Kyle, Adam, and Travis talk about the latest news like Mitch McConnell continuing to freeze up, a Delta Airlines flight that had to turn around due to "diarrhea all through the airplane", and how Liberty Safes has your access codes and would apparently just hand them over to the FBI. Also Bethesda's new game Starfield came out and some people got really angry about pronouns. The Bee also talks to ADF lawyer Jeremy Tedesco about why companies care about their ESG score when they really should be worried about VDS. Help ADF by going to: http://ADFLegal.Org Check out VDS: http://viewpointdiversityscore.org This episode is brought to you by Issues, Etc. Go Lutherans! http://issuesetc.org
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go lutherans the babylon bee podcast hey everybody and welcome to the babylon bee occasional I'm Kyle Mann, the editor-in-chief.
I'm hanging out here with Adam Yenser and Travis Woodside.
I feel like I never say your last name on this show.
I would never, in all the time I've known him, be able to tell whether he was in his good mood or a bad mood.
Oh, I've just started asking him, are you okay?
Is he usually good?
Cool.
Okay.
But the problem is that he goes, yeah, I'm good.
And I go, I don't know what to think about that.
He's been playing that video game about the Roman soldiers.
Oh, Rome Total War.
Oh, yeah.
You can like send your battalions.
You can move battalions and then you can send war elephants.
Oh, that sounds like a Dan game.
Oh, wow.
It is a major Dan game.
When I played it years ago, before I knew Dan, I went, oh, this is such a dancing.
Somewhere out there, there's a kid.
There's a kid and he's going to love this.
This is perfect for.
I think the air just kicked in.
I don't know if it's supposed to or not, but maybe it doesn't matter anyway.
Let's talk more about the air.
Let's talk more.
How do you feel about that?
The podcast is only every now and then.
It has air conditioning.
Not a daily devotional, just an occasional devotional.
And it's off.
Which is what most daily devotionals become.
Are you guys good at daily devotionals?
You mean like actually having one of those from a bookstore and following the budget?
Either that or sitting down.
Or like a dedicated, this is my 15 minutes in the morning where I read something out of the Bible.
I go in streaks.
Yeah, where I'm like, I'm very streaky as well.
I'm doing it.
I'm doing it.
And then I feel like that turns into pride and God's like, nope.
I don't want to be too proud, so I'm not going to read the book.
I've fallen out of that.
I'm very good at praying daily, but reading the Bible for years, I was on a streak where I'd read a chapter every night for multiple years in a row.
But then over the last like two years, I would say it's much less consistent.
Yeah.
Well, let's all read the Bible right now.
There we go.
Let's turn that brown upside down.
Well, today we're going to talk with ADF lawyer Jeremy Tedesco about how ADF is combating.
Is that how you say that word?
Combating the corporate ESG score system with their very own viewpoint diversity score.
That sounds interesting.
Before we do that, we're going to also talk about some cool stuff.
So here we go.
What's in the news this week?
So, Mitch McConnell, he's an old man.
Speaking of cool stuff, Mitch McConnell keeps freezing up.
He stepped on my joke.
Mitch McConnell.
How old is he?
He's trying to freeze up.
He's trying to freeze up like Mitch McConnell.
Maybe I needed to say that.
It's been a long pause.
Mitch McConnell continues to sir.
Sir?
Senator, did you hear the question?
Freeze up.
Wait, I've never actually watched any of this footage.
Does he freeze and then kick right back in, or does he look like he has the thousand mile stare for like several seconds?
And then 38 comes in.
Somebody asks Sam, what are your plans for re-election?
Like, are you going to run again?
And he just gives the blank stare, but he's still standing there at the podium.
And then an aide comes in and goes, sir, sir, do you hear the question?
He just keeps staring.
And then she goes, we're going to need a minute.
And then another aide comes in and they talk to him a little.
And then he kind of comes back to and briefly says something.
And then they kind of take him away.
He's just like, I'm fine.
Okay.
I think it's what he says.
And then the aide tries to go.
She says, after that weird incident, she goes, Are there any other questions?
And you need to speak up.
Yeah.
It's like she's trying to make it like.
Oh, man.
Because I know that when I don't hear anything, I just stare at people.
Yeah.
Oh, they say the person asking the question needs to speak.
Yeah.
Oh, he should have.
Yeah.
