The Daily Signal - How to Challenge Mandated DEI Trainings

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Christian employees can raise religious freedom complaints against mandated diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings if those DEI trainings force an ideology on them or make them less able to live out their faith, a prominent religious liberty lawyer tells “The Daily Signal Podcast.” “There's a lot of push for diversity initiatives and things like that, where you've got to go through these trainings,” Jeremy Dys, special counsel for litigation and communications at the religious freedom law firm First Liberty, says in an interview at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. “Well, a lot of people have genuine religious beliefs that oppose being indoctrinated under those topics.” Dys joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to explain more. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This Black Friday, you've got a whole month to catch all the exclusive offers waiting for you. See your local Nissan dealer or nissan.ca for details. Conditions apply. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, March 11th. I'm Brian Gottstein. Tyler O'Neill sat down with Jeremy Dice, special counsel for litigation and communications at First Liberty. Dice said that Americans have more religious freedom than we realize. Thanks to a few important Supreme Court decisions, Christians and other people of faith can,

for example, file religious freedom challenges against mandated, diversity, equity, and inclusion training. Listen to Tyler's interview with Jeremy Dice right after this. Hi, I'm John Carlo Canaparo. And I'm Zach Smith. And we host Scotus 101. It's a podcast where you'll get a breakdown

of top cases in the highest court in the land. Hear from some of the greatest legal minds. And of course, get a healthy dose of Supreme Court trivia. Want to listen? Find us wherever you get your podcasts or just head toheritage.org slash podcasts. This is Tyler O'Neill. I'm managing editor at The Daily Signal. I'm honored to be joined by Jeremy Dice, who's a senior council at First Liberty Institute. It's great to have you with me.

Thanks so much for having me. So you spoke on a panel this morning at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, and you said that things have never been better. We've never been freer. Maybe like before the left-wing swing in the Supreme Court, but we haven't been freer in our lifetimes. than we are today. Would you unpack that a little bit? Yeah, look, back in the 1970s, the leftovers of the Warren Court made a couple really stupid decisions, really bad decisions. I shouldn't call them stupid. That was wrong. But they're really bad decisions that were out there. And they've been twisted for so many years to restrict religious liberties such that what the founding fathers envisioned for us really became a hollow offering of what is actually in place today. It's just a shadow of what we used to have. Well, those decisions are gone now.

After some cases that we brought to the Supreme Court, at least two of those cases, we took care of of at the Supreme Court in the last five years, they're gone, they're off the books. And so now we have more freedom than we've had in our entire lifetime. I mean, I was born in the late 70s. Those cases governed my entire existence here on this earth. And now we have those freedoms. Now, that's great. We've won cases of the Supreme Court. We've undone these terrible decisions. But now it falls to everyday Americans to actually go out there and take advantage of those freedoms. Unfortunately, we've kind of fallen sort of under a spell of not religious freedom, right? We've gotten used to these oppressions that are out there and just assume that's the way it's supposed to be.

In fact, I still talk to city attorneys and school board attorneys that still believe that those cases are good law and I've got to remind them there's a little red flag next to them in West law. You can't use those cases anymore. And so it falls to us as citizens. We've gone and won the cases of the Supreme Court. Now it's your job to go and take advantage of those things. To go live like a free people. That's what we want for all of our Americans around the country. Go live like the free people you actually are. And these are cases like Lemon v. Kurtzman, like, well, which other? TWA versus Hardison, Lemon v. Kurtzman and some others that are, TWA versus Hardison, for instance, it talks about a religious accommodation in the workplace. And so that case had been horribly

misinterpreted by the circuit courts below the Supreme Court, and that case is overturned. And so now employers have to actually offer a meaningful accommodation of your religious beliefs in the workplace. Well, what does that mean? Well, look, if you're like Gerald Groff, the client we took to the Supreme court to win that case, that means you get to have Sunday off to observe the Sabbath, which was very important to him. What an idea. It's almost like they did that in the founding era. That's right. Well, and it was only in recent years where the Postal Service didn't do that, but that's where this came up against. But look, that means something even more practical for a lot of Americans right now. There's a lot of push for diversity initiatives and things like that

where you've got to go through these trainings that take place. Well, a lot of people have genuine religious beliefs that oppose being indoctrinated under those topics. So now you can talk to employer about, hey, look, can we talk about a different level of diversity or an inclusive program that talks about my faith as well? Or, you know, this is going to offend me from a religious perspective and put me in conflict with my own religious teachings? Can you give me something else I can work through? I want to be a good employee for you. I want to do the right thing, but can you accommodate my religious beliefs here? For the first time in 46 years, we have the right now to seek that accommodation and the employer has to actually meaningfully engage with you in

