things that matter. That's what I've always wanted this show to be. And actually in 2023, we already have some plans to make it even. more that, if that makes sense, we're going to have some set plans, some set changes, rather, and a few things coming down the pipeline that I'm excited about. But as far as content goes,

Starting point is 00:06:02 I would love feedback from you guys. You can tell me in the YouTube comments, you can send me a message on Instagram, you can send us an email and just say, hey, I really like when you do these kinds of episodes, or here's what I find so unique about relatable that I wish you did more. I wish you did more of this. I wish you did less of this. I really, really want to ensure that we are always growing and always improving this in service to you guys. You guys are ultimately my executive producers and I want to produce things of value for you. And so I don't take it for granted at all that you guys are taking about an hour out of your day where you could be doing a million other things to listen to this show.

Starting point is 00:06:45 And that means so much to me. So just to ensure that it is still worth your while, Always, please give me some feedback. I would love to hear it. Maybe I'll post. I might post like a quiz, not a quiz, but a survey on Instagram. And you guys can respond to that. It would help us out. All right. Before we get into some of the things today, I did just want to do a follow up quickly on yesterday's episode that we did Breaking Down Kanye West Breakdown. One of the things that he posted was, as I explained, a swastika within a star of David. It was a picture of what looked like a design of that in Adobe Photoshop that he posted. That ultimately is what got him kicked off Twitter.

Starting point is 00:07:27 Now, some of you have pointed out to me something that I did not realize that the symbol that was posted is not something that Kanye West created, but it is actually the symbol of a UFO-based religious movement called the Raylan movement, intelligent design for atheists. Now, this is not something that I don't think that I have ever heard of this before, but. But I looked it up and it was true. And actually Snopes had covered it. So I don't always rely on Snopes because I do think that they have a particular slant. But when it comes to things like this, I think they're giving pretty interesting information.

Starting point is 00:08:04 So they rate this claim true. The tweet that got Yay suspended for incitement of violence actually contained a symbol associated with the UFO-focused religion known as the International Ralean movement. Yay did post the symbol of a UFO-based religious movement. containing both a swastika and a star of David, but he did so without any additional context, just hours after praising Adolf Hitler. So that is true. If you listen to yesterday's episode, he did indeed say that he loves Hitler when he was on Alex Jones's show. On December 1st, 2022, yay, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, had his Twitter account suspended for what CEO Elon Musk described as a violation of Twitter's policies. So we explained that yesterday. Here's

Starting point is 00:08:49 how Snopes describes the Aralian movement. It's a new religious movement based on a belief in UFOs in extraterrestrial life. The movement was founded in 1976. In France, so many weird things happened in the 60s and 70s in France. Thanks a lot to the French. That's just an evergreen statement right there. An evergreen sarcastic statement. Thanks a lot to the French and to the German for importing a lot of your crazy sexual ideas in the 60s and 70s.

Starting point is 00:09:19 This is not a sexual idea, but it's a weird, kooky religious movement that, of course, is because of the French in the 1970s. So Claude Vorilhomme, born in France, claims that he encountered extraterrestrial beings on the 13th of December in 1973 and received a message for humanity stating that humanoid extraterrestrials called Elohim came to Earth 25 years ago and created life with their ability to control human DNA. Now, this is not that different from a conversation.

Starting point is 00:09:49 that we recently had with the Nephilim, but about the nephalum, not with them. I have never talked to them. Voral Hone says that he was told that humans were implanted on earth by the Elohim, created in laboratories from the Elohim's DNA. The Elohim gave Voral Hone the name Rail, who brings the light of Elohim, or messenger of the Elohim, and appointed him as their ambassador. So that's interesting. His task is to warn mankind that enter the age of the apocalypse after the first nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. Humanity was then at a point where it had to decide whether to destroy itself in a nuclear war or learn to live together peacefully. So I don't really know why, but they decided to trademark this symbol of the swastika within the,