If you did, if you spoke louder, he wouldn't freeze.
Yeah.
But then they said the physician checked him out, and it wasn't a stroke or a seizure.
They said he had a concussion.
Oh, that's right.
He fell a few months ago or something.
Yeah.
But I don't think that's typical of a concussion.
Is that typical of a concussion, Travis?
Sir?
You need to see us.
Did you hear the question?
It's typical to have problems searching for words or finding your words.
And so it'll, it can seem like you're freezing up, but like a normal person, I think I like, I'll freeze up because I can't think of a word and then I'll just go, well, I'll just say something else then.
You know, I will abandon that line of thought.
Whereas Mitch McConnell abandons all lines of thought.
Yeah, right, right.
So I don't know.
And this is at least the second time that's happened very publicly.
The first time was, it seemed like a more abrupt thing because the aides didn't come up right away.
They were just like, well, now they're thinking.
Yeah, now they're just like, oh, we need a minute.
It's on the Fritz Agub.
And they start hitting him.
Smack him a couple times.
Well, that's sad.
He's 81.
We have lots of old politicians.
It's partially nervous laughter because I feel bad for him, but also it's like, man, I would hate to be so obsessed with work like that that I just will not retire.
With all of these people, it's not that you lack compassion for the fact that they're going through these health issues.
Same with like John Fetterman.
He's a Democrat.
I don't agree with him.
On one hand, it feels bad to make fun of these disabilities, but with all these politicians, each side wants their votes so badly.
They'll just wheel these people out there that are stiff as a board and just, hey, it's still somebody on our side there.
Everyone's playing the game.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The Game of Thrones.
Hey, did you hear about this Delta flight from Atlanta to Spain?
I don't know.
Tell us.
Well, basically, a guy had a bathroom problem.
And instead of going to the bathroom, he was just peeing.
No, like diarrhea.
Oh, okay.
Shot, shot, shot.
Yeah, never mind.
Okay, cool.
And he just, I guess what they said was they had to turn around because he started going the halls, like the aisles for some reason.
What they, and I quote, he said, all the way through the airplane.
He diarrhea all the way through the airplane.
Where's that quote from?
Is that from him or is that?
I think it's from like the pilot talking about how they needed to turn around.
The news article was very much like, oh, he had a serious health condition.
It was called diarrhea all the way through the plane.
Obvious biohazard situation.
I get that.
They should have next to the seatbelt and the cigarette a little poop emoji like that.
Bing.
Everyone take their seats.
There's diarrhea all over the plane.
Yeah.
So did this turn around like before they got out of the U.S.?
I don't know how far that got almost to Spain.
Turn around.
Spain won't let us.
They were coming in for a landing and the man had diarrhea this stuff back to Atlanta.
Oh man.
Oh man.
I think it was probably an issue due to the Bermuda Triangle.
Oh, okay.
Which, as you know, causes your compasses to go wild and you to have uncontrollable diarrhea.
I don't think that flight would go through the Bermuda Triangle, though.
It would if it goes through the plane.
It would if they went the wrong way.
Yeah.
You know, my child's really fascinated with the Bermuda Triangle.
That was one of those things I would get books on.
Like, check them out for the library.
It's a little fascinating.
It's so interesting.
I like Titanic.
I liked Bermuda Triangle.
It's one of those things like quicksand.
Like as a kid, you thought it was a much bigger issue than it really is as an adult.
You thought it was something that I always have to avoid the Bermuda Triangle.
And now I think I've been on like a flight.
I've been on flights and cruises that have gone through there.
And it's like, oh, that was the Bermuda Triangle.
It's like nothing to say.
No big deal at all.
I didn't disappear or anything.
Lame.
Well, Fauci is concerned.
We haven't heard about this guy in a while.
He's concerned.
Glad to see him back in the news.
He's always good to see him back.
He said he's concerned that people won't mask up again as COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continue to rise in the U.S. all the way through the airplane.
You know, I wanted to kind of get your guys' opinion on that because I'm hearing this, like, at least from the right.
Oh, they're bringing back masks again.
They're doing all this.
And I haven't really heard of that happening.
I haven't seen it other than Lionsgate.
Yeah, Lionsgate is the one I know of in Hollywood that reinstated the mandate.
And then I've heard...
Like for productions and stuff?
At their studio.
