The Eric Metaxas Show - John Zmirak and David Cortman

Episode Date: June 24, 2020

John Zmirak from Stream.org focuses in on "privileged" Jews in Nazi Germany, and other "myths that kill"; then, David Cortman from the Alliance Defending Freedom breaks down the implications of the recent Supreme Court decisions.

Hi, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. I just found out I'm supposed to be someplace else right now. So my sincere apologies, but I simply won't be able to introduce today's host, Mr. Eric Mataxis. Folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. This is our one, and I try to bring you the best stuff up front. And I've succeeded today. I have John Zmirak with us. John, welcome.

Hi, Eric. Good to be on. John, I look to you to help me and my audience process. what is happening in the world, in our country right now. Let me just throw something out and you can react to it. I think that there is no question that there are two sides to the story on the race issue. In other words, there is corruption in police departments. In other words, there are things that need to be dealt with.

And I would even say that it's not particularly racial issue. It's just the issue of corruption and the issue of bad cops and so and so forth. And that needs to be dealt with. But what is important has been hijacked, it seems obviously to me, by a Marxist, dedicatedly anti-American organization or group of people who genuinely couldn't care less about black. Certainly they're not going to take the time to think it through. They just want to tear everything down. They are as bad as anyone was, it seems to me, in the front of,

French Revolution, and that the problem is figuring out a way to divide these two things, because most of the people in the country don't seem to have the ability to see that we have two things happening right now. That's right. I mean, I think the best comparison is probably the Russian revolution in 1917, where the Germans shipped Nikolai Lenin all the way from Switzerland to to Russia in the hope of bringing down the government and getting Russia out of the war. And he used the slogan, peace and land to the peasants and all power to the Soviets, meaning that the Soviets were there at little councils that were pretending to be the legitimate government. And if you spoke against that, if you were against peace, it meant you wanted to keep getting Russians killed in the First World War.

And if you were against land for the peasants, it meant you wanted ordinary people not to have their own land. It was a brilliant marketing slogan. And then he threw in, of course, and all power to our little Soviet councils. Now you're expected to say, do you think Black Lives Matter? If you don't think Black Lives Matter, you're obviously a racist.

And that would be true. But it's just a marketing slogan chosen by a communist front group run by deranged idiots. So a few weeks ago, I joked. I want to start a group. Joe Biden shouldn't beat his wife. And if you disagree with that, why do you support domestic violence?

Do you think Joe Biden should beat his wife? No, then join Joe Biden shouldn't beat his wife. And if you don't, you favor domestic violence. That's how stupid this is. That is literally how stupid this is. Because Life Lives Matter is not a legitimate police reform organization. It wants to cut the funds that they use to train the police to operate better. I was in Dallas for the Trump rally.

and it was black police chiefs, black community leaders, and a black sheriff got up and said, we need better policing. We need to attract better men to be cops. We need to teach our cops how to treat people right. If you cut our funding, that's the first thing to cut is not bullets. It's not bulletproof vests.

It's training. It's recruitment. So when you want to say, defund the police, you're saying, we want low-quality cops. We want people who will work for minimum, a wage who like the idea of carrying a gun. We don't want to spend money training them. We want to sort of turn them loose like a tribe on the streets of the city.

So when Black Lives Matter says we want to cut funding to the police, what they're saying is kill more innocent black people because, frankly, that helps their political movement. If George Floyd had lived, none of this would have happened. So, you know, they have a concrete interest in more dead black people on the streets. It's always, I always say, John, that I think because of who we are as a people in America, we are magnanimous, generous, big-hearted, tolerant, and to some extent, gullible and naive toward the evil in the world.

