The Daily Signal - Religious Freedom Part 1: Americans Fight to Get Off 'Medical Death Row' Over Vaccination Status

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

This is the first in a three-part series on the movement for religious freedom in the U.S. legal system today. Stay tuned for the next two installments. NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, represents Americans in religious freedom cases who have been turned away from hospitals because they refuse to take a vaccine for COVID-19. "It's disgraceful to put anyone on medical death row simply because they're not willing to take a very controversial experimental vaccine, which is now proven to be very counterproductive," Dacus tells "The Daily Signal" podcast in an interview conducted in February at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, March 18th. I'm Tyler O'Neill. I sat down with Brad Dakes. He is the president of the Pacific Justice Institute. And he represents people in religious freedom cases who have been turned away from hospitals because they refuse to take a vaccine for COVID-19. And he told me this quote, which I thought was really, really important. He said, it's disgraceful to put anyone on medical death row simply because they're not willing to take a very controversial experimental vaccine, which is now proven to be very counterproductive. This is the first in a three-part series on the Movement for Religious Freedom in the U.S. legal system today. So here, without further ado, is my interview with Brad Dacis right after this. Looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues from America's outpost here in Washington, sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. You'll get top conservative research, a rundown of important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online and hot takes from our experts.

Sign up at heritage.org slash agenda or at the link in the show notes. This is Tyler O'Neill, managing editor at The Daily Signal. I am honored to be joined by Brad Dacus. He's the president of the Pacific Justice Institute. Brad, great to have you here. Oh, Tyler, great to be on your program. I appreciate it. So we really appreciate, you know, the way that you've been standing for the rights of Christians, you know, who've been pushed out of their jobs because they didn't take the COVID vaccine. I think this is, you know, and one of the many vaccines, how many cases do you have dealing with this? How many people are you representing in this religious freedom battle? Oh, we have countless numbers of cases.

Some of them are large class action cases. For example, we have a class action case against my favorite city to sue San Francisco. So, you know, that alone is about a thousand plaintiffs who were purged from their job, not because they weren't doing a good job. They were purged for one reason only because of their sincere religious beliefs and convictions about the vaccine. So they were purged. and we have people like this, we have other class action lawsuits all across the country. You know, Tyler, as you know, we at Pacific Justice Institute.

We really should change our name because we actually now have more offices on the East Coast than the West Coast. We have offices all across the United States. There are about 36 offices all across and multiple states across the country. So these cases are keeping us very, very busy. We're also even defending people who are needing organ transplants. And they're being denied by a minority of hospitals. Most say no problem, you don't have to be vaxed, but these few out there are saying, yes, you have to, and it just so happens we've discovered they have contracts with Big Pharma.

It's disgraceful to put anyone on medical death row simply because they're not willing to take a very controversial experimental vaccine, which is now proven to be very counterproductive. We found out that more than 99% of those in the hospital with COVID with serious conditions are people who were vaxed. The non-vax are not in the hospitals. and yet they continue to push it, but we're defending people based on their sincerely how religious beliefs and convictions. And needless to say, we're making great progress and saving thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of jobs for brothers, sisters in Christ, across the nation. So can you bridge the gap for me?

So like when we were going through the pandemic, many of us were convinced by the first round, you know, the two shots. And then we start to hear, oh, we need boosters. We need boosters. We need boosters. And so there seemed to be these differences. And then there's also like my grandfather had polio. And I am very grateful that we have the polio vaccine that prevents people from having to live like my grandfather did without his legs for the vast majority of his life. But this is not that kind of vaccine. Right. This is a totally different ballgame here.

In the past, in order for a vaccine to be submitted for people to even have access to it, much less mandated, they had to go through lots of test. to make sure that it was not causing some other kind of long-term problem conditions, which has happened before. This was like, okay, just throw it out there. We're desperate. It's an emergency. And we all trusted, many of us, not myself, but many, blindly trusted the CDC, you know, the Food and Drug Administration, thinking, well, they know what's best.

