Speaker 1: Welcome to the nonprofits for our third segment this week. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll just let Steven give us the details.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Thanks Scott. I hope you're all sitting down for
Speaker 2: this one. A local Christian pastor says killing women will
Speaker 2: shut them up. So Pastor Joel Webbin of Covenant Bible
Speaker 2: Church in Texas, of all places, says that a Christian
Speaker 2: nation governed by the Bible would see the end of
Speaker 2: hashtag me too movement, his rationale being that publicly executing
Speaker 2: just a few of the allying women would see all
Speaker 2: of the false accusations cease. This story is reported on
Speaker 2: in a few different places, including The Mary Sue by
Speaker 2: Rachel Alatowski on October twenty first, two thousand and twenty four.
Speaker 1: All right, well let's get into it here, Steven. So
Speaker 1: whether or not we consider this punishment of pro and
Speaker 1: I think we are, we're all leaning in one particular direction,
Speaker 1: but the Bible might very well say otherwise. Okay, So
Speaker 1: what do you think of Joel Webbin? Not necessarily your
Speaker 1: personal opinion, but just your your opinion about this approach?
Speaker 1: What what do you what do you think of Joel
Speaker 1: Webbin looking to the Bible for moral guidance on this issue,
Speaker 1: like it's it's.
Speaker 2: It's it's, it's it's mind blowing. It boggles my mind
Speaker 2: that someone can be so inured to any kind of
Speaker 2: critical thinking and empathy and just trying to understand a
Speaker 2: perspective other than their own entitled, empowered perspective, like like,
Speaker 2: just just just so that we have the fullest understanding
Speaker 2: of the concept that this sermon from his pulpit that
Speaker 2: he was preaching is his puppet, which is in the
Speaker 2: dining hall of a restaurant that they rent. I guess
Speaker 2: his rationale being that that you know, in under if
Speaker 2: this were a Christian nation and he is a great nationalist,
Speaker 2: that the Bible would then be the law of the land.
Speaker 2: And therefore, if someone is found guilty of assaulting a woman,
Speaker 2: then he should be put to death. And under that paradigm,
Speaker 2: if someone is found guilty of falsely accusing someone, then
Speaker 2: they receive the same punishment that their accused e would
Speaker 2: have received. And so in this case, a woman who
Speaker 2: was lying about these allegations would then receive that punishment.
Speaker 2: She would be the one put to death. And it
Speaker 2: just boggles my mind that he would say that from
Speaker 2: the pulpit that just killing a few of these women
Speaker 2: would stop stop this. I guess in his fantasy world
Speaker 2: that this is like a widespread problem and that women
Speaker 2: are the enemy and that they should be stopped for
Speaker 2: spreading all of these lies. And I just I don't
Speaker 2: understand how anyone can be so inerd to common sense
Speaker 2: and just like actually hearing another person sharing their experience,
Speaker 2: and just how how, how how empowered, how entitled must
Speaker 2: you be to have your ears stuffed so hard that
Speaker 2: you can't possibly hear of saying?
Speaker 3: Damien, do you think that? I mean, do you agree
Speaker 3: with what Stevens saying?
Speaker 1: I mean, what's what's your take on what could be
Speaker 1: motivating this guy to say these hateful things.
Speaker 4: Look, I think say Christian nationalism, and I think yeah,
Speaker 4: and Christian nationalism follows on from my time when I
Speaker 4: was a when I was a fundamentalist Christian, I think
Speaker 4: I was more familiar with the term dominionism, which they're
Speaker 4: both essentially the same thing. But yeah, my question, my
Speaker 4: I suppose my thing he is has the death penalty
Speaker 4: actually stopped a particular type of crime from happening? And
Speaker 4: we know, for example, in the US that the death
Speaker 4: penalty is mandate mandate, but you know, is inappropriate? Is
Speaker 4: it a punishment for murder? For example, in various Asian countries,
Speaker 4: the death penalty is used for drug smuggling and trafficking,
Speaker 4: but that doesn't seem to have solved those problems. So
Speaker 4: I'm not too sure. Aside from the promotion of religious dogma,
Speaker 4: I'm not too sure why Webin thinks that punishing killing
Speaker 4: a woman would stop false accusations when we know that
Speaker 4: for much more drastic things like murder and drug trafficking,
Speaker 4: that the death penalty hasn't stopped those.
