The Scathing Atheist - 251: Baker's Doesn't Edition

Episode Date: December 7, 2017

In this week’s episode, the Supreme Court rules you have to make a gay couple a wedding cake but you no longer have to watch them have sex with it, Pakistan will put the ‘cleric’ back in ‘clerical error’, and Andrew Torrez from the Opening Arguments Podcast will be here to tell us how long before we reinstitute trial by ordeal. To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click there: http://www.amazon.com/Diatribes-Godless-Misanthrope-Scathing-Presents-ebook/dp/B00J53FZFI/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&qid=1396141562&sr=8-1 To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out out half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ Guest Links: To check out the Opening Arguments podcast, click here: http://openargs.com/ To hear Noah on The Bunk Podcast, click here: https://thebunk.com.au/the-bunk-episode-7-dont-budgen-with-noah-lugeons-2/ To check out the masterful monkey noises of the Atheism 101 podcast, click here: http://atheism101podcast.com/ Headlines: SCOTUS says Texas is allowed to continue discriminating against same-sex couples: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-gaymarriage/top-court-leaves-in-place-texas-ruling-questioning-gay-spousal-benefits-idUSKBN1DY1U7 http://www.statesman.com/news/breaking-supreme-court-rejects-texas-case-gay-marriage-benefits/QWgUz5GV9ktKz1rTC3tIeI/ Update on gay wedding cake case: https://medium.com/@AndrewLSeidel/all-you-need-to-know-to-win-an-argument-about-the-gay-wedding-cake-case-8d72a16e12f3 and https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-asked-if-wedding-cake-bakers-case-protects-religious-freedom-or-illegal-discrimination/2017/12/05/c73e6efa-d969-11e7-a841-2066faf731ef “Muslim ban goes through supreme court until it doesn't...kinda http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/04/politics/supreme-court-travel-ban/index.html Evangelicals support Roy Moore: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/12/03/white-evangelicals-overwhelmingly-support-alleged-pedophile-in-al-senate-race/ Abortion is worse than being a pedo so I support Roy Moore: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/12/03/conservative-writer-supports-roy-moore-because-abortion-is-worse-than-pedophilia/ Pakistani clerical error leads to riots that kill at least two: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/protests-pakistan-171127144811300.html Jim Bakker has launched a 24/7 christian HSN: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/28/televangelist-jim-bakker-is-now-running-a-247-end-times-home-shopping-network/ Churches may get Taxpayer Funds under New Disaster Relief Bill http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/12/03/churches-may-get-taxpayer-funds-under-new-disaster-relief-bill/ SC promotes “bibles and badges”: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/30/sc-city-illegally-promotes-bibles-and-badges-program-for-residents/ Lady wins case not to give fingerprint because it's the mark of the devil: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/12/01/christian-who-thinks-fingerprinting-is-mark-of-the-devil-wins-court-case/

Warning, the following podcast contains explicit language and it doesn't even have Lucinda's soft and inviting voice to take the edge off of it this week. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by everyone's favorite Lord of the Rings themed cover song by Middle Earth, Wind and Fire. Every rose has its Arathorn. Arathorn, guys. You guys never respond during the intro. I thought that was funny, the Arathorn thing. All right. Cool, this is fun.

This is fun. And now, the scathing atheist. Hello, everybody. This is Tim. And Matt from Atheism 101. Longtime listeners of the scathing atheist will know that the last time we did a Farnsworth quote was way back in episode 36. What? They won't remember that.

Of course they will. Remember when Noah trashed me for my really shitty monkey noises? No, only you remember that. Well, I've been practicing. Can I just... Go ahead. Enjoy the show, everyone, but remember, we did, in fact, evolve from filthy monkey people. Here I go. He's not going to think that was you. Shut the fuck up, man. I really need this. Enjoy the show! Eek eek! It's Thursday. It's December 7th.

And Chad's reign of terror has finally ended. Yeah, I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. I'm from New York, New York. Secret lair, Pennsylvania. This is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, the Supreme Court rules you have to make a gay couple a wedding cake,

but you no longer have to watch them fuck it or something. Fans of Fly Like a Smeagol are super pissed about their favorite song getting snubbed in the sponsor. And Andrew Torres will be here to tell us how long before we reinstitute Trial by Ordeal. But first, the diatribe. My brother and I were not allowed to use biblical inspiration when we played pretend. That was a rule. See, okay, my parents didn't take us to church. They just mixed in the religious bullshit along with the real stuff when we asked them questions about the world and when you don't make a full effort to indoctrinate a curious kid they tend to separate out the feel-good nonsense pretty early so even

back then i looked at the bible as somewhere between a textbook and a comic book but it didn't have any particular reverence for me it was just you know there's the least interesting book on the shelf with the encyclopedias and atlases and shit. Now, my best friend was a kid who lived down the road by the name of David, and his parents were at least a little more devout than mine. They weren't regular churchgoers, but they went off enough that he knew the basics. So when he suggested that we play superheroes, but with biblical characters, my brother and I said, why the fuck not? So we went down the list of characters and all their different powers. David wanted to be Jesus, of course, and we were willing to let him have it because when you come down to it, his powers are kind of crappy.

He's invincible, which is useful, and he had the power to bring us back to life if we got killed. But other than that and multiplying loaves, he didn't have much to offer. My brother, on the other hand, was Moses, and we figured out Moses had water manipulation and plague powers I of course was Noah and after much discussion we decided that Noah had control over all the animals and could summon them at will so we spent the afternoon running around the neighborhood fighting imaginary demons and hiding from Satan until eventually one of us got thirsty we had to make an excuse to go into the house and get a glass of water but this is pretend and we didn't fuck around when it came to play and pretend. So we stayed in character, and we pretended that this was an inn or something that we were going into, hoping not to be seen by our enemies or whatever.

