The Scathing Atheist - 542: SCOTUS? Damn Near Killed Us Edition

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

In this week’s episode, James Cameron Marvels at the Depths of the Supreme Court, Sarah Huckabee Sanders stages a persecution and yells MAKE ME too early at nobody, and Geoff Blackwell will be here to bust heads and break hearts. --- Come see us in Detroit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/god-awful-movies-live-in-detroit-tickets-617420751087 To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click here: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ If you see a news story you think we might be interested in, you can send it here: [e-mail] To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show’s sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --- Headlines: Supreme Court decides religious people are better than us. Again: https://www.atheists.org/2023/06/303-creative-v-elenis-ruling/ and https://www.atheists.org/2023/06/groff-v-dejoy-ruling/ Australia takes over Catholic hospital because obviously: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-03/former-calvary-hospital-becomes-north-canberra-hospital/102554384 Mormon parents sued a school district after their son had sex in the parking lot: https://friendlyatheist.substack.com/p/mormon-parents-sued-a-school-district SHS flips out over request to remove Cross drawing at Governor's Mansion: https://friendlyatheist.substack.com/p/sarah-huckabee-sanders-flips-out

Warning, profanity in this episode has subliminal profanity snuck in between the syllables. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by honey and by Piot Brand National Escape Hatches. Because an emergency tube to Canada is doable if we all chip in. And now, The Scathing Atheist. My name is Ethan Lawless, and as the most uneducated atheist on TikTok, if I can understand evolution, so can you. Because we did, in fact, devolve from filthy monkey men and women. It's Thursday. It's July 6th. And it's virtually hug a virtual assistant day.

Great, yeah, because how can you create office culture without unwanted touching? So, virtual? No illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Samuel Alito's New Jersey, Eli, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, James Cameron marvels at the depths of the Supreme Court. Sarah Huckabee Sanders

stages a persecution and yells, make me way too early at nobody. And Jeff Blagwell will be here to bust heads and break hearts. But first, the diatribe. being a second class citizen probably isn't that bad right it's one of the top two classes it's like first runner up sorry i'm looking for the silver lining on these scotus stories that's the best i could come up with because yet again the Supreme Court ended up its term by taking a bunch of basic rights away from minorities and handing a bunch of bonus rights to Christians.

And we're going to talk a lot about the specifics later. We'll get into the most egregious cases in the headlines. And American Atheist Litigation Council Jeff Blackwell is going to be here later to dig into the details. But I kind of want to start things off with the 30,000 foot view here, because there's this one single thread that runs through all these atrocious pro-Christian decisions, dating back really to the very beginning of the Roberts court. And it's this idea that sincerely held beliefs should have some legal standing regardless of their accuracy. But, and here's the bit that gives away the game, only if they're religious. Sometimes the court just elevates sincerely held beliefs to the same place as facts,

right? Like in the Hobby Lobby decision, when they decided that a sincerely held belief that a form of contraception causes abortion was just as good as a fact, even though it was provably untrue. Didn't matter, they sincerely believed it. But sometimes it goes even further than that. Right. Sometimes sincerely held religious beliefs are elevated beyond facts to a height that's apparently unachievable by mere secular beliefs. There is no amount of secular bigotry, for example, that excuses a person for public accommodation laws. But why is that? Why am I incapable of the same sincerity of belief as my religious counterpart?

Let's look specifically at the Groff v. DeJoy case. So this is a case that we've talked a bunch about on the show already, right? It's where a Christian douchebag got hired by the post office, refused to work Sundays because of his religion. Post office bends over backwards to accommodate him. But eventually somebody gets hurt and somebody's out of town and they're like, dude, we need you to cover on Sunday. He no shows.

He gets disciplined. He quits. He sues. And the Supreme Court discards the fucking duh ruling in favor of the post office from the lower court, overturns a half century of precedent and decides in favor of Christianity. But what if I had an equal non-religious conviction along the same lines? This is not a hard hypothetical to imagine. Keep in mind that most post offices used to just not open at all on Sundays, right? But then they entered into contracts with Amazon where some post offices do deliver some stuff on Sunday. So what if a mail carrier is just really viscerally,

sincerely opposed to Amazon? And what if she could prove it to the court, right? What if she could go in there and say, look, here's the documentation. Here's where I never use Amazon affiliated stuff. Here's evidence of me paying more for delivery so I don't have to go through Amazon. Here's where I quit using Audible when Amazon bought them out. Here's this long list of social media posts where I call out the inhumanity of Amazon's work practices. And I don't want to work on Sundays because I don't want to contribute to Jeff Bezos's fortune. What then? I mean, the real answer, of course, is she can go fuck herself because her employer doesn't give a shit how she feels about Amazon. But how does this court reconcile that outcome? Why are her beliefs less valued than those of a religious person?

And keep in mind that the court doesn't require theological justification here or anything. There's no Christian commandment that says thou shalt not make websites for gay people or thou shalt not pay for contraceptive coverage. But the court doesn't draw a distinction between a longstanding tenet of the faith and a sincerely held belief that showed up last Thursday. How the fuck could they? So they're not even saying that a religious belief is superior to a secular one. They're saying that the beliefs of religious people are superior to the beliefs of secular people, regardless of where those beliefs come from. I mean, consider how quick Christians are to cloak their political opinions in religious robes and how quick the courts are to fucking sanction it.