Speaker 2: Things because he doesn't want to stop the sexual assaults.
Speaker 2: He just wants to stop women from talking about it.
Speaker 2: That's that's his that's his in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, actually seems what's happening here.
Speaker 4: I would actually argue as well that this is something
Speaker 4: that Marry Suit. In the Merry Sue article, if you
Speaker 4: look towards the bottom of it, they actually highlighted quite
Speaker 4: correctly that Webin doesn't seem to have called for the
Speaker 4: execution of actual rapists, and in the article actually made
Speaker 4: a few, actually made a few links to news reports
Speaker 4: of actual rapes that have resulted in either disfigurement or
Speaker 4: the death of the person of the victim. And Webin
Speaker 4: seems to be fairly quiet about that, like he might
Speaker 4: only he will probably give some sort of lip service
Speaker 4: to oh, rape is bad. Yeah, those people are heinous.
Speaker 4: But to actually call for the death of women who
Speaker 4: make false allegations, it's like, Okay, that's that's us. That's
Speaker 4: using a hammer to turn off a light switch. Essentially.
Speaker 4: Then the other problem that Webin has is that how
Speaker 4: prevalent are false rape accusations, And I was I would
Speaker 4: say hardly, Like, yes, they exist.
Speaker 1: But hardly to the extent that it's being suggested here.
Speaker 5: Exactly Weben in the replace that's a I think I
Speaker 5: think that's that's a part of it.
Speaker 4: But I think it's more so you first, Kelly first, Sorry,
Speaker 4: you first.
Speaker 5: That was all they wanted to say, mindset, we got
Speaker 5: to gyp this up women in their place, scaring.
Speaker 4: But what I did want to point out, and this
Speaker 4: is something I did put in my show notes, was
Speaker 4: that the way the Mary Sue actually covered this article,
Speaker 4: I'm going to say, is actually fairly unbalanced. Like when
Speaker 4: this when the link came in in the show notes,
Speaker 4: I thought, well, hold on, what's why did he say that,
Speaker 4: what's his reasoning? Where is he coming from? And I
Speaker 4: did not get that from the Mary Sue. Now I
Speaker 4: understand the Mary Sue is, I suppose, very heavily to
Speaker 4: the left of the political spectrum. So I actually had
Speaker 4: to do some Google searching to find, Okay, what did
Speaker 4: Joel Webbin actually say? What context did he say it,
Speaker 4: and what is his what's his motivation? Rather than just
Speaker 4: Joel Webbin is bad because he wants to kure women. Okay, cool,
Speaker 4: we know that, but let's give a bit more background
Speaker 4: and a bit more flavored to the article about why.
Speaker 4: And so I found I found a link to a
Speaker 4: kron dot com, which seems to be an independent media
Speaker 4: your outlet, that actually did go into, you know, a
Speaker 4: bit more of his history and his motivations, and you
Speaker 4: know what what he was actually saying in paragraph form
Speaker 4: rather than you know, Christian nationalist bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what was the what was the difference?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 3: It was? Was the take in the in the other article? Different?
Speaker 4: Well to me is the Mary Sue trying to be
Speaker 4: the information or opinion?
Speaker 5: Is interesting that to see us as when we were
Speaker 5: earlier this week we're talking about educating people to figure
Speaker 5: out good sources. This is one of the things we
Speaker 5: have to educate Americans don't understand what's news and what's opinion,
Speaker 5: because half of Americans don't know the freaking difference.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so sometimes two get mixed up. So I think, yeah,
Speaker 4: so when I read this article, now I know this.