Now, I got to make clear at this point the dynamic of our relationship here. David was the Eli of our group, right? My brother was always the leader. David was always the goofball, and I was, I don't know, the lead guitarist with Mystique. But the key here is that no matter who we were pretending to be, that dynamic remained in place. So as we're walking through the house with our eyes peeled for imaginary antagonists, my brother says something to David along the lines of,

stop acting so stupid, Jesus, which my mom overhears and predictably freaks the fuck out. Now, I say predictably because I'm telling you the story and you will have predicted that my brother calling jesus stupid didn't sit well with my christian mother but for me it was wildly unexpected you know up to that point we'd never discovered anybody that was off limits for a game of pretend and i was baffled that such a line should exist so so my mom scolds us for blasphemy and that sounds really bad. She sends David home, sends me and my brother to our room. And that was my first lesson in reverence.

Now, after the fact, my mother came back and tried to explain why we weren't allowed to play Jesus anymore, but nothing she said made any sense. We probed for a line that separated Jesus from all the historical and fictional characters. It was okay to pretend David was, but it was to no avail. I was being asked for the first time to put Jesus in a special category of one that couldn't be rationally articulated or logically justified. And though I could not have known it at the time, that would be a running theme in my life. Of course, we really didn't care, ultimately.

Playing Jesus, Noah, and Moses was David's idea in the first place. It was kind of lame. But we didn't like being told we weren't allowed to do something, and we didn't like getting in trouble for weird shit that didn't make any sense. Nothing got under my skin as a kid more than an unanswered why, especially one that meant that David had to go home before it was even dinner time. It would take a couple of years to find my answer, and I would ultimately find it at a sunday

school a series of unfortunate twists came about my brother and i wound up in a mormon church one sunday with my grandparents and there comes a point in the service where they gather up all the kids and shuffle them off to a little room of indoctrination and fear so they dive into their spiel about hell and lie monsters and shit and i have questions a lot of questions and normally that's a good thing right like 99 times out of 100 if i'm sitting in chairs with other kids and a grown-up is teaching us something i get rewarded for asking good questions and i wanted to be good at this so i asked a lot of questions and i was not rewarded for it in fact after the third or fourth time i stumped elder chin pimples with a basic logical question about heaven, I was escorted out of the room and invited to draw at my very own table.

And I knew I was in trouble, but I had no idea why again. When astronomy didn't make sense to me, I got a trip to the planetarium. When history didn't make sense, I got a trip to the museum. When religion didn't make sense, I got in trouble. It was the only thing i was being actively discouraged from thinking about and even at the ripe old age of nine that was a red flag for me you know i had an older brother i knew all about being lied to i knew all about the flustered rage people went into when you started asking too many questions about their lie what's more i knew

the difference between that and them just not knowing the answer you know i was a curious enough kid to stump the adults around me with questions on all kinds of subjects from time to time you know sometimes i would ask my dad shit about science that left him scratching his chin but that ended up in a trip to the library that weekend not a stern talking to when i stumped my teachers they were proud of me and yet here's this category of things that's not true enough to stand up to scrutiny but not false enough for a game of pretend. See, the question I've been wrestling with was, why would people discourage me from thinking about something if it was true? And my mistake was assuming that question had an answer.

See, the epiphany here is that they wouldn't. And that this reverence was just a survival mechanism. It was a shell for the helpless slug inside of course in order for religion to survive it needs that shell because i was a pretty bright kid but i was still nine years old when i puzzled this shit out and without reverence that's about the best religion can hope for their lie is almost good enough to sneak past the bullshit detector of a bright for his age nine-year-old so unless it's insulated by reverence it doesn't stand a chance and that means that everything we do to chip away at that reverence threatens to bring down the whole

edifice every dismissive meme is a grain of sand shifting under their ranks every time you say god damn it or make a joke about jesus's crucifixion holes their shield gets thinner and that matters when every question is an arrow and your armor is made of bullshit. They're talking about your Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are two men of modest stillness and humility until the blast of Christmas blows in their ears, Heath Henright and Eli Bosnick. Fellas, are you ready to imitate the action of the tiger,

stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, and disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage? I'm not a big Francis Bacon fan. It's fun because I'm a big fan of killing you with a hammer. It used to say something different

than notes, and I was like, I feel like you should be pissed about this. I feel like you should be pissed. All right. In our lead story tonight, Shakespeare's stuff was written by Francis Bacon. Standard theory. A lot of historical evidence on that. The U.S. Supreme Court

announced on Monday that they're refusing to hear an appeal of a Texas ruling that could end up allowing the city of Houston to deny spousal benefits to same-sex couples. In related news, the high court also began oral arguments in the case of the Colorado penis cake this week, which we'll be talking about

in the next story. Point being, they can only handle, I guess, one gay thing at a time, or else they get distracted by all the pairs of dicks and pairs of vaginas flying around. So they're playing it safe. Just going one at a time. I get it, though, right?

Because then it feels like you're doing the gay day and it all blends together. You want some variety. You know, gay stuff, church and state, Muslim band, gay stuff. Yeah. Spice up your work week. Yeah, exactly. There's a formula here. And to be fair, Clarence Thomas can be distracted by his own eyelids.

So that and gay stuff is asking an awful lot. Well, now whenever I do Clarence Thomas, he's going to intermittently scream because the lights go out. I'll just think that it's all right. It's all right. I was. I was. All right. So here's a little background on the Texas case.

All right, so here's a little background on the Texas case. In 2013, Niece Parker, mayor of Houston at the time, declared gay people to be people. Despite Jesus. Yeah. And granted insurance benefits to any same-sex marriage partners of local municipal workers. In response, a Christian pastor and a Christian accountant named Pigeon and Hicks. No. They decided to sue the city for being gay. At which point, I'm assuming they went back to being buddy cops who are both the racist white guys.

