Unreasonable

This was an especially nutty week in America. And none of it had to do with a particular televised debate or even the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity. 

This week the state of Louisiana mandated that The Ten Commandments be displayed in every one of its public school classrooms.

In Oklahoma, in the wake of the state’s Supreme Court decision to disallow the establishment of the country’s first publicly-funded religious charter school, Ryan Waters, the state’s education superintendent, issued a requirement that the bible be placed in all public school classrooms. 

We parse the immediate and long-term implications of both of these issues with Alison Gill, Vice President for Legal and Policy at American Atheists.

Alison also helps us understand "the Chevron deference” in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo to ignore the expertise of federal agencies in favor of politically-appointed and inexpert judges with their own ideological leanings. 

So much to unpack. 

Thanks for listening! Now follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Threads. And please consider becoming a Patreon supporter at www.patreon.com/podcastunreasonable. It's a small price to pay to help keep America from becoming a theocracy, dontchya think?

Kadida Kenner and her organization The New Pennsylvania Project — modeled after Stacy Abrams’ New Georgia Project — is focused on engaging with and registering voters in communities whose doors are rarely knocked. NPP is doing a tremendous job across the Commonwealth, and her insights into the current mindset of voters, particular minority voters 35 and under, is an important one that you should hear. And that, hopefully, will inspired you to get involved.

Links to references from this episode:
https://www.newpaproject.org/npp-team/
https://powerinterfaith.org
https://www.ncjw.org
https://www.pahouse.com/McClinton/
https://radio.foxnews.com/2024/03/28/scott-presler-on-early-voting-amish-voter-impact-and-his-luscious-locks/
https://www.badfaithdocumentary.com
https://whyy.org/articles/jayz-pennsylvania-legislature-private-school-vouchers-jeff-yass/

Thanks for listening! Now follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Threads. And please consider becoming a Patreon supporter at www.patreon.com/podcastunreasonable. It's a small price to pay to help keep America from becoming a theocracy, dontchya think?

In this special edition of Unreasonable, guest host Olivia Goudeau, national organizing manager of the Secular Student Alliance (SSA), talks to Washington Post columnist and author Kate Cohen about her new book, “We Of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (and Maybe You Should Too)."

Neither fit the conservative invention of “angry atheist.” They are both kind and thoughtful women who come from different backgrounds and different generations, yet arrived at a place of peace, able to live happily without the encumbrances of a god or the trappings of Religion. 

They talk about their own upbringings, their own belief systems and how they arrived at them. They talk about parenting, having been parented, and the role religion played, or didn’t, in all of it.

In her book, Cohen writes:

If “atheist” is ever going to stop being a scary word — and if “religious” is ever going to stop being a sacred word, a word that short-circuits moral and scientific progress — athesists have to be willing to say in casual conversation that we are atheists.

This is that conversation. 

Thanks for listening! Now follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Threads. And please consider becoming a Patreon supporter at www.patreon.com/podcastunreasonable. It's a small price to pay to help keep America from becoming a theocracy, dontchya think?

Elizabeth and Gabe Rutan-Ram had fostered numerous children before they decided to adopt one, a child from Florida identified with a disability. If they were a monied couple, they could have gone through a private adoption agency spending $30,000 or more. Instead, and more in keeping with their means, they opted to take their state’s mandatory foster-parent training program and home-study certification through the Holston United Methodist Home for Children, a child-placement agency that receives taxpayer funding from the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services.

Just as they were about to begin their training, however, Liz had a nagging feeling that maybe, before they go too far down this road, they should let Holston know that she and Gabe are Jewish. Immediately they were told they were no longer eligible for Holston’s services, as they do not share the same religious beliefs. (So much for Judeo-Christian values!)

Hear their story on this episode of Unreasonable.

Thanks for listening! Now follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Threads. And please consider becoming a Patreon supporter at www.patreon.com/podcastunreasonable. It's a small price to pay to help keep America from becoming a theocracy, dontchya think?

In the House of Representatives there are a handful of secular politicians (some more out than others) who work toward enacting laws uninspired by providence and more by simple reason and innate human morality.

Jared Huffman is a congressman from California. A former Mormon preacher and now self-defined humanist, he co-founded and co-chairs (along with Rep. Jamie Raskin) the Congressional Freethought Caucus, created “to promote sound public policy based on reason, science and moral values, while protecting the secular character of government and championing the value of freedom of thought worldwide.”

We spoke with him in the library of the Lutheran Church of the Reformation across the street from the Capital building, as SRF participants headed out for Hill Day to lobby their representatives.

Thanks for listening! Now follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Threads. And please consider becoming a Patreon supporter at www.patreon.com/podcastunreasonable. It's a small price to pay to help keep America from becoming a theocracy, dontchya think?