Starting point is 00:10:49 the star of David. Now, here is an interesting part of all of this. Well, first of all, I do think it's interesting just to say that Elohim is a Hebrew word that denotes God or a God. So it's interesting that they took a Hebrew word. They put a swastika in the star of David. It's all very interesting. So this actually, I wish I had known this yesterday because this makes a lot of lot doesn't make sense, but it makes a lot of sense with what Kanye West, with what I said he posted on Instagram about Elon Musk being a hybrid and thinking that he is not fully human, but that he is like this super intelligent hybrid. And another part of this, because that's part of what Raylian believes that some of these people exist. One of the Raylian leaders, really,

Starting point is 00:11:49 recently praised Elon Musk or said something positive about Elon Musk. And also people are linking this Raylian movement with Elon Musk because of Elon's participation in the neuralink thing, which is really like a microchip that is implanted in someone's brain. Of course, they say that it can help with all different kinds of neurological problems. But Elon Musk is a big backer. of this. He is a big part of this. And so some people are saying that Kanye West was like communicating about Elon Musk being a part of this like Ralean movement and that he is some kind of like extraterrestrial hybrid, I guess. And also I think that he is trying to say, I told you I'm not an interpreter of Kanye West, but I think he's saying that when he posted the Raylian symbol.

Starting point is 00:12:56 And then when he posted a picture, as we said yesterday, of Elon Musk with Ari Emanuel, who is someone who I think Kanye is saying has influence over Elon Musk, who also happens to be Jewish. I think Kanye West is sane. This is my theory. I think he is saying with all of these cryptic messages that some have. the Jewish people, along with this like, Raylian belief of hybrids and not fully human elites, have some sort of powerful cabal to, I don't know what, but I guess to negatively impact people like Kanye West.

Starting point is 00:13:41 Oh, so I just wanted to piece that together. As I said yesterday, there are so many, many layers to this story. And there's actually so much theology, too. I mentioned yesterday, the Black Hebrew Israelites, the nation of Islam, how they also claim to be God's real chosen people and how the white Jews are just frauds. But there's another theological aspect to this. James Cohn, Black Liberation Theology, it's very interesting. If you look at almost all black left-wing theology, there is like an anti-Jewish part of it. And I'm not saying that's exclusive to black liberal theology. There are certainly different parts of all different kinds of theology that have

Starting point is 00:14:28 like an anti-Jewish strain in them. But it's interesting. Like Nation of Islam, black Hebrew, Israelites. And then you have James Cohn who said something that I think is similar to what Kanye West says when he says that black people are the real Jews. James Cohn argued, he says, Jesus is black because he was Jewish. So James Cohn, the father of black liberation theology, a very far left Marxist. And I mean that in the literal sense, theologian, false teacher, who did not believe in the saving grace of the gospel, who also said that anyone who believes in a theology of liberation is his brother, including Malcolm X, so including Muslims.

Starting point is 00:15:17 He did not believe that Jesus was the only way truth in the life. And yet still, professing Christians follow some teachings of James Cohn. He said that Jesus was, is black because he was Jewish. And what he meant by that was that Jesus says, like, oppression as a Jewish person parallels to the oppression of black people in the present day. And so he basically says that like Judaism and blackness is interchangeable with oppression. And so the Jewish identity is not really, according to James Cohn, about true ethnicity or even about the fulfillment of prophecies or about a particular chosen people, but it's just about an identification with oppression. And so that kind of goes along with something that Kanye West is.

Starting point is 00:16:12 recently said when he said black people are the real Jews. In a sense, there are some people who ascribe to black liberation theology who believe that in the sense of oppression, that black people are the quote unquote real Jews. So I doubt that Kanye realizes where all of his statements are coming from, but a lot of them do come from different forms of black supremacist theology, whether it's masquerading as Christianity, like liberation theology, whether it looks like some form of Islam, through nation of Islam, whether it looks through some perversion of Judaism through the Black Hebrew Israelites. These are all kind of different doctrines that assert that black people today, because of their oppression or God's real chosen, oppressed people.