Look at the opposition to vaccine in the wake of the COVID pandemic, right? This became a politically contentious issue on Wednesday and on Thursday, suddenly millions of evangelicals all over the fucking country who never had any objection to vaccine requirements at all had a sincerely held religious belief that happened to line up with the cause du jour in republican politics and over and over again courts gave those expedient epiphanies the same weight as any other sincerely held religious belief because according to the supreme court the transient opinions of religious people mean more than the lifelong convictions of atheists that That's not tenable. Our convictions are not secondary.

They are not lesser. But if we want society to accept that, apparently we're going to need to prove it again by setting those convictions firmly against the people and the laws and the institutions that devalued them in the first place. They're talking about you, Jesus. Interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special

news bulletin joining me for headlines tonight are the frankenberry and boo berry to my count chocula heat then right neil apostic fellas are you ready to get soggy no you bring the carton with you of milk you do small pours as needed and then you finish okay yeah i feel like boo berry was one guy at kellogg who was sure count chocula was only popular because it was spooky themed and then right you know nobody had the courage to retract the mistake so yeah i'm boo berry i get it what i'm saying is i get how i'm boo berry all right now i've sent eli spiraling into another existential crisis i guess we need to pause for a break from this week's sponsor, Honey.

Today's episode is sponsored by PayPal Honey, the easy way to save when you're shopping on your iPhone or computer. Okay, what about rat traps? I don't know. The boxy ones or the snappy ones? Snappy ones. Oh, yeah. Are you kidding?

40% off. 40%. Really? Hey, guys. Guys, what are you doing? Eli's giving me deals on stuff in my online shopping cart. What? Why?

So, you know how it's hilarious when Heath is in pain? Well, obviously, it's the cornerstone of our humor, really. Exactly. So, when he buys stuff that may cause him hilarious amounts of discomfort, I throw him a buck or two as a thank you, you know. I see. But, Heath, why don't you just try Honey?

I am trying, darling. You heard me buying the snappy rat traps. No, no, Heath. Honey is the free shopping tool that scours the internet for promo codes and applies the best one it finds to your cart. No matter what I'm buying? No matter what you're buying. Imagine you're shopping on one of your favorite sites.

When you check out, the Honey button appears and all you have to do is click Apply Coupons. Wait a few seconds as Honey searches for coupons you can find for that site. If Honey finds a working coupon, you'll watch the prices drop. It's true. I started using Honey when they became a sponsor and they save us hundreds of dollars a year when we send out our holiday gift baskets. And Honey doesn't just work on desktop. It also works on your iPhone. Just activate it on Safari on your phone and save on the go. If you don't already have Honey, you could be straight up missing out.

And by getting it, you'll be doing yourself a solid and supporting the show. Get PayPal Honey for free at joinhoney.com slash scathing. That's joinhoney.com slash scathing. All right. Thanks. You hear that, Eli? Looks like I won't need this underwater trampoline after all. Please? I would also like you underwater trampoline after all. Please?

I would also like you to buy it, please. And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, the Supreme Court can suck my fucking dick. Yeah, and if they do, Christian bigots don't have to make websites for them anymore. Yeah, right. I mean, for

five, six of the ones responsible for this bullshit decision anyway. So yeah. In addition to deciding that our water was too clean, our minorities were too educated, our student loans weren't burdensome enough, and that checks and balances were for pussies, the Supreme Pontifical Ecclesiastical Court of Gilead also reinforced the Christian nationalist theme of the Roberts court with two particularly egregious decisions. Yeah, it was weird to celebrate the 4th of July, a holiday about the violent revolution caused by taxes being higher than was fair, and then read the paper that was like, Judge Roberts gets to eat your son now. I don't know, try phone banking or something.

Yeah, yeah, wasn't it though? The Green Party got ballot access in banking or something yeah yeah wasn't it though the green party got ballot access in 2020 or something so all worked out so the first one we need to talk about and i'd say clearly the worst of the two is the case of 303 creative llc the elenis in which a web designer who never designed a wedding website refused to make a wedding website for a gay couple that never asked her to make a website for them or even existed. It looks like she she she prefused them, I guess. And the Supreme Court decided that her sincerely held religious beliefs were more important than the state of Colorado's civil rights laws, which specifically protect LGBTQ individuals in matters of public accommodation. In so doing doing as justice sotomayor pointed out in her dissent quote the court for the first time in its history grants a business

open to the public the right to refuse to serve members of a protected class end quote okay making a website is not the same as saying the stuff on the website you You are not saying it. The owner of the website is saying it. Why is this complicated? Like, if you eat infinite SpaghettiOs, you didn't write Hamlet. That's fucking stupid. That's insane. You just put letters in places.

Nothing. That's nothing. Yeah, I think because of Masterpiece Cake Shop, people are confused about what a huge decision this is. So let me put it this way for those who don't get it. Masterpiece Cake Shop is the Bush v. Gore, right? 303 Creative is the Trump unilaterally declaring himself president, even though he lost.

Except in this case, 303 Creative is the fucking law now. Yeah, yeah. No, Jeff will be here to say the same thing, but in law words. Now, it remains to be seen how this case is actually going to play out. Defenders of the court here try to argue that this is a narrow decision because it specifically deals with expressive businesses where accommodating everybody would violate the free speech of the business owner, right? So, you know, gay people can still eat at the same lunch counters and whatnot.