those conversations. Yeah, I think most Americans don't know. that. And so you're saying there's a good legal case if people get fired for after they justly and without malice or anything, go to their employer and ask for a religious exemption from a DEI mandated training that they could then sue and that would likely succeed. What that case now stands for, Grawfers is a joy. Now requires everybody from the boardroom to the mail room to work together to accommodate the faith of the employees in question. Right. So no longer is like, well, look, the job is more important than your religious beliefs. Do the job or get out. Now it is, now we recognize that your religious beliefs are at least as important as your

job, I think actually more important, but at least as important as your job. Let's sit down to figure out how we can accommodate your religious beliefs so that you're a good employee here as well. Those two should never have been in conflict. They were for 46 years. They're no longer in conflict and we can move forward with everybody working together, like any employee in context should to do what's best for the company as well as for the individual employees to. Yeah, I think that's huge. And the Lemon test, you weren't allowed to endorse religion in certain contexts, but it was a weird way of what freedoms do Americans now have now that Lemon v. Kurtzman has been severely curtailed, if not completely. I chuckle in the description because even judges

at the Circuit Court level didn't realize that Lemon had not been applied. The Supreme Court kept on saying, we've not applied Lemon for years. Well, that's... may be true justices, but your lower courts sure have. And so they finally have said that the lemon case is overturned. Nobody should rely upon it anymore. And if you got any questions about that, go read Justice Sotomayor's dissent in Kennedy v. Bremerton. She says it's overturned. But to your point, look, that case had become really tangled. Anytime government got entangled with religion or endorsed religion in the public square, religion lost is just how that worked out. So whether that was, you know, Coach Kennedy taking an Indian private prayer on a 50-yard line for

15 or 30 seconds, silently praying, that was enough to be an endorsement. Why? Because they said, and I'm not kidding, the school district said this, that kids can see you and they know you're not trying to tie your shoes or pick up a lost contact lens, you're engaged in prayer, and that's enough to violate the Constitution or establish a religion in their minds. It's an endorsement of religion by a public official. Well, that it would be loony bins for the founding fathers. They would have not even recognized what that looks like right now. But it goes on beyond that to other issues, too, of prayer before public meetings or religious imagery. public property, all these areas where religion comes into the public square and interacts with the

state itself. Now that Lemon case is gone. And so those restrictions are off the books. And so if you've got a monument that has the Star of David or a cross on it that you want to have erected in memory of someone who fought a battle or whatever it might be, Ten Commandments monuments, those can go back up. They've been taken down. Those can go back up now. It's a totally different standard now when it comes to applying those. Your religious beliefs as a teacher to just borrow from the Coach Kennedy content. You don't have to run in the janitor's closet to say, grace, before you have your lunch. You can actually sit there in the school cafeteria and say, grace.

Now, this is not the time to jump up on the school desk and start reciting the sermon from Mars Hill. That's just stupid for Jesus stuff. Don't do that. But you can reference your religion, at least when it's incidental to the rest of your job responsibilities anyway. So the days of hiding our religious faith, putting the crucifix in the glove box before we go into school, putting the kipper inside of your pocket so that you're not identified as religious as a public employee, Those days are gone. You don't have to worry about that or risk losing your job or otherwise for simply expressing your religion in the workplace. Yeah. So you have a case with First Liberty Institute, wall builders versus, is it WMATA?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So which stands for the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority, right? Or transport. This case is interesting because wall builders tried to put up ads and they were censored. The ACLU is on your side here. Even the ACLU agrees with us, right? No, so Walbiters is an organization that promotes the religious heritage of our country, especially at the founding era. And so they want to put a couple of advertisements. The one that's most easy to understand is George Washington kneeling in prayer at Valley Forge. People can instantly remember that image of him in prayer. Well, they took that, and then on top of it, they superimposed the word Christian question mark,

and they said to find out more about the faith of the founders, go to wallbitters.org or dot com, whatever it is, and a QR code that sent them right there. Well, they submitted that advertisement, and WMATA rejected the ad. And there are various guidelines that they have for their bus advertisements. Two of them come into question here. One involves religion itself. I'll get to that in a minute. But the first one, and the one that they said no to, was guideline number nine,

which says no issue ads on which there are ads on which there are varying public opinions. Now, I don't know if any advertisement doesn't have varying public opinions concerning the ad itself. Every advertisement has that. But they've used that, I think, as a bit of a shield to say, no, we don't want the religion on there, didn't have to get to number 12, which was the religious guidelines thing. Now, number 12 is important to religious guidelines. They don't allow any advertisements involving religion at all on the side of a bus in D.C. That's important because a number of years ago there was a case that the archdiocese of Northern Virginia brought,

advertising for their Christmas programs at Christmastime. Walmada rejected those ads. Well, that went up to the D.C. Circuit Court. On that panel was Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Well, between the time the case was heard and it was decided, Judge Kavanaugh became Justice Kavanaugh. The decision went in the wrong direction because he was part of the case. He couldn't talk about it at the Supreme Court. So the case was never heard at the Supreme Court of the United States.

