Weekly Roundup: Easter/Trans Visibility Day + Abortion is a Religious Right
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In the first segment, Dan and Brad discuss the growing call to overturn the 22nd Amendment in order for Trump to be president for more than two terms. They analyze why this is a step on the way to authoritarianism and one more sign of teetering democracy in the USA.
In the second segment, the hosts turn to the outcry of Trans Visibility Day and Easter falling on the same day. Dan outlines how Christian natinoalists frame this as a faith vs. trans lives debate, while Brad turns to the rich history of Christian queer theology to explain that many Christians from the past thought of Christ himself as queer - and even trans.
In the final segment, the hosts discuss the recent ruling in Indiana that allows for abortions in cases related to religious freedom. In essence, the winning argument is that abortion is a religious right because of its practice in many traditions.
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Welcome to Straight Wide Web.
Thank you.
American Jesus, my name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco, here today with my co-host.
Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
And I want you to know, Brad, that today, in a tiny way, I got to live part of the life of Bradley Onishi because, as folks might know, There was an earthquake.
Ah, that's right.
There it is.
So New Jersey apparently had the biggest earthquake they've had in like 240 years.
And right before my class sitting in Vermont, like the room kind of rattled a bit and there was a little bit of window shaking.
I was like, oh, that felt like a little earthquake.
And it turns out that it was hardly a West Coast earthquake.
I've been in, you know, a couple of those my time in Seattle.
But I mean, any way that I can identify With the life of the ultra-cosmopolitan, cool, West Coast Bradley Onishi, I'm all for it.
Yep.
I was, A, scared about what you were going to say in terms of how you identified with my life.
That's why I didn't tell you ahead of time, so.
B, if you saw behind the scenes of my life, it does not feel cosmopolitan.
It feels like I eat leftover ravioli from my daughter's plate while doing dishes and the baby screams.
And I realize I haven't showered since last week, so that's usually— I feel like it's a reversion back to, like, college days in some ways, only then it's like ravioli out of the Chef Boyardee can that you're just sort of, like, eating.
And now it's kind of the same thing, but it's like, oh, this is food that even my toddler didn't want, so I guess I'll get to eat it.
I eat, like, graham crackers, and I'm like, wow, these are not bad.
I haven't had these in 30 years.
So, all right.
Here we go, friends.
When you listen to this show, you think of two middle-aged men just living lives of glamour, lives of gloss, lives of spectacle.
You are absolutely wrong.
All right, here we go.
We're going to talk about Trump 2028, which is a call we're hearing, and we need to sort of break it down and talk about why it's obviously pernicious, but also setting the stage for something even worse.
We're going to talk about Trans Visibility Day falling on Easter and the voices across the country saying, they're trying to replace Christianity.
Look at what's become.
This is the future liberals want.
Then we'll go to Indiana and an extended segment of reasons for hope, Dan, because in Indiana there is good news, a win for reproductive rights, a judge who has ruled that the lawsuit brought by a set of plaintiffs who are Jewish and who claimed that abortion is part of their religious tradition and that the Indiana abortion ban would prevent them from Pursuing the guidance and guidelines of the religious tradition, the judge says, yes, you're right.
And we'll get into some of the details of that case as we have them.
Dan, tell us about the calls for Trump 2028.
All right.
So in case anybody thinks we're so out of it that we don't realize that it's 2024, that's right.
It's Trump 2028.
And look, there was an article in the American Conservative, the online publication that talked about this, and the title was, Trump 2028, the 22nd Amendment is an Arbitrary Restraint on Presidents Who Serve Non-Consecutive Terms and on Democracy Itself.
So this is the argument, this is the gist of what it is.
I want to just kind of walk through some of it.
I'm going to read some sections of it, talk about what I think are the rhetorical moves that are being made here, reasons why it's of concern, and then, you know, obviously welcome your insights on this.
But this is how it starts, right?
And basically it starts with, and it feels like a very Trumpian document, the way that it works.
It reflects to me everything about the Trumpian nature of the contemporary conservative movement and the GOP.
But they say this, and basically the first line is, Trump wins democracy.
Like, that's basically the sort of first claim.
So, they say, lost in the left's endless babbling about Donald Trump's alleged threat to democracy is a very simple but inconvenient truth.
I want to throw out the, you know, the Al Gore line there, inconvenient truth, all of these subtle things here.
Trump's re-emergence as the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 is a triumph of democracy.
Not only did Trump secure the nomination following his defeat in 2020, a rather incredible feat in and of itself, But did so in spite of every obstacle the mainstream media, the Republican establishment, and the lawfare apparatus have put in his way.
The primary voters and caucus-goers who chose Trump did so in spite of January 6th, the prosecution of the former president, or even the popularity in some MAGA quarters of Ron DeSantis.
They chose him because they damn well felt like it.
This is democracy in action.
The voters surveyed the scene, tuned out the noise, and selected the man the rest of the world loves to hate.
What could be more democratic than voting for your preferred candidate against the advice, the warnings, the threats, the fear-mongering of your bettors?
All right, so Trump wins democracy.
Everything is great.
Fine.
Yes, the voters in the GOP primary selected Trump.
That's democratic.
We can hear all the sort of populist and nationalist rhetoric there, the anti-mainstream, this and that, and so forth.
So that's the thing.
So why does it matter that Trump won democracy?
Because everything's great.
Everything's great in Trump land.
Democracy won.
People wanted Trump.
Except what's the problem, Brad?
The problem is this pesky thing called the 22nd Amendment.
And I should say, this entire article Absolutely presupposes Trump's win in 2024, and I'm going to talk in a minute about why I think that's really significant.
This is what they say here, right?
They say, yet, even if Trump returns to the White House this November, the 22nd Amendment will bar him from standing for re-election in 2028.
For those who might not have known that it's the 22nd Amendment, that's the reason why presidents can only serve two terms.
So, they give some background on this.