But having seen how Trinity, Lutheran, Macon, and Bremerton are actually playing out in the real world, that's a willfully deluded argument to make. This is a license to discriminate, and Christians will take full advantage of that. Right. Of course. Also, you should have to say whatever the fuck I tell you. If you're a bigot and I hire you to say something by typing it or whatever i get to make you say woke stuff while you're weeping that's how it works right that has to be the rule that's

the point and on the flip side i feel like plenty of rabbi bake shop owners because there's apparently a whole bunch of them they would happily make a swastika cake if the current supreme court would die right now the majority of the six that did this. With triple chocolate swirl, Heath, with triple chocolate swirl. Also, just to reemphasize what Noah said, I think the court is setting us up for straights only lunch counters. And I think they expressed in no uncertain terms

that they're just waiting for the right case to codify that. So like when your uncle points out that this is just about forced creative expression remind him how rapidly he's running out of for nows thanks to this supreme court yeah yeah it's a spoiler for the interview with jeff actually but yeah the other decision of course is the post office one that i talked about in the diatribe and in light of a decision that literally gives christian business owners the right to hang a no-gays-allowed sign on their front window, it kind of seems petty to also talk about the fact that atheists are now going to have to pick up an unfair number of these Sunday and holiday shifts.

Absurd. Well, yeah, but when one group is getting extra rights at your expense, though, it behooves you to bring it up. Yeah, and quick thing, atheists who are dealing with work schedules, you just became just now a Voltron pantheist. I just anointed you a Voltron pantheist. Oh, there you go. You get all the rights now. You get all of them.

And they have to let you bring a lion to work. They have to. We sincerely believe you have to let us bring a lion anywhere the fuck we want. But here's the thing, Heath. They would still be at work. Your example is literally less dumb than this Supreme Court decision.

So yeah, so Jeff Black was going to be here a little later to go into a little more detail on these decisions. But suffice to say that once again, the Supreme Court

has wrapped up its session with you, the atheist, having fewer rights. And that's going to keep happening. And it looks increasingly like the only legitimate way to stem the bleeding is expanding the fucking court and

the thing that Eli is saying underneath all the beeps but you know I'm saying so much I do the beeps every I fear I so soon be nothing but beeps I fear that too man and in immune instamain news fucking phenomenal I fear that too, man. And in Immunent Domain News. Fucking phenomenal. Yes.

The government of Australia is a big fan of the podcast, apparently. And it looks like they're finally making public policy decisions based on our advice. And the first big example was a response to our discussion of Catholic hospitals during an episode last month. Here in the U.S., the Catholic Church controls about 20% of all hospital beds. And they also refuse to do all the medicine because of magical bigot stuff in their thing. So my official policy recommendation was, we take your hospitals now. Because of course. Well, that's what the Australian Capital Territory decided to do.

The government of the ACT noticed that Calvary Hospital was letting religion get in the way of medicine, which means you're stupid and you can't be in charge of anything, especially not medicine. So as of last week, the hospital is officially run by Canberra Health Services, and it's called the North Canberra Hospital of Real Medicine and Nothing Else. Go fuck yourself. Eight million Heath points to Australia for pulling this off. Fuck yeah, man. Yeah, I mean, here in America, it's largely academic whether hospitals offer the medicine since most of us can't afford to be there anyway.

But in Australia, this shit really matters. There's real world consequences. Exactly. Also, now that we know that Australia is listening to our podcast directly for policy advice, I'd like your restaurants to be open slightly later. There's a lot of early closings when we were there. Like a lot later, I would say.

Not slightly, I'd say. Give us a 2 a.m. burger spot. Thank you. It's bigoted towards night people is what I'm saying. Thank you. Brave. As is most of the world.

Yeah. Okay. Big thanks to Gray and Simon for sending us links to the story as it unfolded over the last few weeks. Scathingnews at gmail.com if you want to help out

like them. Wait, wait, wait. Heath, you're saying that not only folks can send us the newest atheism news at scathingnews at gmail.com. Definitely that. But if they do, we will make them as gay a website as they require through our brand

new LOC 303 collective. Oh, yeah. I really like that. Yes, absolutely. No, yeah. Sure. Two votes. Nice to be in a DBA state, everybody.

Nice to be here. Let me tell you. All right. So here's the backstory on this hospital. The government offered to buy it in 2010, but the Catholic healthcare company that owned it had to pull out of the deal because they needed approval from the Vatican to do anything.

And apparently they didn't get it. And that's insane. So the government spent the last 13 years trying to make this happen. And the government finally landed on, we take it eminent domain style there you go with the owners being paid fair market value and they don't get to run a fucking hospital anymore of course they shouldn't the church attempted to stop this from happening with a lawsuit but the supreme court of the act is not a garbage fire of theocrats and they they dismissed the case last month, full green light for what happened.

Yeah. To be clear, Catholicism's position here was we won't medicate everyone and nobody else can either. Yeah. Look, our boss is talking to God and God is really busy right now, not stopping us from fucking kids. So you got to wait until. Yep. Those people were talking. And Australia got a bunch more heath points when the ACT president of the Australian Medical Association made the official announcement about the hospital changeover,

explaining that you can't be part of a public health care system if you're commanded by the 86-year-old spokesman for a ghost as your top level authority. Can't work like that. Fair. Except they said it in polite language that was way nicer than a Catholic hospital deserves. Here's the announcement. Quote, there's no doubt Calvary Health Care has done a great job over the decades, but the complexity of having the public health system being governed by a different organization threw a lot of spanners in the works this now gives us the opportunity to design an efficient health care system end quote no that's the nicest possible way of saying your thing is dumb well done mr president yeah you can hear it between the lines oh yeah yeah it's there Take it from someone with experience.