There's an open question about whether or not religion can be on the side of a bus in Washington, D.C. Or if the D.C. Metro can actually forbid that in public as well. So we're pushing that issue forward, hoping that the Supreme Court eventually will get the opportunity to rein in whether or not public transit authorities can keep religion off the side of buses. That is everywhere throughout the country. The Third Circuit says that's perfectly fine. You should be allowed to have religion on the side of a bus. bus. The 11th Circuit has recently said that's the same thing. But the D.C. and the Fourth

Circuits and other circuits around the country, every major metropolitan district in the country has a policy almost exactly like this. They're trying to keep religion off the size of the buses, and that's never a good thing to be saying, we want less speech and not more speech. The First Amendment is there for a reason. We should have more speech and not less speech. You know, I live in the D.C. area, so I see some of the ads on these buses. And they're not subtle about some of the things they endorse, particularly sexuality. claims that to many conservative Christians seem like an alternate religion. And so I almost see a gap between their stated policy and what they actually allow. You think through the other ads that are on there,

you've got ads for alcohol, for gambling, and that sort of thing. We were told actually in the briefing that WMATA actually went to the website of our client and determined there's the website that caused the problem. Well, that's shocking in an Orwellian sense, that they're not looking at the four squares of the ad itself and making the decision there. They actually have to go and find a reason to reject this advertisement. Well, they said, you know, there was a history channel documentary that was put on there, and they let the history documentary go on the side of the bus, no problem. But apparently they didn't watch the show because it advocates the Stone Mountain being the Mount Rushmore of the Confederacy. Well, I would think that would be an issue on which there are varying public opinions. So why didn't

they watch the show? Where is the limiting factor in all this? Where are they going to actually decide, yes, this is good, but that one, not that one? That's an excellent question. What other cases is First Liberty Institute following. What should our audience know to be looking down the pike for? Well, there's a lot of cases going on right now. We just recently resolved one on behalf of Dr. Johnson Varky, who was a biology professor in San Antonio. Dr. Varky had the audacity in a biology class

to talk about men and women being X, Y, and X, X, X, X, X, X, chromosomally, right? So, and for that, he was terminated from his position. Just last week, we were able to get his job back. He's going to be a full professor again this coming spring, which is fantastic, and good news for that. filed two lawsuits, one in New Hampshire and one in Hawaii in the last two weeks. The same issues, one's for a synagogue and ones for a church plant up in New Hampshire. They both use

rooms of their house to engage in religious expression and the local government officials there are saying, no, you can't do that. The zoning says you can't do that. In Hawaii, they're actually finding them over $40,000 for having religious services inside their church. Think about that. In 2024, America, we still have county officials in Hawaii finding Jewish residents for engaging in religion inside of someone's home. Never mind the fact that down the street, there are louisos and Super Bowl parties that bring in far more people than come in on a regular basis for religious prayers in those homes. That's just silly. But here we are in 2024 America. That's the case. And there are other cases we've got, of course, going on, including our flight attendants with

Alaska Airlines who are fired for expressing their religious beliefs on a messaging board inside of Alaska Airlines. We've got a physician's assistant who was fired from her job because she refused to buy into the gender ideology that the university health system was pushing upon her and lost her job. And so we're continuing to fight these cases all the way. And thankfully, most of the time, we're winning. So Alaska Airlines, that one sticks in my memory because it clearly involves a situation where the employer said, you know, gender ideology has to be endorsed. And the employee, can you walk us through a little bit of what happened there? Yeah, there's a messaging board and they're advertising the Equality Act and talking about how great the Equality Act was. And they left it all.

open for public comment. And our flight attendant clients simply said, well, I've got some concerns about that. What does this mean for our religious liberty? And they cited, I think they actually cited FRC work and some other that had that said, look, this may cause a problem for religious beliefs out there. They were met at gate side by HR officials and taken off the plane. And that was their last day of employment with Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines, who by the way, years ago used to be able to pass out cards with their drinks and peanuts on the plane that had Bible verses on it. How far we have have come from Alaska Airlines passing out Bible verses on their plane to saying if you talk about religion, you're going to be fired from your job because it doesn't comport with the current