And we have allowed things to happen because of that gullibility and naivete. This is an example. In other words, you have a lot of white people who they're very happy to accept. white guilt and very happy to say, whatever you want us to do will do, because they don't understand that there are deeply evil, deeply cynical players, political players, far more sophisticated than anything they've encountered, who are using that white guilt to put forward policies that, in fact, are harming blacks. So you get people to say, yes, we want to help. What can we do? and they say, yeah, send us money, do whatever you can for us, support our movement,

but they don't say that they're not actually going to help blacks. The Democratic Party, which has been helping the Black Lives Matter movement and all of these anarchists and the Antifa and whatever they're doing that has been basically going along with the narrative. They, for 50 plus years, have been in control of these Democratic cities and have done tremendous harm, generations of harm to blacks. And being able to separate this out is very tough. And people in the media are making it much harder. Well, yes, they are.

And because they're feeding into the lie of systemic racism. And what we can't get bogged down in analyzing this, it is a myth like Pizza Gate. It is a myth like Jews running all the banks. It's a myth like the Jesuits picking the head of the United Nations. The idea, systemic racism asserts that because there are wealth differences between whites and blacks in America, even though there are no legal differences, even though the government bends over backwards, to promote affirmative action, to get people into Harvard and Yale and all their IVs, who probably aren't qualified in some cases, because they're gaining the test scores,

to keep Asians and Jews and whites out of these schools with all the bureaucracy we have to try to run. remedy the real heritage of racial discrimination that was up we had in the laws till 1965. There is no systemic racism. The fact that there are different economic outcomes, that's what happens in the world for one thing. Okay. And if you're going to say that lower incomes for blacks is a conspiracy, it's only one step to say higher incomes for Jews is a conspiracy. And a lot of the same people are saying the same things. Once you encourage racial group think, there's no off switch. You don't get to set it to modern. racial group thing. Or we'll just set it to four. No. This has two switches. Zero and

11. He's going to 11. We are going to go to 11, all right? Systemic racism is like Pizza Gate. That's the right-wing conspiracy theory that the Democratic National Committee was running a pedophile sex trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria. That is more likely. There is more evidence or pizza gay than there is your systemic racism. The same people who say, well, then, why are all these statues of white people? Well, it's a country that was mostly founded and run by white people. Why are there statues of yellow people of Han Chinese all over China? What about yellow supremacy? What about systemic yellow racism in China? What about systemic brown racism in Jamaica? I mean, how many white people get elected in Jamaica? How many white people are there in colleges in

Jamaica. Clearly there's a black supremacist movement in Jamaica. They'll laugh at you because they know that's absurd. Well, when Jamaica's a mostly black country? Ding, ding, ding. This is what happens. It's not even evil on the face of it, but it's something that's an imperfection. We need to make sure we don't mistreat members of minorities. We need to make sure as Christians that were fair to people when we see each of them as an image of God whom he created exactly the way he wanted them. And we need to honor them as our equals before the throne of Christ. If you don't believe that, if you don't believe in creation of man by God, then you have no reason to say that racism is wrong.

What part of survival of the fittest also makes room for like racial quotas and head start and guilt? Where do you find guilt in the origin of species? These people claim to be Darwinian materialists, except when they want to weaponize white guilt. And then suddenly, you know, they'll dig up the body of Martin Luther King and move him around like Weekend at Bernie's or the Biden campaign and then toss him back in his grave and assert Darwinian materialism. Okay.

We're going to go to a break. We're going to be right back with John Smirak. Folks, I'm talking to Johns Meera. Why would you tune away? Why would you look away? Why would you switch the channel? I know you won't because here we are. John Smirak, listen, I want to talk to you about something.

I want to have a little fun, John. Okay. I hope you don't mind. Ann Coulter tweeted something out about canceling Yale, points out that Elihu Yale, after whom the venerable alma mater of ours was named, was not just a slave owner. He was a slave trader. He made profits from the slave trade. If ever, in the history of cancel culture, there was someone ripe for canceling

and something right for canceling, it was that thing we call Yale. What say you? Well, a friend of mine, Jonathan Lee from fellow Yale grad, said that the only article trying to demonstrate that Yale, Eli, who Yale was a slave trader, was written by a communist, and by an overt communist, and it might not be true. But let's assume. I'm sorry.

Sorry. You cut out for a second. Please repeat. Okay. The assertion that I lie who Yale is a slave trader is a dubious one, okay? Oh, not certain. I don't care. I want to dubious accusations or something.

