Colorado Springs, Colorado
We took some time to talk about the recent shooting in Colorado Springs, Colorado -- and Focus on the Family, which is located there. We started this podcast analyzing their kid’s radio show Adventures in Odyssey, and covered a whole series that was specifically anti-LGBTQIA+ back in 2019 - the first episode is titled “Beginning to Untie the Ties That Bind.”
We mention Grace Baldridge’s documentary where they interview Jackie Hill Perry. Also, check out their music in spotify!
We also mention the Behind the Bastard’s podcast about James Dobson.
Jenna DeWitt has a website of resources for LGBTQIA+ Christians and allies called Invisible Cake Society
We have a website—check it out for more information. You can also find us on Twitter and Instagram.
To support our show (we can’t do this without you!), join us on Patreon! You’ll get access to our monthly patron-only episodes (including the entire backlog), as well as occasional zoom hangouts. You can join this community for as little as $1.50 a month!
TRANSCRIPT
Krispin: Welcome to the Prophetic Imagination Station podcast. It is Nov 20th, when we’re recording this, and we are doing a different episode today, taking a quick break from the Jesus Freak season because something really tragic happened last night, there was a shooting in Colorado Springs, Colorado at a gay nightclub. And we felt like it was important to have an extra episode about it, in part because this podcast started off talking about Focus on the Family, which is located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and just wanting to process a little bit. We're coming out of White Evangelicalism, which has been violent and oppressive to queer folks.
And when we see violence like this, to me it's just like, yeah, this is where this ideology leads. And so we wanted to talk a bit about that today. It just felt important. You may remember a few years ago, we did a whole series on an adventures in odyssey season that was all about family values and whether or not people are queer affirming, -those sorts of things. And so it just felt like it was really close to home in that way.
Danielle: Yeah. And so, yeah, at this point we don't know, you know, a ton about the shooter except he's young, and like 22 and alive. So, I mean, that means he was white, right? And in custody. But like people saying like, well, we don't know if this was like a hate crime. It's like, obviously it was it. A gay nightclub. Like targeting gay people in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and, and anybody who is familiar with Focus on the Family and Adventures in Odyssey, the name Colorado Springs Colorado right.
Krispin: Right. Yeah. Be really evocative, right?
Krispin: Yes, it is. Because if you grew up like me listening to Adventures and Odyssey, that was part of the address that they always listed at the end of the episode.
Danielle: In many ways we haven't dived fully as deep as I would like to. Odyssey, this fictional town that Focused on the Family created as the small town, this paragon of virtue with Mr. Whitaker, you know, standing for James Dobson, I guess. Colorado Springs has sort of become the surrogate odyssey in many ways, right?
Krispin: There is a Whit’s End in Colorado Springs.
Danielle: Yeah, they have a visitor center and all that jazz, but even more than that, they have also gotten involved in local politics. But it's, it's not so much the local politics right, that we wanna talk about, but it's the national politics and how, you know Focus on the family headed by Dr. Dobson has always existed to basically be a political organization that moves and shifts politics without people like Dobson having to run for office, they still are able to exert a ton of control and to shape American politics. And not just politics, but like the national conversation. and it's always been extremely violent against queer people.
Let's get that straight, but we have seen like various upticks in the anti lgbtq rhetoric and you know, we are in a season right now where it has really, really, really ramped up and you know, causing conservative Christians to view queer people as their absolute enemy. I mean, that is what these organizations have done for a long time and, and is just been really ramped up and I've been really devastated to see a lot of the rhetoric has been focused on trans kids as the ultimate battleground and they're just using real people's lives as paws to get people to vote, to be afraid enough to vote for Republicans. It's really hard to wrap my mind around, but there's, there's five people were killed last night at the Q Night Club in Colorado Springs.
There's 25 people wounded, so it was like a really heavy. We just feel like we need to do it. We need to talk about it. We need to talk about it. So this is what we're doing.
Krispin: I'm glad that you mentioned that we don't know, we know very little about the suspect, and so to tie a link between focus on the family and the shooting maybe feels like too far of a stretch, but it is not. And that is you, you said something about, uh, queer people being enemies. I was thinking about it this morning and what it is, is this theology says, that being gay is being at odds with God. And if that is true, then there is so much that you are allowed and compelled to do, to be against queer people. I think about that phrase, “God's plan for marriage” or “God's plan for sexuality” is a violent statement because Christians have used force claim that they are on God's side to play out their values and to put those values on others, and it leads to things like this where it's like violence is allowed because you are against God.