Speaker 4: I know we're not talking about the Mary Sue, but
Speaker 4: I think it's a good, good segue anyway, you know,
Speaker 4: to discuss, like you know, when a media when a
Speaker 4: media organization puts out an article, you know, we have
Speaker 4: to differentiate what hold on? Is this just a polemic?
Speaker 4: Is this actually trying to say something that the reader
Speaker 4: doesn't already believe?
Speaker 2: Is this you know?
Speaker 4: Whereas if I read from the chron dot com and
Speaker 4: I've got the link in my in my show notes,
Speaker 4: you know, there's actually a lot more if you compare
Speaker 4: the two articles. One is trying to inflame you, one
Speaker 4: is trying to inform you.
Speaker 1: So maybe it's some of that fear mongering on the
Speaker 1: left that we were talking about earlier this week.
Speaker 4: I think so, because the real flavor I got from
Speaker 4: the Mary Soue piece was, you know, Christian national is bad. Well,
Speaker 4: I get that he's bad, but you know, give me
Speaker 4: a bit more, give me a bit more context, give
Speaker 4: me a bit more, you know, a bit more color.
Speaker 4: Don't just give me a black and white, give me
Speaker 4: something that right.
Speaker 2: Well, I do.
Speaker 1: I think I think it's very valuable to make sure
Speaker 1: that we have a an unbiased and comprehensive knowledge of
Speaker 1: the situation before we get too far into judgment. But
Speaker 1: let's you know, we we do. Let's not stray too
Speaker 1: far from the point here. We you know, there was
Speaker 1: video of him standing in the pulpit saying that we
Speaker 1: should that we should execute women, and you know they
Speaker 1: didn't really comment about anybody in the congregation saying anything
Speaker 1: or standing up and leaving. Kelly, what are your thoughts
Speaker 1: on that? What would you do if you were in
Speaker 1: Webins congregation on the day that he said that in
Speaker 1: the pulpit.
Speaker 5: I have more morals than mister Webbin has, so I
Speaker 5: definitely would have said up. I don't know if I
Speaker 5: would have actually walked out. I might have actually stood
Speaker 5: up and said something. So, but I want to point out,
Speaker 5: and this might piss everybody off, Joe Webbin is right.
Speaker 5: If you kill someone, whether they're a woman, or not,
Speaker 5: it does tend to shut them up. Okay, so apparently
Speaker 5: he isn't one hundred percent stupid. But if you need
Speaker 5: a blueprint for stupid, this guy is it. That's all
Speaker 5: I'm saying, Ellie, I can I take a second out
Speaker 5: from the panel for a second. Mister Webbin, if you
Speaker 5: feel that I just mischaracterized you, please please contact me.
Speaker 5: I need the entertainment and I want you to know, though,
Speaker 5: that things can get better. I myself, and this is
Speaker 5: very true. I was a homeless drug addicted alcoholic suffering
Speaker 5: from PTSD and now I run my own business with
Speaker 5: my son. So things can get better for you. You
Speaker 5: just have to apply yourself and that thing you know,
Speaker 5: your brain, you might as well start using it for something.
Speaker 5: Thanks everyone for letting me have it more.
Speaker 3: You know right.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is a Saturday Afternoon special and
Speaker 1: this is Kelly given his motivational speech.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: Hang in there, Joel Webbin, you know you can turn
Speaker 1: things around.
Speaker 3: Seven. I would like to come back to you for
Speaker 3: a second here. So, so he's talking.
Speaker 1: He's talking about this kind of thing from his religious perspective,
Speaker 1: and I would imagine, although I didn't see his specific
Speaker 1: justification for saying it. Maybe there'll be some of that
Speaker 1: in the in the in the blowback here. But so
Speaker 1: we're talking, so we're talking about freedom of religion. On
Speaker 1: one hand, whether or not you think that his religion
Speaker 1: actually promotes the kind of ideas he was promoting. But
Speaker 1: we're still talking about freedom of religion. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, we have the safety of the community and
Speaker 1: of the public in general. How can we balance that?