My doctor knows what's best. And they took it. But now the casualties have been horrific. The number of people that have died as a reaction to this vaccine. tremendous. There has been a more than a 13,000 percent increase in the number of 12 to 19-year-olds who have mitochondartitis, a very serious heart inflammation disease. That is very telling alone. And we know that statistically, according to the British Medical Journal, which are not bound by the United States in terms of their media, et cetera, the most credible medical journal in all

of Britain in the UK. They've proven that the more booster shots someone gets for this COVID vaccine, the more likely they are to be hospitalized and even have fatal consequences. So we have massive blood clotting issues. So a lot of this has been suppressed, but it's getting out. And the good news is that the overwhelming majority of Americans now refuse to get the booster, refuse to get the VACs, because they see the results to the people to their left and their right in their church or in their synagogue, and they also are learning the stats that are now getting out, partly because of people like Elon Musk that are opening up these forms that before suppressed and oppressed people carrying that information. The amount of suppression has really been shocking. We saw these documents where

Facebook employees were telling the White House, and we know that these people are talking about their own experiences and that these are true things, but we're still going to suppress them anyway, because you're pressuring us to do this. You're representing people on the ground. How many of them were fired for not taking the first rounds? We're fired for not taking the boosters. Like, what's the breakdown? Yeah, the overwhelming majority are those who did not take the first round.

Many people have the misconception that they think, well, if I took the first round and now I feel like I feel bad about it, I feel convicted, I should have followed the Lord, I should have prayed about it, whatever. They think, well, it's too late. They have to take the next booster or the next booster. not true. You can still have a sincere religious conviction. It's called repentance. You know, when you do something, you wish you hadn't have done, you feel like, oh, I should have prayed about this.

Now I should have followed my conviction from the Lord. Instead, I went, and that's okay. You can change your mind. You can still have religious convictions. Like I say, it's called repentance. So we have Pacific Justice. We take people across the spectrum, and we help them. They just have to have a sincerely held religious belief or conviction. You don't have to have doctrine. You don't have to be a part of a certain denomination. And we will work with them beforehand to make sure that their beliefs, our convictions are well articulated in the proper way and the proper form. Can you connect this for me because it seems I understand and very highly value the rights of religious conviction? But as you noted, and I think the direct connection between like a Christian theology and a specific vaccine,

like, is there a connection there? Yeah. Some people point to the fact that it was used originally from mapping from a aborted embryos and food an abortion. And they say, I can't have anything to do with that. And that's totally fine. That's a valid conviction. That said, people don't have to have a specific doctrine per se. I talked to one gentleman. He says, you know, he was Christian. He says, you know, I see nothing in the Bible that vaccines. There's no reason people should be vaccinated. I said, well, if your definition of Christianity is that you set a prayer and you got your ticket to heaven and you're supposed to just do the do's and don't sell the Bible, and that's your Christianity, then I agree with you. But if your

Christianity is about entering into personal relationship with the Lord and receiving the Holy Spirit and the guidance of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God, but also through just the direction of our lives and guiding our lives, then it's a totally different ballgame because that is the real, that's Christian, it's a living Christian, it's a living Christian, with a living relationship with a living God for everyone who chooses to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and surrender their lives to him and receive salvation, full forgiveness for all their sins. So that's the perspective we're taking. You know, I personally, I didn't know. I was trying to get information about it. I was looking at the J&J doing on my homework. The good Lord sort of decided it for me. I went and got

COVID. So the idea of the vaccine was sort of said and done for me. But for a lot of people, they really have strong religious convictions. And we go to bat for them on that. And we're very respectful of people who are in that situation. And you also represent people in cases that involve this gender ideology that seems to be taking, you know, taking our culture over institution by institution. I think besides, you know, all the COVID suppression, the rapid embrace of gender ideology by the medical establishment as one of the most shocking developments in my lifetime. But, you know, you represent, you were talking to me about a Korean spa that they're being forced to have a biological male. Can you discuss? Yeah. This is a, like, a, a,