Danielle: Yeah. I mean, if people don't see the connection, I don't know what else to say to you, but I wanna just take like a step back and say, I've been wanting for a long time to do a podcast where I read every single one of the books Dr. Dobson has published and just critique the hell out of them, right? But he's published like, 35 plus books. So, so that's a lot. Okay. We have a few here. I have not read most of them, but the the gist you can get from Dobson and focus on the family in general is okay if I just kind of go into this big picture overview thing?
Because I think in the 80’s he didn't talk a ton about homosexuality. He always was big on saying like, he went to school to become a psychologist in Los Angeles in, in the, in 1965, when like the Watts riots happened, and that really impacted him. Obviously he didn't get the memo that the Watts riots were about ending police brutality against black people and, you know, getting, you know, ending discrimination, racial dis discrimination when it came to housing, policing school, all that stuff.
Instead, he was like, oh, the sixties are so terrifying and everybody's doing drugs and everybody's getting promiscuous and there's all this racial strife. Again, he never names what it was about, so and so. He just like that cemented him in being. We need traditional family values. By, by which he meant like whites, police loving, heteronormative, you know?
Krispin: and traditional family values that were very much a, a product of his time, not reflective of even say like 50 years before him. But anyway,
Danielle: yeah. So what I mean from the beginning, I guess he did go to things like school boards and tell them, you know, you need to be more conservative or whatever like that.
But he didn't talk how we talked about homosexuality, right. In the eighties was more, it was more like this, and this is all horrible trigger warnings up the wazoo for all this stuff going forward. Basically like, well, if you're gay, you're probably gonna get AIDS and die. Right? Cause sin has consequences. Disobeying God has consequences. It's like a big mantra of conservatives, right? As sin has consequences, don't be disobedient. And, and they did that with their kids, right? And then they did that with these cultural issues. And so it's a really, uh, Neat framework for them to say if something bad happens to you, it's just because of sin.
And so they didn't focus on a ton. In the nineties is when they started to focus a lot on homosexuality. And then, and then we enter this awful conversion therapy phase, right? And so all these like Focus on the Family really saying like, people choose to be gay. You can be healed from being gay. You can be delivered from being gay. They invested in all these ex gay ministries. They invested in conversion therapy and, and. Finally our society's beginning to grapple with like how abusive and awful that is, how it does kill people. It's just, and it doesn't work. So, but they tried it for like, what, 15, 20 years? And, and then all of that has literally crumbled in the past few decades.
And, and most of the ex-gay people have now come out and say, it didn't work. I was, I've, I'm still gay. You know, even though they tried for so long.
Krispin: like the leaders of those ministries,
Danielle: yeah. Which, and a lot of them are now like married in queer relationships and all that stuff, but that was kind of where they focus.
And then because Dr. Dobson's always been political, it really has taken a shift in, in the past few decades, even to focus on queer people getting rights, as an erosion of Christian rights. Right. And so it's, it's being framed as we will lose our rights. As people of faith, if gay people are allowed to marry and then we have to like, honor that marriage and so and so, so now we're still in that phase, right? Of like, Queer people getting rights and having those rights, you know, codified by law, is actually going to negatively impact churches. Like they might lose their taxes exempt status, right. If they refuse to hire an openly gay person. And so, it's, it's, it's talked about in terms of rights and, and even that with like, Trans rights, they're really coming for, like, parents will lose their right over their kids if all of this gets put into law.
And so that's, that's the language that's being used and it's, it's just really devastating to me that people getting basic human rights has been twisted. And most conservative Christians who, who listen to focus on the family right, will now see that as like,a threat to them. When really, who's being threatened, who's being gunned down in nightclubs? Right. And, and people who listen to Focus won't ever, ever engage with how, how wrong their perspective is. Like they've, they will see themselves as a victim even after things like this happen.
Krispin: Yeah. I was thinking about that. During that Adventures and Odyssey season, there were these activists that threw black and pink paint on Whit’s End. And I was thinking about that, like - yeah, activists use paint or use protests and I wanna say Christian nationalists use violence and guns and force. I just think it's so striking.