Ratified in 1951, the amendment is largely seen as a kind of constitutional course correction following the four consecutive presidential terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The amendment reads in part, so they do us the favor of reading it for us, quote, no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice and no person who has held the office of president or acted as president for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected president shall be elected to the office of the president more than once.
Okay, so here's the issue with The 22nd Amendment, we say that's fine, but they go on to say, it turns out, Brad, this is really a problem.
This is a concern.
This sounds reasonable enough, especially in light of FDR's hold on the office, yet those who supported the amendment more than 70 years ago, not 250 years ago, not 150 years ago, not two centuries ago, not anything like that, 70 years ago.
We're talking about like one lifespan.
This is not some argument about the founding documents.
Like when my dad was five years old?
Exactly, yes.
So that's going to be important as well.
But the people 70 years ago could not have foreseen the prospect of a one-term president who lost the office but who later regained it in a subsequent election.
I'm just going to say that doesn't sound like that big of a reach.
And then they actually go on to describe, next paragraph, next sentence.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
This is like the 1940s.
This is the age of people flying around the world for the first time.
This is an age of dramatic technological revolution.
I mean, this is like the atomic bomb had just been invented.
You're telling me people couldn't imagine?
Wait a minute.
A president gets elected, but then he loses, but then he runs again.
Quantum mechanics.
Not only that.
Oh my god.
Not only that.
Not only that atomic age logic.
But it's actually happened before, right?
Like, they go on to note and say, Grover Cleveland.
I mean, they're saving me some time, because I was like, I think that happened once.
I'm like, you know, I wouldn't remember it as Grover Cleveland.
Grover Cleveland, this is quote from their article, remains the only president to have successfully vaulted himself to the White House in non-consecutive elections, 1884 and 1892.
So, it's not even imaginary.
Somebody has done it.
So like, what they say is inconceivable is actually something that happened And then the American people and Congress and states, right?
It's a complex thing to add a constitution to the amendment.
They all decided that you should only be able to have two terms, right?
With the historical fact that somebody had in fact won the presidency in non-consecutive terms.
But it's inconceivable to them, right?
This is exactly why I named my oldest child Grover Cleveland Onishi, for this very feat.
Like, do these people have no memory?
God.
Well, so then they try to situate this in, like, ancient, ancient history, because they say in modern times...
In modern times, it is inconceivable that any of the ousted one-term presidents would have seriously thought of running anew against the same opponent, now the occupant of the White House, who had bested them four years earlier.
Right?
So they do all of this and basically what they're trying to say is The article could never, sorry, the amendment, the people frame, they could never have foreseen this happening.
That's specious argument one.
That's mistake one.
Impossible to imagine this.
Not only is it not impossible, it had happened.
The evidence existed.
When people are putting this together, they know that there has been somebody who was elected in non-consecutive terms, and they still chose to put an amendment in that says you can only serve two terms.
Plus all the other complicated things about if you have to step in as president partway through a term, et cetera, et cetera.
Okay?
But it gets even better.
So, specious point number two, what does all this mean?
It means it's not fair, Brad.
And if this sounds Trumpian, this is like one of the Trumpiest parts of this Trumpiest piece.
It says, as the primary season has shown us, the Republicans have not moved on from Trump.
We know this.
We talked about this.
Not all of us see this as good news.
Yet, the 22nd Amendment works to constrain their enthusiasm, Brad, by prohibiting them from awarding Trump with re-election four years from now.
Again, presupposing that he wins in 2024, okay?
What do they say next?
This is plainly unfair.
Indeed, they go on.
So the first is, it's unfair.
And so if you say, why should they be denied the ability to choose him once more and ask this question, the answer is, well, the Constitution says that they can't do that.
Nope, not fair.
Very unfair.
They shouldn't do this.
I just want to point out, they say it's a limit on democracy.
Maybe it's a limit on majority will.
Sure.
Except that it was put in by a democratic process.
It's a rule of the game.
It's what the Constitution is, if you want to think about it that way.
It's like the parameters of the American game.
It was democratically put in.
People can go look at what goes into proposing an amendment, and ratifying an amendment, and getting state approvals, and so forth.
This is not a bunch of people just sitting in a room, changing the Constitution, and forcing it on the American people.
So it's plainly unfair, they said.
But then they say ... Go ahead.
You look like you're about to say something.
Democracy is something we champion, and I feel like part of the reason we do this show is for democracy to be safeguarded from the stuff we talk about every week.
But democracy does not mean unrestricted.
There are guardrails that allow for democracies to function.
One of them is you don't allow insurrectionists to become leaders of that democracy.
That's something we've talked about a lot on the show.
But another is you put in things like this that are like, hey, you can't just be president for 80 years, 40 years, 30 years, six terms, right?
And does that mean that at one point, maybe somebody could win a majority and become president for the fourth, third, third, fourth, fifth time?
Maybe.
But democracy does not mean unlimited, right?
It's just like free speech.
Free speech does not mean you get to say anything, anywhere, anytime, right?
So I just want to point that out because I think they're trying to sneak something.
There's a Trojan horse here that's like, what, you're going to just let democracy be tread on?
Anyway, I apologize.
Go ahead.
No, it's exactly right.
So, and here's the other one, right?
How many times have we heard Donald Trump say, well, you know, a lot of people say that, you know, this or that, or a lot of people say that it's not fair.
A lot of people get the lot of people-ism in here.
So here's the sort of specious argument three here, and it's the lots of people agree.
They go on to say this, in case we think that they're just whining about Trump.
They say, many popular presidents have agreed, Brad.
Now, they give us two examples.
I want everybody to listen up for this.
So first, in 1985, the Washington Post reported that Ronald Reagan supported repealing the amendment, saying in private remarks that the lame duck label being applied to his second term left him feeling, quote, handicapped.
And in 2016, Barack Obama—do we hear the both-side-isms?
Right?
We're going to appeal to none other than Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama for the lots of people are saying we should repeal the 22nd Amendment thing.
Barack Obama told David Axelrod that he was sure he would have coasted to a third term if such a thing were permissible.