DEI woke standards that they have. And that one, it seems like we talk about religious freedom, but we also talk like, that's a very clearly First Amendment free speech, like all she's doing, they invited comment. I mean, it's so many levels of overreach there. It's just terrible. Yeah, again, this is the private forum, but it's private to the employees. to be able to say what they'd like to say. But apparently that was a bridge too far for Alaska Airlines. The great airline of tolerance, by the way, right? That these tolerant people that are seeking a tolerant environment

will not tolerate in the opinions that are contrary to their own. And that seems to be a theme that I'm hearing in a lot of the cases you're bringing up, but also we've seen in the cases across the country. We have stronger religious freedom now, thanks to some of the big Supreme Court moves. But a lot of employers, a lot of governments, a lot of places seem to think that their ideas when it comes to transgender orthodoxy when it comes to, you know, and they couch it in terms of tolerance. So I think in their mind they're the good guy and they're just preventing this mean employee from saying something that's going to harm other people and make them commit suicide or some nonsense like that.

But like does that idea have any weight in a courtroom or should it? Well, the idea of tolerance itself. The reality is in our country. Tolerance requires them to force. No, I mean, look, the Grafrey to Joy case really helps us in this regard, right? Where you can have that belief, that's perfectly fine if you want to have that, and if you can get people to support it, especially investors, if they're willing to support and stand behind you on such things. But you can't force people to change their religious beliefs down at the granular level. And so if your employees don't share what the boardroom believes in an ideological sense, and it's not just simply they don't share that belief, if that would hinder, someone's relationship with God himself or cause them to stand outside of what God requires.

Well, that's going to put the employer now in hot water. They have to now figure out a way to respect that religious belief that may be discordant with their own DEI initiatives or other initiatives for that matter. They've got to find a way to accommodate, in other words, the justices have reminded employers everywhere that religion is a protected class and it's to be treated as a protected class And it is a fundamental class in which it forms the basis of all the rest of the freedoms that we have in our country as well. So employers now have to respect the religious rights of their employees. They can't simply dismiss them because they don't share the reigning gender ideology of the day.

Yeah, even when it conflicts with what's hip and, you know, good in DEI, boardrooms and DEI statements and all that. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, it's good to have all these initiatives, I suppose, but they're not good insofar as they kick people of faith to the curb. Yeah, great. Well, Jeremy, where can our audience follow? Your important work, support First Liberty Institute. Keep abreast of the latest news. Yeah, I'd encourage folks to go to firstliberty.org, F-I-R-S-T-Liberty.org.

You can read about all the cases we've talked about and a whole lot more there. Great. Well, thanks again so much for joining me. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. This is Tyler O'Neill, a managing editor at The Daily Signal. I am honored to be joined by Mike Ferris. He's General Counsel at National Religious Broadcaster's former President of Alliance Defending Freedom and founder of Patrick Henry College. It's great to have you with me. Always a pleasure to be with you, Tyler. So you wanted to talk about the panel this morning we had at

NRB. There's a lot of hope, I think, in that room, and I was really struck by that. Indeed, we had the four principal conservative Christian legal organizations were represented. ADF is the biggest by a good measure, but others are significant as well. Liberty Council, Matt Staver, and First Liberty, Kelly Shackleford wasn't there, but one of his senior lawyers, Jeremy Dice was there, and Brad Dacus from Pacific Justice Institute was there. And they're all longtime, good guy, faithful players, important members of the movement. And one of the reactions that I had was I was probably among the first three full-time Christian lawyers doing this kind of work. It was John Whitehead, me, and William Ball in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania. We weren't connected. We knew each other, but we weren't, you know, didn't work for the same firm or anything. Whitehead and I explored doing that, but we ended up doing our own things. And the ACLU was big of those days. And, you know, we were alone. Now, there were some people starting to do this kind of stuff part-time. Jim Smart and Mike Whitehead from Kansas City started doing this kind of stuff part-time. And they did a very important early case in the Supreme Court. called Woodmar v. Vincent, saying that colleges could not restrict student groups on the basis of their religious faith.

Very important free speech, freedom of association case. And so Jim and Mike were around doing important stuff, but, you know, it was, you know, I knew them all by first name, and, you know, it was really a handful of people, if you throw the part-timers in, and to have four good-sized legal organizations on the field doing this. And then there's still, you know, an army of part-timers out there.

I mean, ADF alone has 4,000 part-timers. Yeah, and, you know, the others have hundreds at least. You know, some of them may have 1,000. I don't know. But, you know, their volunteer part-time group is not insignificant as well. But collectively, it's so much bigger than it was. That's a source of encouragement for me, having been on this movement full-time since basically January of 1980. And so the other thing that...