If someone tells you what a great job you did at a responsibility while taking that responsibility away from you, you didn't. You did not. Yeah. Eminent domain sandwich of compliment there. It was great. And it gets even better. Last weekend, as part of the transition to the new ownership, workers removed some of the signage from the hospital building.

And that includes a big blue crucifix. And they did that removal on a Sunday. So yeah, naturally, Catholic leaders all had a big freakout, including Archbishop Christopher Prowse, who delivered a dedicated snit sermon about this, saying, quote, the very first thing a totalitarian government does, they take down the crucifix. I don't think that's right.

And right now, over at the public hospital, today is Sunday. Of all days they picked is the Christian gathering time. They're taking the very big blue cross from outside the public hospital down today. There was a collective wrenching going on, but there was a sense of hope because they realized you can take down our physical crucifixes, but you'll never take away the cross. Jesus's cross inside my heart. End quote.

Mad about Sunday, though. Okay, well, in that case, it literally doesn't matter to anyone. Like, it already didn't matter to me. You've got it in your fucking heart. Yeah, this fucking bishop is like, as the symbol of our child rape cabal was removed from the grounds of the medical practice, we ran so badly that the government had to take it away like an underfed baby i couldn't help but think to myself this is the worst thing that's happened in this situation

this right here this sign removal yeah on a sunday though but it gets even more better because immediately after that sermon a local health official explained how the previous owner the catholic organization calvary health care was completely in charge of removing any religious iconography like oh that includes the choice to specifically do it on a sunday the murderer was me yep amazing yeah one arm of the crucifix pushing a boot down onto its own face. Yeah. Right. Right. And in motion to cockblock

news, you know, usually when we report on parents suing their school because their kid got fucked, it is, if you'll excuse the expression, kind of a bummer. But I'm pleased to report what I believe to be the scathing atheist's first humorous story

in kids getting fucked at school. Oh, Jesus. Thanks to two prudes in Utah who, upon learning that their son had had consensual premarital sex with his girlfriend in the high school parking lot, sued the school

for violating their rights as parents and their religious freedom. Yeah, their religious parenthood rights is what they were talking about. So I had to check if this was from The Onion. Like, I really did. Like, area Mormon sues owner of parking lot for negligent space having. That doesn't feel like a real thing that could be a real headline, but it is. It is.

Utah did it. God, well, at least they didn't do anything that could embarrass him, right? Right? Yeah, so here's the story. In May of 2022, during the last week of school at Sky Ridge High in Lehigh, Utah, the suing parents' son, J.D.,d don't worry that's a pseudonym had an extra free period as seniors are wont to do in the may of their graduating year problem is jd's mom came to pick him up early and when she found he wasn't in study hall had him paged over the intercom well

eventually jd's mom texted his girlfriend at which point the I'm assuming very sweaty young couple appeared and reported that they had been hanging out in the parking lot of the high school rock paper scissors got heated we played a lot best 7 out of 9 best out of 17

that would have actually been what I was doing in this situation if I had been paged in high school. And in a concerted effort to send us one more listener, JD's parents lost their goddamn minds and decided to burn the incident into the state's legal record forever. Right. What are they? Are they fucking suing for the 50 shekels?

I don't understand even their goal but there's even more good news to this story and that is that a federal judge has already dismissed this moronic case with prejudice giving us amazing quotes from their decision like quote the school's custom of giving students unsupervised time after being released early from class during the last week of school applies equally to all students, regardless of religion. And it was not created with the motivation of infringing on religious practices. Therefore, it is neutral and generally applicable. And the rational basis test applies. End quote. This was my fucking job today. You're idiots.

Wow. Yeah. And by the way, all free time for human enjoyment is anti-Mormon. Yeah. But the school didn't make that true. It's not their fault. Yes, yes. You're suing the school for conforming to the time dimension, people.

Jesus. Yeah. No, that one's a real bitch. So, yeah. I mean i mean look given the week we've just had i can see why our listeners might be a little nervous about this one so for the record if the supreme court ever does get their hands on this case and it goes how i fear it might go i want to say right now that it is my sincere religious belief that my kid must get laid by his senior year. So, you know, public schools of New Jersey prepare accordingly. Make the plot of American Pie the law and happen to me now and my child.

Less ridiculous than what happened there. And finally tonight, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I'm in. Yep, exactly. Did a thing in the world.. Did a thing in the world. She did a thing in the world. And that's amusing. Because everything she does, she does as her.

Exactly. So I get to picture whatever it is with Sarah's insane face looking like, you know, like a medium angry thwomp who thinks you're getting a little bit too close. And here's the latest. who thinks you're getting a little bit too close. And here's the latest. She posted a photo on her official government accounts showing a big mural in colored chalk of a stained glass window featuring a very clearly Christian cross, which is at the front door of the Arkansas governor's mansion.

And of course, when she was quietly reminded about the establishment clause, Sarah launched into her insane pre choreographed response about persecution and the plight of the downtrodden Christian fucking Arkansas. Right. The persecution that she started. Right. She's the sovereign citizen who drives around without a license plate and then is surprised when he's under arrest of governors okay well her and greg abbott well yeah and ron desantis and desantis yeah she's a republican i guess yeah right honestly at this point we're now at the point of not persecuting you where like they're reaching over to our side of the back seat, grabbing our hands, and then persecuting themselves with them. That's what's happening. So, again, yeah,

this was 100% fully planned out ahead of time by Sarah Huckabee Sanders in order to start a fight and make her Christian base think she was winning at something when she's not really doing anything. And that plan starts with a very obvious lie.