Danielle: Yeah. I mean, if you tell people, gay people are coming for your rights, gay people are coming for your rights, trans people are coming for your rights, like what do you think people are gonna do?
When you've been telling them for years and years and years, you must do everything in your power to protect yourself. And your rights. Yes, it's going to be violent. We’ve seen so much violent rhetoric, that, you know, this actually erupting into violence is, is sadly not a surprise. Like, I've been devastated.
I've been sobbing all morning. I've been filled with rage, but I'm not surprised and I want to be, you know, I, but how could you not see this coming and. Everybody listening to this right now, we have got to interrupt this rhetoric when we hear. Make your family so deeply uncomfortable. This Thanksgiving, Christmas. You’re laughing. I'm very serious. You're laughing cuz I'm really intense about this. I get it.
Krispin: I mean, I did my own interrupting
Danielle: yes. And here's the thing guys, people like me, I think people expect me to be really intense. Which I am.
But we need you quiet, intense people too. All of you guys listening to this have some intensity in you and, and I know you don't wanna see queer people killed, and I know you don't wanna see them dehumanize over and over again in the media, from your parents' mouth, from, you know, church people's mouths.
You quiet people, I know that you wanna resist and you have so many avenues to do that. Krispin, can you say what you did today?
Krispin: So we used to go to Imago Day here in Portland, a well known church, - you know, Don Miller's
Danielle: Donald Miller's
Krispin: And and we left because they were not affirming of queer people.
And that was a few years ago, but I'm was still part of the Facebook group, for the church, and so this morning I posted in that in their Facebook group, I dropped a link to our new current church, which is affirming and just said like,
Danielle: we've been there for like three years now.
Krispin: and just said like, “Hey, if you were shaken by this news and you want to worship at a place that affirms and celebrates LGBTQIA+ people come join us this morning at Cascade. So basically just going into another church's Facebook group and being like, Hey, don't go to this church, come to our church instead, if you are affirming of queer people.”
Danielle: But before you talk, cause I know you have some really good things to say. I'm slowly working on my taking down Dr. Jobson thing, and I've been on this kick for a while now. I don't have all the research. I haven't done all the research, so I, I wanna encourage people and most of what I sort of said, no, all of it, most of what I said just now, it comes from listening to, uh, this podcast called Behind the Bastards, and they have like a two part series on Dr. Dobson, focused on the. I would encourage people to listen to that. I don't want it to seem like I'm stealing all their research. I just really appreciate that and I'm glad they put that out there. And you guys should all go. Listen, I have a few more things to say about Dr. Dobson,
Krispin: We'll talk in a minute about how some of the like moderate positions are not.
Danielle: We're not gonna just focus on Dr. Dobson.
Krispin: that's what I want to talk about in a minute. But yeah, let, let's talk about Dobson first.
Danielle: Okay. So here's, here's one thing I was thinking about.First of all, in the Behind the Bastards podcast, they talk about like, he was very successful in politics and it totally went to his head and he became obsessed with that, and that became his whole thing as being politically successful.
Krispin: like he was trained as a psychologist and ended up Right, like on tax code policy, right? Yes. Like just to be clear about, like what we're talking about.
Danielle: by the way, like in 2019, you focus on the family, their tax returns. You'll say they, they made. 99 million.
Krispin: 99 million. Oh my
Danielle: I mean, and that's just that, I mean, they also have the family research account, all this stuff.
Krispin: they also call themselves a church,
Danielle: they don't have to pay taxes on any of that
Krispin: Which is related to Colorado Springs actually like running out of enough money. This was years ago, but they ran out of money to keep the parks open
Danielle: and the street lights on
Krispin: And the street lights on, which would not have happened if focus on the family who was getting all this money was actually paying local taxes. Okay. Back to you.
Danielle: Yeah, so one thing I was thinking about was - Let me ask you a question.
First of all, my parents are really into Focus on the Family, surprise, surprise, you know, who's raised fully in that world? How about you Krispin?
Aand when you grow up in that world, you're like that this is how everybody's raised. The thing is, that's not true. And uh, one thing if that is fascinating is Dr. Dobson is a psychologist. Now, as a general rule, does Focus on the Family, want people going to therapy?