Opening credits is just them shooting Amadou Doualo 800 times over poppy 80s music. As long as we shot a brother we got a quiddle right in our hands baby you and me. I get it. So somehow the Pigeon and Hicks case

was successful for them. Seems like it should have stalled out when the bailiff was like okay all rise for the matter of Pigeon and Hicks V. At which point the judge would be like I'm going stalled out when the bailiff was like okay all rise for the matter of pigeon and hicks v at which point the judge would be like i'm gonna stop you right there bailiff whoever's against pigeon and hicks is the winner and we're done here this is ridiculous but uh this was texas so pigeon and hicks won that ruling was later reversed though following the obergefell ruling but then last june the texas supreme court threw out that reversal and the suing houston to stop giving gay people human rights is once again

underway and the u.s supreme court is officially cool with that as of this yeah damn it we said marry not be merry yeah well well right because the scotus gives them the marriage but then you got to go out and buy the expansion packs that's how they get you oh yeah and uh just for the record the argument from the bigots legal team goes something like this obergefell let them use the word marriage but that's it still not giving them equal rights you know the emancipation proclamation said they can call themselves people we're not like letting them drive on roads right yeah essentially the argument and just in case that wasn't absurd and horrible enough they even tried to compare this

to abortion ready okay yeah compared to abortion they claim that a burgafell doesn't guarantee spousal benefits just like roe v wade doesn't guarantee subsidized abortions how the fuck do you get there i mean i'll admit the fetus bounty it's a little high but still like that's ridiculous okay one heath i think you misunderstood that phrase and two i really need you to move that garbage bag full of fetuses out of the hallway. It's right outside of my room and it smells. No, I'm going to move it. Bottom line, the Supreme Court decided to let a Texas court make sure gay people get treated fairly. That's the strategy.

And they seem fine with opening the door for making the Obergefell decision essentially meaningless. what the fuck is happening at open args by the way yeah right no well we'll get our chance and in baker's doesn't news tonight the supreme court heard oral arguments in the case of masterpiece cake shop versus the gays on tuesday where defendant jack phillips a colorado baker refused to sell a cake to gay people because they're gay and he's christian and if you're thinking to yourself how can that possibly be a case that made it to the supreme court i'm with you i get it and i'm gonna have to call in the big guns to answer that question so joining us now is the host of the opening arguments podcast andrew torres andrew is a practicing lawyer a vociferous atheist, and a pretty fun guy to tour the South Pacific with. Andrew, welcome back, sir. Noah, thanks for having me back on the show.

Hey, you bet, you bet. Now, of course, Andrew's here, so we had to put Eli in a little room by himself. He's listening to some music. He'll be back. So first things first, was my description a fair characterization of the case before the court? Pretty much, yeah. I mean, there's one tiny distinction that the bigot side is trying to make that we're going to talk about, but that's how I would describe it. Okay, so how does something like this, I mean, the law already says you have to sell the stuff that you sell to everybody in Colorado. Sexual orientation is a protected class. So how the fuck is this even before the Supreme Court to begin with?

Okay, so you've got two questions there. The latter part of the question, right? How is this before the Supreme Court is the Supreme Court only needs four votes to grant certiorari in any particular case. And we have four dedicated right-wing judicial activists on the Supreme Court. They wanted to – this is not conspiracy. This is not a joke, right? They wanted to take this case to make new law and they did and they might make new law out of it. So we have conservative political activists who want to chip away at gay rights on the court.

That's how this case is. There's no other explanation. Okay, so you're saying that Merrick Garland being on the court would have changed this vote for Sir Shirori? Yeah, but I think a lot of people got a message, so it's probably— Oh, good. Yeah, I forgot. No, I hadn't considered the message. It's the messaging. This is good. it's good to make your vote useless no without that that four is roberts alito thomas and gorsuch right minus gorsuch you only have three and they don't get to start awarding cert in plainly uh ridiculous cases like this yeah all right so so let's at least

give a nod to the arguments on the other side i'm going to bounce a few bad arguments off you and and if you would just tell me from a legal perspective why these are bad um and we're going to start with the ones coming from the defendant's lawyers as i understand them so um does religious freedom include the right not to serve gay people no and and interestingly in this case and only in this case even the the lawyers for the alliance defending freedom are not uh are not arguing that right they're not saying it is part of our free exercise claim to be able to refuse service to homosexuals. In fact, the very first question, right?

So the ADF lawyers, they're the petitioners. They lost below, so they go first. And the ADF lawyer basically says, hi, my name is, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg interrupts with a question. Here's the question she asked. Good on her. She says, right, and this is the central issue.

She says, what if it's an item off the shelf? That is, they don't commission a cake just for the gay couple, but they walk into the shop, they see a lovely cake, they say,

we'd like to purchase that for the celebration of our marriage tonight. The Colorado law would prohibit that. Would you claim that you're entitled to an exception? And this is out of the mouths of their lawyers. It's the only time they're going to say

this, by the way. Absolutely not. The compelled speech doctrine is triggered by compelled speech and in the context of a pre-made cake that is not compelled speech. So here's the game, right? That's the argument they're going to make before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, if they buy that argument, is going to come up with a bizarre doctrine to try and distinguish as what counts as compelled speech and what counts as off the shelf. And the next case, the answer to that question is going to be yes. The next case, they're going to be honest. But this is a wedge in the door and there's a giant hammer coming behind yeah right okay so that that seems to be where all the arguments come back to they call they talk about free speech and i feel stupid asking this but what is the difference between free

speech and selling a person a cake andrew you'd you'd think i. I mean, you might feel stupid asking that, but in an hour-long oral argument, the justices of the Supreme Court essentially spent their time asking that this Tuesday. So you're at least in good company. Obviously, I mean, obviously to any person, I think, in the abstract, strip out the political context and you say, does putting three layers down, slapping some pink fondant on it and piping some rosettes out of frosting count as expression? And most people would say no, right? Like that's not that's because because there is a real compelled speech aspect. Right. Like you could imagine a law that says all podcasts have to begin their broadcast with the Lord's Prayer. Right. Or even if it were neutral, even if all podcasts have to begin their broadcast with, you know, a statement acknowledging that Donald Trump is the correct and rightful president of the United States. Right. Like that would violate the First Amendment.