Starting point is 00:17:06 And so, like, this, again, it doesn't happen in a vacuum. There is a lot of theology, a lot of religion, a lot of worldview actually at play here. And I'm sure a lot of pieces that I don't even fully understand. Anyway, I didn't even plan to follow up on that, but I just thought that those were interesting pieces. And I know it's easy to just kind of dismiss it as like, well, these are the rantings of a person with suffering from bipolar disorder. And I think that that is true. I think that is true. I think it doesn't. seem like this was some kind of manic episode. But like there are a lot of pieces here. I think for people to think through and to understand like how Kanye came to the egregious conclusions and statements that he has come to. Hey, this is Steve Deast. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity and reality itself. On the Steve Day Show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the

Starting point is 00:18:19 hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this Steve Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Okay, let's talk about this really important. story about 303 creative. So there is a Supreme Court case right now, and it's titled 303 Creative v. Alinas. And this is how the Alliance Defending Freedom, the group of attorneys that is defending 303 creative, this is how they describe this case that is ongoing right now.

Starting point is 00:19:10 They're in front of the Supreme Court arguing in defense of Lori Smith, the owner of. of 303 creative. Smith specializes in graphic and website design and loves to visually convey messages in every site she creates. She left the corporate design world to start her own small business in 2012 so she could use her skills to promote causes consistent with her beliefs and close to her heart, such as supporting children with disabilities, the beauty of marriage, overseas missions, animal shelters, and veterans. She was excited to expand her portfolio to create websites that celebrate marriage between a man and a woman. But Colorado made clear she's not welcome in that space. A Colorado law is censoring what she wants to say and requiring her

Starting point is 00:19:51 to create designs that violate her beliefs about marriage. She enjoys working with people from all walks of life, but like most artists, can't promote every message. Her decisions about which projects to design are based on what message she's being asked to express, not who requests it. After realizing that Colorado was censoring her and after seeing Colorado use the same law to punish masterpiece cake shop owner, Jack Phillips, she challenged the law to protect her freedom and her art studio. So this is another case of the state of Colorado. What has become a very liberal state, thanks to the migration from blue states into what used to be a solidly red state, Colorado.

Starting point is 00:20:32 The activists who are in the government, they are using their power to crush the speech and the expression of the beliefs of Christians. This is the same thing that they did to Jack Phillips. You'll remember Jack Phillips was the cake shop owner who said he was not going to bake a cake for the marriage, so-called marriage, between two men. He said, I'll bake you anything else. He's not refusing to serve them. But he is saying, I'm not going to bake you that specific cake because that violates

Starting point is 00:21:10 my conscience. End of story. And any sane people would have said, you know what, that's fine. There are a lot of different cake shops around here. We'll be happy to go somewhere else. Thanks for your time. They didn't. Like psychopaths, like activists, like the malignant cancer that leftism is, they decided to sue him. They decided to try to ruin his life. They decided to attack him and to drag him through court and to suck up all of his time and resources with lawyers and with litigation trying to force him to bake them a cake that I guarantee they didn't even want anymore in order to make a point. And the state of Colorado and the liberal activists in the state of Colorado were more than happy to oblige. And the Supreme Court found that the

Starting point is 00:22:02 lower courts had so mistreated Jack Phillips when he was in court that that alone, that his treatment in court of how they talked to him, of how they compared his beliefs about marriage to segregation and to Naziism, that that alone was a violation of his rights. And so the ruling on the masterpiece cake shop, it was not broad enough to say, hey, you know what, this is protected speech and he should be able to say and do whatever he wants. The state cannot compel him to create a cake that he doesn't want to create. It was a very narrow ruling. And so now we've got another designer, another artist in the state of Colorado going back to the Supreme Court. hoping for an even better ruling that will truly protect the First Amendment rights of the First Amendment rights of people, of individuals, of business owners.