No.
You can maybe go to like a focus on the family approved biblical counselor. Right? But the only psychologist they want you to listen to is Dr. Dobson.
Krispin: and they're like handful of like, here's a video series from this
Danielle: But, but you know what I mean? They're all so careful. So I was like, this is genius. Like the whole aim is to get people to distrust, right? Therapy and being in touch with yourself and all of these things. My parents really don’t like therapy, you know what I mean? Like I'm sure they blame all of our relational problems currently on the fact that I finally started a long-term therapeutic relationship like in the past year.
And, and you know, they're very proud of the fact that they don't go to therapy and don't need therapy cuz God alone heals them or whatever. And so I was just like, this is genius level stuff. Like Dr. Dobson being like, don't ever go to therapy. Like the culture at large, like, will get you to care about these things and then you'll just capitulate to culture and, you know, stand strong and, and then only listen to me.
And I'm just like, there's just something so insidious about that. Right. Discrediting every single person except himself and this select handful of people. Yeah. This is really, to me, that just really stood out.
Krispin: Mm, wild. It's a wild legacy.
Danielle: I mean can you imagine being a therapist telling everybody, like, don't go to therapy? Only listen to me, only listen to my advice.
Krispin: Right.
But I mean, that's, that's the thing, there are psychologists out there, even non-Christian ones. Psychology has the potential, as a field has such potential to be oppressive and we have seen it. So I think Dr. Dobson, in his own Christian way was like, yeah, like I can do this. Like I can, cuz psychologists are allowed to say this is what's normal and this is what And he just ran, ran, ran with that.
Danielle: Yeah.
Krispin: So, I was thinking about Focus on the Family and thinking about - so what stands out to me thinking about Focus on the Family is that they are really pushing for lots of policies that would take rights away from queer people.
Krispin: I thinking about this documentary that Grace Baldridge did a few years ago. Which, uh, they perform under the name Semler if you're familiar. and so they did a series and they were talking about reparative therapy and being queer in the Christian Church. And they went and interviewed Jackie Hill Perry and Jackie Hill Perry wrote a book called Gay Girl, Good God. She identifies as gay and says like, I'm gay, but I've submitted my sexuality to Jesus as my Lord, and therefore I'm in a heterosexual relationship. Grace, in the interview says like, do you know that people are using your story in oppressive ways, basically to
Danielle: to, to tell all queer people you should do this
Krispin: and, Jackie Hill Perry is like, “I would never want that to happen” and like within this last year, partnered with Focus on the Family to do like a video series.
Danielle: Yeah. Jackie Hiller knows what she's doing.
Krispin: Right, exactly. And so I think that's a good example cuz I hear people say things like, “oh, have you read Jackie Hill Perry?” Or like, “have you heard about these people that are like, Side B, but you can identify as gay?” Right. And “we don't hate gay people. We just want them to be healthy and we want them to be celibate.”
Danielle: Can we talk about the two men I would like to take down who are squarely in this fold?
Yeah. Who aren't even gay and yet believe that they get to be the experts on it. Yes. Well, you guess. You guess who are the two white men? Pastory types that are on my shit list.
Krispin: Uh, Preston Sprinkle of course. Who's the other one?
Danielle: John Mark Comer.
Krispin: Oh, right. Yeah. Mm-hmm. .
Danielle: Okay These men, I think they're worse than Focus on Family in some ways because they are really into like, no, we're the caring, compassionate ones and we just have some concerns about the trans community and like, and they're transphobic and homophobic in ways that conservative Christians who do feel a little weird about, you know, hate crimes. For me, and this is literally what people have told me and though, and people have even been like, “I have a trans child and I love Preston Sprinkle. He's just so moderate and so measured.” I'm just like, no, he is not, he's anti-trans people. He thinks their outside of God's plan and does not believe their rights should be fought for. All this stuff. And John Mark come's the same way.
Krispin: by the way, we should, I mean, you might know who John Mark Comer is. I think it's worth mentioning that John Mark Comer is local here. So Imago Day and Bridgetown are the two biggest, like evangelical churches here. so we know a lot of people that have been at Bridgetown.
Danielle: Yeah. And so it's a trend for these conservative people, like how are they able to make money and how are they able to publish books? Oh, we'll write about human sexuality as a straight white man.
