James Talarico
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But, you know, this was a people who had found freedom from slavery in Egypt.
And they were trying to be able to set themselves apart from the Jews.
that domination that they knew in Egypt.
They wanted a completely new world where God was in charge, not some Pharaoh, not some emperor.
And so I told my colleagues that I thought the bill was unconstitutional, the bill was un-American.
So this was a radical community they were trying to build.
And so they put rules in place to remind themselves that while it may only take a few weeks to get out of an empire, it takes a lifetime to get the empire out of you.
So we now, 2,000, 3,000 years later in terms of the Jewish scriptures, we're now reading it with modern eyes, trying to interpret what they mean and then apply it to our modern context.
One, I think that's sloppy theology.
Two, I think it's disrespectful to the Jewish people.
Three, it's a misunderstanding of Christianity because the whole idea of Jesus's movement was that he was simplifying the law, right?
He simplified it into two commandments, love God and love neighbor.
Those are the only two commandments that we Christians should keep our focus on.
And Jesus regularly got into conflicts with the religious authorities, right?
Jesus is always getting in trouble with the church of his time because he is rejecting legalism, right?
But I went one step further and I said I thought the bill was unchristian, which again probably sounds weird to people.
and embracing the spirit of the law, which is loving your neighbor as yourself.
And so in our modern context, that should mean loving our gay neighbors as ourselves.
And so to me, you know, when I'm looking at the teachings of Jesus, I think it's very clear how we should treat those who are different, those who are left out, those who are on the edges.
And I think trying to take the Hebrew tradition and interpret it for our own political benefit really does a lot of violence to that scripture.
I mean, the word homosexuality wasn't even invented until the 19th century.
So if you see the word homosexuality in your Bible, that's an interpretation.
That's a translation and using a word that didn't even come around until thousands of years later.
But in all of Jesus' teachings, he's always focused on the outsider, the outcast, the person who's left out or the person who's different.
It could be a whole host of things.
I mean, some of these things are put in place for health reasons.
Obviously, they didn't have modern medicine, and so—
You know, if there were things that were considered hazardous to your physical well-being, sometimes those were included in the law.
Preserving family structure, right?
You obviously had a patriarchal structure in the ancient world where it wasn't just about your commitment to your wife.
It really was about, you know—
how land and wealth we passed on to children.
And so all those things were important to protect that family structure.
So some of these ancient commandments, which again, I don't claim to know what the original meaning was, may have been put in place for some of those reasons.
But again, if this was something that really was central to Jesus's ministry,
I would think he would have said something about it, right?
We have four gospels with tons of teachings from Jesus, and none of them are about this.
So I get suspicious when anybody, whether it's a televangelist or a politician, tells me that something is central to my faith when Jesus never talks about it.
To me, that should, I think, ring alarm bells as to what is the agenda here.
And so as a Christian, I think my concern is for the Muslim kid and the Jewish kid, the Hindu kid, the atheist kid who's sitting in a classroom who now has a poster on the wall forced by the government that says, you know, your religion is inferior or you're not welcome here.
What is someone trying to get across?
If we're looking at the last 40, 50 years, the religious right has made a concerted effort to make homosexuality and abortion the two biggest issues for Christians.
And, you know, the Southern Baptist Convention was pro-choice until the late 1970s.
So this idea that to be a Christian means you have to be anti-gay and anti-abortion, there really is no historical, theological, biblical basis for that opinion.
Well, there were certainly abortions in the ancient world.
And again, I haven't stated this enough to say this definitively, but there are interpretations of certain passages from the Torah where some folks will even say that there is some subtle instructions for how to perform an abortion in the ancient world, certain things to drink, things like that.
The point is that this idea that there is a set Christian orthodoxy on the issue of abortion is just not rooted in Scripture.
We can have an honest debate about it.
If Pope Francis were to come back and sit at this table and tell me, you know, James, I'm pro-life and anti-abortion.
Here's my theological argument.
I'm here to listen and respect that opinion.
I have dear friends who are anti-abortion.
All I'm asking is that for Christians who are pro-choice and who respect the bodily autonomy of women, that we be given the space to make our theological argument, because I think there is a lot of biblical evidence to support that opinion.
So, one, you know, in Genesis, God creates life by breathing life into the first human being, which we later call Adam, that life starts when you take your first breath.
And that is actually the mainline position in Judaism, is that that's when life starts.
Then if you think about it from a Christian perspective, what something interesting that Jesus does throughout his ministry is he is breaking first century norms about women, talking with women, learning from women, having women lieutenants in his movement.
And this was something that was kind of unheard of in the first century.
The longest conversation Jesus has with anybody in the whole Bible is with the Samaritan woman at the well.
And so this affirmation of women as full and equal people is a huge part of the Jesus movement, especially the early church.
And then the last, I think, story I would go to is the story of Mary.
Mary is probably my favorite figure in the Bible, the mother of Jesus.
And she's an oppressed peasant teenage girl living in poverty under an oppressive empire as a Jew.
And she has a vision from God that she's going to give birth to a baby who's going to bring the powerful down from their thrones, going to scatter the proud, who's going to send the rich away empty.
And I just think if Jesus saw that, he would weep for those students and would demand that we love them as ourselves.
I mean, this revolutionary song that she sings, it's called the Magnificat.
And it's actually been banned by certain authoritarian regimes because it is so radical.
But I say all this in terms of in context of abortion, because before God comes over Mary and and we have the incarnation, God asks for Mary's consent.
I mean, go back and read this in Luke.
I mean, the angel comes down and asks Mary if this is something she wants to do.
And she says, if it is God's will, let it be done.
So to me, that is an affirmation in one of our most central stories that creation has to be done with consent.
You cannot force someone to create.
Creation is one of the most sacred acts that we engage in as human beings.
But that has to be done with consent.
It has to be done with freedom.
And to me, that is absolutely consistent with the ministry and life and death of Jesus.
And so that's how I come down on that side of the issue.
Again, I'm very open for my fellow Christians to disagree with that.
And so that's why I kind of spoke out against the bill on theological grounds, not just constitutional grounds.
And they may have scriptural passages they point to to be anti-abortion.
And I think that's a debate that we should feel comfortable having.
All I'm saying is that it shouldn't be assumed that just because you're a Christian, you are anti-gay or anti-abortion because there are so many Christians out there who don't subscribe to either of those policy positions.
That's right, and it's why I think that almost everyone in this country is pro-choice to some extent because the polling indicates that the vast majority of Texans, the vast majority of Americans support exceptions for rape, incest, or threats to the mother self.
But at least they're consistent.
Again, if you believe that a fetus is a person... Well, it certainly has the potential to be a person, right?
So the bill forces every teacher in the state to display the Ten Commandments in their classrooms.
Well, and a fetus is alive in terms of just biologically alive.
literally trillions of living organisms in us right now.
But the question is, is a fetus or is an embryo a person with full legal rights that trump the rights of a woman or a girl, as you mentioned?
Because if you're a 16-year-old girl who's been raped—
Does that embryo or that fetus, does its rights trump the rights of that girl?
I think most Americans say no.
And to me, that exposes kind of the lack of support for fetal personhood.
Again, we can have conversations about limits to abortion, all of those things.
But I do think it's clear that most Americans believe that a woman or a girl should have the autonomy to make those decisions about their own body.
It's only public schools because that's really where we have authority as the state legislature.
Well, I think if you look at the data, the late-term abortions that happen are almost exclusively to save the life of the mother.
Because, I mean, now you're talking about people who have picked out a name, who have bought a crib, people who want this baby.
And so the only time this happens is for immediate, life-threatening medical reasons.
Well, and I think within Roe versus Wade, there was a legal framework for states to be able to make decisions about how you regulate abortion.
And so if a state decides that they wanted to ban elective late-term abortions, if those things happen, then that was completely fine within the framework of Roe versus Wade.
But we're not having that conversation, right?
We're having a conversation about a total extreme ban on abortion here in Texas, the most extreme.
And the bill, this is going to sound weird, but it even specifies how big the poster is, the dimensions of it.
Well, and that was the original ban that passed, but then Texas had a trigger law in place, which was if Roe v. Wade is overturned, which it was, then Texas would automatically ban abortion in all cases.
So no longer a week-by-week framework.
So there was that original ban that went into place, but then that was because Roe was overturned, was then replaced by a total ban.