Quote, I am confident in this vision Because I'm confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could have mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it.
I remember Obama saying this.
Remember this being reported.
Here's the trick.
As it stands, neither one of those quotations are somebody actually saying they want to repeal the 22nd Amendment.
In fact, as they say, Barack Obama said he's sure he would have co-signed the term if such a thing were permissible, right?
So that's the third one.
Are there presidents who maybe, I don't know, have talked about this or floated the idea of doing away with it?
I don't know.
Probably.
We could do more research on that.
The point is, in this article, they try to appeal to presidential authority to say, hey, it's not just us, but the evidence that they give doesn't actually make the point.
Yeah.
Look, I'm confident I could dominate 6th grade basketball right now.
I'm 43, okay?
I can't jump that high anymore.
I have creaky knees.
But I'm confident I would coast to victory playing most 6th graders.
There's probably some 6th graders out there like, I can take you down.
And they're probably right.
I'm just saying, I think I would dominate a lot of 6th graders in basketball.
If such a thing were permitted.
However, Dan, I am not calling for grown men to be allowed to play in sixth grade basketball leagues.
So, I just want to put that out there for everyone in case they were wondering.
Yeah.
So, those are the things.
Those are all of the argument that they're putting forward for this.
It's not fair.
It's not fair to Trump.
It's anti-democratic.
It's making all the rhetorical moves that we're talking about, all the sort of Trojan horses, quoting a couple presidents, the quotes for which don't actually say that they want to repeal the 22nd Amendment.
Or that we shouldn't have the 22nd Amendment, or something like that.
Let me just throw out what I think are, like, why this matters, right?
Beyond the just bad reasoning or whatever.
One, I do also want to note, there's like a toss-away line in here.
Like, I can't get over how Trumpy this is, where they have to appeal to Trump's greater physical strength against Biden.
Like, they have this line in there where they're like, you know, It says, besides the glaringly obvious differences between the men in their brain power, physical strength, and ability to walk in a straight line, and then they go like, they've got to put in this weird, irrelevant, but hyper-Trumpian line about being physically stronger than Biden.
I don't know if he's physically stronger than Biden.
I'll be honest, if somebody wanted to have pay-per-view and have, like, Trump and Biden arm-wrestle or something, I'd probably watch it.
But, like, who the hell cares?
Because you're President of the United States, it's not a physical feat, but whatever.
Here's the other one.
I think this feeds into election denial.
I think the subtle but repeated presumption that it's almost a foregone conclusion that Trump is going to win in 2024, because of course the issue becomes moot if he doesn't.
Can he run again?
Absolutely.
Right?
He'll be even more advanced in age than he is now, but he can run again.
And I absolutely want to be clear, I affirm the right of anybody to run for president.
If you're eligible to run for president, run for president.
Fine.
Cool.
Good.
I feel like The presumption that he's going to win in 2024, it's like as if the election cycle so far has already been decided.
I feel like it smacks of, if he doesn't win in 2024, it's going to be because something kept him from winning, something anti-democratic.
So I think it's in the background.
They don't say it explicitly and they could come at me and be like, we didn't say anything about election denial.
We didn't say that Joe Biden didn't win the election.
I'd be like, yeah, but you kind of keep assuming that Trump wins in 2024.
If he wins in 2024, yeah, we could talk.
I think it feeds election denial.
The other one is this, that I think it's also interesting that if somebody wants to argue for the repeal of an amendment, by all means, do it, right?
The Constitution is something we made.
It's not, in my view, a divinely inspired document.
If it was perfect and right, we wouldn't have to amend the damn thing.
We have times, like with Prohibition, which they cite, that It has been amended and then sort of amended back because it turns out that we decided collectively it was a mistake.
Somebody wants to argue that there shouldn't be a 22nd Amendment that 70 years ago in the bygone dark ages nobody could have imagined that this fine, But they're not arguing about the presidency, right?
They're not arguing about the office of president.
They're arguing about Donald Trump.
And I think it highlights all the sort of the cult of personality, the personalizing of this that defines populism, that defines nationalism, that defines the contemporary GOP.
This is an argument not that the 22nd Amendment is unfair as such, Or, in principle, against the next Grover Cleveland to come along, who wins non-consecutive terms.
It's not even an argument about some sort of, like, governmental efficiency, that presidents or the executive will have more authority.
If you never know that they're a lame duck, right?
If the day that they're elected you don't know that they're term-limited.
Whatever.
It's about Donald Trump.
And that's a concerning point for me, because I don't think that they're making an argument about American democracy.
I don't think they're making an argument about the office of president.
I think they're making an argument about Donald Trump.
And I think that that says an awful lot.
So I'll throw it over to you for other thoughts or responses to any of those.
I just think that Ruth Ben-Ghiat's points are what came to mind here for me.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat consistently points out on social media that these kinds of pieces and other rhetoric that Trump uses about migrants and camps, Ruth Ben-Ghiat uses the word priming.
And I continue to come back to that word because what she argues, and I think is true here, is that you just continue to put these ideas into the water, into the water, into the stream.
And therefore, when someone tries to act on them in reality, when someone tries to pursue an idea like this, that is based on, as you're saying, specious logic and goes against clearly the 22nd Amendment, it's not abnormal.
It's not shocking.
So whether it's rounding people up, and we're talking like hundreds of thousands of people and putting them in camps, whether it is trying to make it such that it is impossible to exist as a trans person in public in this country, I don't know, trying to ban abortion, which we'll talk about in a minute, or trying to argue that Trump or anyone else could be president for three or four unlimited terms.
It's just priming people for normalcy.
And so you might be thinking, Dan, Brad, this is a piece in the New Conservative.
There's, you know, this Trump didn't say it.
Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, Mike Johnson, they didn't say it.
Who cares?
And I think I care because all the things you said could never happen when Trump ran for president, all things you said he would never try that, leave NATO, try to buy Greenland, let people die during COVID, suggest ivermectin, blame California for their own wildfires and not provide support, blah blah.
He did.