In order to go to Lionsgate studio now, you have to wear a mask there.
And then I've heard of individual schools reinstating at various places, but I personally have not encountered anywhere where they're trying to make me mask up again.
I don't think they're going to really push it.
I think you'll see this seasonally from now on.
Like you'll just see when it hits winter, there's going to be some places that are going to start enforcing masks.
And that'll just go on forever, probably.
And I have heard of friends getting it again the last couple of weeks.
I know.
COVID too.
Getting masks again.
They've come down with masks.
One of the variants.
I don't have any friends, but Emma did get in.
A mask or COVID?
COVID.
Oh, okay.
I have a friend who gets it.
She's not a friend.
He gets all the new COVIDs every time they come out.
He collects them all.
Yeah.
Got to catch them all.
How long do you think?
Do you think we'll ever get to the point where CNN will put back on the old death tracker?
Will they continue from where it left?
Oh, does it start over?
Start over.
They may not because they don't like that there was more COVID deaths under Biden than Trump.
So they don't want to draw.
They still want to draw attention to the masking and the social distancing and stuff.
But they don't want to draw attention.
Be a counter not so much for people dying, it'll be a counter for how many people are wearing masks.
Yeah, so 10 people wearing masks right now and uh hey, you hear this story.
Uh, Liberty safe, America's top gun safe manufacturer, tells customers they provided FBI the access code for january 6ers gun safe.
Also, Proud BOYS members are being sentenced to multi-decade prison stints.
I saw the leader.
What's his name?
Bario or something.
His name is mr Proud boy.
Mr Proud boy.
Yeah, proud j boys, proud j boy.
The j stands for justice.
Um, that was one of my favorite Simpson's jokes where his middle initial was Homer Jimpson and then he went on that quest to find his middle days.
Oh, Homer Jimpson, isn't it like j y?
Yeah yeah, he got the leader, got sentenced to 22 years and he wasn't even at.
He wasn't at the capitol, he wasn't there.
I get, you know, if he was actually planning something.
I'm all for the people getting charged if they actually assaulted cops or broke windows.
All those people i'm.
But you know the whole thing where they're going after everybody, especially with these multi-decade sentences.
It seems weird.
Yeah well, and at the same time, if you break a window and i'm not saying that shouldn't be punished.
But like, sounds like you broke a window.
Well, I mean, it's vandalism, it's not, I mean, but they're charging them for like high treason essentially.
Yeah, it's like for breaking a window, I don't know.
Yeah, like Absent Okay, Absent Trump.
Let's say it's 2005 and for no reason what whatsoever, you go to the capital and you're just like yeah, what do you think you'd get charged with?
Like I don't know?
Fine, I mean yeah, I mean you get charged with vandalism, right?
Yeah, the year before, when there was Blm riots in Washington Dc, for two nights they burned the president's church.
They were so rowdy I mean, Trump denies it, but the reports were that they were so close to bringing the White House that they took the first family, the secure location.
Yeah, they defaced the Lincoln Memorial and there was Secret Service that were injured and there was cops that were injured.
I've never heard of anybody getting multiple.
I think that's the issue.
It's the double standard.
Um, it's like, why are they going so hard on the january 6th thing, when I mean other than broken windows, which obviously not great, but people just walked around the place.
Sounds like you're defending the broken windows again.
Travis, are you planning an insurrection?
please don't dox me I do not own a Liberty safe um, so that is interesting about Liberty safe too.
I don't know if that's necessarily related to the Proud BOYS.
When I started reading this story I thought it was an ad read at first that I was going into.
It's like Liberty SAVE, America's top gun safe manufacturer, tells customers they provided FB.
Oh no, this isn't a commercial.
Yeah, so how do you feel about a safe manufacturer being like, oh, here's their code so you can get in?
I don't know what the legality of that is.
I guess they can do it if they want to.
I don't know.
Well, I mean, the FBI had a warrant to search the safe.
I feel like if it's a, it's hard, because I would feel like in most situations if they have a warrant like if they're investigating a murder suspect and they think the weapon is in that gun safe I guess I support law enforcement getting that.
It's just the whole circus around january 6th that feels overboard and overkill, especially like he didn't have a gun.
If he had, did he have the gun at like?
Why did they need?
I have no idea.
We know they didn't shoot anybody with it, so I don't get it.