So in Texas, again, we're not recognizing any of the shades of gray in this conversation.
It is the most extreme ban in the country, and we've seen the devastating consequences of it.
Texas women who were forced to wait in emergency room parking lots until they went into sepsis.
I mean, we've seen women banned from using public highways to travel out of state to get an abortion.
It has to be in a conspicuous place.
I mean, that's what they were just trying to do in Lubbock was prevent women from using public highways.
It's basically the size of a sheet of paper, regular sheet of paper.
It's interesting you bring up miscarriages because, you know, if I'm, again, trying to take people at their word, trying to assume the best intentions and hear a good faith argument on the other side of this, if my concern is with the life of an embryo or the life of a fetus,
The idea is they didn't want anyone to make it too small to where someone wouldn't read it.
The greatest threat to that life is a miscarriage.
I mean, if your concern is how many embryos or fetuses we're losing, the number that we lose to miscarriage versus the number we lose to abortion, I mean, it's dwarfed.
And so I'm always interested why the pro-life movement is not more interested in figuring out how we prevent more miscarriages.
Because again, if your concern is that embryonic life seems like finding ways to prevent miscarriage, which we have best practices that can do it, right?
Making sure people are covered by health insurance once their pregnancy starts.
But the bill says that the school doesn't have to spend money on it.
I mean, that is a huge opportunity to prevent miscarriages.
You're not gonna prevent all of them, but there are things we could do
And so the fact that all the attention is on abortion, rather than on some of these other things that maybe we could all agree on, to me, again, it makes me suspicious about the true motives of some of these politicians and some of these activists who are pushing some of these bans.
Because it doesn't seem like it's about children.
It doesn't seem like it's about mothers and women and girls.
It does seem like it's about control.
And I think that's what we see across this Christian nationalist movement is controlling what you do with your own body, controlling what you read, controlling what you learn, controlling where you travel.
I mean, this is religion at its worst, is trying to control people and what they do.
So I think there's lots of different ways you could describe it.
The way I define it is a little broader.
I say Christian nationalism is the worship of power, whether it's social power, economic power, political power, in the name of Christ.
And that sounds fine to most people until you realize there's this huge network of Christian nationalist organizations that are already preparing to flood every school with these Ten Commandments posters for all of their classrooms.
And I think it's relevant to describe it this way because it's something we've struggled with within the Christian church from the very beginning.
So the first followers of Jesus didn't even call themselves Christians.
They called themselves the Way because their crucified teacher had taught them a different way of being human, a different way of relating to other people, of understanding your relationship to neighbor and to God.
And this transformed them.
They became these peculiar people, is how the Bible describes it, because they didn't participate in the economy, the military, the culture.
They were persecuted because they turned the world upside down.
Again, that's how it's described in Acts.
But 300 years after the Roman Empire crucified Jesus,
Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of that very same empire, the same empire that crucified Jesus.
So this is 300 years later.
And now Christianity is the official sponsor of of the empire of Western civilization.
It's always hard to tell with politicians, and I say this as a politician myself.
Well, he was baptized, I don't know the year, but he was baptized after he had this vision before a decisive battle when he saw the cross and decided that his soldiers would put the cross as part of their emblem.
And then they won that battle, right?
Which, you know, who knows if it was because of his vision or not.
But it started a trend, which we've struggled with for literally, you know, more than 1500 years of powerful people, you know, emperors, billionaires, dictators, megachurch pastors, using religion to protect their own wealth and power.
And to me, Christian nationalism is just the latest iteration of that, whether it's the Ten Commandments bill, whether it's the bill, I don't know if you read about this, a bill that we passed that allows schools to replace school counselors with untrained, unsupervised religious chaplains.
Sometimes people who go online and become a chaplain within five minutes.
You know, that to me, again, is an example of Christian nationalism.
So the donation thing sounds like it's kind of innocuous until you realize that the donations are already ready to go from all these outside groups.
It's using political power to elevate one religious tradition over all the others.
It's using governmental power to dominate our neighbors instead of loving them as ourselves, which is exactly what we're called to do as Christians.
And then, of course, most recently we saw this bill that defunded public schools here in Texas to subsidize private Christian schools.
And to me, again, that is a bill that's right in the middle of this Christian nationalist movement to erode the separation of church and state and force a certain interpretation of Christianity on everybody against their wills.
I think no one would disagree that Christianity was influential in the founding of this country.
And it's still influential.
I mean, it's suffused throughout our culture, our politics.
It is a central part of who we are as a nation.
But I think it's really important to clarify that we were not founded as a Christian nation.
We were founded as a nation where you are free to be a Christian.
So there's going to be legal challenges, of course, but if it's not struck down in the courts –
or a Jew or a Muslim or a Sikh or a Buddhist or an atheist.
I mean, that's the promise of America is that we are this multicultural melting pot where no one is told how to pray and no religion is elevated over the others.
And, you know, to be fair, the Declaration of Independence does mention a creator.
And now it doesn't necessarily mention the Christian God, but it does mention a creator.
I think probably in a deliberate attempt to be less sectarian and more open.
I mean, a lot of our founders, if we're being honest, some of them weren't religious at all.
You know, Thomas Paine.
And then a lot of them weren't really what we would consider Christians today.
every teacher is gonna have to put up the 10 commandments in their classroom against their wills, even if they don't want to.
A lot of them were deists where they saw God as this impersonal clockmaker who created the universe and stepped away.
And I'm not— That's an interesting way of describing it.
Well, and I'm not casting aspersion that.
I think this is how Deus would describe it.
And it's because they were enlightenment thinkers, so they were enthralled by physics and the natural scientists.
And they saw that the universe fit together.
in this perfect way, almost like a clock or a watch.
I mean, I just, again, speaking as a Christian, if we have to force people to put up a poster,
And so they assume that God was this watchmaker, this clockmaker, and then kind of stepped away from God's creation.
That is a very different view.
It's not an invalid view.
I don't mean to cast aspersions on that view, but it's very different than a lot of Christians today who have a personal relationship with God and feel God's intervention in our lives and in our world.
And so those are very different kinds of religious.
And so for Christian nationalists today to say, you know, that our founders were these evangelical Protestant Christians is just not quite historically accurate.
These were Enlightenment thinkers.
They had their own suspicions of religion.
I mean, Thomas Jefferson created his own Bible where he took out all the miracles.
I mean, all these guys had— Pretty anti-Christian.
But again, Christianity was used to justify slavery.
It was also used by abolitionists to tear it down, right?
Christianity was used by Bull Connor and white officials in the South to maintain Jim Crow.
To me, that means that we have a dead religion, a religion that no longer moves people, a religion that no longer speaks to people's hearts.
And it was also used by Dr. King and the civil rights movement to tear down that system.
So, you know, faith, it's really in the hands of the user.
It can be used to do a lot of damage to people, but it can also be used to move us toward a more just and loving world.
Well, and I honestly think, if I'm being my most hopeful self, that Gen Z and millennials, young people are going to be the ones to lead us out of this.
Because there is power in disillusionment.
Because that's fertile ground.
In my faith tradition, Jesus is not just a great teacher.
Jesus is the embodiment of the pattern of the universe.
He, in his person, his life, his death, his teachings, that we somehow learn something about God, this ultimate reality.
If we have to prove our legitimacy by micromanaging what teachers put up in their classroom, I mean, to me, that means we have a real crisis in our faith.
And Jesus' life, again, in our tradition, the milestones are incarnation.
That's Christmas, right, when God takes human form.
Incarnation, by the way, is not just limited to Jesus.
Everybody bears the image of the sacred, right?
Every listener to this podcast bears the image of the sacred, made in the image of God.
The second is crucifixion, right?
That's Good Friday, where Jesus, because he confronts the powerful, is executed on a cross, a humiliating death, along with other criminals.
And then the last step is resurrection.
That something new and beautiful rises from those ashes.
So those three things, incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, that's the pattern of the universe.
Again, just take religion out of it for a second.
Let's just think like a physicist or a biologist.
Creation, destruction, recreation.
I mean, that is the story of the physical universe.
It's the story of our lives, right?
That we are all headed toward a brick wall at the end of this, right?
There is birth, death, rebirth.
Hindus would say reincarnation, right?
This pattern of reality is something that's recognized across traditions.
I say all this in response to your question because...