She's claiming the mural was made by her three kids. And absolutely not. At most, maybe they helped color it in, but probably not even that. These kids clearly hate their mom because she's hot garbage. You can see the forced smiles of fake love in the picture she put up there.

They don't like her. Mm-hmm. Okay, y'all, if there was ever a week see the forced smiles of fake love in the picture she put up there they don't like her. Okay, y'all, if there was ever a week to become a patron and get access to our scripts, today is that day. Heath has inserted the photo into our notes and these nine-year-olds are standing there pointing at the fucking

Sistine Chapel. It's ridiculous how not children this was made by. Absolutely not. Well, and even if one of her kids is little fucking Mikey Angelo, what kind of excuses? Well, actually, it was my kids that violated the establishment

clause. Right. Weird. So, here's the post from Sarah Huckabee. Quote, new artwork to welcome people into the governor's mansion. So proud of how hard the kids worked and how well their masterpiece turned out. Again, clearly just a lie to make it more difficult when somebody had to explain that it's illegal to have an overt symbol of one religion at the front door of a government building. Of course, that was the

basic idea of the letter she got from Americans United for separation of church and state. All that letter said was, please don't have giant Christian symbols at the front door of the governor's mansion. You can put a bunch of that stuff like all over the place on the inside of your house, just not at the front, you know,

like next to the fussing, mussing, whatever signs. And here's an important thing that's going to matter in a second. The letter did not mention a lawsuit or forcing anyone to hide their religion officially or anything about physically destroying the artwork of a child with industrial equipment. Right. But even if you take her at her word, it's a giant crucifix floating in a stained glass background, right?

The only people that would make feel welcome are fucking Spanish inquisitors. Well, and also, her kid's made a giant no Irish need apply sign. It should be destroyed with industrial equipment in a lawsuit. Yes, absolutely should be.

So considering this whole thing was a premeditated PR stunt, Sarah Huckabee already had her ridiculous, indignant response ready to go. And of course, it addressed exactly zero of the reasonable points in the letter. According to Sarah Huckabee, quote, I have received your letter and my answer is no. I will not erase the beautiful cross my kids drew and I will not now or ever hide that I am a Christian saved by Christ. And then she continued, you are wrong to claim that our constitution prevents public officials, let alone their families, from making earnest expressions of religious faith. Our founding documents are riddled with religious language, which was weirdly honest, I guess. I mean, maybe she doesn't know what riddled is.

Riddled is negative. That's a negative thing. There's definitely some in there, and it's gross. Anyway, she continued, in Arkansas, we stand up to bullying liberals. We won't let you power wash our kids chalk drawing off our front steps. We won't let you tear down Christmas decorations and stomp our traditions into the dirt, end quote. Okay, I just have to talk about this because you know what I realized as I was reading that statement? She's doing this because she saw that viral video on TikTok

of the lady whose kid's chalk got erased. Like, she saw that video go viral, and she was like, yup, people hate when chalk gets erased. We got ourselves a plan. Well, but honestly, though, if she really genuinely considered this bullying, consider that she told her kids, hey, go out there and get bullied for mommy's pr right exactly and she also okay you know i'm gonna give her the voice i didn't want to give her it hurts thank you to do the voice for so long and she had

a bunch of quotes in this thing i was describing i'm gonna give her the voice for a second she added one more thing she said i'm offended by the implication that just because i'm a christian i am somehow a bigot all people of all faiths are welcome in our state of arkansas we are all citizens of this same great country one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all end quote oh say can you, by the dawn's early light, you have let me finish what so proudly we hailed. I get to do the whole thing.

Do you hear the people sing? But you're literally using your Christianity to bigot in this announcement. That's what you're doing. Presently, I'm offended by the implication that my bigotry somehow makes me a bigot. That's what the word is, though. Yeah.

It might as well have been like dot, dot, dot, slur word at the end of what she just said. It's crazy. Yeah. And just a quick note about how I'd like to help in the future, just me personally. If the fine people at Americans United for Separation of Church and State are ever feeling like it's going to be awkward to deliver a message like that one because you don't want to criticize the artwork of children, I'm your guy.

I love doing that. Especially if it's a lie about who did the art, but honestly, also, if it's not. A lot of kids make shitty art. I'm fine explaining that to people. I'm also available for stomping traditions into dirt. I know that's not your thing none of that's your thing but i volunteer just in case there you go all right well now that we know

that heath is still pursuing his dream of being the simon cowell of refrigerator art i guess we can close the headlines for the night heath eli thanks as always do monday and when we come back jeff blackwell will be here to bully sarah huckabee sanders oh he beat you to it And when we come back, Jeff Blackwell will be here to bully Sarah Huckabee Sanders' kids. Oh, he beat you to it, Eve. We do the best we can on this show to synthesize the atheist news for you, but it's important to remember that the only thing I actually have any expertise in is pretending that I have expertise. So when it comes time to do shit like break down Supreme Court decisions,

we got to bust out the big guns. And those guns are coming this week in the form of litigation counsel for American Atheists, friend of the show, and not a lot of people know this about him, straight up gangster, Jeff Blackwell. Jeff, thanks for coming on, man. Thank you, Noah. Happy to be here. Although I wish we were under better circumstances.