This uh news item has been brought to you by Liberty SAFE, America's top gun safe manufacturer and proud ally of the FBI.
Lock up your guns today.
Speaking of being locked in the closet, Tucker's promo code insurrection.
Oh man, my beautiful segue was ruined.
Tucker talked to a man who has claimed over the years that he did drugs and had sex with Barack Obama in 1999.
His name is Larry Sinclair.
Whoa, don't dox Larry Sinclair.
I'm sorry.
An unnamed man.
Larry, can we just say Larry?
Yeah, just Larry S. Or you could just watch Tucker's show.
Yeah, I guess he could.
His name would be on there.
Yeah, I don't know really what to think of it.
It is weird to me, like, that we're in all these important national conversations about, like, are we losing our nation and blah, blah, blah.
And Tucker's like, hey, here's this guy that said he had sex with Obama in 99.
It's also one of those stories.
There have been these rumors for a while.
Yeah, right.
And it is weird that excerpt from Obama's letter where he said he fantasized about, or he had, made love to men in his imagination.
So there is all this like weird innuendo.
And it would be funny if this was true.
But I didn't watch the whole interview, but I saw clips of it.
He seems like a questionably credible guy.
Yeah.
He seems a little.
It's one of those things where I certainly support Tucker doing his show on X, the Everything App.
I certainly support him investigating everyone who says they had gay sex.
Absolutely.
We got to know.
It's one of my core principles.
I feel like he's going in the, this is like a tabloid report.
Like, who cares?
He's not even president right now.
He's not leader of the free world talking about how, oh, I, you know, this virtuous man.
How long is the interview?
Is it a regular like hour-long one?
Oh, I probably.
I don't know.
Like, his entertainment was for the next hour.
This man who did quote that.
Describes in graphics.
It's like, what else could you say?
I feel like you need two minutes of that.
You got the gist of it.
I wonder what kind of liability you have to bring someone on.
Like, what if that turns out not to be true?
Does Obama have any standing to go after Tucker or something?
Well, would it be against him?
I'm just asking him questions.
Well, yeah, or would it be against Larry S.
Well, he could obviously sue him if it's false.
But for Tucker, bringing someone on like that, does that open you up to any kind of like...
Maybe he has to keep saying allegedly.
Yeah.
Just throughout, allegedly.
So, you know, that's a thing, I guess.
Cool.
That's cool.
Lots of fun news this week.
Yeah, it is a lot of fun news this weekend.
It's good stuff.
Speaking of gay sex, Bethesta put out the new game Starfield.
And people are upset about pronouns in the game.
So I started playing this game.
This is the people who made Fallout and Skyrim and Marwan.
Skyrim and then the good Skyrim, which was called Marawen.
I heard they're coming out with a woke Fallout called Come Out.
That's it.
End of the podcast.
Did we just end?
It's just credits roll.
It's credits roll.
Circle wipe on my face.
Da-da-da-da-da-da.
So.
So they put out this game, and there was a lot of people freaking out because they were like, oh, they shoved pronouns in this game.
And so I started up the game and I was like, I've been excited for this game.
And you get through the character creation screen.
I'm like, I thought I missed it because I'm like, they didn't ask me for pronouns.
This isn't woke.
Yeah, this isn't a woke.
This is based.
But it does, after you fit.
Well, first of all, you can't pick male or female in the game.
You pick body type one, which looks suspiciously close to male, and body type two, which looks suspiciously close to female.
And then based on one of those that you pick, at the very end of character creation, if you picked the male body type, it says in a little thing in the corner of your character sheet, it says he, him.
And then if you picked the female, not female, it says she, her.
And then there's a button you can press somewhere like on the bottom of the thing that says change pronouns.
So that's where all this is coming from.
Did you change your pronouns?
I did not.
Did you look at the options?
Like, can you change it to like?
I didn't even go into the screen, but yeah, I don't know.
I assume you can do like they, them and stuff.
But I don't, as far as I know, nobody actually refers to you by your pronouns in the game.
So it's just like a virtual legendary.
It's also one of those things where even when they try to be woke, if it defaults to for the male body type and defaults to the female for she, her, if they were really woke, it would randomize every time.
No matter which body type you pick, it could be one or the other.
I guess it could have been.
But I just, because I clicked on, I met a girl character as I do in RPGs.