So this is why it's important.
It's a drip, drip, drip on democracy.
It's a drip, drip, drip on what we consider normal.
And we're going to be left in a second Trump term with a myriad of these ideas.
If Trump wins, friends, I'm telling you right now, six months into that presidential term, Trump 2028, you're going to start hearing it.
Op-ed.
I hope not, but Wall Street Journal or somewhere like that, Op-Ed, Forbes, I don't know where it's going to be, but you're going to see Trump 28 come up quickly.
So, any final thoughts?
Do we remember the time that Trump floated the idea, just floated the idea out on social media about suspending the Constitution?
Yeah.
Remember?
Just threw it out there, right?
He plays the kind of Tucker Carlson that, hey, we're just asking questions, we're just spitballing, right?
You're exactly right.
It's going to happen from the more highbrow things, it's absolutely going to happen on truth social or whatever saying, you know, it's just not fair, the American people love me, whatever, right?
Absolutely going to happen.
And before we go to break, I'll just say we could have spent time too talking about Eileen Cannon and the documents case down in Florida and Jack Smith and they've had a standoff this week and It appears like Jack Smith is preparing to get that case kicked over to the 11th Circuit.
So if you're interested in the mechanics of that, I would say read up on it yourself, listen to Lawfare, listen to Amicus.
There's a lot of great podcasts out there that cover these kinds of things in depth.
What I'll just say from my perspective that relates to this is that how do you hollow out democracy?
Well, you start floating ideas that somebody can serve for life.
I mean, it's really hard to dislodge an authoritarian when they want to stay forever and the law allows them.
You also let that person appoint judges who are unqualified and loyalists.
And Eileen Cannon, by all accounts, is unqualified for the position that she holds and is a Trump loyalist.
Now, the Trump loyalist part?
Maybe too much opinion on my behalf and I accept that.
You may say, well, Brad, you don't know and you don't have the, okay, and that's fine.
But her judgments in this case for most commentators have come down to either incompetence or favoritism toward Donald Trump.
So how do you hollow out democracy from the inside?
You see it with the judicial branch.
You allow someone like Trump to appoint lackeys and then you're weakening one branch of the government.
So whether it's Trump 2028, whether it's the judicial branch, you can see how democracy eats itself if you let it.
And that's what we're talking about here.
So, all right, let's go to break.
We'll come back and jump into Easter and Trans Visibility Day falling on the same day this year.
Be right back.
Okay, Dan, let me read from the AP.
This is by Melissa Golden, April 1.
As millions celebrated Easter this weekend, the Biden administration was criticized by many on social media, including several Republican politicians, for supposedly disrespecting the Christian holiday.
The criticism centered on two separate claims.
One, that President Biden declared Easter Sunday to now be Transgender Day.
So, claim number one, no more Easter.
There's no more Easter allowed.
I always knew that there was a conspiracy with all those pastel colored Easter eggs.
I knew, and like, here it is.
Like, he's a Disney, you know, villain who can stand up on the rock and tell the whole, like, village, no more Easter, just Trans Visibility Day.
And two, that he banned religious symbols from an Easter egg contest at the White House.
Both allegations are missing important context and misrepresent what actually happened.
So, the claim is that Easter Sunday is now Transgender Day, Visibility Day.
The fact, Transgender Day of Visibility has been celebrated on March 31 for about 15 years, since 2009.
Easter, as all of you know, I hope, falls on different days every year.
So, it is a moving target.
However, social media users are saying that Biden chose March 31 as an affront to Christians.
I'll quote one of these, Dan, I'll throw it to you, and then I'm going to put on my historical theologian hat and talk about the depiction of Jesus, the resurrected Savior, and the crucified Savior, as queer, as non-binary, and as trans throughout Christian history, which has been done.
Let me give you this quote.
This was intentional.
It was done with the intent to flip the middle finger at Christians.
one post on X.
For Joe Biden to select Easter Sunday is an assault to Christians.
This was intentional.
It was done with the intent to flip the middle finger at Christians.
His staff knew exactly what they were doing.
Joe Biden, the man who goes to Mass six to seven times per day, flipping the middle finger at Christians, at Jesus himself.
I can imagine him doing it, Dan.
All right.
Take over.
What should we read?
What should we be talking about here?
Just Joe Biden, the Satanist, really, is all.
No so like a couple things like some more quotes right first of all for this and it was it was this this uproar it's you know another you know the right-wingers alerting us to yet another left-wing conspiracy to take christianity out of america uh you had uh mike johnson right we know who mike johnson is uh said that that biden was betrayed he had betrayed the central tenet of easter
I just want to note that Trans Visibility didn't ban anything.
People can do and say what they want.
want.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, another one of our favorites, claimed, there is no length Biden and the Democrats won't go to to mock your faith.
And then she quotes the Bible, the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming.
Fox News panel, one final one, Lisa Booth had sort of a conspiracy theory she put forward, said this is a clear effort and a coordinated effort to remove God from our society and to replace God with false gods.
And in this instance, it's the trans community.
They clearly want us to bow at the altar of the trans community instead of bow to God.
As you say, Easter moves around.
March 31st is always the day of transmissibility.
It happened to be on Easter this year.
For those who don't know when Easter is, because it can be a little complicated, it's not as easy as figuring out when Thanksgiving is, it is the first Sunday after the full moon occurring on or after the spring equinox.
Okay, often corresponds broadly with the Jewish holiday of Passover because the Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar, and so it sort of lines up with that, etc., etc., right?
So this is the story, right?
Yeah.
Say it again.
When is Easter?
Say it again.
So Easter is the first Sunday after the full moon occurring on or after the spring equinox.
As the Lord declared, right?
That's right, yeah.
Is that in the Bible, Dan?
Uh, yes.
Uh, it's, it's in, it's, it's in Matthew.
The Gospel of Matthew.
For all of you listening at home, it is not in the Bible.
It is not in the Bible.
It is not in the Gospel of Matthew.
Yes.
So, anyway, that's when it is.