It never is, though, right? Yeah. Now, of course, there are a pair of terrible Supreme Court decisions I want to talk to you about today. There are like seven or eight that I want to talk to you about, but there's two that we're going to have time for. Let's start with Christianity's new license to discriminate. That is, of course, the 303 creative decision. Now, this is not the first time the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Christian homophobia in a case about public accommodations in Colorado. So for those people who don't follow the court closely, can you distinguish this case from the Masterpiece Cake Shop decision for us?

Sure. So the Masterpiece Cake Shop case involved very similar circumstances. That was obviously a cake shop that refused to make cakes for gay couples who were getting married. And the court initially took that case specifically to answer the question that they ultimately answered in 303 Creative, but they didn't actually get that far in Masterpiece because the court decided before even reaching the text of Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act, or CADA, C-A-D-A, before even reaching the text of that law and saying whether it was constitutional or not, they pointed to remarks made by Colorado Civil Rights Commission members that they said showed an antagonism toward the cake

shop owner's religious beliefs. And because the proceedings around enforcing the anti-discrimination law in Colorado were tinged with this animosity, they said that violated his free exercise rights and therefore did away with the decision below. Anyway, because they decided it on that grounds, the court did not reach the ultimate question that was asked of whether or not the law was constitutional because courts try very hard to not decide constitutional questions. They'll decide a case on any other basis before reaching the constitutional question, supposedly, normally. Yeah, yeah.

Decreasingly true of this case. So this is like the do-over, right? This is them, what, finishing the job they started with Masterpiece? Right. They felt this was the case where they could actually reach that question. And so in 303 Creative, they have actually addressed, is Colorado's anti-discrimination law that prohibits discrimination by businesses open to the public against certain classes of people,ed as speech, and therefore, the law restricts their ability to speak their mind, and therefore, violates the First Amendment. Okay, so now that's one of the parts of this case that I actually found very confusing.

I kept reading that this was decided on the basis of free speech rather than religious liberty. Does that make any practical difference? And if so, what difference does it make? In a fair world, one where the laws apply equally to everyone, it would make a fairly significant difference because anyone expressing a viewpoint through their business would be able to point to this case and say, the state is making me deliver a message I disagree with. This case says that's wrong. And so whatever requirement the state is imposing on me is invalid. We don't live in that world, sadly, and this case will not be applied in an equitable way. I'm fairly confident in saying. I seriously

doubt that, for example, a doctor who's forced to tell her patient that some sort of anti-abortion, medically unsound bullshit that the state is requiring the doctor to say will be able to point to this case and invalidate that state requirement. The doctor's not going to be allowed to say, the government made me say this that I disagree with. We've seen them reach that conclusion time and again. This will only be used to protect harmful religious viewpoints. So, and another point of confusion here is obviously that the question of standing.

So, if I understand correctly, the plaintiff here never actually designed a wedding website for anyone and never had a gay couple try to buy one from her. So is this, as Marsh described it on The Skeptocrat, like the judicial version of Marvel's What If series or what? Yes, it is. So this is what's called a pre-enforcement challenge. She was never actually approached by a gay couple and asked to make a wedding website. But she was contemplating getting into the wedding website market. And so if she did that, the argue goes, she would fall within the scope of the statute

and therefore it could potentially be enforced against her. Now, normally in a pre-enforcement challenge, the standard is pretty high. You have to show that enforcement against you is essentially high. You have to show that enforcement against you is essentially imminent. In this instance, there's a pretty significant disconnect because though she's contemplating getting into that market, she may decide not to. It may not be

a viable business proposition, she decides. Or she gets into that market and no gay couples ever approach her to make a website. That is also a possibility. In fact, no gay couples have approached her to make a website, despite the fact that she claimed otherwise to the court. I don't know if you want to, we've, Skeptocrat already discussed that, but there's a fairly large amount of lying for Jesus going on in these cases. And the court, basically without much analysis, allowed her to proceed in a situation where if, I think it's safe to say, identical case with an atheist baker or website designer or whatever who did not want to help out with a wedding in a catholic church sure but the law had never been enforced against them they would get kicked on standing grounds right okay so once again this is a case of the the court deciding what they wanted to do and then just retrofitting every decision along the way to get them to that conclusion.

Yeah, this is a really common theme with this court where they are turning everything into this sort of case-by-case analysis. They are allowing judges to insert their subjective viewpoints in numerous places within First Amendment law in a way that shields them from being invalidated because they don't have to say, I'm kicking this because't sufficiently imminent against you to support standing for a pre-enforcement challenge, therefore, case dismissed. Wow. And never have to really acknowledge the disparate way the law is being applied. All right. So now you've already kind of said that you think that this is strictly going to be used to protect religious bigotry. And I think you're...