Yeah. Well, yeah. New religiously. Well, both of them are equally possible and are on my list of what-ifs. I have a contingency for both of those plans. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get like a 12-year-old kid

to come in and record it and do it like really sarcastically. Great lawsuit. But right. So that's what compelled speech is right it is telling somebody they must say a thing now the question is is designing a cake more like telling somebody they must say a thing or is it more like just doing your job and and and to me it's pretty obvious and and And what I would say that goes hand in hand with that is that there's a case from 2006. It's Rumsfeld versus the Forum for Academic and

Institutional Rights. Okay. And in that case, there was a small liberal arts college that did not want to hand out flyers from the Department of Defense, did not want to allow military recruiting on campus. And at the campus employment center and counseling center, they have the little boxes and different employers would put their stuff in the boxes. And they said, no, we're not going to put flyers for the military because we oppose the Iraq war and get out. And the Supreme Court decided that that's not compelled speech to have military pamphlets in the boxes outside your college counselor's office, even if the college disagrees with the content of those pamphlets, right? So if actual speech is not compelled speech, I don't know how a cake is compelled speech, right? And there are some great questions.

I mean, we could go through this. There are some great questions where I think it's Justice Sotomayor says, like, okay, you walk by a wedding cake. What message is that conveying to you, right? I mean, corporations are cakes, right, based on Citizens United. So I feel like there's some kind of argument here. I think I get what they're saying. Yeah.

And look, there's no good answer. But that's the argument. And look, there's no good answer. But that's the argument. The argument is it is my artistic expression and forcing me to utilize my expression in an area where I'd rather not is akin to compelled speech. And compelled speech violates the First Amendment. Therefore, go away, gay people. Yeah, there's a lot of this artist shit.

And it's like, yeah, you know, like the subway guy is a sandwich artist. so he doesn't have to make a footlong if you're gay yeah all right so moving along the bullet points of bad arguments anytime gay people want to get married and have baked goods there there's bound to be a nazi who wants to buy a cake from a kosher bakery so how is this any different from forcing horowitz's house of hamantaschen to serve Hitler a cake with a uh with a swastika on it so there's there are two answers to that I mean that argument that's a tricky one it's a good thing we have the supreme court for stuff like this yeah it's so stupid that there's there's a very very argument, and then there's kind of the lengthier legal argument. So the real easy thing is Nazis aren't a protected class. Right.

And then the kind of lengthier argument is that as long as Horowitz's House of Amundaschen agrees to sell or not sell the same selection of cakes to the same selection of individuals who come in, even if Nazis were a protected class, they would be fine, right? So, in other words, we don't make Nazi cakes, so you can't come in and request one is very different from, we do make wedding cakes, but you can't come in and request. I mean, it seems to me that not is a fairly obvious disanalogy. Yeah, yeah. Boy, I'll tell you what, me the word sounded fairly obvious when you said this analogy. Yeah. Yeah. Boy, I'll tell you what, in the last 10 years, there have been so goddamn many Nazis needing cakes for analogies to work. All right. So now I want to offer up my least favorite argument for this kind of shit, the sort of libertarian argument. Won't the market just sort this out though after all if one bakery is discriminating against gays won't that won't that invisible hand just open up some other bakery that

isn't sure and and the way i'd answer that is um what what are there more of bake shops or restaurants in new york city right because that because right? Because that argument is an argument against the Civil Rights Act, right? It's an argument for segregated lunch counters, right? Well, if you say no blacks at the lunch counter, then they'll just go find another lunch counter. And you know what? Like there are a hell of a lot more lunch counters,

restaurants, there were a lot more places to eat in New York City in the 1950s than there are cake shops right now. But guess what? All of them put up signs that said no colors, right? That's what invidious discrimination means. And so, like, yeah, in New York City, can you probably find another bake shop? Yeah, you probably can. In Colorado Springs, Colorado, and this case is not a Colorado Springs case, but I'm just picking the home of focus on the family. Like, there probably is not a cake shop within a hundred

miles of Colorado Springs, Colorado that's going to serve a gay couple if this case passes. Right? There's probably not a cake shop in all of Utah outside of Salt Lake City that's going to serve a gay couple if this passes. So, you know, it is that the market argument ignores, you know, history.

Yeah. Okay, devil's advocate. Didn't the Civil Rights Act of 1964 kind of like fuck up the business for the, you know, not segregated lunch counters? Didn't like that guy. He was killing it right before that. The penis cake shops are going to be like ruined by this because now everybody's going to have to serve the penis cakes.

That's it. The DOJ is just looking out for, for job creators. I can see. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's,

that's an interesting, like protectionism for penis cake shops and discriminatory lunch counters. That's, that's, that pretty much could be the platform of the libertarian party. I think you're anti-gay, if anything, Andrew Torres. I mean, I honestly can't imagine much of what was being offered to the Supreme Court on Tuesday was better than that argument.

So, okay, so let's talk civil rights law, because, again, this sort of hits at the very heart of civil rights law. What would a narrow decision look like here i mean is there a way that the supreme court can rule in favor of the homophobic baker without gutting all of civil rights law i i don't think so and and i'm sorry to say that because uh i i would i've been trying to come up with sort of a soft landing, if you will. And and I don't see it. And the reason I don't see it is because the issue was framed the way I set it out.

Right. Like what counts as speech and is therefore compelled speech. And in order to rule in favor of the cake shop, you have to say making a cake for somebody you don't like counts as compelled speech. And you have to pick a line, right? You have to say, well, obviously, like, you know, just, you know, handing a bag of flour to a gay couple is not compelled speech. But, you know, mixing that flour with some eggs is compelled speech. Right. And I don't think we're going to see eggs. Right.

Like the eggs doctrine. Compelled speech begins at inception. Absolutely. It touches the egg. Yeah. Oh, OK. Damn. Yeah.

Because I was trying to think of the same thing. Like, how in the hell do you draw a boundary that would, that would include like, you know, whatever wedding photographers and cake bakers, but wouldn't include ambulance drivers and doctors or pharmacists or, yeah, I mean,

yeah, like it's, I can't usually, you know, when you sort of tee up a test case, you would want to tee up a case with better facts than this, right? Like this is, in my mind, this just sort of shows how much power

the religious right wields on the Supreme Court and in our country because the facts of this case are terrible, right? Like, I mean, this is, it's not the same thing. Like you could start with wedding photographer, you know, people who make scrapbooks or something. Something that actually has real words on it. Because a wedding cake doesn't even have words on it.