So, Easter moves and everybody who, like, If you observe Easter, or even if you don't, if you just got like, I don't know, you put an Easter basket full of candy together for a kid or something, we all know that that's why like you wake up on Saturday and you're like, oh my god, like I've got to get the Easter candy by tomorrow because nobody knows when Easter is, right?
So here's a couple things.
The first is, And this is where we're going here, right?
Marjorie Taylor, she's wrong when she says this mocks people's Christian faith, that this is any effort.
Why?
Because there are Christians, and others, there are lots of religious people in America who affirm trans identity, who are trans-inclusive.
There are lots of trans people who are religious or identify as religious in some way.
But there are Christians and Christian congregations who observed Easter as a holy day this weekend and incorporated trans visibility into their service because they are fully affirmative of the trans community, right?
What it highlights, again, is, as always, that this isn't really about America not being quote-unquote religious or even Christian.
It's about being the right kind of Christian.
The conservative white Christian who views yourself as somehow speaking for a majority, excuse me, of real Americans who has some sort of privileged claim to what this country is, right?
So you view it as an attack on your faith despite the fact that nobody's making you do anything.
You go to the conservative church that thinks being trans is wrong.
I fundamentally disagree with that, but that's your religious right and you go there and people will preach what they preach and they could decry this, whatever.
No, nobody made anybody do anything, right?
So that's the first part.
I think it cuts to this fundamental conception of what people on the right mean when they say America is a Christian nation, right?
It's the right kind of Christian.
And the other one that I think brings up maybe the biggest problem here And I'm getting this from Amanda Marcotte at Salon, who just articulated this really, really well.
What she said was this.
She said, "...embedded in all of this performative outrage is an argument.
It's justified for Republicans to adopt Christian nationalism and even fascism on the grounds of self-defense.
The supposed threats to Christianity are so great, the thinking goes, that the only way to quote-unquote protect the faith is to end religious liberty and democracy." And of course, their political opponents are demonic and subhuman, thereby violence against them is permissible, even desired.
I think she's exactly Right.
It makes Christian nationalism, or presents Christian nationalism, not as an offensive sort of ideology, not as an ideology that wants to take power.
It presents it as a defensive, legitimate reaction against a hostile culture that is out to end a way of life.
And I think that that, again, is the really telling thing about this.
And the last point, just to reiterate, When she says that those on the right want to end religious liberty and democracy, again, this is the right on the other side of queer-affirming Christians to be queer-affirming Christians, to recognize this, to see this as part of Easter or anything else that they want to.
So, all of those things are stirring around.
I know you have additional thoughts or reflections on this to share with us.
I'm going to go to Phil Gorski and Sam Perry, The Flag and the Cross, and they have some ideas on pages 101 and 102 of that book that I always come back to in moments like this.
So they triangulate white Christian nationalism between order, freedom, and violence.
White Christian nationalism is a theory of order, they write, and of hierarchy.
It distinguishes insiders and outsiders.
So what you're doing as a white Christian nationalist is trying to order the country so that the insiders have the power, the insiders have the authority, and everyone else is like either attacking you or is a second-class citizen.
Marjorie Taylor Greene cannot conceive that there would be Christians Jews, anyone of faith, anyone religious, who would imagine being trans as wonderful, as beautiful, as an expression of one's self, one's body, and so on, one's identity, one's selfhood, rather than something that is an attack on Christianity.
They cannot conceive that.
So order and then freedom.
Freedom Is the God-given rights that white Christians have, and you cannot experience freedom unless everything is ordered the right way.
We've talked about this on the show a lot.
So, just the fact that there's Trans Visibility Day means I have less freedom to celebrate Easter.
Is that because they shut down church?
They didn't let me go to church that day?
My church had to read a statement about trans... Did the government make anyone do any... Nope, none of that.
Did the government step in and say, unless you mention Trans Visibility Day at church, then, sorry, you don't get to have church?
Nope.
But I'm not free unless everything's in order, and that means Trans Visibility Day can't exist, trans people can't exist, much less Trans Visibility Day exist on Easter, without me feeling like I'm somehow impinged upon.
And then violence.
If everything's out of order, then white Christians have the authority to use violence to put things back in order.
Okay?
And I think that makes sense if you understand everything from January 6th to the rhetoric from militias to so on and so forth.
So to me, this is about order, Dan.
It's about wanting to build in not only the right kind of Christian, but to impose on everybody the right kind of country and determine who actually is an insider and who is not.
And trans people are clearly not.
Now, this relates to order because what do people like Marjorie Taylor Greene say?
They say, if you're trans, you're out of order.
You're not natural, right?
You are deviant.
You are something.
So what they're expressing there is there's two genders.
There's man and woman.
Everything else scares me, and if everything else, any other mention of queer people, non-binary people, of trans people, it scares me, and it feels like things are out of order, and now I'm unsettled, and I'm anxious, and oh my god, okay, I'm not free.
That's how this works, okay?
Now, I think those points are clear.
I think you've done a good job making them.
Let me just do, real quick, my historical theologian thing that I do.
This is what I did with abortion in Politico a couple of weeks ago.
People got very upset about it.
And I'll do it again.
So, I'm going to start with the Bible, Dan, because just like two days ago, the Family Research Council had an article about me that said I never quoted the Bible when it came to abortion, and so that's why I was a terrible human being or whatever.
When it comes to the Bible, Dan, I'm just going to, you're a biblical scholar, you've done comp exams on the Bible, you've done Greek and Hebrew, so you check me if I'm wrong here, okay?
You ready?
Let's start in the Hebrew Bible slash Old Testament.
One of the core books of that corpus is the Song of Solomon or the Song of Songs.
It's an erotic love poem.
If you read that book, y'all, that is steamy, steamy stuff, okay?
And there's a lot of talk in there about people having necks that are like towers and things that we don't say anymore on Tinder or whatever.
But that's an erotic love poem, and it's written from the perspective of a woman.