All of us in our faith start off with order, disorder, and then reorder, if we get to that last step.
We should be leading by example, not by mandate.
All of us kind of inherited a faith from our parents.
It was usually pretty stable.
We didn't ask any questions and it was comforting, right?
You were childish in the best sense of that word, innocent.
You grow up, you have experiences, you meet new people, you're exposed to new ideas.
Suddenly you start to question all those things that you were taught.
How did this get proposed, and what is the support for it?
And now you have disorder, disillusionment, right?
That maybe what I was told wasn't real.
Maybe this isn't right.
Maybe I've got to question everything.
And that's healthy and essential.
You need that crucifixion to break apart what was there before.
That third step of resurrection, reincarnation, rebirth, reorder, however you want to describe it, to me, it feels like that's what we're on the precipice of.
And it does feel like young people in particular are the ones that are asking these questions because young people have always, on every major issue, have usually been the ones who have been able to kind of think outside the box and see things anew.
But it does feel like they are waking up to how broken organized religion is.
Well, the support is pretty broad within the Republican caucus.
And they are starting to yearn for something bigger and something better and something that's more true and more honest.
I hear from people all day long, yes, on TikTok, but also in real life where they're just like, I want a relationship with God, and I'm just not sure how to find that.
I mean, I think that's maybe it was the pandemic, but there is something brewing out there where people, they're hungry for something bigger and deeper.
So, again, that's me on my hopeful days.
I've also had my days where I'm more cynical.
Again, I serve in the state.
So I'm in my fourth term in the Texas House, and they're two-year terms, so that's eight years.
In my second term, I kind of had a crisis of confidence, I guess.
It was a brutal session.
It was a lot of really vicious fights on the House floor, a lot of really terrible bills.
The abortion ban, which we just talked about, was passed in my second term.
Yeah, I don't think there was a single Republican who voted against it this time around.
And I just kind of—I honestly lost faith in—
In the impact I was making and maybe even in democracy as a whole, whether this thing was even going to work, this idea that we were all going to try to solve our conflicts nonviolently and peacefully through a political process.
I don't know, all of that kind of I started to doubt in a profound way the work I was doing.
And throughout my life, whenever I've felt that doubt, I've always fallen back on faith.
Faith is the thing that is kind of the foundation for me.
And so in that second term, I had thought about quitting altogether.
And again, I serve in the state legislature.
I thought about resigning my seat and just going off to do other things that maybe would be more fruitful.
But through a lot of praying and a lot of soul-searching and a lot of meditation, I made a slightly different choice, which was to go to seminary and go back to school and go through the process of becoming a minister.
My granddad was a Baptist minister in South Texas, and so it was a part of my upbringing.
A lot of people think that I'm a congressman.
And I had really not thought about doing it myself, but I think I had just—
Loving thy neighbor is really hard sometimes.
And the work I do in the legislature is my attempt to love my neighbor through the bills I pass, through the work that I do on prescription drugs, on child care, on public schools, on justice reform.
I serve here in Austin at the state capitol.
But I was losing faith on whether I was actually doing what I came here to do.
And so I made that decision to go to seminary to follow Jesus's first commandment, which is to love God.
Those are the two commandments he gave us, love God and love neighbor.
And as a seminarian and a lawmaker, I'm starting to figure out how these two commands, how they relate to each other, how they sustain each other.
You need that inner life, which I feel like I'm cultivating at seminary.
And then you also need this outer life of how does that impact your relationships and the work you do out in the world.
So I'm a state representative.
And you really can't have one without the other because if you do the second one, the workout in the world, you can burn out so easily, which I think I was about to burn out in that second term.
You can burn out if it's not sustained by that love of God.
There are two chambers, just like the federal government, a Senate and a House.
And again, I don't mean God as that word is charged for a lot of people.
I don't mean like a sectarian religious orthodoxy definition.
I just mean that ground of your being, whatever that is.
Anyway, I don't know if it answers your original question, but... What was the main struggle?
Well, so there were several bills.
I mentioned the abortion ban.
Was it the actual— So the bill—this was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Toward the end of that legislative session, my Republican colleagues brought a—
I serve in the House, in the state House.
Again, this is the way I would describe it, a voter suppression bill, making it more difficult to vote in the state of Texas.
Again, Texas is probably the hardest place to vote in the country, just in terms of the paperwork, the requirements, the hoops you've got to jump through.
There's a whole host of things.
You know, the fact that we don't have online voter registration in the state when a lot of other states do.
So the Republicans have a majority in the House and in the Senate.
I mean, think of all the things you do online.
Voter registration is not one of them.
The IDs that now count for registering to vote or voting are very selective.
So, for instance, you've got a concealed carry license.
That license counts as ID, which I agree that it should.
But a student ID from a college or university doesn't count as an ID.
Yeah, you got to go get a driver's license.
But again, I didn't have a passport for most of my life.
I didn't travel outside the country until I was in my 30s.
And so I didn't have a passport.
I'm a member of the Democratic Party.
A lot of people don't have a driver's license, especially older folks.
So the point is that these rules get added on top of each other and make it even more difficult.
So I literally can't get anything done without working on a bipartisan basis.
I mean, there is that concern.
And here's where it kind of breaks down.
What's the main concern?
The main concern is voter impersonation, which is the idea that I would show up to vote as if I was someone else.
Like I was going to go and impersonate Joe Rogan and vote for Joe Rogan.
That does happen though, right?
vanishingly few incidences of this happening.
Because it requires, you know, sure.
And Ken Paxton, you know, decides to, he's our attorney general here in Texas, decides to spend millions of dollars trying to find voter fraud, right?
To try to prove that this is a widespread problem.
And, you know, if he comes up with anything, it's usually like one or two cases of some mom who made a mistake on her form.
I mean, the Secretary of State here in Texas, a Republican, said that our elections are safe and secure.
It's actually a blessing in this modern era where we're all tribalized and polarized that I am forced to work with people who have completely different views than I do.
So I'm all for making sure that our elections have integrity.
I think you have to have that in democracy.
My concern, though, is when some of these bills are adding—
unnecessary regulations on top of that just to make it harder for some folks to be able to vote rather than make everyone have the same opportunity to vote.
I mentioned this issue of colleges and universities and those student IDs not being eligible.
Two, in Texas, you've got to change your registration every time you move counties.
Not necessarily if you move within a county, but every time you move counties.
This is something we don't have to do.
There are logistical systems in place where we could track voter registration across counties.
But think about the people that disenfranchise us, the people who move a lot, who moves a lot.
Young people move a lot.
Every time you get a new job, get a new apartment, if you go to a college or university, then you are moving and your voter registration has essentially been erased until you redo it.
I mean, I don't even know if that's true anymore because, you know, a lot of young people voted for President Trump in the last election.
My point is when Republicans in my workplace try to disenfranchise certain groups, I think it's almost they should give themselves more credit and believe in their ability to actually win over those groups.
And actually, you get to know them.
I don't think they're speaking to them, though.
Well, but my point is instead of making it harder for young people to vote, why don't you just go out and try to win their votes?
Clearly, Donald Trump was able to do it.
And if Donald Trump was able to do it, I think more Republicans should feel they can compete for those votes.
Competition is a good thing.
In D.C., from what I hear, I have only been to D.C.
Yeah, I think that's true.
But again, I'm arguing for my Republican colleagues here.
I do think there is something that Donald Trump tapped into.
I think that other Republicans could tap into.
And again, this is weird because I'm a Democrat making an argument for Republicans.
The reason I'm doing this is I think when politicians feel that they can win over voters, we all compete.
a few times in my life, but from what I hear, you're
to win over those voters and that leads to better public policy, right?
If you write off voters, then that leads to extremism in your policy making because you're only focused on pleasing your people.
And so the fact that I do think the Republican Party can speak to this.
This desire to be an entrepreneur.
You know, Democrats too often, my party, we think that people are going to be happy with a handout.
You're really kind of separated physically from your colleagues.
I've never met someone who wants a handout, right?
I mean, people want to work.
I should hang out with different people.
I think some people may think they want that.
And let's take the government out of it.
Some people think they just want to sit on their couch, right?
When I'm like exhausted, don't want the last thing, I just want to rot.
My point is after a while,
You don't spend a lot of time talking to each other anymore.
That doesn't make you feel good.
Every human being, you need the desire to work, to produce, to contribute.