Erica Coray and Zach Pekelis are attorneys working to limit the deleterious impacts from religious accommodations. Their SRF panel “Past, Present and Upcoming Battles Over Health Mandates and Religious Accommodations” examined the law governing religious exemptions from public health requirements and the impact these cases have on the future of religious exceptionalism in law and society.

They talked to Unreasonable about the real-life threats posed by religious accommodations, the cynical use of the term “deeply held religious beliefs” and how courts are meant to assess a plaintiff’s standing, as well as the sincerity, of their religious-based objections. (Think gay wedding cakes, hypothetical websites, postal workers demanding Sunday off and football coaches making 50-yard line public spectacles of their personally held religious beliefs.)

Most timely, we get into the current Supreme Court battle argued by Erin Hawley (a former clerk for Justice Roberts who now works for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a powerful conservative Christian legal group, and the wife of insurrectionist Sen. Josh Hawley ) regarding access of the abortion pill Mifepristone.

Thanks for listening! Now follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Threads. And please consider becoming a Patreon supporter at www.patreon.com/podcastunreasonable. It's a small price to pay to help keep America from becoming a theocracy, dontchya think?

Erin Reed is a transgender woman, public speaker, journalist and activist who tracks anti-LGBTQ+ legislation around the world, tirelessly reporting on issues concerning the trans community. Her immensely influential TikTok account has over 445,000 followers and her daily Substack, Erin In The Morning, has more than 54,000 subscribers. 

On twitter alone, her works has been viewed over 250 million times. That’s reach.

All told, her content has been viewed hundreds of millions of times with one goal: “to achieve gender justice for queer and marginalized people through education and understanding.”

Thanks for listening! Now follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Threads. And please consider becoming a Patreon supporter at www.patreon.com/podcastunreasonable. It's a small price to pay to help keep America from becoming a theocracy, dontchya think?

On June 12, 2016, life changed for Brandon Wolf. He crouched in a bathroom while a gunman opened fire at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub, killing his best friends, Drew Leinonen & Juan Guerrero, and 47 others.

Rather than be swallowed by the anger and fear of tragedy, Brandon set out to honor the victims’ legacies with action.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Brandon co-founded The Dru Project, a nonprofit organization that works to empower youth and provide future leaders in the LGBTQ community funding for higher education. To date, the organization has given over $150,000 in college scholarships to rising leaders.

He also became an outspoken activist in the gun violence prevention movement, partnering with March For Our Lives, Everytown, Giffords, and others to demand legislative solutions to the epidemic. In 2019, he became the first survivor of the tragedy at Pulse Nightclub to testify before Congress.

Today, Brandon is a nationally-recognized gun safety and LGBTQ civil rights advocate and dynamic public speaker. He currently serves as National Press Secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization.

He is the author of the memoir, "A Place for Us."

Thanks for listening! Now follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Threads. And please consider becoming a Patreon supporter at www.patreon.com/podcastunreasonable. It's a small price to pay to help keep America from becoming a theocracy, dontchya think?

By his own definition, Todd Stiefel is weathly. He just is. That’s not a judgment, just a fact. When his family business was sold and the non-compete clause kicked in, he was left financially secure and without a career. His years of preparation to lead the company were rendered unnecessary. One day he was Chief Strategy Officer of Stiefel Laboratories. Next, he’s searching for ways to protect, and make the best use of, his windfall.

He created the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, whose mission is to “secure humanity’s future by ensuring public policy decisions are based on love and reason rather than bias and dogma.” He has gifted over $8.7 million to charitable causes, including $7.7 million dollars to nonprofit organizations in the secular movement. 

We met Stiefel at the Summit for Religous Freedom in April. This interview follows up on a screening of the new documentary, "Bad Faith," (Stiefel is an executive producer) that closed out the event.

Thanks for listening! Now follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Threads. And please consider becoming a Patreon supporter at www.patreon.com/podcastunreasonable. It's a small price to pay to help keep America from becoming a theocracy, dontchya think?

Tim Whitaker is a true believer. The creator and facilitator of The New Evangelicals podcast, Tim advocates for the marginalized within the church, exploring the full depth and breadth of Christian faith traditions, and seeks to hold toxic churches and their leaders accountable.

So if you’re appalled by watching the America you thought you knew violently shapeshift into an authoritarian theocracy, imagine what it’s like for those who have a completely different understanding of religion — a progressive one — witness the debasing of their country at the hands of those cravenly reinterpreting the sacred tenets of their  faith.

In an age of Christian cosplay, The New Evangelicals seek to reclaim the evangelical tradition by embracing Christ-like values like inclusivity, diversity, and respectfulness.

The New Evangelicals “advocate for a restored church that recognizes the imago dei in others, and does not dehumanize anyone in their journey.”

Imagine that. 

Thanks for listening! Now follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Threads. And please consider becoming a Patreon supporter at www.patreon.com/podcastunreasonable. It's a small price to pay to help keep America from becoming a theocracy, dontchya think?