Now, throughout Jewish history and Christian history, the interpretation has been that the Christian, the Jew, the individual person, or the community, are the female in that love poem, and that God is the object of their desire.
That you long for your lover, as a woman longs for her male counterpart in this case, as you long for, excuse me, as the Jewish community, the nation of Israel, the church, longs for God.
Okay.
In part, on the Christian side, because the New Testament uses the language of the Bride of Christ so often, there's this idea that the Christian and the Christian community are the Bride of Christ, a female, feminine term.
Revelation, Dan, and this is where you can correct me, I believe ends with a depiction of eternal life as essentially a honeymoon, a blissful unity, union of Christian and Christ, bride and groom.
Am I wrong about that?
The wedding feast of the Lamb, yep.
The wedding feast of the Lamb, okay.
My ska band in high school.
Now, what we have there is the idea that if you're a Christian, Spiritually, you're a female.
So here's what I always say to people at Thanksgiving, just to ruin dinner and have people overturn the table.
If you're a Christian, spiritually, you're female and feminine.
All of us in our true selves are female and feminine, because we long for a God who is, for some reason, maybe beyond our comprehension, gendered, male, at least in some of the biblical texts.
So, as a man, right, who identifies as masculine, who identifies as somebody who is male, sexed male, I need to recognize my true spiritual self is feminine and female and my desire for my groom, where I will have an eternal wedding feast of erotic unity.
That's the Christian life, everybody.
That's what it is.
Okay?
Now you can say you're a jerk, quit trolling everybody, but I'm not.
I'm repeating theological axioms that started in the second century with people like Gregory of Nyssa and most forcefully with the origin of Alexandria.
Origin of Alexandria was a man, sexed male, ascetic, meaning he tried to live apart from society at certain times, who purportedly, according to church tradition, cut off his own genitals.
And if you Google that, origin castration, uh, don't do it at work.
Cause you're going to see a lot of medieval depictions of it that are really graphic.
I taught this in classes and my students are like, Hey, have you seen this?
And they're bringing me pictures.
And it's like, yeah, I have seen it.
And yes, we can talk about it.
It's, this is legitimate academic stuff, but it's also makes you blush kind of stuff.
Okay.
Origin wrote a whole commentary on the song of songs where he, the man, sexed male, Peter Brown argues in his book, Harvard Historical Theologian, that the reason Origen cut off his own genitals is he wanted his physical body to more accurately reflect his spiritual reality.
This continued, Dan, for a long time.
So, I have made a whole video about this, and it's a very cringy YouTube video from a couple years ago.
I don't really love my hair in the video.
The editing isn't great.
But it makes a great point.
That if you go through Christian history from Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the like profound church fathers of the medieval age, to Angola of Fuligno, to Mechtild of Magdeburg, to all the way down, you are going to find people Who not only used this erotic metaphor of bride and groom, but started to realize that, hey, wait a minute, if bride and groom can be sort of
envisioned, even though someone like Origen is sexed male and has a penis, if he is spiritually female, isn't it true that maybe gender and desire and sex and love and eros might also be somewhat fluid?
Because as Galatians 3.28 says to us, there is neither male nor female in Christ.
So might it be that true spiritual advancement would mean realizing that gender in some way is not limited to male and female, to two sexes, two genders, but it might be something that is more advanced?
And the answer is yes.
So if you watch my little video that I made, it's about 14 minutes, you will see that something like Christ's side wound, when he's on the cross and he has the soldier, the soldier pokes his side and there's a wound, that becomes a symbol And I just want to jump in, right?
Like, because you can correct me if I'm wrong.
You're the mystical scholar.
Those who might not know that Brad, the current, you know, media author has like a first edit of like, you did a lot of work on Christian mystical theology and things like that.
But like, These are really graphic depictions of kissing Christ's wound and using your tongue.
They're vivid images of oral sex with Christ's wound.
We're not even making it up.
If you read this stuff, it's the kind of stuff that if you teach it in class, you're kind of waiting for the dean to call you in because that student who woke up halfway through class and just heard a lot of talk about Jesus and oral sex is like, what in the world is going on?
I think this was inappropriate.
Like, it's super graphic and we're not even, like, extrapolating or making it up.
It's right there in these texts very, very much as, like, an explicit focus.
Let me read Angelo Faligno for everybody.
And I'm not doing this for giggles.
I'm not being wry here.
These are the writings.
He then called me to place my mouth to the wound in his side.
It seemed to me that I saw and drank the blood which was freshly flowing from his side.
Now there are places she talks about lips and placing her lips against his.
Then we have Catherine of Siena.
Let me pull up Catherine of Siena's.
I just want to get these straight.
So she's born in 1347, dies in 1380.
With that, he tenderly placed his right hand on her neck and drew her towards the wound in her side.
Drink, daughter.
Now, notice Jesus There are more examples.
I am not cherry picking this, friends.
I am not.
You can look up.
here.
Drink, daughter, from my wound, he said, and by that drought your soul shall become enraptured with such delight that your very body, which for my sake you have denied, shall be inundated with its overflowing.
There are more examples.
I am not cherry-picking this, friends.
I am not.
You can look up.
There are books that are titled Jesus as Mother, Jesus as Wife, okay?
And it's not just medieval mystics, okay?
It's not just ancient texts.
The Moravians of the 19th century, okay?
A persecuted Central European group, okay?
Some of you out there are familiar with the Moravians.
There are, and especially if you're in Pennsylvania, right?
A lot of Moravians in Pennsylvania.
Let me read a few hymns, okay?
This one is actually from the 17th century.
"The lamb shall keep his bride's soul till she can kiss his sides whole." Okay.
I'm going to read one more.
This one seems like I'm being funny and I'm not, Dan.
This is not me being like an eighth grade, you know, giggles sort of sex joke situation.
I'm not.
This is like a real hymn from the Moravians.
I'm going to read it.
Everyone just be mature.
Just grow up, people.
All right?
Grow up.
That's what I'm going to say right now.
Just get it together.
Be adults.
All right, here we go.