I think that is a natural human urge that's like built into us.
It's a lot of fundraising and events and not really a lot of relationship building.
I think that's absolutely true.
I think that one should be
That means that we aren't creating enough jobs where people can find meaning.
I don't think you and I have – and I don't want to speak for you, but I don't think of this role that I have as work.
This is something that moves me every day to get out of bed and work on these issues.
Now, I don't get paid to do this, so I have to actually have a whole other job.
But it's a whole different issue.
there's a difference between a career and a job.
I think everyone that I've met, everyone I grew up with wants a career.
And that career can look very differently.
In the state capitol, you don't have the same media scrutiny, the same spotlight.
That career does not have to be in a office, right?
I mean, that career, one can be outside, can be with your hands, or that career can be at the home.
My little sister just had her first child two years ago, my baby niece Jane.
And she's stay-at-home, Madeline is, and she's spending so much time with Jane.
And I've never seen my sister more...
alive than the work that she's doing.
And my sister was a successful accountant.
She worked at Alamo Drafthouse.
But I think this is the career that she wants.
She knows that she could do other things if she wants to.
But this is what's giving her meaning in her life.
And I want to have kids one day.
So I definitely see that.
There's work that I want to do.
Part of why I'm going to seminary is that this is something I feel called
It's something that's giving me purpose and meaning in my life.
I just think every single person deserves that.
So we can still get to know each other and go out to eat with each other and meet each other's families.
And I don't know the best way to do it, but how do we give everyone that opportunity to give the gift that they're meant to give, right?
I mean, we're all here for just a short amount of time.
We are all so different.
There's literally no one in the history of the universe that is you, right?
Joe Rogan, this collection of atoms and elements is only gonna exist once.
And thank God you found a way of how do you shine that light?
How do you give that gift?
But think of all the people across the state in this country who don't have a way to give that.
What are we missing out on?
The cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a kid in a low income school.
So let's just talk about I think we're all either thrilled or terrified of this AI future.
And I actually think it's something that we could benefit from at the national level is that kind of –
And who knows what it's going to look like.
It's probably not going to be apocalypse and probably not going to be utopia.
It'll probably be something in the middle.
But it is going to change how we understand work.
It's gonna change how we understand our jobs and our careers.
It's gonna eliminate a lot of jobs, I would imagine.
And so this is now gonna be a spiritual question about what does it mean to be a human being?
It's one that we are not equipped to answer right now, because in a lot of ways we have thrown out the baby with the bathwater.
And because of the problems with organized religion that we talked about earlier, we've just jettisoned the whole thing.
So we're no longer having conversations about what it means to be a human being.
But to get to your question about what specifically this could look like,
You know, I'm intrigued by some of the pilot programs on universal basic income and what they've provided.
But I think what's missing in this idea is how do you provide people the support to go off and realize whatever dream has been festering in their brain for a long time?
camaraderie and professional working relationships with people across the aisle.
Almost like entrepreneurial grants, right, of where we invest money.
in someone's next big idea for an industry, for art, whether it is community work or nonprofit work or solving a community problem.
My point is my life shows me that people are just, they have this creativity and this imagination that we are not tapping into.
And so much of that is trapped in people who are either in these meaningless jobs or are not or either gone to inadequate schools and therefore don't even get into a job where they could express themselves and give this gift.
But I do know that it's out there and that if we tap into it, it could be a game changer.
So I don't know what this looks like, but it does seem like the disruption that's coming could be an opportunity.
Again, back to out of crucifixion comes resurrection.
Disruption is an opportunity to do something.
Yeah, the system doesn't encourage that at the national level.
I think in D.C., the minority party appoints the committee chairs or ranking members.
Here at the state level, the Speaker of the House, who is elected by Republicans and Democrats, that's the person who decides what committee you're on and what bills you can get passed.
And so if we approach this when it happens, which I agree it's about to happen, and I don't think any of us are ready for it.
If we approach it as a technological problem or even an economic problem, I think we're missing the full picture here, because I do agree with you that it is primarily, first and foremost, a spiritual problem.
And what I do know about human beings is that all of us ask these questions.
What does it mean to be a human?
What is all this about?
Where is my life going?
Late at night, I can assure you, almost everybody has asked those big, deep questions.
That is essential to being a human being.
Whether you're religious or not, whether you're an atheist or not, we all do struggle with these ultimate questions.
And I think what's borne out over thousands of years of our species history is it's best to wrestle with those questions in community.
Because right now, especially on my side of the aisle, where religion has declined tremendously,
And so in some ways, that forces you to be loyal to the body
among certain populations, there's this tendency of like, well, you know, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual, which I'm very open to people who say that, and I understand where they're coming from.
But you want to be careful that it is not private spirituality only, meaning that it's only something that you own that only impacts you and has no connection to other people.
I do think we've got to be a part of communities where we ask and struggle with these questions together.
It can look like a church or a mosque or a synagogue.
It can also be a book club, to be honest, right?
Rather than loyalty or party or your caucus.
I mean, or a podcast, right?
Like this space in a lot of ways for the whole country has become a place where people are having these conversations.
Bigger conversations that aren't just about your job, aren't just about the current events of the day, but something deeper.
And I think we're going to need that now more than ever.
And right now we're not equipped.
Again, I'm proud to be part of the Democratic caucus, but I can't I literally can't get anything done if I don't have some kind of Republican support.
And so that just and I get a lot, you know, I'm able to pass a lot of bills as a Democrat.
Well, and everyone contains multitudes.
I completely agree with that.
But I also think we're all selfless, too.
I mean, it depends on whatever situation a person is put in and what roots someone has to draw upon.
And it's because I have good relationships with Democrats.
And it's why I feel so lucky that I was brought up in a faith tradition that really emphasized my own experience as a validator for faith.
Because what you just described of a pastor or clergy consolidating power is something we see all too often in organized religion.
with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
And so if you don't empower your congregation or someone who is seeking answers to check everything based on their experience—
and use that as a measure for what's true and what's good, then you make people dependent on that one guy.
Which is way too much power for one person.
It has to be, you have to use your own life as a way of saying like, does this work for me?
But yeah, on the Ten Commandments issue, it kind of became one of these culture war fights.
Does this ring true with everything I've lived through?
Trust yourself in some ways.
And so there wasn't room to have kind of an honest conversation about- When did this get proposed?
So it originally got proposed two years ago in 2023 during the regular session.
I spoke out against the bill.
I kind of kicked up a bunch of dust about the bill and it went over all over social media.
Well, I'm just honored to be here.
And I think that pressure ended up delaying the bill enough to where it died on the deadline.
Then it came back this session, 2025, and eventually passed both chambers and got signed by the governor.
And those kids were doing exactly what we told them to do.
Again, I think we've overcorrected, or now we tell every kid to go to college, which does a lot of damage, too, because a lot of kids, one, don't want to go to college, two, their gifts.
And their skills aren't going to be fully developed at a four-year university.
And how much more money they make.
Having a great carpenter is so important.
So unless it's stopped in the courts, it's going to be law in the state of Texas.
No, I mean— So important.
I mean, the guys I went to high school with that have a boat out at Lake Travis are not the ones who went to a four-year university like I did.
So I mentioned to you before I was a politician, I was a public school teacher, which is kind of an unusual route to serving.
I taught sixth grade language arts at Rhodes Middle School.
Oh, so that's something that's valuable.
I often say teaching middle school is the best preparation for politics.
It's a lot more like middle school than people think.
The egos, the drama, you know, just all of it is.
Isn't it crazy how no one gets past that?
I mean, well, we could talk about this all day, but I have, there are lots of stories I have where I'm just blown away by the
And I, you know, here's what I try.
And again, I have an ego.
There's no way you can do this kind of difficult work without an ego that, you know, to be able to say, I want to make decisions for 200,000 constituents.
I mean, that's the job I have, right?
I mean, that takes a certain amount of ego to make those kind of decisions.
You just can't let the ego be the boss.
And this was the problem.
I try to always take someone's argument at face value and assume best intentions.
I mean, we focus so much on President Biden's age, which I agree was a problem.
But I don't think we've really discussed that the biggest problem was ego.
It was his inability to step aside and let someone else do the job.
Well, and he said he was a transitional figure.
I mean, he I don't know how explicit he was, but he certainly made it sound like, you know, he was stepping in so that he could usher in a new generation.