I shouldn't say strictly. I should say it's predominantly going to be used to protect religious bigotry. And I think you're... I shouldn't say strictly. I should say it's predominantly going to be used. Okay. Right, right. Yeah. I don't want to overstate the case here. So how broadly is that going to be interpreted, right? Like, so would this protect a religious web designer

that didn't want to build a website for an interracial couple or a couple that didn't marry in a church or a bar mitzvah. Yes, it's an incredibly broad decision. And I don't know, there's nothing in the case that limits the language to only protecting someone who is anti-gay marriage or what have you. There's nothing that limits to that. There will be, I am sadly very sure we'll have soon cases where people oppose interracial relationships and so don't want to support that. It goes even beyond that, though, because this is a free speech case. It doesn't have to be anything that's rooted in their religious beliefs. And you don't have to point to any tenant of their religious beliefs. I think like you mentioned in the

diatribe, the fact that this is a free speech case moves it significantly beyond that and beyond just weddings or anything like that. I'll give you an example that could easily impact the two of us in particular. Hotels are prototypical places of public accommodation. And anti-discrimination laws almost universally prohibit this kind of discrimination in places of public accommodation. Businesses that are open to the public and ostensibly open to all. And many hotels have convention spaces or other event spaces that are highly expressive in nature. And hotel staff are deeply involved in planning and conducting events prominently displaying signage for events and things like that for example during american atheists conventions and in 2017 our convention was held in a marriott in i believe

it was charleston south carolina and marriott is owned by a mormon family looking at this case i don't see that there's anything that would preclude a hotel, a business that anti-discrimination laws are specifically targeted at, because back during the civil rights movement of the 60s, black people were being turned away from hotels left and right, saying they don't have any vacancies and whatnot. Nothing in this decision precludes a hotel from turning us away because they don't want to have

an atheist convention. A restaurant could turn away a local atheist meetup group because allowing them to occupy a large section of the dining space is expressing that the restaurant supports their viewpoint. I don't see anything here that limits this case from extending to those situations. Jesus Christ. So this is worse than I thought it was. Okay, that's depressing. And we could spend a lot of time on this one, obviously, but we only have so much time to talk though. I want to shift gears a little bit here to the other religious bonus rights case this term, that would be Groffi DeJoy. This one we also talked about in the headlines and in the diatribe. Now, unlike the 303 creative

decision, which was decided along partisan lines, this one was a unanimous decision. In your estimation, why is that? It's difficult to say because you have to do a fair bit of reading the tea leaves, so to speak, and that happens a lot with Supreme Court analysis. But it didn't help that in this situation, neither the Postal Service employee, Groff, or the Postal Service itself argued in favor of keeping the standard as what it was. And under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it had been the case that a business had to show that accommodating someone's

religious belief would impose more than a de minimis burden. Now that language is different. Now it is a substantial cost, and that is a fairly significant shift. And I think the fact that neither side was in favor of keeping things as they were, encouraged or provided cover for everybody to just sign on to one opinion. I gotcha. All right, so Groff can go fuck himself here, but to my untrained eye, generally speaking, these type of accommodation cases are brought by minority religions more often than Christians.

Again, as far as I understand. So it seems like this ruling will benefit members of minority religions more often than Christians who generally get their fucking way in terms of employment anyway. So does that make this a good thing? Is it still a bad thing? Is it a little of both? Where do you fall on that? So this will certainly be relied on by members of religious minorities.

And there were several amicus briefs filed by minor religious groups that encouraged the court to take a position like what the court arrived at. The problem is there are far more Christians with persecution complexes than there are members of religious minorities in the United States. persecution complexes than there are members of religious minorities in the United States. And as a general rule, members of religious minorities and as well as atheists are less likely to stick their head up and potentially get cut down by, you know, rocking the boat and whatnot because they are in the minority. And I think you're more likely to see, and this is just speculation on my part, but I think you're far more likely to see this relied on by Christians who on Sunday offer. I mean, if Mike Pence goes into the private employment space and says he doesn't want to share an office with a female coworker, I mean, I don't know.

Wow, yeah. Does the business have to accommodate that belief? Holy shit, yeah. Wow. Okay, so now when I've seen breakdowns of this, I keep seeing people say that this actually could have been a lot worse, that this was not a complete victory for Groff. So what would a complete victory have looked like and how is this different?

Sure. So what Groff and his attorneys were asking for in this case was for the Supreme Court to essentially apply all the principles of the Americans with Disabilities Act and apply them to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Jesus. And what we, and that's, businesses have to go to significant lengths to accommodate disabilities under that law.

And that was passed in, like, 1990. And there's, you know, a fair bit of jurisprudence since then supporting that. And the court did not go that far. that. And the court did not go that far. The problem is that the language is all very, it's almost as if they're all using, to a certain extent, synonyms, whether it's a significant burden, a substantial burden, an undue burden is what the law says, is what Title VII says. And so this is all, to a certain extent, hair splitting. And it comes back to what I mentioned earlier, where the Roberts Court is creating all of these standards that have to be applied in a case-by-case way.

Under the new standard here, it has to have a substantial increased cost in relation to the conduct of the particular business in question. Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah, that sounds like there would be a formula that you'd write out on a chalkboard that Matt Damon would puzzle out on this shit. Okay. Oh, it's some really fuzzy math that's going on.

And if you're running a business, you like certainty. You like things that are predictable. What you don't like is hearing that you won't know an answer to a question until after you've litigated it, because litigation is expensive. And as a result of this, while they're saying, you know, you don't have to accommodate every demand of a religious employee, that it only applies to those that impose substantial increased costs, the businesses are going to look at that and say, well, I could either accommodate them with whatever they're asking for or spend hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of half a decade to figure out whether I can tell them no. And I won't know that I can do that until after the fact.