Starting point is 00:23:11 So here's how CBS is reporting this. The Supreme Court's conservative block appeared sympathetic Monday to a Colorado graphic designer who argues a state law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation violates her free speech rights by forcing her to express a message that conflicts with her. closely held religious beliefs. I kind of hate the adjective that is so often used closely held religious beliefs. How are we measuring that? If she has loosely held religious beliefs or those religious beliefs that are not protected under the Constitution, if she's kind of wishy-washy on her beliefs, if she only reads the Bible every other week, only goes to church once a month, but she still doesn't want to create websites that are celebrating gay unions or transgender does that mean that that's not protected under the First Amendment?

Starting point is 00:24:01 So I hate, I've probably said it before and I've stopped now saying sincerely held or sincere beliefs or closely held religious beliefs. It is not up to the Constitution, up to a lawyer, up to a judge to determine whether someone holds their theology firmly enough for their religious beliefs and religious expression to be protected. I don't care if she is deconstructing right now. Like if she believes that this violates her conscience, if it does violate her conscience, if she doesn't want to do it, the state should not be able to compel her to say or express something that she does not want to say or express. So it doesn't surprise me the CBS describes closely held religious beliefs.

Starting point is 00:24:46 I don't care if they're closely held. I don't care if they're held a mile away. They are her religious beliefs and therefore they should be protected, period. You have a First Amendment right to express your religious beliefs, to say what you want to say without the state forcing you to say something or forcing you to express or to not express those religious beliefs. And that right supersedes any desire that a person may have to get a certain cake or to have a certain person design a certain website. You don't have a constitutional right to that. During oral arguments, CBS says in the case known as 303 creative LLC v. Alinas, the court seemed to move closer to resolving a question it is left unanswered since 2018 when it narrowly ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding.

Starting point is 00:25:42 Whether states like Colorado can in applying their anti-discrimination laws compel an artist to express a message they disagree with. With the court's conservative majority appeared prepared to find that Colorado cannot force web design Lori Smith to create websites for same-sex weddings. Several recognize that there are differences between artists who are conveying a message in vendors selling goods and services in the marketplace. The case comes down to a fairly narrow question of how do you characterize website designers? Are they more like the restaurants and the jewelers and the tailors?

Starting point is 00:26:14 Or are they more like publishing houses and other free speech analogs that are raised on the other side? Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked. Justice Amy Coney-Barritt told Kristen Wagner, who, argued the case on behalf of Smith that she was on strongest ground when talking about the uniqueness of the websites Smith makes and work that goes into creating them. It's about the message, Barrett said, after posing a hypothetical scenario to Wagner, focused on whether Smith would design a site for heterosexual couple getting married after, uh, divorcing other people. Wagner said

Starting point is 00:26:45 Smith likely would not. Well, I don't even like that hypothetical. I don't, I'm sorry, I don't even really like that hypothetical because it's not the same thing. There are a thousand different scenarios that could justify, maybe not a thousand different scenarios, but there are some scenarios that could justify a man and a woman divorcing, whether it was for sexual immorality or whether it was for abuse and say that woman, she went to go marry someone else. And it was in line with the biblical commands about marriage and divorce, and Lori Smith wanted to make a website for them. Okay.

Starting point is 00:27:39 And again, like, is the court really judging whether someone's theology is entirely consistent? Like, based on what? To me, I mean, and obviously I don't know as much as Justice Amy Coney Barrett, but doesn't it simply come down to a person's beliefs, a person's religious beliefs in the state not being able to decide what is sincere, what is not, what is an okay expression of that speech. Of course, there are other laws on the books. I think Smith, the employment division, also kind of addressed that, that obviously there are limits to certain kinds of expression and speech. But it's not here. This is not the line that we draw. So I don't

Starting point is 00:28:24 know. I don't know if I really like that hypothetical scenario because I'm not sure if that makes enough of a difference, even if the answer had been, yes, that she would create a website design like that. Smith's stance could violate Colorado's public accommodation law, which prohibits businesses open to the public from refusing service because of sexual orientation and announcing their intent to do so. Smith, in turn, argues that the law violates her first amendment rights since the state is forcing her to express a message she disagrees with. Exactly. Wagner told the court that Smith's speech has been chilled for six years, and she has put on hold plans to expand her business to create custom websites for weddings while her court fight played out. And of course, that is what the left is