And that never happened because when you get into these offices and I again, I'm just a little state rep at a low level.
But even I know, like people call you representative, your mail, your mail says the honorable representative.
And you're like, oh, this feels pretty good, right?
And you have a bunch of new friends, right?
All the lobbyists are like, now they're professionally friendly, right?
And all that can go to your head very quickly.
And think about someone who's been in it for 60 years.
I mean, it almost becomes a fused part of your identity to where you can't step aside.
Everything is for self-preservation.
This is how I'm able to work in a place like the legislature here in Texas, because I try to listen to what someone's argument is.
Desperately clinging to.
And I look at these people and I'm like, you have grandkids.
Well, it's not just that.
You tell me this 60 years from now.
If I'm 80 years old and I'm still in elected office, it's like, go home.
Spend some time with your grandkids.
But to me, it suggests that you think there's no one younger with more energy who could do this better.
And if I'm being charitable...
The best argument for this is that the kids are not all right.
Or, I mean, I just saw the story about this congressman right before the big, beautiful bill passed, and he sold all his stock in a company that does Medicaid reimbursements.
Because you knew it was coming.
Going into this, when I first decided to run, I was 28, had never run for anything before.
And I was, like I said, a former teacher, so I didn't know about how to run for office.
Young people are growing up without the structure of faith, whether it's the Christian faith or Islam or Judaism or Hinduism, whatever it may be.
Well, so I was a teacher on the west side of San Antonio, which is, for your listeners who are in San Antonio, the west side is this beautiful, historic neighborhood, Mexican-American neighborhood.
It's also one of the poorest zip codes in the whole state of Texas.
So every day I saw my students struggling to overcome poverty and these systems that were designed to hold them back.
And the school I was at was...
I taught 45 kids in one classroom, and the classroom was not that much bigger than the studio.
So you can imagine 45 kids in here.
I literally had kids sitting on the air conditioning unit because there weren't enough desks.
I mean, this is the 21st century in the United States of America.
So I had one student, I was a first year teacher.
What happens in schools, especially schools in high poverty neighborhoods where things are really hard, you know, the administration of the school will oftentimes give the kids who need the most help, the kids who have the most troubles to the first year teachers, right?
Almost like a hazing thing.
So I remember my first year of teaching, my principal told me that I was going to get this kid named Justin who had gotten kicked out of his elementary school the year before because he had brought a knife to school and threatened to stab his fifth grade teacher.
So I was, again, first year teacher, kind of freaked out, right?
One, he's not a monster.
He's an 11-year-old boy, right?
I took him aside, introduced myself, told him I was happy he was in class, told him I wanted to get to know him.
Students are just less religious than they once were.
He gradually started to raise his hand a little bit more in class.
He was super smart, super just quick.
He also had like a great smile.
He's very popular with the girls in the class.
And I started to invite him to our little lunch group because I had kids who came and ate in my classroom during lunch.
People are less religious than they once were.
And we started to kind of build a rapport.
He didn't have a lot of male teachers.
So I think that was helpful to see a guy as a teacher and be able to build a relationship with him.
Anyway, right before winter break that year, it was the last day of school, he brought me this wrapped gift.
The wrapping was all janky, but I opened it up and it was this little cup with a snowflake on it that he had bought at the Dollar Tree for his teacher.
Again, this is a kid who was going to stab his fifth grade teacher.
And so this rise in mental health issues, anxiety, depression among young people, there are folks out there, and I would even put myself in this camp, who say it's that children are growing up in an incoherent universe.
A few months later, he's bringing a snowflake cup to his sixth grade teacher.
And I was feeling like I was on top of the world as a teacher.
I was like, who's going to make the movie, right?
Sandra Bullock's going to play you in a movie.
Yeah, yeah, who's going to play me?
And then I came back after winter break.
I was in my third period class, and I heard this commotion out in the hallway.
So I immediately stepped out of the room to see what was going on.
And there were two of our coaches, and they were both restraining Justin, either side of him.
They were carrying him out of the school.
His feet didn't touch the ground.
Like he literally was just carried out of the school.
I found out that he had started a fight in his third grade class and that was his last strike.
And it was the last time I ever saw Justin.
I did some digging to figure out what had happened.
Turns out in the previous semester, Justin had been seeing a therapist that was provided by the school district.
And it was this lady that he really was hitting it off with and getting along with.
And they were going through all his issues because Justin had been abandoned by his mother.
At a very early age, which that'll screw anybody up, right?
Justin had experienced violence, had experienced all this trauma.
And so for the first time, there was a professional who was helping him work his way through it.
And there was a teacher who liked him and believed in him.
And that was all it took for Justin to see all these improvements.
And I found out that after winter break, that because of budget cuts from the legislature, the district had eliminated the therapist.
So this lifeline suddenly went away for Justin.
So literally everybody had abandoned Justin, including his own mother.
And now the adults that he was trying to trust again were abandoning him.
And so that was the kind of radicalizing experience for me because these people at the state Capitol had cut $5 billion from our schools.
Who knows what the justifications were?
But I saw firsthand how that screwed up a kid's life.
I saw the damage that did to real flesh and blood human beings.
And so I promised myself right then that if I ever got a little bit of power or a little bit of influence, that I would do everything I could with every fiber of my being to stop that from happening again.
So literally, Justin and my students are the ones I think about when I'm at the Capitol.
They are the criteria that I use to evaluate public policy, not if it's a Democratic bill or Republican bill, not if it's going to get me ex-lobbyist support.
It is, will this help my students or will it hurt my students?
And it makes things a lot easier.
I have a picture of one of my class periods on my desk at the Capitol.
There's not a tradition, a story that helps them make sense of their lives in a profound, almost cosmic way, which is necessary for human beings.
So that is what got me into this whole mess.
I miss being a teacher because I miss having that experience.
All the impact I make now, if I make any impact at all, feels very diffuse and far away because there's all these layers.
But I like to think that some of the bills I'm passing are at least helping teachers like me and students like mine.
Climate change on their private jets.
My point is if you're going to a conference to discuss climate change, but you're taking your giant private jet.
I mean, no matter who you are, you need that structure and that meaning in your life.
Well, I would say that I am probably the poorest member of the Texas legislature.
And I'm not poor, but relatively speaking, most of the people I serve with, either very successful lawyers who own their own law practice, doctors and surgeons who operate their own medical practice, or it's
It's just people who have a lot of family money.
And here's, because I mentioned earlier that I don't make any money at this job.
So I'm like a congressman, because I think congresspeople make like 150 or something, which is a real salary.
That's $400 a month after taxes as a state rep.
And so I recognize that as a problem, but...
Now, I also get a per diem when we're in session, which is a little bit more, which is helpful.
But the reason I say that is because there are systematic barriers to a regular person running for the job that I have.
Like, unless you have an ability to support your family or sustain your life or pay your bills, a teacher can't run for the job I have.
A firefighter, a police officer—
Construction worker, you can't run for state rep.
And you wouldn't be able to take time off.
But what I firmly and passionately believe is that the government forcing teachers to put up a poster actually makes that problem worse.
How are you going to do it?
So the only people who end up serving, and again, I understand why paying politicians no one wants to do, right?
I understand that I'm not a sympathetic character here.
Well, but the problem is when you don't pay a politician, especially a state legislator who's making most of the big decisions about that affect your life, it's really not people in Congress.
It's the state level people.
But if you're not paying them a living wage, then you're only going to get trust fund babies and lawyers and surgeons.
I mean, FDR was a trust fund baby, right?
I mean, he's one of the wealthiest families in New York.
Bobby Kennedy was a trust fund baby and still sympathize with working people.
So I don't think that you have to be...
born poor to be able to do that.
I do think it provides a helpful perspective.
I was born to a single mom and that experience has helped inform how I view things.
So a lot of my colleagues, I would say, just have no experience.
So for instance, there was a bill that we passed, unfortunately, that would make it easier for landlords to evict people.
And we were trying to work with the author of that bill to add some exceptions for, you know, if you just miss a bill because you're late, you shouldn't get evicted.
Because I think, and again, I was a middle school teacher before I became a politician, so I know students.
Like we're trying to build that out.
And the author just kind of had no conception with how you could miss a bill.
Like it just because when you're that when you have people who do that.
Like he was like he was like his accountant does all that.