Just a couple years. Just a couple years. Yeah. And before that, I was Calvin Coolidge's personal lawyer, and I dated Thomas Jefferson's sister in high school. Those are jokes. Those are jokes. TR's right-hand man at the march on San Juan Hill, too, right?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was there. I was a quartermaster. But anyhow, it just does my heart good to see that even though we're still a fraction of the size of the ACLU. Collectively, I estimate that those four groups together are probably about 40% the size of the ACLU. When you look at it from a budgetary perspective. And there are, of course, a bunch of other big legal groups in the Southern Property Law Center and, you know, lots of more, you know, various LGBT organizations. And so, you know, they've got a big left-wing coalition as well.

But when I started, you know, we were zero percent of the ACLU. Yeah. And so. 0.001 or something. Yeah, yeah. Rounding area, you have to go really deep into the rounding to actually have a digit. And so it was, you know, that's encouraging to me and to see, you know, the Blackstone Fellowship that ADF does is not the only program, but it's one of the more mature programs. It's been around for 23 years, I think, and it's trained about, well, the last several years.

years, about 200 students a year. The number of people that are coming into the fray is really encouraging to somebody who was here when it was almost nobody. And my heart's thrilled by that. Yeah. Well, I think along those lines, I've seen this growth. And even just in the last few years, I think these organizations are bigger. But I also get the sense that they're more needed, not necessarily, you know, that because back in the 80s, there was a push. to marginalize, I think, conservative Christians even then. And those who would agree with us and those who would, you know, and this is often, you know, religious liberty is such a big tent notion we're defending,

you know, Sikhs who want to wear turbans in the military. And this is all part of that. But I think right now the movement to demonize, particularly conservative Christians in some cases, you know, forcing Muslims to have their students, their kids, inculcated with these ideas that they find objectionable. I think that's gotten more aggressive, too. Well, you know, there's several things that have changed, and you've hit some important elements of that already. And I, you know, affirm all those things. On the education front, I was litigating cases in the late 70s, early 80s on this. Late 70s, that was part-time.

So in some... That's why HSLDA exists. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I actually started doing public school cases originally. And what I would describe it was going on in those days, the public schools, I call it the great religion of hodgepodge. And that if you could get kids to believe that everything is relative, you tear down the idea that there is the truth. You know, even the concept of the existence of absolute truth is undermined by that. But the idea of Jesus being the truth is really, you know, the target. But it was very subtle, you know, and it looks like pluralism, but they were not serious about pluralism.

Pluralism was a transitional phase from one orthodoxy to another orthodoxy. And I would say today, there's no pretending about there's not an absolute truth. There is absolute truth that the public schools are teaching. They're just the opposite of what I believe. I think the men without chess, the way Lewis describes, it in the abolition of man just hits the nail right on the head. It's like relativism is a weapon to force their own orthodoxy. Indeed, there is a passage about education in screw tape letters I just listened to in the last couple of weeks. I do books on tape mostly. And it just describes

the educational system of today perfectly from 1945. I mean, he just nailed it from 1945. So this has been going on a long time, but it is in your face. We will. We'll teach you what's right and wrong. You know, Christianity is wrong. You know, the woke agenda is the truth. There's lots of different names on it, but you can call it by a variety of names. But it's just the oppressor-oppressed agenda, that the oppressors are the white Christians, and the oppressed are the, you know, the marginalized people.

And we're going to split this country apart. America used to be, we basically agreed on most of the core elements. Free speech being a good example. Almost every American believed. I mean, disagree with everything you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. No longer. No longer. Well, that's why people like Barry Weiss are out there fighting for free speech.

Yeah, yeah. The left has given way to that more than the right. But there are some on the right that are wrong on this issue as well. I just wrote an op-ed piece about a piece of legislation in Florida that's a conservative Republican legislator. I'm sure is a great guy and does the right stuff almost all the time. wants to open the door on defamation in a way that would just kill free speech. And so it would take away the right of a jury trial on the question of whether a defamatory statement was true or false. And that just helps the big guy. If the big guy is the guy getting

defamed, he's helped by that. If the big guy is the big media group out that defames you, the big guy wins in that scenario. Either way, it's quick. You don't get any discovery. it really truncates your rights in the defamation case. It's just a terrible idea. And so conservatives need to defend free speech for everybody because more often than not, our heads are on the chopping block. But, you know, I've said this in the religious freedom context for a long time. And it's true in both contexts.