Oh, and then it's like, she, her.
I'm like, oh, cool.
You got it.
Wrong.
He, him.
It's like they're looking at your character and they're like, we're going to guess.
She, her.
It's weird if they never use the pronouns in.
It's just like, no.
You're you in the own your own satisfaction of your own mind.
You're like, oh, nobody knows I'm a trans person playing this game.
I mean, Starfield sounds like it kind of suffers from the same amount of confusion that like Skyrim and Fallout have, where you have so much character customization as if you're going to be in the multiplayer world and interact with others, and then you just don't.
So I think what you make your, you build so much attention like designing your face in Skyrim.
No one sees it.
And it's a first person game, pretty much.
Yeah, you can go third person.
I know people like to like go third person and look at their character and do like the photo gallery.
Look at my cool black cat person.
Yeah.
I think Cyberpunk was the one that had massive character customization and you could give your woman a wiener and stuff.
Your woman character.
You could do all that.
But there like wasn't even a there like wasn't even a mirror in the game.
Yeah.
Like there was literally, and it was entirely first person.
So you're like, I made this cool character and literally nobody ever sees you.
That's just really funny.
Which is just awesome.
But I wanted to talk briefly just for a couple minutes before we go to our ADF interview.
Because I found myself doing this more and more when I turn on a Netflix show and it's like, what is the threshold for when you would just either stop playing a game or stop watching a show or a movie?
Because you're like, you know what?
I've had enough.
For me, it's when nudity shows up in games.
Well, but for woke stuff.
Oh, for me, it's when gay nudity shows up.
In terms of woke stuff, I think just if it's super in your face, because like, I mean, I played the Spider-Man games on PlayStation.
There's like pride flags in New York.
I don't really care about that.
But sometimes that ends up bugging me a lot because it's like, like even this pronoun thing, you know, it's like, why is this here?
Yeah.
Like, why did you have to put this in?
And I hate that it's like normalizing it.
Yeah.
Like the next game will have it again.
And then the next game will have it again.
You know, it's just like going to become a normal thing.
And I hate that.
I think this is somewhat subjective.
For me, it's, there's a sort of grade of how heavy-handed it gets.
If it's one thing, you kind of roll your eyes and you're like, ah, they're trying to go along with this stuff, you know.
And then also, as far as shows and movies go for me, a big part of it is whether it feels like it's purely for the agenda's sake.
There's a movie like Everything of Rare All at Once.
Yeah, part of the storyline is that the character has a lesbian daughter, but it feels organic to the story.
It's like, I don't necessarily agree with that morally or politically.
But it doesn't feel like it's shoehorned in there for some dumb reason.
It feels like that's the story they wanted to tell.
So I definitely don't like it when it feels like it's a story that doesn't need that and they're just pushing it in there.
Or like I said, depending on how heavy-handed and pervasive it is.
Yeah, that's an interesting example because I saw everything everywhere all at once in the theaters and it felt, it did not feel forced.
It felt organic.
And then I went and watched Multiverse of Madness, the Doctor Strange 2-1.
And the girl has the pride.
Oh, it's very forced.
Yeah.
The camera's constantly right on this pride.
Like, why does she have this?
It's random.
And then it's like, oh, she's got two moms on this other planet.
And she grew up on another planet.
And the pride flag happened to be designed exactly the same way in this other universe.
Because she's from the progressive universe right exactly, so that bugged me.
The one that our universe aspires to be is her perfect progressive.
I can't put my finger on why.
That feels very forced.
And then the everything.
I guess it's just better storytelling.
Well, I think yeah, part of it is like in everything, everywhere all at once.
Um this, the story is kind of about that her, the mother, having a difficult time accepting this about her daughter.
Um, that's kind of a crux of the story.
Um, whereas in but it did, but it also didn't feel like an Lgbtq film no no, where it's like oh, i'm not accepted, and that's the whole point.
Yeah well yeah yeah, but it is a source of tension between.
It's like a catalyst that leads to some of the stuff.
Yeah, and in um, in Doctor Strange, it's just kind of like there and it serves no purpose at all.
There's no tension built around it, there's nothing.
It's literally just, oh, by the way, I have two moms guys, look at my two moms, guys.
Did you see my two moms over there?
Because they're gay?
That's kind of what it felt like.