I don't know. It looks bad. And if it goes through, I can't see that there's a way to really limit the damage. And like I said, the worst is yet to come, right? Because the ADF is lying. They sent out their lawyers to say, oh no, like our guys are perfectly happy to sell, you know, off the shelf cupcakes to gay people. And we know that's not true because there have been a dozen cases with florists, right? And you don't get, like there's no artistic expression in a flower, right? Like that literally, it's a plant that youists, right? And you don't get, like, there's no artistic expression in a flower,

right? Like, that literally, it's a plant that you grew, right? So, I mean, I guess in the arrangement, you know, baby's breath counts as, but, like, that will be the next argument through, right? If this case rules in favor of Masterpiece Cakeshop,

then the next time will be, well, hey, look, if cake bakers can do it, then, you know, I shouldn't have to sell cars to gay people, right? Because who knows where they're going to drive that car to and what's going to happen afterwards. I shouldn't have to rent a hotel to a gay couple, right? Right, and sales isn't art, you know? I have to talk to these people.

Yeah, right, that's speech. There's at least as much speech there as there is in piping out a fondant rose wow see and my next question is what okay what is the worst case scenario decision look like because i assume that yeah right i assume that there was some lower level okay so when when do we know the supreme court will probably rule on this in the late summer, early fall. Okay. Yeah. Now, I need a fucking year to decide this?

Are you kidding me? No, believe me, that's good because I think – I don't have a lot of evidence for this. It's just anecdotal. But I've actually talked to a Supreme Court clerk who is an ex-debater of mine, and I think that Neil Gorsuch is the, like, Ted Cruz of the Supreme Court, right? Like, I think he's just so personally obnoxious that, like, every time he talks to Anthony Kennedy, Anthony Kennedy is slightly more likely to vote with the left, so I'm okay with giving him more time. All right, so, okay, now that tees up my next question. Given your expertise in these matters, how do you see this going?

Well, and first let me undercut my own expertise, which is I thought that Trinity Lutheran was, again, not so obviously the other way is to be laughable. But obvious enough the other way that I did a three-part series on it on my podcast of this is what a superficially plausible but bad argument looks like. I really thought it was going to go the other way, and I thought it was possible it might be 6-3 the other way, let alone the outcome we got. So my job as a prognosticator is in really serious jeopardy. That being said, obviously, it's going to be a 5-4 decision. It's going to depend on what Anthony Kennedy does. And Anthony Kennedy has a really long and distinguished record on the court of voting with the side of civil rights, particularly in gay rights cases. A lot of people are making a lot about oral argument, and he seemed to have some critical questions regarding the Colorado Equal Protection Commission's record below.

I'm on record as saying I don't think oral arguments matter as much as the briefs and matter as the precedent. I think it's pretty clear here, and I think Kennedy's going to come around but that may just be overly optimistic but it's going to be 5-4 either way and it's going to come down to Anthony Kennedy and start you know encouraging Kennedy to hang out with Gorsuch more or something I don't know. Yeah we'll send him to a father-son dance or something like that. All right well Andrew thanks for shedding a little light on that for us and of, if you'd like to hear more of the latest in legal news, be sure to check out Opening Arguments, which you'll find linked in the show notes for this episode. Andrew, thanks again.

Thank you so much for having me on. Bye, Andrew. I'm sorry I didn't get to ask any questions. I had some, but Noah said that's illegal to ask on the air. Lost in the edit. It's fine. Talk to you later. I'll text you or I'll text your son.

You answer those faster. Anyway, and in... Yeah, he does. He gets fine. Talk to you later. I'll text you, or I'll text your son. You answer those faster. Anyway, and in... Yeah, he does. He gets right, hey, what? The answer is this. They had to buy him a new phone. It was adorable, and he was all upset because his friends lost it. I don't want to get into it. Anyways, and in

getting the band back together news tonight, after nearly a year trying to stop Donald Trump from fucking all the Muslims, the Supreme Court decided to concede to his request for a handjob this week so he can tell 37% of the country he got laid. Yeah, at camp.

Her name was Desk. Desky. So, just a reminder for those who have been hiding in their bomb shelter since 2016 this ban began as donald trump's promise to ban all the muslims from the country until we get this whole thing figured out but as the timeline for donald trump figuring anything out ever stretches into infinity a series of court rejections gave us the mutilated still

kind of racist ban that will go into effect last week pending appeal it's kind of like your racist grandpa wrote you a card about what a whore you are for dating a black boy for christmas and then your grandma scratched that out and and then wrote Grandpa says hi instead. The law. Yeah. It's like that, the law. Right. But also, your grandparents still won't let black people in their house. Yeah, right. Exactly.

Or North Korean people. Like, they're trying to hide it. They've added some weird categories. Right. So, the ban, like, all attempts to make people feel safe from nebulous concepts like radical Islamic terror. Is that nebulous? Well, after they detonate the vest. Yeah, it's all over the place.

Right. So is now a bloated, useless thing placing varying levels of restrictions on foreign nationals from eight countries. See if you can find the pattern here. see if you can find the pattern here chad iran libya north korea syria venezuela somalia and yemen find the pattern find the pattern and i guarantee you trump had puerto rico on that list until somebody was like no that's not how it works. That's America. You can't. South America. I feel like Chad's just on there because he's still pissed that that kid from fourth grade got his own country. There's no country called

Donald. Fuck those people. Now, you may have noticed that notably missing from this list are you know, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Egypt, which listeners may remember as being the countries where all the 9-11 hijackers were from. But don't worry.

Don't worry. The looming threat from Chad has been stopped. Honestly, at the rate white people commit terrorism, there's going to be more terrorists named Chad than from Chad by the end of the year. Right. And Roy Moore could still become a U.S. Senator.

What the fuck news? Well, yeah, honestly. Very likely, in fact. Here's a tweet that was at the top of my feed when I woke up the other day from comedian Trayvon Free, full frontal. It's a writer.

Quote, has any other president ever called a child molester from Air Force One to offer words of encouragement? This is probably a first for America, right? We can just assume that, right? That Donald Trump is the first president to call a child molester from Air Force One? Okay, good.