If I don't defend the right of Bushists, Baptists aren't going to have rights. And so we just have to stand for the principle that the government doesn't have jurisdiction over the heart, soul, and mind of man. And that's the core principle. of the First Amendment. And, you know, Congress shall make no law was there for a purpose. It was describing an area of law that government does not have jurisdiction. That's the key. And if we give them jurisdiction over somebody we don't like, we've ceded the core point, and we can't do that. Well, and we have to balance that with, I think there's a good growing movement on the right to

emphasize that our rights come from God, not government. But, you know, it's one thing that doesn't mean we don't believe that atheists have rights or that, you know, people who have a different notion of God is just we ground our rights in something bigger than our own government. Right. In fact, I wrote a book called The History of Religious Freedom that starts with the Bible translators in 1550 and goes to the adoption of the American Bill of Rights. And the core of it is that, in fact, there was a famous Harvard historian written in the 1930s who said of the early English and Virginia Baptists, that they were the only group that consistently stood for religious freedom for everybody because it was a matter of their theology. They thought that the relationship

between God and man was nothing to do with the government. And they stood for the rights of everybody and they got it right because their theology drove them to that. And so it's our theology, it's our conservatism that makes this stand up for the rights of everybody. And, you know, I believe in the rights of Buddhists because I am a Christian, not in spite of the fact that I am a Christian, but because I am a Christian. And I've spent time in India. ADF has a branch there. And I've talked directly to people who've been beaten by the police for praying.

One guy's beaten in the police for praying for his uncle's healing on his grandmother's balcony. And I saw him. I looked at the bruises myself. He had been beaten seven days earlier. We were actually afraid that the police were going to come radar meeting that we were having. And so they don't reciprocate. But we do the right thing. You know, the one thing that any of the Obama's ever said that I think is true.

is Michelle Obama is famously quoted as, when they go low, we go high. That's actually the right principle. And so it doesn't mean we don't fight, but we fight about the ideals and the principles. And we fight hard for those things and do it for everybody. So we were talking about the history of religious freedom and the need for all these firms rising up.

How do you see, you know, the movement on the other side? You know, it's bizarre because I think a lot of people get the wrong notion that conservative Christians really just don't like people who identify as LGBT or whatever, how many acronyms they want to add. But that's not it at all. We have our beliefs and we believe that we are sinful as well, not that we're somehow higher or holier or mightier than people who are struggling with these things. Well, the only way I can best respond to your question is tell you a story.

I have to confess my vice on your program to be able to tell you the story, though. So here we go. Here's my vice. I play too much bridge on the Internet. The average age of an Internet bridge player is dead. And so... So you beat everybody. Yeah, because I'm only 72.

And I am one of the young punks in this group. But anyhow, there was this guy that I was playing bridge, and I will not even say what his screen name was because he's probably still out there, but I'll make up a screen name. We'll call him Dave Jr. That's not even close. Dave Jr.

Okay. And so that was his screen name. And I was the kind of the hero of all these little old ladies on the bridge group because I just had a policy of never criticizing anybody. It's very competitive, putting duplicate bridge. And people get mad and they, you know, but I just, you can't hear me.

on the thing, I yell at my screen. I say, you idiot, what are you doing? But I never, ever type that. You know, I always type encouraging things and, you know, thank you partner, we'll get them next time. And as a consequence of being nice all the time, at least as far as they know, I'm very popular with these little old ladies.

And Dave Jr. didn't like that. And he started ragging on me. And the little old ladies just beat the tar out of him. And I was sending him private message to say, look, I know you're just joking. I don't know if he was or not, but I was trying to make peace with Dave Jr. I figured out at some point in time that Dave Jr. was gay.

And he found out I was going to argue a case in the California Court of Appeals for homeschooling. And he lives in West Los Angeles. And he asked me if I would go to dinner with him. I said, sure. And we went to dinner, and we were joking around, having a great time. And I was genuinely his friend. And he said to me, you know, Republicans this, Republican that. And I said, Dave, surely by now you figured out that I'm a Republican.

He says, he says, Well, yes, I know, but you're not one of those kind of Republicans. And he had no idea how deeply... I co-wrote with Bob Marshall, the Virginia Marriage Amendment that was voted him by the people. I mean, he had no idea how deeply I was involved. But he knew I liked him, and I was his friend. And I wanted Dave, the day he had a problem,

and he wanted to know a real Christian who would talk to him and be his friend. I wanted to be that friend. And that's not atypical. I'm not unusual in that regard. That's the heart of every Christian leader that, at least I know well, who's been involved in this movement.

I've never heard anybody castigate individuals behind closed doors or make fun of them. You know, we think they're doing the wrong thing. And if anything, it'd be, we feel sorry for them in certain ways. But we want to, we want their best and their highest. But it doesn't mean we want to change our legal system and change our rights and throw our moral system into disarray. That being kind and loving doesn't mean giving up your principles. And so that's the best way I can explain my view.

view on that whole thing. Yeah. No, I think that's helpful. How do you see the growth of this movement? I mean, I would peg it to Obergefell, but I think there were times before where, because Jack Phillips's case is before a Bergerfell, where do you think that they're coming from? And what is the best way to respond? Well, again, a story to illustrate where they're coming from. I was at the first international religious freedom ministerium, they called it, at the State Department under, in the Trump years. Pompeo and Sam Brownback. And so when it came time to do questions or statements from them at large, you know, you go up and say whatever you want in the microphone, I got up.