Yeah yeah, and one of the old classic movies, I think, like when I was growing up, I liked um, was it as good as it gets with uh Jack Nicholson?
Greg Kinnier plays a gay guy who's like a victim of hate crime, but it feels like, it just feels like a good movie.
You know, it's just part of the story, but then, you know, it's like when we have uh Gabe El Taib here and he was talking about Superman, it's just, we're gonna make Superman bisexual.
Yeah, it's like why it's just to push an agenda.
It's not, you're not coming up with a good original story.
Yeah, it's not organic to the story, it's just shoehorned in for politics right, and in terms of like, the heavy-handedness of it and stuff, it's drawing that line I don't think you can really just draw.
It's kind of like uh, what people say about pornography, you know it when you see it and it's kind of the same thing.
You, you know it when they're doing that.
It's like oh, I get it.
You're just trying to send a message.
Yeah yeah, I agree cool, all right.
Well, there's no tension in this conversation.
The issue has been solved, settled.
Now it is time to talk to Jeremy Tedesco about ESG ADF in VDS.
And now it's time for another interview on the Babylon BEE podcast.
I'm Jarrett Lamaster.
With me today is Jeremy Tedesco with ADF, Alliance Defending Freedom, which we are massive fans of.
You guys do such good work and i'm a huge fan of you guys.
So Jeremy, this is great to have you on.
Thanks for being here today.
Yeah, appreciate that.
Huge fan of the BEE and very excited to be on awesome.
Okay, first question I have for you, are you Italian or are you German?
Um i'll, i'll say both.
Actually, my name in uh Italian, Tedesco means German.
So i'm i'm i'm, I.
It's a little bit odd, but yeah i'm, i'm Italian.
Yeah, that's what I was.
You know, that's what I was saying.
Like, are you Italian or German?
That's so funny.
So his name means German in Italian.
Uh, that's funny.
Not many people know that, but that's good man you're, you're well informed.
Well, that was um.
Honestly, I can't take the credit for that.
That was um, one of our guys here, one of our producers.
He was like wait, his name means German and Italian, so anyway, I had to bring it up.
Uh yes, so you are.
You've come out against ESG, so we're going to talk a little bit about that today.
Isn't that?
Uh, isn't that the stuff they put in Chinese food?
or did they micro-dose that and it kind of helps with depression?
Like, what is maybe that's kind of where it started, but I guess it kind of like went into somehow into the kind of business shareholder space and it's causing all these problems for corporations.
So, yeah, what is ESG?
Yeah, yeah, well, it's the term ESG means environmental, social, and governance.
That doesn't really help you understand it.
I mean, essentially, what it is, it is the progressive agenda kind of packaged for corporate America.
And they pressure corporations to adopt ESG through a lot of different methods, shareholder pressure.
The left really controls, progressives really control a lot of the huge asset managers and the proxy advisory services, which essentially advise investment advisors and wealth advisors how to vote shares.
And so they have control over a lot of these kind of pressure points on corporations, regulators too.
And they're demanding ESG adoption by corporations.
And when they adopt that, what they're basically adopting is the political agenda of the left on environmental, social issues that most Americans care a lot about and don't want to see corporations taking positions on.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
I mean, in the last year, we've seen a lot of this in public.
So we've seen some really big explosions from some of these places, like Anheuser-Busch, for instance, taking on Dylan Mulvaney, losing $15.7 billion, and then continuing to kind of double down in spite of like massive losses.
I don't understand it.
So is this, what is it?
Why can't somebody just wake up and be like, guys, let's stop hemorrhaging money and let's just stop doing all this weird stuff?
What's happening with that?
Yeah, it's so I think the pressure is equaling out some.
So first of all, let me answer your question kind of about why is Anheuser-Busch or Target doing these things?
It didn't come out of the blue.
Yeah, I mean, it didn't come out of the blue.
It's really been happening for years.
It's been growing.
And it's part of it is just the way the progressive left works.
What they do is they always move the goalposts on these corporations.
So they score them on different tools they use or indexes they use to determine whether you are doing what they want you to do on ES or G.
And then each year you might get 100% on an index that scores you on the S, the social.
But the next year they come back and they're like, hey, we added three things.
And those three things are always more radical than last year's.
So a perfect example of this is Human Rights Campaign and their Equality Index, which has been around for 20 years.