Yale has been stuffing down America's throne for the last 50 years. So I'm all for it. I can't wait to receive my replacement diploma, and I think they should rename it for Harvey No. The gay rights activist. He only molested one teenager, and he was close friends with the Democratic faith leader Jim Jones, the Reverend Jim Jones, whose theology we see playing out all across America. And I think Jim Jones is the person we need to study to understand what's happening in our streets and in our churches. But nothing would be more poetic justice than to make Ivy Leaguers lose their trademark, lose their credential, because it's connected with a slave trader.

I mean, I think Ann Coulter is absolutely right. It's not just that she went to Dartmouth and feels a little envious of us. But I think she has a very legitimate claim that, and of course you're seeing responses. And responses from liberal Yaleies are what's hilarious. They're saying, well, it's one thing to name a Fort Bragg after some Confederate. But people who served at Fort Bragg don't have the same attachment to that name that those of us who went to Yale have. Yeah, you know, if you train there and you fought there, you fought with men from there, you're just a soldier. You're just a grunt.

you're just an ordinary working class American. Your feelings don't matter. But the feelings of those of us who went to Yale are important and complex feelings that need to be respected. Oh, my God, I want to name the place Harvey Milk. Or Jim Jones. Jim Jones University, I'd be doing.

Well, I mean, I think, you know, my proposal was the one person who stands out to me as worthy of having Yale named after him is Nathan Hale, happens to rhyme with Yale. But he, of course, was one of the true. heroes of the American Revolution. He didn't own slaves. He was a young man who gave his life for his country. There's no doubt about that. A noble figure, actually, he was hanged not far from where I am here in Manhattan. Hard to believe, but this was farmland and the British were not so far from here.

and he was hanged and left on the tree so that the birds and the animals could desecrate his corpse. He was a real Christian, and he not only did he go to Yale University, but he became a school teacher as a result of that, but his dorm is still there. Yes. His dorm is still there. And I think that if anyone were to do anything positive, they would get rid of the name Yale and replace it with Hale University. I don't see that happening soon because millions of dollars would be lost if they got rid of the name Yale. They'll do anything not to get rid of the name of the slave trader Elihu Yale. Also, it would be a disservice to Nathan Hale's memory, to name what Yale has become after him.

I mean, really. Furthermore, the same people who support the 1619 project, which is a historic, illiterate mishmage that the New York Times emitted and the Pulitzer committee, but gave an award. It says the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery, specifically, that the American colonists were afraid that the powerful abolitionist

movement in Britain, which didn't exist yet, but never mind, would lead to the liberation of the slaves, so that's why America was founded. That's why we had the revolution. So I'm sorry, Nathan Hill won't cut it. Maybe Benedict Arnold. Maybe Lord Dunmore.

Maybe Lord... Lord Dunmore. He was the royal governor of Virginia, and he was not an abolitionist, but he made a cynical plan. He thought he could defeat the revolution in Virginia by offering freedom to slaves who revolted and joined the British Army.

He didn't treat them particularly well. He didn't care about them, but he was only used them to try to win the battle against the colonials in Virginia. And the Lord Dunmore is one of the tiny, tiny threads that the 1619 project tries to hang the claim that King George just wanted to free the slaves and those evil wicked Americans wanted to preserve slavery. That's why they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. This is not some crank theory art. This is being taught

in schools because it was a firm of the New York Times and the Pulitzer Committee. So liberal teachers unions are stuffing it down the throats of administrators in blue states and counties all across America, people being taught that the very founding of America was an evil act to preserve slavery. Gee, why are they pulling down historic statues? Why are they smashing church windows? I can't imagine when the mainstream media and the academic establishment are telling them, America's founding was as evil as the rise of Hitler to power in Germany. Now, see these historical monuments? What do you want to do to them? Here's some ropes. I have to say, John, you know, I want to encourage my audience, and I want to remind them that it's not just we too, but many, many others,