Starting point is 00:29:01 activists want. Of course, the people who asked her to design the website could have gone to someone else. There's a million other people. That's remote work, by the way. You could have gone to anyone outside of the state of Colorado. You could have gone to absolutely anyone to design your website, but they dragged her through court. They cost her who knows how much money, who knows how much time, how many resources time that she could have been spent not just building her business, but with her family, simply at peace. Because, as I have said before, when leftists say live and let live, they are only talking about you letting them live.

Starting point is 00:29:34 They're not talking about the other way around. They don't want to leave you alone. They don't really care about your sincerely held religious beliefs. They do not really care about the separation of church and state when it comes to the state involving themselves in the affairs of the church or in the lives of Christians. They believe in separation of church and state, meaning that Christians should not allow their worldview to have a say in politics. That's what they mean when they scream separation of church and state, that Christians,

Starting point is 00:30:05 you shouldn't vote in accordance to your conscience. You should simply allow the legal slaughter of children up until nine months paid for by the taxpayer. Christian, you shouldn't allow your worldview to determine how. you vote on things like marriage or sexuality or gender or anything like that. Progressives, secular progressives, think that they are the only ones who can allow their worldview into the public dialogue, into public policy, into curriculum. They think that their worldview is the one that should dominate and that if you speak up about your worldview, if you try to represent your faith, your values at your business,

Starting point is 00:30:46 at school, at the voting booth, then you're a Christo-Feing. fascist bigot. It's all a manipulation game. It's projection. They just want to be the ones in charge. And they don't believe, just like all progressives for all of time, they don't actually believe in dissent. They talk about democracy. They talk about freedom. They don't actually believe in these things. Not the activist class. Not saying everyone who votes Democrat believes this. But I'm talking about the leftists who control the party, who are in power, the activists who run a lot of these organizations, they do not believe in your religious liberty. They do not believe in your free speech. They do not believe in live and let live. They do not really believe in

Starting point is 00:31:31 separation of church and state. They very much want the state at their behalf to be involved in your schooling of your children in the doctrines that you're. church teaches and what you're allowed to say and how you conduct your business, just look at this case, look at the Jack Phillips case, and see that they believe that it is worth it to ruin your life until they can compel you to go along with their sexual preferences, not just go along with it, but to celebrate it and to compromise every belief that you have until you comply with what they believe in how they live. So just remember, live and let live was a lie, a manipulation tactic to make you shut up.

Starting point is 00:32:22 And to make you believe that speaking up about what you believe in and voting in accordance to your values is bigotry. That you, only you, conservative Christian, you have to be the one to compartmentalize your faith. Secular progressives never do. They allow it to inform corporate policy. Again, curriculum, their vote, the laws that they might be a part of drafting. They allow their moral compass, their worldview, to infuse every sphere that they occupy. But you, conservative Christian, you apparently are the only one who is supposed to check your worldview at the door. Because if you even speak up about what you believe in, if you even try to represent your

Starting point is 00:33:07 morality and your values in the public, well, that's imposition. That's bigotry. That's fascism. That's theocracy. That's Christian nationalism. Scary. Don't buy it. Don't buy it.

Starting point is 00:33:23 If you believe, as I've said many times, that God created the heavens in the earth, that is a total statement. That means you believe he created all of it. He is the authority over all of it. And we as ambassadors of that truth have no choice, no logical. choice, no theological choice other than to live that out, to act like it, to vote like it, to speak like it, to think like it. Of course, how you conduct your business must be in alignment with what you know God's word says is good and right and true. Of course it must. Of course,

Starting point is 00:33:53 that must be how you vote. Of course, that must be how you teach. Of course, that must be how you raise your kids. Of course, we don't believe that the idea, the belief that God is sovereign, that God is the creator, that God is the authority that he made. all of this, that he says what is and what isn't, what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad, what's true and what's false can be compartmentalized? That doesn't even make any sense. It's a manipulation tactic. And some people are paying the price of that tactic.