And tons of the corporations, the Fortune 1000, take this survey.
Most of them get very close to, or if not 100 on it.
And HRC is kind of a radical LGBT activist organization, but they really have control over a lot of these corporations and what they do on LGBT issues.
Well, this year, this coming year, to get 100% on HRC's equality index, these companies have to provide puberty blockers to minors in their health insurance programs.
Well, that's like one of the most contentious issues in the country.
And that particular part of that issue, puberty blockers for youth, is probably the most contentious issue of all.
If you look at the polling on it, whether you're looking at Republicans, Democrats, or Independents, people are diametrically opposed to that.
Yet HRC wants to drive these corporations as deep as they can into that contentious issue.
So, I mean, this is the way the sausage is made.
They say you got to get a high ESG score.
They have all these corporate these kind of nonprofits and other organizations rate organizations, and then you kind of just drive a message at them that you got to do this to get 100, to get accolades.
So, Mike, my big question, my big question about this is, though, so it's what it's called, the CEI.
This is your CEI score, and it comes from all these like radical leftist groups.
Why does it matter?
Like, who cares?
Like, who cares what they think?
I mean, in the end, it matters because of this, because of what I said at the beginning.
The progressives really have control over key people who put pressure on corporations.
So they have an incredibly powerful and active shareholder activism movement that files tons of shareholder resolutions and puts tons of pressure through shareholders.
Then they have the big asset managers, BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, who own somewhere between 10 and 30% of the shares of every one of the big companies.
And so when it comes to voting time, you have these activist shareholders putting in ESG proposals and the big asset managers voting 30% of the shares.
So the corporations just say, well, we're doing what the shareholders want.
But the reality is this whole thing is kind of rigged.
And that whole power structure that the left has needs to be unwound.
And it is being.
I mean, the thing I want to make sure you understand is things have changed a lot.
There's a lot of counterweights now to the ESG demands.
And I think what corporations were experiencing and what we all kind of experienced as we watch them engage over the last several decades is they keep getting more progressive.
They keep adopting more left-wing stuff.
And that's because it was really the only game in town, the only people showing up to have conversations with them was the left.
Totally changed.
Republican state treasurers are really pushing back on this.
Republican attorneys general are really pushing back on this.
We have formed a group of aligned shareholders that are pushing back on this, the shareholder space.
And I do think the pendulum is swinging back.
Now, where the corporations end up in all this, who knows?
But they're hearing both sides of the conversation now.
And they're understanding that their employees, their customers, their shareholders, regulators, sometimes states are coming to them and saying, you know, you're going to pay a price if you go down this path.
And so, I mean, in the end, these are businesses, and I think they're going to listen to those people.
Yeah, you got to hope so.
You got to hope so.
And there's been advocates on the right to kind of create this separate economy.
I mean, obviously, like the Daily Wire talks about this a lot, where they want to create a whole separate economy.
You know, if you want to buy razors, buy Jeremy's razors, you know what I mean?
Instead of going back into the system and maybe changing a little bit so that we can make the pendulum swing in the overall culture.
And so, would you advocate, obviously, I think you advocate for that model versus like, let's just be separate and create our own America, or do you want to do both simultaneously?
What do you think?
I think it's important to do both because I think that there's a lot of entrenched kind of censorship mentality and deplatforming, even debanking mentality that is going to be hard to root out immediately.
So I think we do need to explore this idea of alternative, you know, alternate economies.
But in the end, you know, I really believe we need to reform the existing institutions, the existing economy.
We have to be able to participate to the maximum ability that we can in the economy that everybody else does.
And we're not taking the mark of the beast.
Their mark.
I know.
The mark of the CEI beast, which is probably very similar to the eventual mark of the beast.
I'm just going to say it.
Just say it right there.
You also launched this really interesting thing, and it's kind of a counter to the CEI score, the rating.
And it's the Alliance Defending Freedom's Viewpoint Diversity Score.
Can you explain that a little bit?
Yeah, the Viewpoint Diversity Score is where we have, that's a website.
It's viewpointdiversity score.org.
We house a business index there.
And basically, what it is, is the first comprehensive measurement of corporate respect for free speech and religious freedom.