And so both John Mark Comer and Preston Sprinkle. Their most recent books are about this. I have not read either of them.
Krispin: I read the one that Preston Sprinkle wrote about trans people.
Danielle: but it's just like you're getting money. You get paid to speak, you get paid to write, and you say things that cause queer people and trans people to hate themselves, and you encourage other people to hate them as well.
Like these men need to sit down and shut up and give back all that.
like it is disgusting to me. There's so many other things they could be writing about. Why do you think they're writing about this, Kristen? Why do you think they're writing books on sexuality right now? Because it gets them paid, because it adds to the culture war.
Krispin: Well, I was gonna say-
Danielle: It kills people.
Krispin: I think it's because it is the only distinct thing that they can find about their Christianity.
Danielle: I think it gets him a paycheck.
Krispin: Yeah, I agree with that. And I think it also has to do with like this idea of like, “oh, like these stories are sad, but I'm really biblical,” and there's a piece there.
Danielle: I'm so mad at them. I'm so mad and I so mad at Christian Publishing. I mean, that's the real through line of this podcast is my incredible rage at Christian Publishing and like Christian media in general because the thing about Dr. Dobson is he wasn't just a psychologist, right?
He created, and he wasn't just like somebody involved in politics, he also created a media empire that was both like radio. And publishing. So the magazines, they had the books and they had the incredible popular radio show. So he's like, I mean, maybe he's kind of a genius because he, that's, he's just gotten his message out for decades in so many formats and into so many people's ears.
And he's probably one of the most influential people in the United States that nobody ever talks about.
Krispin: Yeah. So it's true. think it would be really helpful to slow, slow it down. Uh, I'm not saying you slow down, I'm saying like, break it down a little bit because there might be folks that are listening that are like, yeah, I wanna hear both sides, or something like and the problem that we run into if you hold this position of, uh, being a compassionate conservative where you're saying I don't think that shooting should happen at nightclubs, but I think God has a design for marriage or like God made boys and girls what you are perpetuating and what those authors are perpetuating, even though they're saying it's out of love. It’s this message: these are people that exist outside of God's plan, and that is devastating. That is a devastating message to receive. And that also, like I said it at the outset, but that message also allows focus on the family to raise money to support laws that are going to oppress people. And it's all connected. And you know, I think that, I was thinking about this this morning, I was thinking about, cuz I got into some interchange exchanges in that Facebook group and getting stuck on, uh, you know, a little bit about what does the Bible say? Is it okay to be gay or not? And what I think is missing in these conversations is the, the way that when queer people are given safe spaces where they can be themselves and they can be loved and they can belong, and they can be also part of a faith community, like the life that comes out of that is so beautiful, the life that's there that they deserve. And so I, instead of getting caught up in like arguing about, “what does the Bible say?” today I just felt this, incredible sadness, thinking about what is being missed out on, both by conservatives that choose to stay in homophobic churches, and for people that grew up in religious spaces where they're told there's something broken about you. And my hope is, even thinking about the queer people that are really close to us in, in our life, that they would know how loved they are, that they would, that they would know that God delights in them, that they can just be themselves, that they can show up, uh, because that is really beautiful and I think that is what God wants. That is what God wants.That is God's plan if you ask me. And to use phrases like God's plan for marriage or God's plan for sexuality draws these lines that pushes people out.
Danielle: Yeah. And, and you and I are coming at this from different places, which we've talked about before. You know, people like, cuz I was, you know, while out Instagram, since I deleted my Twitter and talking about this stuff, because it is personal, it's personal to us as a family.