Speaker 1: How can we balance this easy one for you, I'll
Speaker 1: lobbing you up a softball here. How do we balance
Speaker 1: religious freedom with person with public safety?
Speaker 2: Well, like I think like public safety, like your you're
Speaker 2: relig what is it that your religious freedom.
Speaker 3: Stops at the tip of my nose or something?
Speaker 1: Right, You're right to swing your arm, that was it.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to punch the air. And if you
Speaker 2: happen to get in the way, like, yeah, your religious
Speaker 2: liberties start and end with you and they don't extend
Speaker 2: beyond that. And anyone's safety is not secondary to your
Speaker 2: religious freedoms. It's while that people would would ever consider otherwise.
Speaker 2: And in this fantasy land where you know where you know,
Speaker 2: white Christian men get to make all the rules in
Speaker 2: this fantasy land where where women and children are the
Speaker 2: property of men, Like, how can yeah, Like, in what
Speaker 2: way there's there is no room for that in our civilization. Like,
Speaker 2: if you want to be having your own private fantasies
Speaker 2: about that, that's your discretion, but the rest of civilization
Speaker 2: knows better than that, and we will we need to
Speaker 2: be able to fight to protect exactly that.
Speaker 1: So you think there's a fundamental clash between between his
Speaker 1: right for religious freedom in this in this particular instance,
Speaker 1: and the need for public safety and for well and
Speaker 1: for it's more than just a matter of public safety, right,
Speaker 1: it's specifically on women and women's freedom and trust and
Speaker 1: feelings of safety in coming forward and reporting acts of
Speaker 1: sexual assault in that kind of thing. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: think that there's a fundamental difference that they can't be balanced.
Speaker 1: We have to have to lean one way or the
Speaker 1: other in this case. Is that what you're saying, Stephen.
Speaker 2: Like, well, like, if we're saying that, you know, his
Speaker 2: religious freedoms means that he should be able to stone
Speaker 2: a woman that he found guilty of adultery, then yeah,
Speaker 2: we're going to curtail those freedoms. But like for him
Speaker 2: to believe for him to wish, for him to want, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can cash that in at the bank if you like.
Speaker 2: But for yeah, like your your what you believe personally, Like,
Speaker 2: nobody's going to stop him from believing something. Nobody's going
Speaker 2: to stop him from holding that belief, but as soon
Speaker 2: as that belief is going to have a negative impact.
Speaker 2: And that was that was such a huge piece of
Speaker 2: my deconversion, is realizing just how much disrespect I held
Speaker 2: for people who weren't a part of my my in circle,
Speaker 2: my in group, and for me being you know, a
Speaker 2: good man and I pacifist. You know, I could do
Speaker 2: I could still, you know, I could, I could bear
Speaker 2: that burden for those people without getting violent about it.
Speaker 2: But it was still it was still yeah, I still
Speaker 2: that doesn't that didn't stop me from holding that that
Speaker 2: kernel of disrespect for anybody that was on the outside.
Speaker 2: And it was so liberating when I was able to
Speaker 2: release that and say, hey, those people that think differently
Speaker 2: than me aren't inferior to me, but they're actually equal
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: So so what you're saying then, is that what you
Speaker 1: were The way you were talking about society also reflects
Speaker 1: kind of like a little microcosm of what's in your
Speaker 1: what was in your own mind. You know, you had
Speaker 1: your own personal clashes. You were religious, you saw this
Speaker 1: hateful uh speech and these hateful ideas, and it just
Speaker 1: there was that fundamental clash and you it just couldn't
Speaker 1: you know, it was not couldn't mesh right, And so
Speaker 1: that led to your deconversion. And that leads perfectly into
Speaker 1: my next question for Damien. Will this type of thing
Speaker 1: lead to the undermining of the respect of religious organizations?
Speaker 1: And if that's the case, is that ultimately a good thing.