So we measure these corporations based on 42 performance factors that we think if they score well on, they're going to have a tolerant culture both internally and externally when it comes to free speech and religious freedom, when it comes to respecting the diverse views of their customers, their employees, their shareholders and others in the kind of broader public square.
And so our real concern and what we focused on with the index in the first two years, we've done two iterations of it so far, are those corporations and those industries that have kind of gatekeeper function over essential business, over essential services and products.
So that's tech and financial services.
And so we're looking right now at basically 75 Fortune 500 companies in the tech and financial service space.
And as you would imagine, they score really low on our index because they are really kind of beholden to progressive ESG, DEI, all that stuff.
And so they have a lot of practices that are really bad and they're getting low scores.
Now, we're not trying to name and shame them.
We're trying to show them that they have massive gaps if they want to be known as corporations that respect these things.
And we have a whole host of model policies and practices, guidelines that they can adopt and kind of look at as they're trying to pull things back.
And again, like what we were talking about before, there is a counterweight now.
There's counter pressure.
It's no longer a free pass to just do whatever progressives want you to do.
And so we're trying to tell them, look, this is a path where you respect every person.
You respect all views and you build up a culture of speech and religion, which are essential supports for a free society.
You can do it in a way that doesn't favor any viewpoint over another.
And so, you know, we're hopeful that we can continue to kind of point out a different path to these businesses that give them an alternative.
It's not an alternative ESG because we're not requiring or asking these companies to debank people we disagree with or deplatform people who say things we don't like or stop funding, you know, nonprofits that we disagree with.
That's not who we are.
We're about a marketplace that's open to everybody and doesn't have, you know, as part of its program, discrimination against people because of their political or religious views.
That's amazing.
So have you guys thought about creating something like this for other areas of culture?
Like, for instance, obviously universities would be a great place to start.
You know, like how friendly is this university to free speech?
How, you know, how, you know, maybe even like rate your professor on that level.
Even churches, like I would say, there are, you know, like it seems like there's churches that are like about CEI.
So, you know, seems like in Hollywood or the guilds or anything like that, you could probably apply this to all that stuff.
And have you guys, obviously, it seems like maybe you have, but you're nodding your head.
Yeah, we've thought about it.
We've talked about it.
There's some of the ones you mentioned, we've thought a lot about.
We've also thought about a 50-state religious freedom index.
And, you know, these things take an enormous amount of work and research.
But, you know, our concern right now and our focus is that if private companies start debanking people, and we know they're already deplatforming people, but if it really, if it even goes to debanking people because of their political and religious views, then we can have the strongest possible, which we really do, First Amendment rights to speech and religious exercise in relationship to government censorship and government discrimination.
But when private companies who have control over the digital public square and our access to essential financial services like a bank account or payment processing, if they can just cancel us for our religious beliefs, then that's going to have the same or more chilling effect on people's willingness to engage in the marketplace of ideas as government censorship.
So we really need to stop those things from happening first, I think.
And that's kind of our core focus right now.
And then I think at some point, I'd love to move to some of these other areas.
That's great.
I mean, that's really great.
I think we need this in our culture.
We need to be able to do something about all of this pressure, this corporate pressure for all of us to conform to this progressive ideology.
And so I love what you guys are doing there.
ADF, you guys are the heroes right now.
You're actually on the front lines.
And so I always love talking to you because we're kind of, I mean, we're on the front lines in a certain way.
We just basically, we're kind of in the courtyard.
We're in the king's court.
We're the jesters on the side and laughing at everybody.
You guys are in there engaging and saying, we should change this, you know?
So I love it that you guys are doing it.
So thank you so much for coming out.
Thank you for being on the show.
And those of you who are watching ADF, if you have any of these kinds of issues, please go to the ADF.
If you are interested in this kind of stuff, go to the Alliance Defending Freedom.
They're doing such amazing work in culture on the legal side.
And they are the people really standing in the gap for us because that stuff affects us every day when we go to the store, when we go to church, when we go anywhere.
So they're doing some good work out there.
Thank you so much, Jeremy.
I appreciate it.
Yeah.
Really appreciate you having me on.
Thanks for coming on, Jeremy.
That was a great interview.
Awesome.
Good job, Jeremy Tedasco.
Check out the link where he talked about Tabasco sauce.
Check out the link to find out how you can support ADF and all the important legal work they're doing.
Hey, we'll see you guys next time on the Babylon Be Occasional.