Starting point is 00:34:23 I mean, with their resources, with their lives. Now, let me keep going with what CBS is saying about this because it's kind of interesting to see the other side or see the other side try to give some kind of argument. the dispute before the Supreme Court pits the First Amendment right to free speech against LGBTQ rights and state laws designed to protect from discrimination, a conflict that the court has been asked to address before but has declined to definitively resolve. And of course, this was always going to be the case going back to Obergefell. Justice Thomas said that. Justice Thomas said in his Obergefell dissent, which said that marriage between two men or two women is a legal right. He said there is going to. be a conflict between religious liberty and between this now invented right of two men or two women to get married. That's going to cause problems in the future. And he, of course, was right. It didn't take long at all.

Starting point is 00:35:24 The complicating fact here is not a hotel. Justice Clarence Thomas said, this is not a restaurant. This is not a riverboat or a train. I'm interested in the intersection of public accommodation law and speech. The court's three liberal justices, Alina Kagan, Katanghi Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor, expressed deep concerns about whether exempting Smith from Colorado's public accommodation law would open the door to businesses denying services on the basis of race, ethnicity, or disability. If the court rules in her favor, Jackson, the newest member of the Supreme Court and the first black female justice,

Starting point is 00:36:01 wondered whether a photographer seeking to depict Christmas scenes from the film It's a Wonderful Life could limit their photography to white children. Sotomayor echoed that premise. What about people who don't believe in interracial marriage and people who believe that disabled people shouldn't get married? They also question Wagner about whether the websites should be considered Smith's speech or that of her clients. I keep looking at all the mockups and all of them relate to what a couple is doing.

Starting point is 00:36:30 I don't understand how is this your story. It's their story, Sotomayor, said, Wagner, who heads the group Alliance of Fending Freedom, replied that the speech is still Smiths, comparing her service to the work of a newspaper editor or ghostwriter. What matters is what the objection is that the speaker is being asked to create. If you don't believe they should be telling their story and what they're asking you to do is to tell their story, then you don't have to do that. Justice Gorsuch argued, though, that it is not the people she has discriminating against, Smith is discriminating against. It is, it's the message that she is

Starting point is 00:37:11 discriminating against. So it's not like if a gay person came to Lori Smith and said, hey, can you please make me a website about Christmas trees that she would say no. She is discriminating based on the message. And so that's the difference here is that she is not discriminating. This is not giving license to people to discriminate against someone to say, you can't come in my business because you are black or because you have a disability. This is not about the people that she is working with. This is about the message that she is being forced to convey. This is about her speech.

Starting point is 00:37:47 This is about her religious expression. So she is not discriminating against people. She is discriminating against messages, which is at the core of the First Amendment that you get to discriminate against which messages you want to say that the state cannot tell you that, okay, if you want to talk, you have to say that two plus two equals five. No free speech means that I don't have to say that. So that's what Gorsuch really gets down to in some of his arguments and his back and forth with the representation from Colorado, Eric Olson. And I think that's a really important distinction. That's why I think the liberal justice's argument really

Starting point is 00:38:27 falls flat, that it is not, it's not the person that she is discriminating against. It is the message that she is not going to celebrate a same-sex union. She's not going to celebrate gender transition surgery or whatever it is. You can't be compelled by the state to say something and to say something that doesn't align with your religious beliefs. And so we're not going to have a decision from the Supreme Court until the end of June on this. I think we know which way the court is going to go, but we don't know exactly what it's going to look like. we don't know exactly what the decision will encompass. Like we already said with Jack Phillips, it was a narrow ruling.