I'm like, but when you're a working person, you're balancing raising kids, working multiple jobs.
Maybe trying to exercise when you can, like when you're doing all that.
And God forbid you have a medical problem.
Like, yes, some stuff falls through the cracks.
And like evicting that family because of a mistake or because they missed a bill.
To me, it's not that he's trying to be malicious.
It was that he just had a complete blind spot on what it was like to be a working person.
But there's also people that do they are malicious.
I do feel like those people I have found are very loving parents and spouses and even friends.
They have the best BS detector around, right?
And to me, that means they haven't broadened that circle of concern.
Because you want to think some of these people are just two-dimensional villains.
Victim to that thinking.
But then I spend time with them.
I'm like, this person is kind and funny and good hearted and treats his wife well and treats his kids well, treats his neighbors, his immediate neighbors.
So my challenge is always like, how do I try to expand that circle a little bit more to where they care just as much about...
I think this bill will create a whole new generation of atheists.
a neighbor who lives in a completely different city than the one who's right next door to them in Highland Park or River Oaks or one of these nice neighborhoods, right?
That to me is the challenge, is seeing everyone as your neighbor, not just the people who live right next to you.
And that's the central teaching of my faith and in most of the great faith traditions.
I mean, sometimes we try to pretend that there's all these diverse religions and who knows who's right.
In reality, there is giant ethical overlap between the major world religions.
There is literally not a faith tradition that tells you when someone gets sick, see how much money you can make off of them.
No religion teaches that.
You know, there's no one that's, you know, love your neighbors only when they agree with you.
That's not what any of the faith traditions teach.
There is this consensus, this ethical consensus.
And the reason I think we try to pretend that all these religions are so different is because we are threatened by that moral consensus of how you should treat one another, how we should treat the least among us.
who think that my religion, my faith tradition, that means everything to me is more about power than it is about love.
to the people who are in power, the people who run the status quo right now.
I mean, it upends the status quo.
They didn't kill Jesus for being a nice guy.
And divide everyone to keep them distracted.
This is my personal, like the more I've done this, I've done this for four terms now.
I think of politics now less as left versus right, and much more as top versus bottom.
Because I just see how we are all pitted against each other.
These social media platforms, they only get clicks when there's conflict.
They don't get clicks when we're having a conversation, when we're understanding each other.
When we're coming to some kind of mutual agreement, that doesn't get anybody any profit.
And they already kind of think that.
And so these – the Rupert Murdochs of the world, the cable news networks, the social media platforms, the Zuckerbergs and Musks, I mean these platforms are literally tearing us apart by design.
And I just – I think there has to be something better than that.
I mean, young people already think that about religion.
That's if we're measuring engagement as the sole good.
I think this is just going to confirm just the worst, people's worst inclinations and impulses about organized religion.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
Well, I just think we all and I know I have this experience of just feeling terrible.
when I'm on a lot of these platforms, right?
I mean, it does feel like everything is making us feel terrible, whether it's the news we're watching, the TV, the social media algorithms.
But I think this podcast is evidence in the opposite direction.
Because why would people tune into these really long conversations with very different people?
I mean, you had Trump and Bernie Sanders in the same chair, right?
So why are people attracted to that, though?
Because this is not clickbait stuff on your feed that's just trying to provoke conflict for clicks.
So clearly this format exposes that people do have a hunger for something healthier, something that builds understanding, right?
People have both of those things inside them, I guess.
But it's also long form.
The social media platforms just abuse your attention so much.
Do you not use the typical platforms?
But you and I, to some extent, we had the privilege of growing up in a childhood without that.
Well, and the staunchest defenders for the separation of church and state throughout American history were Protestant Christians, Baptists in particular, right?
So I just want to acknowledge that for kids, right?
Like they don't have the same impulse control.
So if we're feeding this to them, it's almost, I mean, it's just as bad as some of the junk food we're feeding them.
It's professional wrestling.
And I loved, you know, when I was growing up, I loved professional wrestling.
I mean, I did when I was in high school.
I mean, the letter Jefferson writes where he first uses that phrase, a wall of separation between church and state, was to the Danbury Baptists.
Well, because it's entertainment.
I mean, it's not a sport.
I mean, I know there's athletic ability, but, you know, it's the heroes and the villains.
Because, I mean, these Protestants were fleeing Europe as religious minorities, right?
I mean, this is kind of essential to the founding of this country was religious freedom.
And so those Christians understood that once the government—
And I think the thing that's encouraging about both this podcast but also the format in general is that it is long form.
And so it forces you to pay attention in a different kind of way, right?
Your attention on TikTok or Instagram or some of these other platforms, it is so superficial and shallow and that attention I think is abused on those platforms.
starts preaching your religion, starts making decisions about your faith, that that doesn't lead anywhere good.
And I think I've talked to people in my own life who feel like the more time they spend on those platforms, the less you're able to pay attention to something.
But the fact—and what you mentioned about martial arts is this focus, right?
I mean, you can't do anything great in your life without that focus.
I mean, I'm going to sound like a Buddhist, but the ability to kind of control your own mind—
and focus that mind and that spirit on something right in front of you on the here and now.
I mean, that is the key to all success.
And whether you're doing a podcast, whether you're doing sports or politics, but it feels like there's a whole generation of kids who are growing up who aren't getting that training for their attention.
And it's just getting abused and shot
You know, I've gotten that a lot.
And so we should be very suspicious of the state usurping the role of pastors and Sunday school teachers.
If you want to deepen your faith, we have churches on every street corner.
A lot of them don't have a lot of people in them, right?
We've got mosques and temples and synagogues that have a ton of room in them.
I've just noticed just in this conversation we've had that you have a gift for listening.
And I think this is something these platforms or most of our cable news or most of our media environment doesn't value anymore is actual listening and learning.
It is now all about listening.
what you say, what your opinions are, rather than actually creating a connection with another person.
And so why would we have the government start to teach kids about or preach a certain religion when we have houses of worship that can do that?
People who are like, you're in seminary, you're studying to become a minister.
Well, and the fact that you have people from such different perspectives on, I think – I just don't – I don't think we have very many platforms like that anymore.
And to me, that is probably the best thing about working in the legislature – I think I told you this – of being forced to get outside my bubble.
Because, of course, I live in a bubble like everybody else does, right?
My information feed is curated like everybody else's.
And I try to break out of that whenever I can, but my job forces me to break out with that because I have to sit down with
Very far right Republicans, very far left Democrats and hammer out solutions to problems.
I mean, that's what I do all day at the Capitol or when things are going well, that's what I'm doing.
But, you know, I think about there was a colleague.
I hope he doesn't mind me mentioning him on here.
His name is James Frank out of Wichita Falls.
Very, very conservative Republican.
And he and I met when I got elected and we bonded over the stupidest thing, which is that we both have the same first name.
Like that's when you meet someone like that's sometimes you go off of like the most superficial basis to create a friendship.
James is a really common one.
But we started this joke of like we're the James caucus and you're vice chair, blah, blah, blah.
It was a stupid basis for a friendship, but it was a basis.
And from there, he started to like come back to where I sat on the floor.
And like when things were slow, he would just come kind of sit and shoot the shit.
And he would say like, he would reveal some of the interesting non-orthodox views that he has about politics, which then gave me an opening to kind of express some of my dissatisfactions with this political system in both parties and the way it forces us into tribes, all that stuff.
Anyway, all those conversations really created an actual friendship.
And I consider James an actual friend.
And then what got interesting is how we took that friendship into public policy.
Because I think it was two sessions ago, James had a bill that all the Democrats hated, including me, I hated the bill too.
It was a bill to allow homeschool kids to participate in UIL.
Yeah, I was going to say.
That is basically school sports in Texas.
It's like the sports league.
And as you know, sports are very important.
Why did you not like that?
Well, my concern was that the public education system is not a buffet table, right, where you can just come and say, I want to do the sports, but I don't want to participate in the actual school or the academics, the life of the school.
I didn't want it to become this fragmented thing that everyone could just pick apart and just do the fun stuff.
That was my first reaction.
I mean, I honestly think that Christianity has a lot to share with the world at this moment of kind of crisis everywhere.
James sat down with me, which right there, a Republican coming to a Democrat and actually having a private conversation about a bill, that doesn't happen enough, and it should.