And it shouldn't have to be personal for you to freak the freak out about death. and. People in, in my messages are like, I wanna learn about how, you know, it's not heritcal - do you have any books or whatever? And I just I don't, I don't think you should have to like study this - I don't think you should have to do that. What people need to be doing is they need to be looking at the history of biblicaism within America. Nobody wants to read books about biblicismm and the versification of the Bible and how that led to people chair cherry picking versus, to oppress people. You know, most notably the biggest example we've seen of this in American history, as Mark Noll told us in a webinar and in his freaking huge book he wrote about the Bible called America's book. You know, I was just thinking about how America was literally the only place in the entire world that used the Bible justify chattel slavery. So the lifelong enslavement of the God ordained inferiority, like, I'm sorry I'm saying these words out loud, but that's what it was. And he said, you know, throughout the world people use the Bible obviously to keep people enslaved. The only country that took off is the United States, and it's really hard not to read chapters like that and see about how we have the same exact problem when it comes to queer people and how the Bible is being used. And it really comes down to biblicism. So that's what I guess when I encourage people, it's like you have to look at the entire history of how the United States interacts with the Bible really is like the most important thing because I just don't think gay people should be begging for you to care about if they should be alive or not. Like you should just care about that and you should instead be curious about how the Dr. Dobsons came to be and how, you know, and how being anti-LGBTQ got them political votes, got them power and got them money.
And you know what it's got gay people? Trauma, death, suffering. Like it's so upsetting. I mean, here's a thought I had. You know, we started this whole podcast to nitpick adventures and honesty, like as a thought experiment, right? What would a gay club in Odyssey, which is like the pseudo Colorado Springs, Colorado.
What would happen in the whole season? We talked about, you know, it was a pride parade that they, for 14 episodes, right, they freaked the freak out about a pride parade and eventually didn't they get it changed and shut down
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Danielle: from being about tolerance, to about family values and
Krispin: like mm-hmm.
Danielle: and even as we went through the season, we were like, yeah, the only thing that conservatives can imagine is them winning and them winning people over, and if they can't win them over, and I don't think it's any coincidence that this shooting happened like three days after. Right. The Senate voted on Respect for Marriage Act, right? Is that what it is?
Krispin: mm-hmm. . Yeah. Yeah
Danielle: so giving gay people hopefully the chance, like their rights to, to be married can't be taken away by a super conservative Supreme Court. And that passed, you know, three days ago, at least in the Senate. And you know, the last email I got from Focus on the Family, Krispin, was Jim Daley. Telling everybody, you need to be very upset and worried about this and call your senators like, we don't want this to pass because then our rights will be taken away.
Our rights as Christians to believe to believe in God's design for marriage. Like those rights will be taken away if you don't contact your and, and so I'm just, What would happen in Odyssey? What do you think? If there was a gay nightclub, what would Mr. Whitaker think? Being like, wait, there's queer people dancing and celebrating and joy. What do you think he down. Yeah. Yeah.
And if that didn't work. if, if the City of Odyssey wasn't allowed to discriminate based off of sexuality, what do you think Mr. Whitaker would do?
Krispin: He would talk about how horrible it is to everybody.
Danielle: Yeah.
And he would, you know, lobby politically, he would start to tell everybody in Odyssey like, look, because we haven't been paying enough attention, finding hard enough. Like, “the city council now can't even do anything about a gay club.” Like, “so next time there's a school board election and next time there's local positions like you better.”
To do it because guess who's taking over our city? Guess who's going to take away our rice? Right now they just have a club. What if they say I have to hire a gay employee at my bizarre ice cream shop?
That I also have kids go on a time machine sometimes and hear revisionist history like and if and if that all happens, like you can just see where it's going to end, and then eventually there's. But what if for decades and decades, he's been telling these kids, he's been grooming them as they grow up in his shop, being lured by ice cream, so he can then tell them about conservative ideology if he told them over and over and over again, these people are trying to take away our rights and our rights to be Bible believing Christians. These people are taking my rights. Like who's to say what one of those kids is gonna do when they're like, wow, the world is not working out as I wanted to. These rights are not being stripped away in front of me.
There is a gay club here, you know? What are people gonna do?
Danielle: I mean, just for people listening, like I think how you feel about a gay club in general is probably a really good litmus test for whether you're on the right track or not. Right. Do you see that as the ultimate expression of like queer joy, you know, queer safety of resilience, of resisting a culture that wants them eradicated? Like I view that as such a beautiful space. I've never been in one.
I would love to. And I just see it as a beautiful place and it that's makes the tragedy, you know, even worse.
But like, how do you think conservative people think about a gay club? Just like a beacon,
Krispin: like a den of inequity.
Danielle: where Terrible, scary things go down. And even like all this rhetoric about trans people, trans women, you know, like it all leads to this viewing them as the ultimate threat, when really they're just trying to survive.