Right. So, in fact, this is just going to result in businesses kowtowing to whatever request for accommodation that someone brings, no matter how insincere, no matter how burdensome

on other employees. And it raises serious questions when, and I've mentioned this at a couple of talks I've given, where in this instance, in Groff, we have a small post office. Someone's hired to work nights, holidays, weekends, that kind of thing, refuses to work on Sundays. So now the post office, under this decision, it seems, will have to hire someone else to cover that time. And when they're hiring someone else, they'll have to make sure that that's someone who

will work on Sundays because that's what they need them to do to cover this guy who won't work on Sundays. And in doing that, imagine being in a job interview and being asked, will you work Sundays? And if you're a Christian and you don't work Sundays and you tell them no, you're not going to get that job and it's going to be because of your religion. Right. So, in order to accommodate a current employee's religious beliefs, you're essentially going to require the post office to discriminate against people based on their religious beliefs in hiring new people. It is absurd. And the fact that what was good about the de minimis standard is that religion intersects with almost everything. There's no way to predict where someone's religion might intersect with how their employer operates their business. And so in a space that could be as far-reaching

as the accommodation of anyone's religious beliefs, the burden required needed to be pretty low. And that's particularly distinct from what Groff and his attorneys wanted here, which was application of the Americans with Disabilities Act. When someone is disabled, you generally know exactly what they need in order to overcome that disability

and make up for that disability. There is no such specificity when it comes to accommodating religious beliefs. Yeah, right. And so we're just going to see a plethora of new requests by employees. We'll hear about businesses. I am sure we'll get a lawsuit. We will get decisions. We will see litigation where a business's obligation to accommodate someone's religious belief is creating an instance where they're discriminating against other people, whether it's

is creating an instance where they're discriminating against other people, whether it's Mike Pence not wanting to share an office with a woman, and that's pretty blatant gender discrimination if they accommodate that, or the post office having to hire someone that they know for certain will work on Sundays. Well, and also, you can imagine very easily the arms race of religions that realize that one of the ways that they can appeal to new members is by giving them Sundays off or something. They're like, oh, well, according to my religion, you don't have to roll silverware or whatever. Sure. Right?

Jesus Christ. Okay, so let me pose to you the central question at the heart of the diatribe this week. As atheists, we not do we do we just need to hold our shit more sincerely why are our beliefs less valuable than the the sincerely held beliefs of religious people yeah so first it's important to note that within the context of the first amendment i know atheism is not a religion. Atheism is an answer to a single question, do you believe in a God? However, for the purposes of the First Amendment, atheism is equivalent to a religion. And all atheists have some worldview that comes along with their

atheism, whether, you know, I consider myself a skeptic and a secular humanist. And those worldviews have moral implications for me, all the same sort of ethical requirements and things like that, that someone's religion imposes on them. And I think we need to be more active in asking for accommodation for our own beliefs and everything that follows from our secular humanism or our skepticism. Whether it's, I want to attend a human light event around the solstice and I'm a secular humanist. I'm happy to celebrate the solstice. It is a thing based in science that we can celebrate the change of the season. And I should be entitled, if other people are getting religious holidays off, I should be entitled to have that day off or a Pi Day. And we, perhaps it's just me, but we have a tendency, I think,

to downplay the things that we as an atheist community do that are equivalent to religious holidays and things like that. And we should be, when we can, more forceful in asserting ourselves. Now, there are obviously plenty of people who are in a situation where they can do that safely, and that is a whole other question and part of the problem here. But that's something that we should do. And we should also just whenever we encounter businesses that are being bigoted and not serving people equally, we should call them out for it. It should be impossible for businesses like this to function on the open free market. Well, it should be impossible for a lot of reasons.

But yeah, I guess we're the last defense of it. All right. So I had several more questions. I think we're going to go over on time. So I just want to close off by asking you this. I know that you've always got a hundred irons in the fire at every moment over at American Atheist, but can you tell us what, like what you're personally working on right now?

Sure. So we have a lawsuit on behalf of a prisoner in West Virginia who's being required to do 12 step programs, actually connecting to requesting accommodations. No one can be required to participate in 12-step programs by the government. If your employer is requiring you to participate in 12-step programs, I think that would qualify as well under the anti-discrimination statutes. So we are trying to get him to a place where he can be eligible for parole without having to attend 12-step meetings. I've also just filed an amicus brief in a Supreme Court case that'll be heard next year, one of two cases actually involving

censorship by government officials on their official social media pages whenever people are critical of them. Oh, interesting. And pointing out the issues with how the lower courts have handled that. It's kind of funny because there's a whole line of jurisprudence when it comes to government events, or we refer to them as public forums, and who can, on what basis the government can exclude someone from a public forum. As soon as you inject social media into that conversation,

the courts lose their minds. Don't they, though? And everything gets flipped on its head. And to an almost comical extent. And so in two cases, Linkey v. Freed and O'Connor Ratcliffe v. Garnier, or Garnier, depending on whether or not you're a shampoo company, we're arguing that the court needs to lay out a clear standard that's in line with normal First Amendment principles, normal free speech principles that someone can apply in the moment when they are engaging

with a government official on social media and have a good idea of whether or not their speech is protected by the First Amendment or not. Because as it stands right now, the only way to know that with any certainty is to go through litigation. And that chills people's political speech

and cannot be the proper way of going about this. Interesting. All right. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for your time.

It's really been edifying and we'd love to have you back next time SCOTUS whittles back our audience's rights, huh? Yeah, I'll see you

in a year. All right. Thanks again. Welcome. Before we tighten the bolts this week, I want to remind you that there's still time to pick up general admission tickets for the Godawful Movies live show in Detroit. Check the show notes or go to GodawfulMoviesLive.com for more details. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight.

We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show's Hot Friend Godawful Movies debuting at 7 Eastern on Tuesday and an even newer episode

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