Because when he sat me down, he was able to use all the conversations we'd had to talk about this policy.
And he said something to me that just blew my mind.
He said, James, whenever we talk about immigration, you always say don't punish kids for the decisions their parents make.
And immediately I was kind of first embarrassed and ashamed.
That's our natural reaction when we're wrong.
But I was like, James, he's absolutely right.
These kids didn't decide to be homeschooled.
This may be their only opportunity to interact with kids their own age in a public school setting.
The opportunity to do UIL football or choir or theater or debate, this could be a door that opens for these kids.
So anyway, I ended up crossing party lines to support that bill.
And I got a bunch of blowback from my folks.
But I felt like this trust that I had with James, someone who was on completely polar opposite side of me, moved me in a way that I actually changed my opinion on something.
Why wouldn't you want the Ten Commandments in every classroom?
We passed that bill a couple years ago, and I got to talk with some of the homeschool kids that are participating, and it has been a game changer for them.
And what's interesting is that that has become a great recruitment tool for the local public schools.
Because then the public school is able to show off the UIL, how much fun it is.
And then the kids sometimes enroll.
But this, again, is giving Christianity and religious people broadly a bad name.
The point is, like, I was open to changing my own mind.
And that goes both ways.
The next session I had filed this bill.
Sometimes I file a bill that I know is not going to pass in a Republican legislature, but I file it anyway so I can at least start a conversation.
I passed a bill that was actually a Bernie Sanders idea.
Or sorry, I filed the bill.
It was to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada directly to Texas because Canadians pay half of what we pay for the same prescription drugs.
And I didn't think it was going to go anywhere.
And all of a sudden, James calls me and it's like, I just read your bill.
I'm a big believer in the free market and big pharma is disrupting the free market.
So suddenly it was me and James Frank.
We got it through the House.
We got it through the Senate.
And we got it signed by the governor.
And now Texas is working on its application to the FDA to import cheap prescription drugs from Canada.
Because this is what people think about religious people, that we're more interested in imposing our faith or our values or our beliefs on others instead of living it out ourselves.
So it goes both ways of you being open to changing your mind and the other person being open.
And suddenly progress is possible when there's a relationship.
Well, my mother, as I told you, I was born to a single mom.
She was a preacher's daughter from Laredo down on the border.
She moved up to Austin.
She met my birth father, who was a high school dropout and had a drinking problem.
And that drinking problem sometimes led to being violent with my mother.
And there was one night, it was me and mom and my birth father, and he had had too much drink and got violent again.
And that was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back.
And my mom decided right then and there that she was leaving.
So she packed all our stuff.
She put me in her little Ford Escort.
She drove me to the hotel where she worked downtown.
The manager let us stay in one of the rooms for a few weeks until we found a little apartment in East Austin.
And mom, she took on double duty at the hotel.
She fought for me at every instance, even when her own physical safety was at risk.
And back then, this was early 90s, she could look over at the Texas Capitol and she saw Texas Democrats like Ann Richards, Bob Bullock, people who fought for the little guy, for working people, people who were forgotten and left behind.
That was the classic Democratic Party.
And so I remember when I was – I guess I was maybe kindergarten –
And someone in school, they were talking about political parties.
And I asked my mom what we were.
And she was like, we're Democrats because Democrats fight for the people.
That was what she said.
My mom is still a Democrat today.
But like, I don't know how much our party is still true to that.
But I do know that that's our historical legacy is the party that fights for the little guy.
And I think we're at our best when we do that today.
We're at our worst when we stray from that.
So I still believe the Democratic Party can get back to those roots.
I hope last year was a wake-up call, especially to the National Democratic Party, about what needs to change and how we need to be different if we're going to build a big coalition to take on the issues that we care about.
But that's why I'm a Democrat and why I hope the party can get back to those roots.
So, yeah, I told you I went to seminary.
I have about a year left of coursework.
I'm going slow since I'm doing all this other stuff.
My goal is to go full-time into the ministry whenever I'm done with seminary and I get ordained.
You basically kind of like passing the bar after you go to law school.
Like you go through seminary and you've got to get ordained, which is a whole different process.
But basically, I want to become a minister full-time, and I would love—my pastor is probably listening to this podcast—whenever he's ready to hang it up and retire, I would love to take over and lead my home church.
So I say all that because I don't want to do politics forever.
I like the work that I'm doing.
I do think I'm making an impact.
A lot of the bills that I've passed are actually helping people, helping students like the ones I taught.
But it is a bruising business to be in.
Well, because it's terrible.
So I recognize that it's kind of a weird position to be in.
There are great things about it.
I really don't want, I don't, I am not a victim here.
I have a great, this is a, no one was given this job away.
I had to work to get this job, right?
I didn't knock on thousands of doors.
I mean, the fact that I went from serving 150 students at Rhodes Middle School in room 112 to now serving 5.5 million Texas public school students as part of the public education committee in the Texas House.
I want to acknowledge that I also feel this fear that –
So like that's, you know, I passed a bill to allow incarcerated minors to get a high school diploma while they're in prison.
And then I got invited out to speak at their first graduation ceremony in the prison.
And I saw these kids who made...
horrific mistakes, but I saw them with their parents with a cap and gown and suddenly their whole conception about who they were changed in an instant because of a bill that I passed.
There's all kinds of terrible stuff in this, the corruption, the partisanship, the polarization, the tribalism, it's all terrible.
You know, I look across my church on Sunday mornings and I see a lot of gray hair.
But then like you give a kid an opportunity to earn a diploma,
And you're just like, I can hang it up.
One, I think this is a model right here.
Like having a place that we can all come together and listen to each other.
I told you about your talent for listening.
I learned this in my seminary training because what pastors do is listen a lot and how hard it is to actually listen to someone.
It's easy to stop talking and then start talking when the person is done.
Being open to hearing someone is a whole different ballgame.
You have to recognize something in someone else, a part of yourself, right?
Again, I would describe it as the image of God, but I don't want to make people feel weird about religion.
Well, because I think the most revolutionary teaching in my religion is the teaching to love your enemy.
I mean, it's crazy from two perspectives.
I worry about the future of my church, of my faith in this country.
One, it's Jesus is acknowledging that we're going to have enemies.
Because you could see a world where he's just like, don't have enemies, right?
But if you're going to do difficult work, if you're going to speak your mind, if you're going to stand up to entrenched power, you're going to get some opponents, right?
But then the revolutionary part is that you are called to love your opponents and your enemies just as you love yourself.
It's easy to say in church.
I try and fail every day to do that in the legislature, to see my opponents as children of God, to see Donald Trump as a child of God.
I'm probably going to get a primary challenge right there for saying that.
Everyone has seen the charts of declining religious participation and the decline in the number of people who belong to faith.
And that's a hard thing for progressives and Democrats to get their head around.
Dorothy Day, who is this great Catholic activist for the poor and labor organizer, she had this great quote where she said, you really only love God as much as you love the person you love the least.
You only truly love God as much as you love the person you love the least.
In other words, the test of Christianity is not do you love Jesus, because Jesus is pretty lovable.
The test is do you love Judas?
I mean, now that is radical.
And I think that is the key to saving this whole American experiment.
Is how do you love your enemies?
So I actually had – this happened to me in my first campaign.
Facebook was the main platform at that time.
And there was a guy who had written kind of a snarky comment about how I was a Democrat who wanted to take away everybody's guns.
And I, again, I wanted to respond in anger, right?
Because that's always your first instinct.
I think a lot of it is well justified because organized religion has done a lot of damage to people, particularly if we're talking about this country.
But I tried to check that anger, tried to remember my teachings.
And I responded and I asked him to get coffee.
This is a guy, just a guy in my comments, right?
And so we actually met up for coffee.
Turned out to be a lovely guy.
He actually brought his wife and his kids, adorable kids.
He talked about how he was a gun enthusiast, and he was also a certified NRA safety officer.
And so the more we talked, we actually got down to how we both really value safety in this conversation.
and how he was talking about how gun owners in many ways are the biggest advocates for safety.
And then we found some consensus on background checks, stuff like that.
But it turned from this dunking in comments on social media to when we were face to face, human to human, suddenly we heard each other, right?
We listened to each other.
And he realized I was not trying to take people's guns.
I have no interest in that.
He recognized that I was just trying to find a way to safety, which is his value too.
Suddenly that's a conversation.