Starting point is 00:39:10 We're hoping for something more broad. With the current makeup of the Supreme Court, I think that we can be encouraged by the possibility of this conclusion. And if there's one good thing, like, okay thing that we have in our country right now as far as policy goes, as far as the government goes, it is the makeup of the Supreme Court. Of course, we saw that with the Dobbs decision, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Starting point is 00:39:41 That's why politics matters so much. It took electing so many different kinds of people over so many decades to get the makeup of the Supreme Court that we have. And that is one of the only things that's really protecting the Constitution right now at all. So thank God for that. And God bless Lori Smith and the attorneys at Alliance defending freedom, them, First Liberty, how they go to bat for those who are simply

Starting point is 00:40:10 trying to live and to speak and to work as Christians in this country. I'm just so thankful for it. Okay, so I don't have as much time again as I wanted to today to talk about all of the things that there are to discuss. But I did just want to mention this terrible story coming out of Texas that I saw that I just thought was so stunning. But I also had so much. many questions about it just to, I don't know, just to make sure that we are being so vigilant as parents, but also to pray for this family. So there was a seven-year-old girl by the name of Athena Strand, who was murdered in the state of Texas. She went missing for several days, and she was murdered by a FedEx driver. And this is how Daily Mail reports it. My princess was taken by a monster.

Starting point is 00:41:09 Texas mother's heartbreaking tribute to daughter seven, who was snatched from driveway killed by FedEx driver. As a woman says she was raped by killer and has been warning about him for four years. So Athena, seven-year-old girl, she was kidnapped apparently from her neighborhood right in front of her house after she had an argument with her stepmother. So she had an argument with her stepmother. She went outside and the FedEx driver took her away. We don't know right now if she was sexually assaulted, but we do know that she was murdered, apparently within an hour after she was taken. And it took several days for investigators to find her body. But man, it is just absolutely devastating. And there are a lot of different aspects to this story.

Starting point is 00:42:00 One, I think it's very odd. And I don't know all the answers to this. I just am saying that there are some questions to ask. I think it's very odd that. a seven-year-old little girl. So we're talking about first grader here, that she had such an argument with her stepmother that she went outside to the point, I guess, where she could be abducted by a FedEx driver without anyone seen or stopping. I just think that that's very odd. Now, maybe there was nothing wrong that went on here. Like maybe she just went outside to play. the stepmother was going in the back room to fold laundry. She didn't see what was going on.

Starting point is 00:42:43 And then when she looked out to check on her, she was gone. As a mother myself, I find that scenario a little bit hard to believe that she would be so ignored for that amount of time that she would have been abducted without anybody noticing. I also think it's hard for me to picture such an argument between a seven-year-old and an adult to where the seven-year-old would storm out, I guess, of the house in the front yard for that long of a period of time without the stepmother saying, or the stepmother saying, no, this is not how things are going. So I think that's devastating. I think that's a strange scenario that I have a very hard time kind of understanding how that went down. also there are so many questions about this sicko of a FedEx driver.

Starting point is 00:43:39 Did he know the family at all? Had he been passing by? Did he know when she was going to be outside? That she was going to be outside with this, was this completely random that he just decided to do this. And really, I mean, what possesses a person to do something like this? I know that crimes like this have always existed. Of course, there has always been the victimization of people, the victimization of children. children are the most vulnerable.

Starting point is 00:44:05 They can't speak up for themselves. They can't defend themselves. They can't physically fend off an attacker. And so that is, of course, why the worst of the worst are always praying on children, whether it's ideologically or whether it's spiritually or whether it's physically. And so we have someone who prayed upon a weak little girl. Again, I don't know how she got into the vehicle. Was she screaming?

Starting point is 00:44:30 I mean, how in the world did that happen without anyone's. seeing it. I just don't understand how that went down. My first thought, and I know that this isn't necessarily proven, and it's not a necessary component of this, because as I said, victimization has always happened. But I just have to wonder, especially because this guy has been accused by another woman of rape several years ago, what role pornography played here? What role violent and the growth and the increase of violent pornography and the violent depiction of the sexual abuse of children what role that played in something like this. It's hard for me to see how this person couldn't have had a very active, a very sick,

Starting point is 00:45:21 a very dark and depraved in violent fantasy life and virtual life that would have led him to something like this. it's hard for me to see how there would not be a correlation there. As we've talked about before, sexual violence, the promotion and the popularization of sexual violence is prominent, even on places like TikTok, even on places like Twitter and Instagram, trends of young girls saying that they want to be choked during sex. I mean, sexual violence is something that is on the rise, thanks to its pervasiveness, it's accessibility on social media.