And I said, you know, if the State Department wants to stand for religious liberty, the first thing we need to do is take down the rainbow flags. We were flying at the embassies all over the world because the Christians in that country see that, and they go, they can't be for religious liberty if they're flying the rainbow flag. because the point of the rainbow flag is to crush Christianity. And this lesbian Episcopal priest from Philadelphia came up to me in the break. And we had a cordial, professional conversation. Didn't agree at all.

But she said, all we want is to be celebrated by everybody. That's all they want. That's all we want. And imagine what they would say. Yeah. If somebody were to celebrate a Christian, in that way. Yeah. And to like put a Christian flag on the embassy. Yeah, it's, it's, so that's what they want. They want to be celebrated by everybody. Why? Because in their soul, they know that it's, they feel pangs of sin. They know that what

they're doing deep down someplace, at least at some point in their life, their consciousness can become seared. But at some point in their life, they knew it was morally wrong. And the, all of this is a defensive mechanism to drown out the remnant of that message. They don't want a reminder that it's morally wrong. We know it, but they don't want to hear it. And, you know, of those four groups, the lawyers who spoke today, three of them are hate groups, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. I don't know why First Liberty hasn't made it on there yet, but...

It's because they only do religious freedom cases, and so the rest of us do cases that are free speech and family vows. values and, you know, I wrote amicus brief when I was still at the college, co-authored it for ADF, honor Bergerfeld. And when I was at CWA, a lawyer who's now at ADF, Jordan Lawrence, he and I co-wrote an amicus brief that was actually used by the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas. And so these groups take, you know, Liberty Council and Pacific Justice Institute in ADF, work on right to life, marriage, family, traditional values, and free speech, whereas First Liberty only does. free exercise of religion, and religion cases,

establishment clause and free exercise. And so, you know, that's fine. That's good. You know, I'm glad that they specialize, but that's why they say they're the biggest firm in the country that only does religious freedom work. Well, that's true. Does it mean that the other groups aren't bigger than them by a long margin?

It's just, you know, you take away, that's how it works. So, you know, and they're excellent group, and I'm glad, you know, they do what the NRA does. The NRA works not one thing. Yeah. Fine. If that's what God's called them to do, go do it and go do it well. And people should give money to them because they do it well. And people should give money to all those organizations because they all do it well. When I think, you talk about defamation, my immediate thought, and this is because I've been covering the Southern Poverty Law Center for a while, I've covered defamation lawsuits against them. I think if there was ever a case for overturning New York Times v. Sullivan, or at least all the precedents that have kind of gumbed it up because we want strong protections for free speech. But we also want defamation law to.

to make sense. And right now, you know, you're considered a public figure under the precedence of New York Times v. Sullivan if you've been published somewhere. Like, I would be considered a public figure, even though I'm not employed by any government, I've never helped write laws. And if you actually look at New York Times v. Sullivan, maybe that was decided rightly. But our laws now are calcified. Now, we don't want, we do want jury trials. We want all of the protections for people, and we want it to be fair. But what sort of change would you see there? And do you think it's wise for groups to be suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for defamation? Well, most of the defamation cases that have gone awry against the Southern Poverty Law Center

have been on the basis that what they were saying was opinion rather than fact because it's only statements of fact that can be the basis of a defamation successful lawsuit. And so if they call somebody a hate group, well, that's an opinion. That's their legal defense. And it's been successful. That conclusion is. but there's a subtlety in and correct defamation law that exists in the books. You can find it.

And that is that if you're saying, if the statement of opinion is premised on false underlying facts and it's obvious that you're using false underlying facts to reach that conclusion. You can reach the actual non-state. Exactly. Exactly. And so I think that carefully delineating that it's kind of like an abortion distortion that the regular rules of law got thrown out the window on abortion

abortion-related things for such a long time. And there's a bit of that going on here. If we apply the defamation standards correctly and consistently and didn't give left-wingers an extra pass, I think that, I mean, like, for example, they said that ADF wanted to support the forced sterilization in France. Yeah. We wrote a brief in the European Court of Human Rights, supporting the law of France.

We say it more precisely. Supporting France's right to make laws on the subject. Our argument was the subject matter is within the competence of the state, and it was within the margin of appreciation of human rights, meaning there are areas that states get some freedom to rule it, there shouldn't be one international standard for that. And so we were arguing the margin of appreciation doctrine saying that the subject of LGBT rights falls within the margin of appreciation.