Speaker 4: I think it will lead to the undermining of religious organizations,
Speaker 4: just in that it's one more example of a of
Speaker 4: what we would call an unhinged Christian nationalist pastor. You know,
Speaker 4: if you're looking for examples of you know, dumb things
Speaker 4: that passes have said, you know, I think you can
Speaker 4: put up, you know, a Wikipedia page of all the
Speaker 4: things that Joel Webbin has said. It's a highlight. And
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, it's like it's very hard to now look.
Speaker 4: I actually think Joel Webbin should be out there saying
Speaker 4: these kind of things because it exposes, you know, what
Speaker 4: what he thinks. Because I think the more dangerous thing
Speaker 4: is let's say Joel Webbin was an underground church past
Speaker 4: that had been suppressed by by the government or by
Speaker 4: by other forces. And then you know, let's say he
Speaker 4: was running a cult. And then only do you find
Speaker 4: out later on, once you're inside, once he and his
Speaker 4: group have his hooks into you, that you find out
Speaker 4: that he calls for the stoning of women who make spurious,
Speaker 4: spurious sexual assault claims. Then it's oh, shit, is too
Speaker 4: late to get out. But the fact he's upfront and
Speaker 4: he's able to say it and record it means we
Speaker 4: can see upfront with very little cost to us except
Speaker 4: for our time, that this guy is all full of
Speaker 4: stupid ideas. So let's get on the front foot and
Speaker 4: actually discuss these stupid ideas so we can be the
Speaker 4: antidote to his stupid ideas.
Speaker 1: Right, So shaning later on the situation, right, we want
Speaker 1: to expose it so that we can that way we
Speaker 1: can fix it.
Speaker 4: And this this is what I'm saying before. But having
Speaker 4: the plurality of voices, you know, the answer to bad
Speaker 4: speech isn't cutting speech down, is having more speech. So
Speaker 4: we can evaluate and have these discussions and bring things
Speaker 4: out into the open, so that you know, as I say,
Speaker 4: sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 1: I agree completely, so Kelly, as we so as Demian
Speaker 1: just said, sunlight is the best disinfectant. If we expose this,
Speaker 1: we can talk about it. We can we can make caring,
Speaker 1: compassionate decisions, reasonable decisions about how to proceed, how to
Speaker 1: deal with these types of situations, how to deal with
Speaker 1: these types of people that spread these hateful messages. Do
Speaker 1: you think, Kelly, do you think this is going to
Speaker 1: be something that we will that will become less common
Speaker 1: as we see these things, as we as we shake
Speaker 1: our fists, and people read about this in the newspaper
Speaker 1: and say that's a horrible thing. Will they still go
Speaker 1: to church the next Sunday? Or as Steven did, will
Speaker 1: some of them start realizing, wait a minute, we have
Speaker 1: there's a clash here. I'm going to stop going to
Speaker 1: that church or stop going to church at all. Do
Speaker 1: you think this is a problem that's going to be
Speaker 1: around for a while longer or because I have to admit,
Speaker 1: it's stuck around a lot longer than I've expected. You know,
Speaker 1: this kind of thing that started popping up, you know,
Speaker 1: within the last five years, the last eight years or whatever,
Speaker 1: and so you know, I expected people to react much
Speaker 1: more swiftly and much more severely. Do you think this
Speaker 1: is a long term problem or do you think this
Speaker 1: is something that will be self correcting, perhaps within our lifetime?
Speaker 5: You know, Scott I said it earlier this week, America
Speaker 5: was founded by a bunch of crazy religious fanatics. So
Speaker 5: is this going to go away? No, it's never going
Speaker 5: to go away. Can we fight it? Yes? Should we
Speaker 5: fight it? Most definitely? Right? And I think that I
Speaker 5: think what we're going to see is that, and what
Speaker 5: we have seen throughout American history is this kind of
Speaker 5: stuff goes in waves, it goes in cycles, and we're
Speaker 5: just in a big cycle of it right now. You
Speaker 5: know what. I look at this as like one more
Speaker 5: satanic panic that we're living through. Wait, the first one
Speaker 5: we got alcohol illegalized.