End quote. So that's how my day started. Yeah. No, but I bet they've called popes and shit. That counts. That still counts. No, but I bet they've called popes and shit. That counts.

See, it's because of the hustle and bustle of four shows that prevents me from performing a cover of Adele's Hello with new lyrics right now. That's all I'm saying. This is why we need more time. So Roy Moore is... Hello, you're a pedophile! Would have been beautiful. I was working on it last night while anna was trying to cook or

talk to her dying grandmother or something i don't know i wasn't paying attention but i got a really i'm sorry because you got caught it was a whole thing but i couldn't get it together i got a piano all right so uh yeah roy moore who looks like he always just told himself a joke with the n-word and laughing hilariously at himself was accused by multiple sources of being a child molester last month. And yet he's still a viable candidate, in fact, leading to become Alabama's next U.S. senator after the special election next week. According to the most recent CBS poll, he's actually ahead by six points right now. Yep. Yep. cbs poll he's actually ahead by six points right now yep yep and according to a recent poll by the washington post 79 of republicans and 78 of white evangelicals are supporting him perhaps they read

an article in the federalist that explains how pedophiles well you know they're not ideal but at least they aren't abortionists like the other candidate doug jones right yeah exactly as as long as the person poking around in that 16 year old girl's vagina isn't a doctor alabamans are okay with it yeah and uh god here's a little glimpse into the minds of the alabama voter uh from a numbers perspective the child molester accusations came out on november 10th at which point roy moore had a decent lead in the polls it took an entire week before alabama voters had a chance to i guess think that through and decide as a group that maybe the other guy the not accused pedophile was a better pick right but then they thought about that exactly and after about 10

more days roy moore was back in the lead again 10 days 10 days and then on monday morning the president of the united states called roy moore from air force one to directly endorse him and offer encouragement where the fuck am I? America, Heath. And you guys, you're being too negative. Look, I like this honesty. I liked G.I. Joe because I didn't ever have to watch CNN have chummy interviews with Cobra Commander on G.I. Joe.

It's refreshing. And when he wins, we all get to stop having hope, right? And we all get to stop having hope right and we all get to stop being like my uncle's a good guy no your uncle's not a good guy he voted for a pedophile you don't have to pretend he is anymore you're free there's the silver lining the silver lining and in bad for even in a stand country news tonight six are dead and hundreds more injured after a clerical error made insane Pakistani Muslims completely lose their shit for weeks. The deadly riots centered around a slight rewording of the oath that incoming lawmakers take, which, according to hardline Muslim fundamentalists, altered the language that declared the Prophet Muhammad as God's final prophet. fundamentalists altered the language that declared the prophet muhammad as god's final prophet the government called the changes a clerical error but the increasingly militant barelvi party called

it blasphemy and demanded the resignation of law minister zahid hamed jesus he's got like two lines of rioters running to each other like braveheart some guy gets on the megaphone last second wait wait ran a spell check we're're cool. We're cool. It's all good. Only in Islam. Yeah, right. Islam. We're what religion looks like when you mean it.

Now, the protest began as sit-ins largely centered in Islamabad. But when the government tried to clear out protesters a week in, things turned violent and spread around the nation, culminating in a capitulation by the government last week that included the resignation of the aforementioned law minister who didn't actually do anything. This marked the latest in a series of concessions the Pakistani government has made to hardline Islamic militants, making it ever clearer that the government is only in charge when the religious nuts let them be. Yeah, he said in Trump's America. Oh, it was different before. All right, just spitballing here.

Maybe we switch out Chad or Venezuela for Pakistan on the ban thing. Which we disagree with. We disagree with the ban thing. As long as we have it, I'm just saying. Why not Pakistan instead of... It's good. It's like using grandma's death

to make out with your hot cousin. It is not like that at all. What? This turned judgy, this show. I should also note here by the way that this was not just a random case of mistaken identity okay zahid hamid the the minister at the center of this whole thing wasn't actually guilty of blasphemy whatever the hell that means but he was intentionally targeted by the bar alfi party for not being bigoted enough towards minority interpretations of Islam. So this is not a case of religious zealotry run amok.

It's a case of religious zealotry doing exactly what it's designed and promoted to do. Important note there. It's working. Religion is working. Yeah, exactly. And in backer up news tonight, televangelist and Times preacher. Thank you. Thank you. And convinced

felon Jim Backer. He's back in the news. Why would it be Baker? There's no E. There is absolutely an E. I mean, you may have spelled it originally without an E. I found it. It's carefully hidden after the K's, everyone. All right.

Televangelist, End Times preacher, and convicted felon Jim Baker, if you want to say it that way. If you want to say backer, that's fine, too. Is back in the news this week. After launching his very own 24-7 end times home shopping network. That's right. Gone are the worldly desires of ugly

jewelry for sad women and depressing fake swords for sad men because Baker is selling all that stuff. Plus end of the world supplies. 24-7 to crazy Christian people. You end up fighting Jesus.

You're going to need a mouth sword. We have a case of 50 mouth swords of different sizes. The other tagline could be no, by all means, answer yet. Quick before the locusts get here. Now, I want to admit right up front, i have a feeling that the

venn diagram of people who shop on the home shopping network and people who are going to shop on jim baker's home shopping network is a circle but it does make you wonder who the slivers on either side are right like some atheist who's just like, look, this lovely diamond bracelet is a steal at 47 payments of $199.99. But that motherfucker's a criminal and a liar, right? Still, my mama

didn't raise no fool, which is why we'd like to announce here at the Scathing Atheist our brand new shopping experience, the Atheist Shopping Supply, or ASS. Noah, roll the clip. And this is a lovely spaghetti monster you see here. Yeah, sure is, Linda.

It's a three-carat white gold, and the eyes are real cubic zirconia. Yeah, do not let this pass you by, folks. We only have 788,000 of these left. They are going fast. Oh, yeah.

May contain the fingers of Indian children. Of course. Of course, obviously. And this is going to give you a really even roast on your babies, folks. No uneven cooking. A perfectly roasted baby every single time. Look at that. Look at the meat just fall off the bone.