That's it. That's what we said. The word sterilization does not appear in our brief, you know, ever. We never talked about it. And so somebody claims that the French law could be interpreted to force sterilization if they wanted, you know, certain rights. And so we were not talking about the details of the French law, nor were we advocating that French law should be written in a particular way. It was the law that was on the books. And we were just saying, this is France's choice, not the international community's choice.

It's a lie. It's a flat lie. Now, there are a lot of times, I've been defamed many times in my life. And most of the time, I have decided that I just let it slide. My favorite of all time is, you know who Lyndon, LaRouche? Yes. Oh, yes. I know. All right. Okay. Lyndon LaRouche's paper posted an article about me about 1994 or five, right after I'd run for lieutenant governor of Virginia. And they accused me, Ollie North, George Bush, the elder, and a woman who I know named Baroness Cox from England who works on religious liberty issues. The three of us of Americans, Arly North and George Bush and I worked for Baronel's Cox, and we were British spies.

And so I had my, I was going to sue them for defamation. And I had my jury argument ready against you. They've accused me of betraying my family. They've accused me of betraying my country. They've accused me of betraying my faith. I want you to know, ladies and gentlemen, the jury, it's all a bloody lie. So I just decided, you know, it was actually probably helping me to have those people saying that stuff.

And so, to some degree, Southern Poverty Law Center is such a joke that anybody within the conservative movement thinks it's a feather in your hat that they're attacking you. And many of the people in the middle are starting to say, this is just partisan nonsense. I think in the long run, their original mission was actually pretty good. They did good work. Yeah. They got guys off the death row were falsely accused of rape. Yeah.

And fighting the Klan and good stuff. They did really good work. But they lost their way because they figured out this is a great way to raise funds from, you know, northern liberals. And they've been very successful at fundraising. So it's with no mistake that their founder is in the Hall of Fame for fundraisers. Well, I just, I agree with you. I think a lot of conservatives know that it's, that they're just a scam. But I see Biden using them for domestic terror things.

I see the FBI citing them going after radical traditional Catholic. And that's one of the reasons I believe in constantly pushing the message from the rooftops. It's not to say that they're not dangerous and shouldn't be fought back against. And if we get the right case for defamation, I'm going to be the first one to sue them. Where it's so clear it's a statement of fact and it's false. You know, I won't hesitate. I won't send the demand letter. I will file the lawsuit.

And those things do add up and they can. Are you seen the DA King case? No, I haven't. Oh, I need to sum that to you. They have a case that's reached the discovery phase now. Okay, good. That's survive the motion to dismiss. Okay, well, that's excellent.

So they deserve to go down, and they do hurt people. And so I think that if they apply the defamation law correctly, they're going to get buried someday. When they get buried, they need to be buried deep. Because they hate the principle that you're allowed to differ. That's what's wrong with them. It's not that they're left wing. They hate the principle that you're allowed.

to differ. And that is un-American. And, you know, but I'm so pro-free speech. Let them say what they want. But the moment they defame somebody, the moment they commit crimes, which I think they have done some very questionable things along the way, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn someday that they had it in them to actually violate the criminal law at times. I don't have, I'm not saying they have yet, but that's the trajectory that I would expect from people who still care about stuff. They don't care about race. They don't care about America. They care about using the progressive ideology to raise a ton of money and spend it on themselves. And bury their opponents. Yeah. I mean, I think they're trying to make disagreement with their ideology unthinkable.

Right. Oh, yeah. They are. And so, but they're using it by terrorist tactics. You know, terrorist tactics wrapped in a little bit of velvet. And yeah, I mean, Apple uses them for their Apple Smile program. All kinds of companies use them. Yeah. Amazon. Yeah. Amazon Swile. I'm sorry.

Yeah. So that's friendly turf for them. Very friendly turf for them. And I think that we need to not let them get away with this stuff. But just on a personal level, I've learned to just shrug it off as much as I can and let God defend my reputation. I've not ever sued any way for defamation yet. But give me the right circumstances. And if Lenny LaRue actually republish that, so I'm within the statute of limitations,

You got your speech ready. Well, thank you so much, Mike, for joining me. Is there anything else you'd like to mention or flag for audience? Well, the thing I'd like to mention is that I've been a great, I've been a grandfather for 24 years. Five days before Christmas, they said, you know, you've been a pretty good grandfather, but now you're a great grandfather. So that's, you know, Thomas Jefferson, all that joking aside,

I'm an old bugger. Well, congratulations. Thank you. And because of having 30 grandchildren and now one great grandchild, I want to leave America a free country. You're here. Well, thanks again so much. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast.

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