millions of Americans and millions around the world who see the ridiculousness in what is happening around us. And people need to know that, because you wouldn't get much evidence from that, because even those news channels that report on this, oftentimes, you know, they're reporting on these negative events so much that we forget that there are plenty of people who see the ridiculousness in most of this. The question is what will happen. I think that the brand, the brand name of Yale, the brand name of Harvard, these things have gone downhill and lost value so dramatically. It's like the New York Times. The New York Times, they're clinging to their past. They're on fumes at this point because that they can't simply, they simply can't

be who they once were, but they still have the name. People still say New York Times bestseller, and they're clinging to that. But places like Yale and Harvard, I think most people know that, you know, whatever they were 50 or 100 years ago, they're not bad anymore. Well, the problem is, though, there's still a ticket to power. There's still USDA primes stamped on your part. The employer is still treated that way. I wrote an article two years ago, stop hiring Yale. And of course, I would apply that to everyone in the Ivy League and at many private colleges.

I would say, if I were an employer, I wouldn't hire someone from the Ivy League unless they could prove to me they ran or took part of the Pro Life Group on campus. Because if they were a standard ordinary Ivy League product, they're liable to be left wing, whiny, entitled, and litigious. Good luck trying to fire them. Their cousin is probably a white shoe attorney. But knowing that lots of people know better than this, okay, that's comforting. But you know what? Lots of people in Nazi Germany knew that Nazi racial theories were crackpot. Oh, they're targeting the Jews.

They'll calm down. It's just election rhetoric. Yeah, I don't worry about it. A lot of Jewish people didn't leave Germany because they thought, oh, well, you know, the Vakta going to eventually, they'll see them. ask this clown Hitler. It's just, they just want him to stop the communists. They were wrong.

And in this case, you'd be wrong. This is a fanatical new false religion. It's a post-Christian religion that calls itself anti-racism. It's just communism and blackface. Okay, but I know that you don't want to come across as negative and hopeless as Peter Hitchens, who was on the other day. You and I believe that we need to fight. And that part of doing this program is exhorting people, A, to know that there are tons of others who think the way you do.

And B, you better do something about it. And let's talk about what you need to do. And let's talk about what you need to. And let's go. To pick Jesus as anything but African needs to be torn down or destroyed. And they're already, they're already announced in California. Well, in California, they tore down the statue of Kunipro-Sera, who was the missionary, who was the missionary, who, took care of the Indians and educated them.

They pulled down the statue, a mob did, and the church apologized for having had the statue in the first place. If they attack our churches, we need to be standing outside of them, employing our Second Amendment rights, standing our ground and protecting our places of worship from these communist mobs who want to destroy them. I am with you on that. We have to go to a break. We'll be right back final segment with John Smirak.

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Never enough time with John Smirak. John, let's talk about the blood guilt article you wrote at stream.org. Yes, thanks. It's called blood guilt, Jewish or white is a dangerous lie. And as we see colleges having workshops and classes, how do I deal with my whiteness? How do we solve the whiteness problem? And we see statues of historic figures being torn down because they were white.

They're tearing down Ulysses S. Grant. they just tore down a white abolitionist who fought in the Union Army in Wisconsin. No, yeah, in Madison, Wisconsin. Whiteness itself is being treated as some kind of moral disease. What does this remind us of when mobs in the street say that one ethnic group is evil because of its financial and political power? Well, that's exactly what the Nazis did to Jews in Germany. And I know it sounds happening to compare everything to the Nazis.

But when gangs of people with their faces masked are using street violence, smashing windows, targeting people, beating them up, on one point are we allowed to say, gee, remember Crystal Notch? What was that? What were they doing? Oh, yeah, there are gangs of people smashing windows and targeting people because of their ethnicity. And the government just looked on and let it happen. In blue cities and blue states where the Democrats are letting mobs attack people,

letting mobs destroy neighborhoods. It's because they are on the same side. They think these mobs, while they may be a little getting a little out of hand, they're fundamentally their heart is in the right place. That's exactly what the judges and the military in Germany said about the Nazis. And they may be breaking some laws, but their enemies are worse. They're fighting the communists. So they're a little overzealous.