Speaker 2: Wooh.
Speaker 5: And then we had the second satanic a panic in
Speaker 5: the eighties, and now we're going through another one. And
Speaker 5: the first, the second one was about culture, right, Oh,
Speaker 5: we can't play D and D rock and roll music
Speaker 5: is bad. But this one that we're going through, this
Speaker 5: one is actually targeting people.
Speaker 4: This is bad.
Speaker 5: This is alcohol to games, and culture and now the
Speaker 5: actual people we're attacking with our religion, and so are
Speaker 5: we going to get rid of it forever? No, this
Speaker 5: cycle of it is really, really, really bad though. I
Speaker 5: think this is probably the worst Satanic panic we've lived
Speaker 5: through in the last one hundred years.
Speaker 1: All Right, thanks, Kelly Steven, I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: the last word. So how I want to make sure
Speaker 1: that we bring it back around to the victim, to
Speaker 1: the real victims of what's happening here. So how does
Speaker 1: his stance highlight broader cultural challenges surrounding the accountability of
Speaker 1: men who have been accused of abuse versus the treatment
Speaker 1: of women who report it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, like, I'm like, I am glad that at
Speaker 2: least four of us, you know, sis guys can be
Speaker 2: sitting here and like speaking up and holding these shitty
Speaker 2: values held by men to the fire, because this is Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's one thing for us to say that it's good
Speaker 2: for webin here to be to be saying these things
Speaker 2: out loud, so that you know, the the world can
Speaker 2: hear him say these things. But most importantly, I hope
Speaker 2: that the people within his church are hearing him say
Speaker 2: these things, and that they're actually able to dig in
Speaker 2: and say, what do we actually think about this, and
Speaker 2: not just say, oh, well Pastor said it, so it
Speaker 2: must be good. I know he I was reading the
Speaker 2: transcript of that part of his sermon and he actually
Speaker 2: doubled down and he recognized that I just made some
Speaker 2: people in the congregation here uncomfortable, and that's good because
Speaker 2: the truth should make you feel uncomfortable, and like getting
Speaker 2: himself really hyped up as a result of that. So
Speaker 2: he stands by this kind of narrow view, and we
Speaker 2: need to yeah, we need to be able to call
Speaker 2: it out for what it is and let people know
Speaker 2: that there is an alternative to that. I think guys
Speaker 2: like this are beyond reaching. He has no motivation for
Speaker 2: changing his thoughts in this way, like he is at
Speaker 2: the top of the pyramid as white sis head Christian pastor.
Speaker 2: Like what on earth would possibly motive him to try
Speaker 2: to empathize with others. But I think that this is
Speaker 2: at least one place where atheists and like sane Christians
Speaker 2: can be in agreement and say no, this is bullshit.
Speaker 2: And we in our in our personal sphere where we
Speaker 2: do have some flow, influence, some control, this is where
Speaker 2: we can say No, these ideas are garbage ideas, and
Speaker 2: we will not stand for them, and we will stand
Speaker 2: against them. And that's the most that we can do.
Speaker 2: Shitty people are going to believe shitty things. People who
Speaker 2: want to believe shitty things are going to walk around
Speaker 2: until they find someone who will tell them these shitty
Speaker 2: things that they want to hear. We can't change that,
Speaker 2: but we can still add our voices to the din
Speaker 2: and try to make this place, the world a better,
Speaker 2: safer spot for the people who are disenfranchised and marginalized,
Speaker 2: like the wonderful women on our planet.
Speaker 1: So maybe we could fill in the missing shitty you know,
Speaker 1: the people that are wanting to hear shitty things. Maybe
Speaker 1: we can fill their ears with things that are not
Speaker 1: so shitty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, make it more for them to hear it.
Speaker 2: What's then, make it harder for them to hear that
Speaker 2: shitty message.
Speaker 1: Exactly drown out you know, drown out the bad voices,
Speaker 1: drown out the bad stuff.