Starting point is 00:46:02 So I just have to wonder if that played a part here. She was vulnerable in so many different ways because of apparently some kind of fraught relationship within the home, some kind of brokenness going on there, of course, just because of her age and her size and because of this apparently evil monster. Now here's one other thing that I want to say. The death penalty, if he is convicted, is the only. just punishment. It is the only just punishment. It is actually profoundly unjust for him not to get the death penalty. I know that there are a lot of Christians out there who think that they can out

Starting point is 00:46:40 compassion God, that they are more just than God, that they are more loving than God by saying, oh, no, no, we shouldn't inflict the death penalty on anyone. We should just allow someone to stay in prison forever, get three square meals and have food and have shelter, not really have any needs, have security for the rest of their life. No, that's a better alternative to death. Well, I don't think so. And the God of the Bible doesn't think so either. As we've talked about many times, you go all the way back to Genesis 9. This is pre-Israel, pre-civilization, where God says, I made man in my image. I'm paraphrasing Genesis 9.6. I made man in my image. And there for taking man's life away means the death penalty. That is the only just, the only,

Starting point is 00:47:26 sufficient punishment for taking the life purposely, taking the life of an innocent image bearer of God. That's what God says. Yes, there are exceptions in the Bible. God makes exceptions. He makes exceptions for Moses. He makes exceptions for David. But that does not negate the rule, that he lays out in Genesis 9, that he reiterates in ancient Israel, that he also reiterates in the New Testament in Romans 13, people who use verses about vengeance being the Lord's and not taking revenge on us, but allowing the Lord to exact revenge. Well, according to that reasoning, according to that logic, if you're saying that Jesus saying turn the other cheek means that we're not supposed to have, we're not supposed to inflict the death penalty.

Starting point is 00:48:19 According to that reasoning, you're saying that we shouldn't have any enforcement of laws at all. Like if you believe that God warning us against vengeance means that we are not supposed to inflict the death penalty, then why people, why put anyone in prison? Why have any punishment for assault or for rape or for murder at all? of course the death penalty is just god says that it's just in genesis nine he reiterates that in romans 13 the death penalty is the only just punishment in capital murder and so should he be convicted you should absolutely be punished and actually the injustice having to do with the death penalty in this country is that it takes way too long is that it is deferred justice it's deferred justice for the

Starting point is 00:49:09 families. It's deferred justice for this victim. It's deferred justice for the community that was affected by this. It is deferred justice for other victims. I guarantee you it would disincentivize murders if after a swift and fair and impartial trial, we had a quick and a swift execution. Share the gospel with him. Allow him opportunity to repent. That's what I hope. God can save everyone. but God is totally sovereign over that timing. And God's sovereignty over or God's desire for people, salvation does not preclude earthly justice. What he calls justice is the death penalty for capital murder.

Starting point is 00:49:52 If there is any case that deserves the death penalty, it is this. And it is an injustice by the United States of America to not push for the death penalty in cases like this. It would be an injustice by the state of Texas to not push for that. That was one thing that I really appreciate. it about the Trump administration is that they resumed federal executions for some of the most heinous murders that you have ever heard of. That is justice. That is not cruel. That is justice. God calls it justice. And you are not. None of us are more just than God. All right. That's all we

Starting point is 00:50:39 had time for today. Thank you guys so much for listening. We've got lots of good stuff for the rest of the week to. And again, give me feedback on the show. And, what you want to see and prove next year. All right. See you guys back here tomorrow. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country

Starting point is 00:51:04 aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave,

Starting point is 00:51:22 even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 719 | Christians v. the State of Colorado… Again

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