Little side hole, little side hole, thou art mine, most dear little side hole, I wish myself entirely inside.
Okay?
Shall we read one more?
Let's stop there.
I think that's good.
Here's the point.
Dan, when I examine the Bible, Family Research Council, y'all listening?
When I examine the Bible, I am taught that I am the bride of Christ and that there is neither spiritually male nor female.
That's pretty complicated.
When I look at Christian history and Christian theological giants like Origen of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Bernard of Clairvaux, Catherine of Siena and others, I see not only erotic desire at the heart of the relationship with Christ, but I see queerness.
I see Jesus as he, I see Jesus as she, I see Jesus as depicted with what seemed to be not only female sex organs, but playing a feminine role.
It all brings us to the point that when you celebrate Trans Visibility Day, And you celebrate Easter, you can do that together in a way that Christians have been doing for 2,000 years.
The problem for Marjorie Taylor Greene is not that it's impossible to think of being trans as coherent with your Christianity.
It's that she wants a country that's ordered how she sees it and wants to claim that that's the only way not only to be a real American, but to be a real Christian.
So, I'm saying, historically, theologically, biblically, it doesn't hold up.
It's a matter of order and force.
It's a matter of imposition, not religious liberty.
It's a matter of forcing her vision of faith on you, rather than allowing all to practice their faith in ways that they should be allowed as Americans.
Off to you, Dan.
Just briefly.
Because I play this game too, but there are other connections that you can make, right?
So those that are the gender complementarians, those who believe that there are two genders and they have like specific roles to play and so on and so forth, the passage in Genesis where it talks about that the woman's desire will be for her husband, there's debate about whether that's before or after the curse because of the first sin and whatever, But it's interesting if you play that around, because that's often used to define a patriarchal role, to define women as submissive, to define women as passive.
And yet, if you look other places in the New Testament and Christian tradition, you have what?
You have the desire of the Church.
For God, right?
You have that language, which means that, as you say, there is this language of passivity, of femininity, that queers all those identities and should call into question broad structures, not just of trans identity sort of narrowly, but of patriarchy, of gender, of all.
It's not hard to do.
I think the last point I'll make is one of the criticisms I've long had about White evangelicalism and the kinds of Christianity that feed into this is they have very little historical consciousness.
They don't know their history.
They don't know their theology.
They don't know their medieval mystics.
They don't know that those things are there.
And I think that at the level of seminary professors, at the level of some pastors, that's very strategic.
Because you don't have to look very far before you run into ideas that might make you say, wow, I don't know if I agree with that, but these are like, these are some of the biggest Christian thinkers, the people who pondered this, that have ever existed.
Maybe I really need to rethink some of my own orthodoxies.
I think it's a very strategic and chosen unknowing that's at the heart of American Christian nationalism.
I just want to say that this is why this show is called Straight White American Jesus.
I know Jesus wasn't white.
I know Jesus wasn't American, but if you think Jesus was straight, my question would be like, why?
Did Jesus have a girlfriend?
Was Jesus married?
Like, tell me in the, like, I've read Matthew.
I read Mark.
I read John.
I read Luke.
I didn't see Jesus having any romantic relationship, Dan.
I didn't.
And Christian conservatives historically have gotten really upset if somebody suggested that he did, right?
All you've got to think about is the Last Temptation of Christ, right?
And if people don't know what that is, you can Google it and the controversy around it.
Yeah, they want a chaste, we could argue maybe asexual Jesus.
You start telling me about Mary Magdalene and I'm like, okay, so you do want to admit Jesus.
It's like, which one do you want?
You want Jesus had a girlfriend or Jesus had no sexual romantic interest?
You pick and then we'll talk.
I want to talk about both.
Let's do it.
Let's get Chick-fil-A and hang out.
Okay?
Because I'll talk about all that for hours.
So I'm just saying, I don't think Jesus was straight because I don't have any evidence for that.
I don't know.
I don't know.
But if you do think Jesus was straight, it's because you assume that, right, to be straight is the default, to be straight is the correct thing to be in God's eyes, etc.
So I'll just leave it there.
Let's take a break.
We'll come back and quickly talk about Indiana and we'll do an extended reason for hope.
Be right back.
All right, Dan.
Extended reason for hope this week is that, excuse me, I'm looking at a thing here from Americans United.
They sent out a memo.
But in Indiana, we have one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.
After the fall of Roe, you saw a law passed, a strict anti-abortion law that made it basically impossible to get an abortion in Indiana.
It was the first state to pass such a law after the fall of Roe, okay?
Now, after that, and looking at a piece here from Baptist News Global by Mark Wingfield, you had plaintiffs in a case brought by the ACLU and others who challenged this.
And we've talked about this case on our show, and we have folks in this case who are anonymous Jewish, Muslim, and spiritual plaintiffs, and the group Hoosier Jews for Choice.
Hoosier, meaning like Indiana, Jews for Choice.
So, we have people from non-Christian religious traditions, people who are spiritual, And from this group, the Hoosier Jews for Choice.
We don't have a ton of time, so I'll cut to the chase.
This week, we had a decision from the court and from Justice Mark Bailey, who said, yes, in fact, you are correct that the promise of religious freedom
means that if you want to practice your religious tradition and your religious tradition includes seeking guidance for safety and health and the well-being of a pregnant person, then you should have the right to an abortion as a result of your religious freedom.
Okay?
So here is what Mark Bailey writes, if America is to make good, excuse me, that is not it.
He writes, no preference shall be given by law to any creed.
Yet in this post-obs world, our legislature has done just that, preferred one creed over another.
By taking the position that life begins when conception and so on and so forth, okay?
There was a bunch of great amicus briefs that accompanied this.
Americans United wrote one.
A group of religious studies historians, American religious historians, also wrote an amicus brief, including our friend Gil Frank, who was part of that group.
And they really helped kind of frame the argument, okay, that there are Hoosiers, there are people from Indiana, there are people for Hoosiers from Choice, etc., whose religions support or require abortion access, okay?