And this blood is not going to last, folks. No, it will coagulate. That's right. Eternal youth, eternal life. Get it now. Tell them about the boat. Right, right, the boat. And you can use it to fix a hole in your boat.

No problem. Fix it right up with the blood. With the blood. Yep. And in Harvey Wallbanger news tonight a disaster recovery bill working its way through congress with bipartisan support seeks to ensure that the rebuilding efforts in houston will not include the structural damage done to the wall of separation well thank you thank you in response to a lawsuit filed by three texas churches against fema for their stubborn refusal to use taxpayer dollars to rebuild sectarian houses of make-believe instead of homes and necessary infrastructure,

lawmakers sought to bypass the pesky judiciary process by overruling FEMA's longstanding policy and just giving the churches whatever the fuck they asked for. Next on Docket, we have Bill to helicopter drop shit loads of pennies over houston and wish for better weather right yeah but won't the atheists get some of those pennies let's let's do the church building sustained it's like if the grasshopper at the end of the fable told the ants they were bigots and then ate all their bread and then raped their kids. That's a little less harsh, but it's kind of like that. No, the analogy still holds. So in the latest example of liberals not having the balls to stand up to religion, the bill, H.R. 4460, made its way through committee without the First Amendment really coming up.

Instead, it seems like the Democrats in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee came pre-cowtowed with simple Chamberlainian demands like at least don't do that bullshit no-bid stuff you did with them two redneck electricians in Puerto Rico. Yeah. We got to let them do this, Frank. Otherwise, no more fun pastors will come to our convention and lie about what Jesus said. So it's got to go through. Right. to go through right now of course in the halcyon days of all the times neil gorsuch wasn't on the supreme court we wouldn't really have to worry about this unconstitutional olive branch because

all the aggressive surrender by the elected officials could be countered by those damn judges and that damn consistent reliance on legal precedent interpreting church state separation but now the only silver lining is that when your money is handed over to the churches at least you won't have to know what they did with it since I'm sure they won't be required to account for it. And we all know what halcyon means. So just say we're all on the same page. It's a kind of light. It means to have a house.

And in we don't need no thinking badges news tonight. Question time. What does South Carolinian police officers and a Bible study have in common? A right to taxpayer funding, according to Neil Gorsuch. Similar rules about how long you can knock a black person unconscious.

Good answer. Good answer. Good answer is all. And in at least one case, far too optimistic. But this week, we found out the answer in Newberry, South Carolina, is their brand new government-sponsored Bibles and Badges program. With the purpose of, according to their Facebook page, quote, a chance to interact and learn about the Bible with other officers, but to build stronger connections within the community and interact with local religious leaders. End quote. Not adding, unless you're a dirty Jew.

Right. Or an atheist. Or a Muslim. Who are we kidding? This is South Carolina. This is those people. All right, come on. Can't wait for the satanic temple to fuck with them about this, though. It's going to end up just being like a bunch of cops in South Carolina,

reluctantly pouring milk on each other so they can keep the Bible study going. No, Dave, I'm also not enjoying this like you. I don't like this at all. All right, now you go. Two percent, motherfucker. Just me. Can I get almond milk? God damn it, Eli.

You have ruined a ruining. Ruin to ruining. Now, as is usually the case when governments sponsor and host religious activities along with the eyebrows, so raises the pen of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, who sent the mayor a letter this week encouraging to be the 8 millionth government official, blatantly pushing theocracy to knock it the fuck off. Yeah, because fuck joy and smiling children. We hate those. Damn. Okay. I'm not allowed to say that, but you're allowed to. It's fine.

Okay, whatever. So, I, for one, plan to point out that the Bibles are black, and you know what they say, can't study what you've just shot 147 times. So it should take care of itself. I don't just walk in and be like, it's a violent book, and they'll be like oh it's got it's a violent

book and they'll be like it is a violent book pay what's going for my gun yeah no no that that works hashtag not all cops and finally tonight in okay some of them i'm just saying okay yeah i mean but this is south carolina you guys know what all right anyway in uh fingerprints of no explain what you mean explain what you know i'm trying to walk a fence and you're pushing me don't damn it okay fingerprints of darkness news it's a fun pun we're back trying to tie someone to a fence and leave them there as a sign to the others the next story is about a judge in pennsylvania who ruled last week that christian

people who work with children can refuse fingerprinting for background checks if they think the fingerprinting is actually a plot by satan the prince of darkness to brand them with the mark of the beast and send them to hell fucking what yep and perhaps even worse is the general implication that completely crazy people are allowed to work with children well not just allowed but allowed to sue their employer if wiggles the invisible clown doesn't get a chair at staff meetings now, right? Is that the new rule? Alright, so quick background on this. So there's this rabbi in ancient Israel and he's way quicker than that. Yeah, also stop tearing the community

apart with your wild claims. So a woman named Bonnie Kate was working as a school bus driver in altoona pennsylvania since 2001 and then in 2015 the state apparently decided they should do some thorough background checks on the people who you know have the opportunity to kidnap children twice a day not the worst idea no i like it but ms kate refused the fingerprinting because her super christian dad told her that satan's plan to take over the world relies heavily on bus drivers in altuna then she got fired for failing to perform a legal job requirement uh she filed a lawsuit

and eventually won that lawsuit again to clarify because she thinks the mark of the beast from the bible is your fingerprints is her finger yeah right on the fingers right but the courts have to do this because if they started deciding which bullshit counted they'd be excessively entangled or or rather or rather they'd be admitting they already fucking are this is the judicial equivalent of just plugging in that ball of christmas lights and acting like wad is what you were going for such bullshit i'd be so happy to see just a giant wad on somebody's porch some mad dude just like okay you know what fuck it that looks kind of cool too mary yes couldn't find the fucking crisp it's mary you get it

yes so uh back to uh this fingerprinting thing i'm curious what she thinks fingerprinting means what would that how would the mark done anyway uh more importantly i'm wondering why our legal system has gone completely insane yeah we already have federal and state versions of and now we have yet another court case that seems to be saying stupid people don't have laws as long as the stupidity is sincerely held basically and here in pennsylvania that means lots of people without laws it's not a good situation although we do have a new patreon goal which is we will reenact moments from this trial for your money so just keep that in mind we will make that happen and i just want to be clear uh the like this pretend thing only works one way. Right. If you were allowed to be like, oh, sorry, I'm from the Church of Abortionism.