Krispin: I was just thinking about how homophobia is so just intrinsic to our nation and to our faith traditions. And so, so much gets interpreted through that, right? Like we do not think about rich people who oppress others and you know, like in that same way, right? Like I was thinking about this cuz I was thinking about the beginning of that season when Mr. Whitaker is talking about pointed nibs. It is cringeworthy, but it also is a picture of him trying to implant disgust. This picture of disgust. In people's heads around like, this is wrong and it carries with it this weight of disgust. And I think that fits with like thinking about like gay nightclub, like that is what has been promoted and that is something that promotes violence.
Danielle: Disgust, even like, going back to this Odyssey idea, it's like, if you're a conservative, you truly don't know how to live in a pluralistic society. And so you use every tactic available to, you know, stomp out your opposition. And I just think that's so scary. And we are all right to be scared of conservative Christians. I mean, Focus on the Family is classified like by the Human Rights Watch, right by the Southern Poverty Law Center. As a hate group and as, I mean, I would go so far as to call it a terrorist organization based on how many people have died because of their deadly ideology. And you know, the amount of money they raise, the amount of political lobbying they do, the amount of influence they have, their media empire. It's, it's really insidious and it's not taken seriously in the United States, we like to talk about Hitler - that's like what the Behind the Bastards podcast talks about. It's like we like to talk about certain bad people and others we just ignore completely,
Krispin: right? Yeah. So I think the question that I have is, if you are in a space where you're straddling between your beliefs and, being a part of a more conservative community, what do we do?
Maybe that's like, well, you said disrupt Thanksgiving. I think that's a great
Danielle: I think it's important that I don't tell people what to do and everybody has varying levels of. You know, their intersectionality that they're bringing to these things. And, and I, and I will say like, this is extremely personal to, to us, and, but we're not really, I just wish it was, didn't have to be personal Right.
For people. And I, and I just wanna say, I want you to honor yourself and I want you to honor your desire. To love people and to accept them. And if you've been told that you can't love God and take the Bible seriously and also be at 100%. In support of all things queer. You know, I just wanna tell you like you were lied to by men who wanted power. Like that's what happened. And this is not historic Christianity. This is a direct result of biblicism and white, patriarchal, uh, men, you know, wanting to be in power. And, and so I would just say you've got to get in touch with the parts of you that you had to numb or try to get rid. I know that you want people to live, and I know you want people to thrive, and I know you don't wanna see queer people be used as pawns in a, in a political like takeover.
So I would say please honor yourself. Please honor your own autonomy, and you need to decipher for yourself how you're. Stand up to people in your life who would rather you didn't do that, and you standing up will be a threat, but it's, it's time. It's time to do this. It's time to never again attend a church that is not a hundred percent affirming.
Don't give any organizations, even if they're doing, you know, good things or whatever, don't give them your money. Don't give them your time or attention and call this stuff out.
Krispin: You were like, I'm not gonna tell you what to do,
Danielle: Well, you know what I'm saying? Like,
Krispin: I really, no, I really appreciate that. It is, I mean, and it is up to each person to decide like, how do I want to engage with this? Right.
And I think that is really so helpful to, to say, yeah, notice that part of that wants to stand up and say something. Yeah. I, I think. paying attention to that part of so
Danielle: Yeah.
Krispin: We'll be back soon talking about Jesus Freak.
Danielle: I know, I feel like we should have like a list of resources and stuff, but we're just two people talking about a tragedy that happened and it's connection to violent. White evangelical and so, you know, we are experts. We don't have all the answers, but it's really personal to us and it's honestly very much like everything we've been trying to do with this podcast is to call out, you know, how toxic and how really harmful these, these theologies are. Mm-hmm.
Krispin: Well, we interviewed Jenna DeWitt last season and she has a wonderful list of will put in the show
Danielle: but you know, just general rule. Find trans people read their books, but find them in real life and work really hard to protect trans kids. You know, that's what I would But yeah, we are, we are gonna get back to the old Jesus Freak stuff, So I guess be, look out for that. Thanks everybody for your support and, uh, feel free to reach out. We're, we're kind of bad at responding to emails, but…
Krispin: We do appreciate them
Danielle: feel free to reach out to us.
Krispin: Thanks y'all so much for we'll be back soon.