Christian-owned Korean women's spa. Now, Korean spas, culturally, people go in to get scrubbed downs and things like this. They don't wear any clothes. So that's why it's only women. That makes total sense. A man comes in, he says, hey, I want to go to the women's spa. They says, no, this is for mothers. There's mothers and their teenage daughters in there. Absolutely not. These women would be visually violated, to say the least, and he would be ludely exposing himself to all these women and these little young teenage girls. Something that's criminal in any other context. So he leaves, and he reports it to the Washington State Human Rights Commission.

This is George Orwell's 1984 all over again, where the meaning of what they say is actually opposite of what they do. They're actually human rights oppressors because they go in and they sue this Christian-owned Korean spa to try to force them to let men, naked men, go into places with naked women and their young teenage girls. They're sick, it's demented, We at Pacific Justice Institute, we don't take this lightly, we step up, and we've taken on this case.

We're taking this actually now on appeal up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. We think it's going to set some very important case law dealing with this issue. We also have other similar issues, like, for example, the state of New Jersey. We're taking on the Attorney General of New Jersey who's trying to force every school district to have their teachers not only use pronouns that violate the conscience of the teacher to affirm a lie, to affirm deception and confusion in little children, who have just left alone would outgrow that deception statistically. But instead, they're also compelling these teachers to lie to parents, to cover up the child's gender confusion, to the adverse statistical effect of these children.

People need to understand, this is not just a neutral little condition. People who undergo gender distortion procedures and are confirmed into this gender confusion, the average will not likely live to see their 30th birthday. This is serious. A child, put this in perspective, a child with a child with a child with a child, leukemia is more likely to live to see their 30th birthday than a child that is confirmed into gender identity, dysphoria leading to gender distortion of their bodies. This is the facts. This is science. And it's ignored in a very dangerous trend we see. Science and statistics are being

ignored because of the emphatic control of the radical left and the radical LGBTQ movement to the demise of countless numbers of children and youth throughout America today. We at PJI take this very seriously. We're taking on these lawsuits doing with similar actions all across the United States, and we do it all without charge. We have over 220 cases right now in active litigation. Just right now, we have offices all across the country, and if anyone is in need of assistance, free representation, deal with religious freedom, parents' rights against the government, sanctity of human life, we strongly encourage them to go to our website. Pj.orgi.orgi.orgi.org.org. PJ.org.org. you can sign up to get a free e-newsletter, as well as whole information about how to protect their kids from being taken by zealous social workers.

Where are you seeing this data? You know, you're talking about this longevity statistic that they're not likely to see their 30th birthday. I haven't seen that. I've looked at a lot of the data on this, like the way that these detransitioners have to deal with lifelong medicalization. You know, they have to, it's not enough if you say, even if you were just taking cross-sex hormones and you say, oh, no, I want to return to my biological sex. You have to then take the sex hormones that fit your original biological sex. Like, this is a continual medicalization, but I haven't seen data on longevity like you suggest. Right. And I wish I had it in front of me right now, so I apologize for that. But I can assure you as an attorney, I'm very careful only to quote what I've known what I've seen it. I'm going to try to. to make a mental note though to have that because you're the second person who's asked me actually for the actual data source which it means you're a good reporter and i should be a better interviewe but there is lots and lots of data out there you know for also dealing with the issue showing actually there's actually an increase in mental illness not just depression but also bipolar issues that come

as a result after they go through the hormone therapy you know it's interesting when a male takes on you know estrogen just that part of it much we're not even talking about masochistic cutting off organs and body parts. Just that hormone alone is something that person feels happy, feels good for maybe up to two years, but then depression sets in. And then with that, often bipolar and other dysfunctions. So it has a serious consequence in multiple biological issues mentally and otherwise. And then when females take on the testosterone, their bodies are not made for testosterone. Their brain is not made for testosterone. So testosterone causes someone to be more aggressive. And when you combine that with a brain that is more wired differently than a male