Hands off my cooch. It'd be fine. But they're very clearly like, no, no, only our brand of crazy. Only ours. I don't know about fine, but it would be better. But yeah, no, it's very clearly you can't pretend to live in just any old work of fiction it has to be a david a.r white movie right and uh one last thing we're not saying that miss kate is a pedophile no we're not because that would be illegal but that would be illegal but refusing to give fingerprints while working as a school bus driver, that's exactly what a pedophile would do.

Point being, Christianity is once again making it easier for pedophiles. And that's kind of their thing, isn't it? And if that's your thing, maybe you shouldn't exist. Maybe we should try. Maybe you shouldn't be allowed. Yeah. Oh, we need a catchy, like,

we are the world, kill a pedophile anthem. I don't think that we do. You gotta go out. You're not allowed to call for the death of a senator. Or even a pedophile anthem. I don't think that we do. You're not allowed to call for the death of a senator. Or even a senator-elect. All right. I mean, what people imply is not my fault. I don't learn. Like yourself?

What you imply maybe is your fault. Look, Heath is against all Black Lives Matter. So like, whoa, what was he talking about before? You guys remember that? I'm just saying maybe you take action into your own hands. I'm saying blue and black. I'm saying all the, no, I'm not saying all, damn it. I'm saying, I'm saying first, I'm saying Black Lives Matter.

I'm saying that first and then I'm done. And then I'm done and moving on. Just take it all together. Damn it. All right. and then i'm done and moving on just take it all together damn it all right well here's eli brought up uh an an anthem idea and sort of speaking of which we said we were retiring the 30 seconds thing last week but yay yeah well no i'm thinking we can make an exception once in a while if we really get set up and And I think we got set up. So let's put 29 seconds on the clock, we'll say.

Ideas for the pedophile bus driver mixtape. Go. See, at this rate, this bit will be gone by episode 1501. We can skip as fast as we want. Let's go. Siemens in the sun. Sun. S-O-N. Siemens in the Sun. Sun. S-O-N.

Good. We're not stopping the part of the show I'm worst at. The Squeal on the Bus. That's pretty good. How about Roy Moore than a feeling? Show me the way to the next candy bar.

By the way, I know the name of that song is Alabama song, but if I used that, I wouldn't have to change it so it wouldn't technically be a pun. I had to do something different. Roy Moore, you know. Is that a song? Roy Moore's words, yeah.

Those are notes. I was thinking anything by the Sticky Little Fingerprints. Yeah. Or anything by Unmarked Van Halen. Don't Stand So Close To Me. It's just a song, but it's pretty clearly about fucking children. So I didn't like this part.

And then they said we were no longer doing it. I was thinking maybe Kindergarten of Earthly Delights? About swells like tween spirits. And with 30 seconds fans breathing a sigh of relief, we're going to close off the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Black Lives Matter

is what I'm going to do, but Black First is what I'm going to do. When we come back, God is going to kill a lady with cancer. Before we hand things over to the outtake this week, I wanted to thank James over at The Bunk Podcast for inviting me on to chat with him on his latest episode. Basically, an hour-long takedown of NaturalGreenMommies.com.

Had a lot of fun, and despite it being a very new show, James was a real pro through the interview. Strongly encourage you to check it out using the link on the show notes. Anyway, that's all the Blast Me we've got for you tonight, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show's Hot Friend Godawful Movies, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern time on

Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I'd have to make amends in the old way if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for his both dry wit and wet wit. I prefer the wet stuff. I need to thank all the non-Eli things in the universe for being impossible to compare to the incomparable Eli Bosnick. I need to thank Andrew from Opening Arguments one more time for helping us get our heads around the burgeoning judicial theocracy we got going. I want to thank Tim and Matt from the Atheism 101 podcast for providing this week's Farnsworth quote and for Tim's much improved monkey noises. Good to have goals, bro. Of course, we'll have their show linked on the show notes as

well. I also want to express Lucinda's regret that she couldn't be here again this week. If you're paying attention to our typical tri-weekly schedule, you'll have noticed that we skipped the Book of Mormon segment this week. We're saving it for next week because that's when we're going to get Lucinda back. So not that much longer to wait. And trust me, you're not missing her anywhere near as much as I am. But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week's most humane humanoids, Mark, Frank, Alex, Charles, Stephen, Caleb, Corey, Amy, Natalie, So and Rowan, Donald, Martin, David, Jacob, Jason, Dave, Sarah, Dustin, Paul, the audience and Confusion Golem. Mark, Frank, Alex, Charles, Stephen and Caleb, whose testicles are measured on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness.

Corey, Amy, Natalie, Sohan, and Rowan, whose IQs are measured in septendecillion squared. Donald, Martin, David, Jacob, Jason, and Dave, whose dicks are measured in kilonewtons. And Sarah, Dustin, Paul, the audience, and Confusion Golem, who can rhyme whatever the fuck they want with orange. Together, these 22 tantalizingly talented, triumphantly titillating typifications of Tower and Tootlage

took time to toughen the trail towards traditionalist tyranny this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the alliterative distinctions it takes to give us money, but if you think you're alphabetically stationary enough, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist whereby you'll earn early access to an ad-free extended edition of every episode, or you can make a one-time

donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help, donating money to podcasts makes you break out and not having enough money, you can also help us a ton by leaving us a five-star review on iTunes, Stitcher, or the podcast rating vehicle of your choice. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the Law Offices of P. Andrew Torres and our audio engineer, Russ Morgan-Clark, who also wrote

all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at ScathingAtheist.com. all the contact info on the contact page at scathingatheist.com Where is it that the Balrog was? I forget. Lord of the Rings. Moria. Moria. Well, yeah, no, I know.

Lord of the Rings, yes. Where did I put my keys? Earth! Earth! I know this one! The universe! Reality! All right. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm, LLC.

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