Brad and Dan begin by discussing the Senate's passage of the Respect for Marriage Act, which provides federal protections for same-sex marriage. Both hosts see the bill as a net win, but are concerned about the concessions it gives to churches and conservative lawmakers.
They then discuss the seditious conspiracy conviction for Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes. Again, it's a net win, but it won't prevent right-wing extremism or put out the fire of the Big Lie. For that, we need the conviction of someone else. . .
In the final segment they breakdown the refusal of several counties in Arizona to certify the election. Brad traces this back to the Big Lie and notes why it is more than a footnote in the 2022 midterms.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show's hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center, UCSB, and I'm here today with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Good to see you, Brad, back from Denver.
I think we're still both still sort of buzzing around about the event, but it's also nice to be back to sort of our regular routine a little bit.
I want to tell you two things that happened on the way home from Denver.
So, Denver was amazing.
We've talked about it.
I know some of you are like, please stop talking about Denver.
It's over now.
Okay?
No more advertisements.
No more talking about it.
So, that's totally fair.
So, the event was great.
Denver was great.
We all had great times.
However, Dan, on the way to the home at the airport, I was very proud of myself.
I had, like, packed snacks and my water bottle, and I felt like I had remembered all the details and was ready for my flight.
I was tired, but, you know, feeling pretty good.
And I went ahead and dropped my water bottle in the urinal, so that was really good.
Had to fish that out, and some people were watching.
But, you know, I thought if that's the worst thing that happens this weekend after all the big, you know, events and and meetings and and papers and public stuff, then that's fine.
So sometimes you have to just take a water bottle out of the urinal and throw it in the trash.
That that is just part of life.
You know, I've told my one year old dad it's a lesson that we all have to learn sometimes, I guess.
Uh, and then I got home and was like, yeah, left my microphone and recorder it at my hotel room.
So that was really good.
So, uh, still trying to get that back and not sure if I was Freudian, which I'm not, I would say that, you know, I was purposefully leaving the recorder and the mic cause I was somehow Not wanting to use them.
However, I'm not a Freudian so I don't believe that.
And I ordered another mic right away and here I am talking on it.
So, there you go.
There's my coming home from Denver.
And those were the worst things that happened and I'll be honest, I'm totally happy with that because a lot of things could have gone wrong or not worked and they didn't.
So, I'm pretty good.
You know what I mean?
There's that, you know, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.
I don't know what you make when life gives you a urinal.
No, Dan.
We'll just stop with that.
Nope.
All right, so talking about three things today as usual.
We'll talk about the bill that passed the Senate and will likely pass the House, the Marriage Reform Act that is being touted as protecting same-sex marriage in the kind of wake of the overturning of Roe and the fear that Oberfeld will be overturned at some point by the Supreme Court.
Talk about the Oath Keepers Seditious Conspiracy Conviction and what that means and the significance of that going forward.
And then go out to Arizona and talk about a couple of counties that are just refusing to certify election results and see if that matters and what's going on there.
So that's what we want to talk about today.
We may mention Ye had quite a day, Kanye had quite a day yesterday and we might get into that a little bit.
I'm sure some of you are waking up to that news if you're like my wife and not on Twitter and you kind of do yesterday, you know, you do the news in the morning, the day after, you may be waking up to some news that Kanye was on Alex Jones and said a lot of things that You didn't think that he could shock you, but he still does.
So anyway, we may get into that too.
All right, Dan, let's talk about marriage.
As you told me before we started recording, marriage comes first because it's the foundation of the family.
And that was a joke because we've all listened to way too much James Dobson in our lives.
What's going on with this new bill?
Does it protect same-sex marriage?
What is good?
What is bad?
Yeah, so it does two things, right?
It's a bipartisan Senate bill, right?
As you said, it has, Biden was going to sign it, but I believe it has 61 votes, so it would be filibuster proof.
Majority, which means that there were some GOP folks who signed on to it.
It was crafted by a bipartisan committee protecting both same-sex marriage and interracial marriage.
That's the piece that doesn't get quite as much attention, but it's worth noting that we're in 2022 and there was still a need to have federal legislation, you know, codifying the legality of interracial marriage.
So here's what it does.
It repeals the Defense of Marriage Act.
And if everybody's like, you know, the Defense of Marriage Act was the one back in what, 96?
In the Clinton years that said the federal government would not recognize same-sex marriages.
And that's why if folks remember back when you had progressive states started allowing same-sex marriages, you couldn't still like file a joint federal tax return and things like that, right?
And everybody will say, I thought that was overturned by the Supreme Court.
It was.
But this formally rescinds it as law.
It requires states to recognize same-sex marriages that are validly performed in another state.
And again, if folks remember before the SCOTUS decision, if you had somebody who said, hey, let's go to Massachusetts and get married and we live in Texas, they would go back to Texas and Texas wouldn't recognize that marriage as valid.
So it requires that.
And same things as well for interracial marriage.
And it affirms that faith-based organizations don't have to participate in celebrating or conducting such unions, which this is what the conservatives are touting as like the big gain, right?
It protects religious liberty.
I don't think anybody anywhere ever suggested that you were probably likely to be able to force a church to perform a wedding.
And here's why, Brad, wait for it.
Marriages are legal contracts, not religious contracts, right?
People go through the wedding and you go to your church and whatever, that has no legal binding whatsoever.
The marriage certificate and license that you have to fill out and codify with your state.
That's what makes you married, right?
So any religious overlay to that is purely symbolic.
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