brain, it can result in some of the horrific hazards like we saw, for example, in Tennessee. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we need to get more information out there needs to be more, more studies. It's talking about the behavioral implications of people just take the hormones, much less the actual surgical procedures, which also caused medical complications as well. This has been downplayed, but the facts are coming out. And, you know, the only question is, it's not when are we as a society going to realize we've made a huge mistake from a humanitarian perspective. It's simply, it's not if, it's just when. And how many people are going to have to suffer the consequences before we wake up? That's the question. Fortunately, Europe is already moving in the right direction. They're waking up,

they're banning these procedures until people reach adulthood in many countries. The United States is way behind and the casualties are mounting daily. And I think we've seen a lot of of these laws that say, you know, in many cases there are underlying psychological conditions that are associated with this. And yet therapists who want to address those underlying conditions, as opposed to putting them on the path to self-mutilation, often find that sort of therapy banned by law. Are you representing any therapists? Yes. We've helped therapists before. Unfortunately, progressive, oppressive states, what I call them, like California, New York, oppress freedom and liberty, they've passed these laws. New Jersey, Oregon. They're making

illegal for counselors, licensed counselors to actually directly address the issue. We give them counseling on how to get around that, which is, to paraphrase, to address the underlying issues supporting that condition, which is really the proper protocol anyway. It's interesting. The number one correlations that correlate with kids who have gender identity dysphoria is sexual child abuse. By the way, there's a very also high correlation with those in the same-sex sexual lifestyle and orientation. Number one on that list is also sexual child abuse. And that is what needs to be addressed. And psychologists should be able to boldly and directly address all these underlying issues. Peer-to-peer bonding is another one. Absence of a father in the family, which we see is

very problematic. These are all contributory, correlative factors that are statistically undeniable. And yet states like California are cruelly, unprofessionally, trying to oppress people getting the help that they need to address these underlying issues leading to these terrible effects, courtesy of the LGBT movement in our public schools, on the internet, etc. And I know we're running shortly low on time here. I wanted to just briefly mention, you know, because you and I both are very familiar with an organization called the Southern Poverty Law Center that has decided to target your organization along with Alliance Defending Freedom and others as a hate group. Are you at all considering a defamation case along the lines

to push back or are there other avenues that you can see? Southern Poverty Law Center is like a snake. They're the most hate-filled, hate-indocrinating organization in the country. They breed division, they breed hate, they breed misunderstanding. Their goal is to silence, to vilify, silence, and destroy. That's their language, not mine. So the key with that organization, though, is that they have legal counsel that goes out of their way to be able to make statements of opinion, which is not liable defamation

and slander versus factual and inerrant statements. They're very sly. They're very cunning. In fact, we at Pacific Justice Institute on our website, p.j.i.org, we have a video film people can link to. I believe it's called to expose SPLC.com or SPLCExposed.com. There's actually two out there. But I encourage people to go to our website p.j.j.org. And we produced a video that shows them for exactly what they are. And it is shocking. They're the most dangerous nonprofit organization in the world. world and people need to take note of that. Well, thank you so much, Brad. Is there anything else you'd like to add? People should follow your work. Yeah. People just need to know that we at Pacific

Justice Institute, we're here to serve to make sure that people are not left on the side of the road. If they like to support our work financially, if they need assistance, they'd like to keep up with our work. They should simply go to our website, pj.j.org. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Thank you. And that was Brad Dakis. Again, I'm Tyler O'Neill with the Daily Signal podcast. If you'd like what you heard here, please feel free to leave us a five-star rating and review. We read all of your feedback. And don't forget to tune in to this very podcast at 5 p.m. Eastern Time this evening for our top news edition where we go through the top headlines of the day to keep you informed for your evening commute home. So again, this is Tyler O'Neill with the Daily Signal

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