And yet, Dan, and I just want to point this out, and this is in the Americans United amicus brief, that there were legislatures who could not conceive that a religious person could support abortion, okay?
And yet, and this is actually really fascinating, Dan, in order to justify their vote for the law, many of those same Indiana legislatures called on their religious traditions.
They said, I'm a Catholic.
I'm a Christian.
Life begins at conception.
All life is sacred.
And Judge Mark Bailey basically used their words against them.
It was like, you used your religion to justify this law.
Therefore, you used one vision of faith, not science, not legal, you know, good legal jurisprudence.
You used theology to justify banning abortion, preventing the religious liberty of Jews, Muslims, spiritual folks, and others in this case.
Got a little bit more to say here.
I'm trying to rush through it because we're going to run out of time.
Some thoughts from you on this front.
Yeah, so a few, and I know we need to move fast as well, but it's interesting that this is the kind of test that, you know, when Uncle Ron comes to you and says that they believe in religious freedom, throw this out.
Like, this is fact now that a court actually decided that this group of non-conservative Christians, right, other religious adherents, but people who are not conservative Christians, arguing that their religious freedom demands abortion access, You're going to find out that it turns out he's not really into Christian freedom—or, sorry, religious freedom.
He wants Christian freedom or Christian hegemony, right?
Christian order.
Yeah, exactly.
A proper Christian order.
I think everybody recognizes this.
I think, obviously, abortion access shouldn't be dependent upon religious practice and so forth, but this is a really telling account.
It's something I think we've been waiting for.
As you say, we've talked about it.
I think it's also interesting to see how this plays out because you talked about this a while back, the argument that everybody has a religion, right?
That atheists have a religion, that secularism is really our religion and so forth.
If that's the case then, conservative Christians, and you know you're all about religious freedom, What about all those atheists' non-religious adherence?
If it really is a religion and they believe strongly that people should have access to abortion, you can just see where it goes.
And I think this is telling on so many points, as you say, like an extended reason for hope.
And I'm looking forward to digging around in those amicus briefs more than I've had a chance to.
I think it's a really significant development.
Let me give you one more quote from the judge.
I'm going to make one more point and then I'll go to you for reasons for hope.
Legislatures, many of whom, an overwhelming majority of whom, have not experienced childbirth, dictate that virtually all pregnancies in this state must proceed to birth, notwithstanding the onerous burden upon women and girls.
They have done so not based upon science or viability, but upon a blanket assertion that they are the protectors of life from the moment of conception.
In my view, this is an adoption of a religious viewpoint held by some, but certainly not all, Hoosiers.
The least that can be expected is that the remaining Hoosiers of childbearing ability will be given the opportunity to act in accordance with their own consciousness and religious creeds.
That sounds like the freedom of religion to me, Dan.
It sounds very much like the freedom of religion.
I want to make one last point, which is this.
I wrote about abortion and the history of the idea of life begins at conception in Politico a couple weeks ago.
I got more hate mail than I've ever received.
But you know what it came down to, and I told my partner this this weekend, is it comes down to this.
If you think life begins at conception and you are then against every and all abortion, you're the good guy.
You are on the right side.
You have drawn a line.
And you're clearly on the other side.
I've said this on the show before, but it's so easy, Dan, to go to bed at night.
Because you're like, you know guys, this might be a mess, that might not be settled, but I know abortion is wrong and it's murder and I am against it.
I'm a good person.
I'm going to bed.
I feel good.
I am on the right side.
And what I did in my piece is try to say, look, the idea that life begins at conception is not settled Christian doctrine.
It's been debated from, like, from Augustine to Aquinas, you know, and I did my whole thing.
And the emails I got were like, you're not a Christian, you're not a good person, you should die in hell, all this stuff, right?
And what I told my wife is like, people can't conceive any nuance on abortion when it comes to the religious right and Christian nationalism, because if they do, Regardless of history, regardless of science, regardless of any nuance about whether a clump of cells is an actual human person, you know what they are not as soon as they admit that, Dan?
Morally superior to you.
They are no longer just clearly the good guy in the story.
And that's what they want.
That's what you want.
You want to be the good guy who says, if you're for abortion, you must be a God-hating, child-killing demon of a person.
That's what you must be.
And that means I must be the opposite of that.
So anyway, all of that to say, this is good news.
I hope we see more of this.
And I hope that people can see that this judge used the arguments of the legislatures, their religious arguments, against them to make this ruling and give this opinion.
Hats off to Gil Frank.
Hats off to Americans United for their work.
And all right, pass it to you.
What's your reason for hope?
So mine, it's a little strange, but it did make me feel good, and it has to do with religious freedom as well, right?
We have the solar eclipse coming up Monday.
I'm going up north with my family to see it.
We're supposed to actually have clear weather in New England, which is surprising, but But people may have heard this, so there was a New York prison that was going to be on lockdown during the eclipse, and a group of inmates—a Baptist, a Muslim, a Seventh-day Adventist, two practitioners of Santeria, and an atheist—all filed a lawsuit against the prison on the grounds of a violation of religious freedom, that this celestial event violated their religious freedom, that they should be allowed to watch it.
The prison has agreed to let them watch it in exchange for them dropping the suit.
I just thought it was a cool story.
Go on forever about prisons, dehumanizing places, and so forth.
But it was just, I thought it was encouraging.
I thought it was cool for some of us of a certain age.
This could be like a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing.
So yeah, I thought that was cool.
I thought it was really interesting that, again, it was a religious freedom argument from a diverse array of inmates of different religious backgrounds.
Yeah.
I don't think I'm going to see the eclipse.
I think I'll be putting a child to sleep or trying to pretend they're going to go to sleep.
Cleaning up ketchup off my clothes.
Things like that.
It's going to be good.
Enjoy your glamorous life, Dan Miller.
Someday I will walk a few steps in your shoes and know what it's like to live this.
Walk a few steps in my cargo shorts.
these.
I think I just broke Brad.
That's it.
That's all folks.
That's the show.
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