So they gave them slaps on the wrist. They gave Hitler a slap on the wrist from trying to overthrow the government. in the beerhole put, she should have been put up against a wall in shock. Instead, they gave him a cozy cell and a private secretary with a typewriter to put out mine cops. And he came out as a national hero. That's how they're treating Antifa and Black Lives Matter. I'll tell you what, Antifa claims to be an anti-Fascist organization. It studied the Nazis. It studied their strategy, and it studied their tactics. It's just a new brand of Nazi. And they learned, well, we lost last time. We saw the Nazis won. We're using their playbook. So in my piece at stream.org, I explore this and I

compare the myth of the blood guilt where Christians for hundreds and hundreds of years pretended that ordinary Jews, Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, carry the blood of Jesus crafts, that they are guilty of the death of Jesus Christ. This seems absurd to us, but it was widely believed. It was used as the pretext for smashing synagogues, killing Jews, running Jews out of countries. What they're doing now with white people is comparable. They are saying, because white people have more money than black people. That's obviously an ethnic conspiracy.

They're also saying it about Jews. I actually saw something on Twitter saying, tear down Martin Luther King because he supported the state of Israel. Are you kidding? That's in my article. Take a look at it. The stream.org. Stream.org.

I put it on my Twitter feed. I will post it on my Twitter feed because it's very important. What you said about Crystal Nuck, I had not made that connection. Leave it to you to come up with that because that is really extraordinary. The looting, the intimidation of people, the humiliation of people, this mob mentality. Remember, it wasn't the government. Crystal Knock was not affirmatively done by the government. They left it at one removed. They let mobs do it,

which is exactly what happened, what it is when Blue State mayors, let mobs attack churches, let mobs loot stores. Oh, we can't control it. We're just telling the police not to interfere. There is an autonomous communist statement in the city of Seattle where people are being raped and murdered. Imagine you own a home in there. You own a home in Chazasthan or whatever the heck they're calling it. The government is not enforcing your rights and live in your home.

You're being ordered around by thugs. They've set up Jones County County in Seattle, Washington. And people are saying, well, you know, Donald Trump said some nasty stuff on Twitter. Our country has gone insane. Yeah. We have to go. The election all the more important this fall, I have to say that, look, folks, need to see the clear lines that have been drawn. When when you when people in the Democratic Party are calling

for defunding the police, what more needs to be said? That is a gift to the Trump campaign, because that is the most ridiculous thing that anyone could ever say in a civilized society, you know, defund the police. But they're saying things like that and many equal things. And I think these are all gifts to the Trump campaign. They have to fight it hard. They can't do their instinct of, oh, we're all about reconciliation and unity. No, I'm sorry. Reconciliation and unity come after the fighting is over, right? You don't have reconciliation and unity in June 1944.

There's violence in the streets. They're pretending to tear down the statue of Andrew Jackson across from the White House. I tell you what, if that statue comes down, Trump might as well resign and move to Monaco because he will look so weak. We need to order. I think on. On November 2nd, the president should declare Juneteenth a national holiday so that he can demonstrate to black Americans where he stands. But this is going to be a very ugly election. I think that the Democrats have already begun to try to steal it because they don't think they can win it legitimately and they have no problems with that.

We're at a time, my friend, John Smirak, if you never have enough time with you, that's a compliment. thanks for being with us. Thank you, Eric. God bless. A Georgie girl swinging down the street so fancy free. Nobody you meet could ever see the lonely. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the Eric Mitraxas show. I now have the privilege of speaking with someone from the Alliance defending Freedom, ADF, as we call it.

David Cortman is the senior counsel with ADF. David, welcome. Thanks for having me on. Should we talk about the Supreme Court ruling? or two of them recently because religious liberty doesn't seem to have been upheld in the way that I had hoped. Let me put it that way. Yeah, it's been interesting to see, you know, to catch up everybody. The court ruled recently about Title VII.

Title VII is basically workplace protections that have been in place since 1964. And they were originally meant, ironically, to protect women in the workplace to make sure they weren't discriminated against. And the court issued a ruling within the last week that, basically said the original meaning of sex in 1964, which was biologically men and women, now also includes sexual orientation and gender identity. So it's kind of thrown things in a little bit of chaos. That sounds like looniness to me. On what basis could they have possibly done that? And of course, was it Roberts who cited with that majority? It was actually Justice Gorsuch and the Chief Justice Robert.

How is it possible that Gorsuch could get something like that wrong? I'm absolutely lost. It was interesting because a lot of people have heard of originalism or if you're a textualist, in other words, you're reading actually what the law says, and then you determine at that time not only what did Congress mean, but what did those words mean to the public. And interestingly enough, it's cited at saying that we're being textualist,

and even though it didn't mean sex orientation or gender identity, in 1964, today, if you're looking at that, you have to take into account someone's sex to decide if it's an issue of sex orientation of transgender identity, which of course we think was the mistake in the case. Since when does Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor care about originalism? In other words, I'm a little lost on how, I mean, unless it's sophistry on their part, But do you mean to tell me that Gorsuch and Roberts both genuinely believed that's what it says now? Well, that's certainly what they said.

And what's interesting about that, I think it was a brilliant strategy from those on the left. So it's kind of rather than, you know, rather than continue to fight him, join them. And Justice Scalia was so persuasive and had such a great influence on the court in people's thinking, where he was the champion of being a textualist. And so the other side basically started making the argument, hey, this is a textualist reading, and you should be able to say that to decide someone's transgender status or sexual orientation, you have to look at their sex. So it is a textualist approach. And that's what the chief and Justice Worsuch decided. What does that have to do with sexual preferences then? Yeah, I mean, I don't understand it. I mean, obviously, we think it's the wrong conclusion. But they basically said to make the decision, you necessarily have to look at someone's sex. An argument is, no, it doesn't matter what their sex is. You don't even have to know what their sex is if you're looking at sexual orientation or transgender status. So that's where the distinction came. Well, so what does this mean? In other words, you know, the reason I'm such a strong proponent of ADF and religious liberty, and getting originalists on our courts is that we don't want to be legislating from the bench.

We've had a lot of that. That's what this seems like to me. Now, there's what's the kind of a case that can come up? I mean, the funeral home case that we've talked about on this program where a guy, you know, goes on leave. He works at a funeral home. He comes back and says, now I'm a woman and I'm going to dress as a woman. They said, no, this is a very sensitive business. and we're dealing with clients that are in tremendous grief,

we don't think this is appropriate. Now that person has been justified and will keep his job, although he would probably want me to say her job, at this funeral home. I mean, that's the case that was basically adjudicated. Was it not? It was one of the three cases, yes. And what was interesting about it is,

is that we actually argued on behalf of the funeral home that the person should, transgender status didn't matter. It was coming to work and saying now, even though you were hired as a man, and you agreed to this dress code policy where men wore black suits and women wore black dresses that no longer would you comply with that. And you wanted to come to work to dress as a woman, be able to use the women's restrooms. And the court said, well, we're not, interestingly enough. We're not going to rule on those issues. The dress code or the restroom, when those really were the issues in question in the case.

I just feel like, you know, the basics of freedom are that I can hire and fire whom I like for almost whatever reason. If somebody comes to work in my funeral home and then at some point they show up after a crazy weekend with a skull tattoo on their face, it seems to me that I can say that's not appropriate and you can't work here anymore. How is this different from something like that? Yeah, and what the court would say is, well, there are certain protected statuses, and we've decided that now transgender status and sex orientation status fits in sex from the 1960s,

and so that's how you get to that result. And what is the other case that was recently ruled on by the Supreme Court? Yeah, and the other case was where there was two different cases, and one out of New York and one out of Georgia. But basically those where one was worked for a county down in Georgia, one was a flight instructor, and the plaintiffs argued in that case, well, the employers found out that they were gay and then fired them because of it. And the court said, well, your status as being gay is not sufficient.

It violates Title VII in these protections to fire you because of it. There were also, though, underlying disputes, though, in one of them, there was some inappropriate handling of money that was accused. And so there were different issues wrapped up in it. But the court basically cut all that away and said that you can't fire someone under Title VII for their status as being gay or transgender. For their status. But I thought you're saying that they weren't fired for that.

They were fired for another reason. Well, that was the dispute in the case. And apparently the court landed on the side of accepting the plaintiff's version of the facts the way that they were brought. that they were fired and did we have any reason to believe that there was animus on the side of the employer toward gays? You know, there was none I was aware of. In our case, there was none at all. In fact, what was interesting in the funeral home case, we specifically planned and our client said,

look, we don't have a problem with him being transgender. It's violating the dress code policy and the restroom facilities as he comes to work. Okay, this is nuts. folks, we're talking to David Cortman with the Alliance Defending Freedom. Great organization. We'll be right back. Hey, folks, this is the Aircomptaxia show, and I am talking to David Cortman, Senior Counsel with ADF. ADF, that's the Alliance Defending Freedom. I want to give you their website. It's ADFlegal.org. ADFlegal.org.

David, you all at ADF, you're just one of a handful. of organizations that are fighting for religious liberty in our courts, very, very rarely lose any cases. So this must have been very disappointing. It really was disappointing. And we thought the case going in, regardless of what your feelings are about these issues of sex orientation or transgender status, wherever you land on that, we thought the case was pretty straightforward because the question in the case was not how you feel about those things, but whether in 1964 when sex was added to the non-discrimination laws in the workplace meant to protect women so they wouldn't be discriminated against from men, did that mean in 1964 sex orientation of transgender status? And the answer was clearly no, and yet that still somehow wasn't the ruling that resulted.

So it wasn't disappointed. Well, I just want to go back to the Constitution itself, since we're talking about originalism. it strikes me as odd that we have laws in America that protect anyone from anything along these lines. In other words, it seems to me that an employer should have the right to fire someone for almost any reason. In other words, even if I disagree with the employer, even if I say the employer is wrong and is a bigot or is anything, when did we turn that corner where the government says to an employer that they're not able to fire someone? It strikes me as a curious legal precedent. Yeah, there are, you know, there's always been debates about that, you know, how free should the free market be?

You know, supply and demand, customers decide, those type of things. But there's times both when the court and when legislatures at all different level, whether it's Congress or lower, say, well, here's a specific class of people we think has been discriminated against to such a point where we want to make sure their status is protected. And so what happens is that list tends to grow at the local level. It's much larger, all types of categories. Washington, D.C., your political beliefs are actually a protected category, which you can imagine is an interesting debate in a lot of circles.

And so that's the way those things develop in the law. Your political beliefs, I would think that, you know, being a concerned, conservative or in the times in which we live now, being a Trump supporter, would be a reason that many people would get fired. You're saying that that is protected, that if I were a vocal Trump supporter in the District of Columbia, that I could have my job protected from someone who doesn't like the president? Yeah, that's right. That's the way it is in Washington, D.C. And what's interesting about that deciding, you know, what counts as political beliefs these days. It seems to be almost anything because everything is certainly up or grabs.

So yeah, that's the way it is. Yeah. Well, it does seem crazy. It's just fascinating to me as we think this through. You know, we know what we like and what we don't like. But then the question is what is right. And that's to me what the Constitution is for to bring us back to the basics of, you know, the level playing field, so to speak, even if you don't get the kind of outcome you like, how can we all play by the same rules? And it seems to me that with rulings like this, We're changing that. This is outcome-based, and it does seem like even people like Gorsuch and Roberts are legislating from the bench, which I find to be horrific.

And I have to say, I hope this president is reelected and gets to appoint some or nominate some true originalists to the court. We're out of time. David Cortman, thank you. Folks, I'd like you to go to adflegal.org. ADFlegal.org. Check out the Alliance Defending Freedom of their heroes. David, thank you.

All right. Thanks to be honest.