I'm not saying I don't want to be, I'm trying, I'm not naive.
This stuff often doesn't end well, right?
You don't often get to an agreement, but I have seen over and over again that when you extend an open hand instead of a closed fist, it's a game changer.
People mirror that behavior.
This country is going to be Christianity, right?
And they're hungry for it.
People are hungry for connection.
And social media is almost like empty calories.
It feels like you're eating, like you're getting connection, but actually just ends you more hungry.
But I grew up in a tradition that cherished the separation of church and state, not just because it protects the church or protects democracy, but it is what allows this democracy to happen where we can all have different faith traditions and live together in peace.
You're hungry at the end of the day.
Now, in India, it may be a conversation about Hindu nationalism, but here, the dominant religion is Christianity.
Well, this certainly exists on both sides of the aisle.
But I think in recent years, this cancel culture on my side of the aisle has just become kind of the default spirituality on the left.
And it is so toxic because nothing is more antithetical in my faith than canceling another human being.
If we are all endowed with the sacred image, if we are all holy—
then we are all of infinite worth and we are all entitled to unconditional love.
Like that is as a progressive, as a Democrat, like that is central to how I understand the world.
That's why I fight for universal healthcare and against big money.
It's because I believe each person is sacred.
So then in a conversation where someone happens to not agree with you on a policy, even an important policy, the fact that you would write them off as irredeemable, as trash.
I just can't imagine anything,
more diametrically opposed to my values, my faith, but also to, I would think, the values of the Democratic Party.
I mean, the way you win in a democracy is you persuade people, you win the argument.
But to say, you are now a bad person, you're a villain, I mean, it's making everyone two-dimensional.
And, you know, we've seen that too many churches, too many faith leaders have abused that trust.
I mean, that is inherent in our species.
A lot of Gen Z, a lot of my fellow millennials, when they hear me talking about, you know, my faith and how it informs my public service, they're like, I've never heard of this kind of Christianity, right?
I mean, we are a moral, believing species.
I mean, that's what separates us from all the other animals is that we can think abstractly, think about the future and the past, tell stories, and then ask questions about what this all means.
Why are we all here on this planet?
Floating rock out in the middle of the vast infinite universe.
Well, and I, you know, oftentimes I feel like atheists or agnostics have very valid criticisms of organized religion.
You know, sometimes they see the church more clearly than I can on the inside of how it's not living up to its values.
I think the thing you're hitting on is that there is a baby in that bathwater.
If we just throw out the whole thing.
I mean, now we're conducting an experiment on humanity in real time of what happens when you take this believing species and rob it of any community to make sense of the world.
I mean, now that's why you're—I honestly believe that's why we see higher rates of anxiety and depression, especially among young people, is because they're growing up in an incoherent universe.
Like, I was told that if you wanted to be a Christian, you had to hate gay people, right?
If you wanted to be a Christian, you had to want to control women.
And it's not just religion.
I mean, a big criticism I have of my own side is that, you know, I mentioned earlier this pattern of order, disorder, reorder as the pattern of the universe that these religions are talking about.
If you wanted to be a Christian, you had to reject science.
And we all, you know, we're born into certain stories, whether it's religion, patriotism, masculinity.
These are stories that we're born into.
We grow up and we start to question these stories, which is natural.
I feel like my side is stuck on that second step.
We haven't made it to that third step, that reordering, that resurrection, reincarnation, where we're taking these things and we are understanding them anew because religion can be toxic, but it is not inherently toxic.
And so when Gen Z and when millennials were faced with that choice, it was a pretty easy choice for them, right?
Patriotism can be toxic, but it is not inherently toxic.
Masculinity can be toxic, but it is not inherently toxic.
Like understanding that these are things that we can reclaim and be proud of, I think is something that hasn't quite seeped in on my side.
So we end up just rejecting all of it.
Patriotism is bad and naive.
And I just don't think those things are true.
So I do think our challenge on my side of the aisle is how do you get to that third step of –
feeling disillusioned, but then using that to rise and create something new and reclaim.
Yes, politics is corrupt, but it doesn't have to be.
Every system we have is a choice.
I mean, we can make it better if we make that decision to do so.
I do feel like right now cynicism is like the hottest thing.
It's very cool to be too cool for school.
They chose their gay friends.
But I do think earnestness and hope and optimism are going to make a comeback.
They chose women's rights.
And you're trying to get out.
I'm not leaving right away.
I do think there are other ways to make an impact outside of politics.
I can do that in the ministry.
I do think we're missing that moral clarity in our political conversation that really can only come from faith leaders and
They chose believing in science.
And that, in my opinion, was always a false choice.
Well, and it doesn't help when there are videos of the president hanging around with that student.
And in fact, a lot of those positions that I just mentioned are contrary to biblical values, to the teachings of Jesus.
And I want to validate that, that there is reason and good reasons to be disillusioned.
I guess all I'm pushing back on is that second step of it's always going to be this way.
And so, you know, there's always going to be progressive Christians and conservative Christians.
Because we were talking about how politics has become a religion.
This is one of the ways it does is people put all their faith in a politician.
I've seen it with Bernie.
I mean, people, and I like Bernie a whole lot, but some people treat him as if he's a messianic figure.
And Trump on the right, people treat him as a messiah in some ways.
That's a very healthy debate we should always have.
But he's still a flawed human being, right?
I mean, just like we all are.
I know, but my point is.
But instead of, like, the change is going to come from your listeners.
I can be a part of that.
But I mean, if there's any hope I can give people, it's that the people in power, including the billionaire mega donors who basically run this whole thing, and I can get more into that if you want.
But they are very afraid of the power that the people have.
But in this country, it's become synonymous with right-wing politics, right?
Because they spend so much time – let me just – so let's talk about the two billionaires that I think basically control state government here in Texas.
And you – I don't know if you or even your listeners necessarily know about them.
It's two billionaires from West Texas.
Their names are Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilkes.
They made their money in oil and gas.
It's not a country music band.
I was just going to say.
Some people get them confused with –
Wilkes and Dunn is the bad one.
Brooks and Dunn, good one.
But they made their money in oil and gas, but they are also Christian nationalist pastors, which, you know, billionaire pastor, you know, you would think that's an oxymoron.
So much so that when people hear I'm a Christian politician, they just assume I'm a Republican.
But on Sunday mornings, these two billionaires, they preach at these far right churches and they've got very extreme views.
They don't think anybody who's not a Christian should serve in elected office.
In fact, you can look this up.
Don't take my word for it.
But they told the former Republican speaker of the Texas House, a guy named Joe Strauss from San Antonio, that he didn't have a right to be speaker because he's Jewish.
And that's a Republican.
So they are dominionists.
They're Christian nationalists.
This is the world that they have.
But they basically, every single Republican state senator in Texas has taken their money.
a majority of the Republicans in the state house have taken their money.
I mean, it's just I think that has pushed a lot of a lot of people away.
And for some of those lawmakers, a majority of their total campaign contributions come from just these two guys.
Like they increasingly run this whole government here in Texas.
And you ask where the 10 commandments bill comes from, you ask where that school counselor chaplain bill comes from, the voucher bill, the abortion ban,
A lot of this is driven by these two billionaires.
And they give to politicians, but it's actually much bigger than that because they have this sprawling network of think tanks, advocacy organizations, media outlets, the Daily Wire, right, funded by them.
So they are creating an empire to control every aspect of the state.
I mean, I don't mean to sound alarmist, but that's what's happening.
And again, your listeners should do their own research on this to learn about it.
But there's been a lot of stories about these two billionaires and their control over state government.
And I say this because-
Well, and these two billionaires hosted a meeting with Nick Fuentes, who is a Holocaust denier, and got a lot of pushback.
Well, to be fair, I don't listen to a lot of Nick Flint does, which is on me.
And again, I think the important part about these two guys that's maybe more important than the oil and gas stuff is that they have this extreme religious worldview.
And they have the money to be able to actually implement that worldview on 30 million people in the state of Texas.
And now they're trying to go national by trying to win a U.S.
So, I mean, if your listeners haven't heard of Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilkes, they need to.
One, because not only do they make policy increasingly for 30 million Texans, but now they're trying to go national nationally.
And a lot of their views and a lot of their politics are going to become nationalized.
So what were you trying to say?
My point was that Dun & Wilkes, and I've probably become the most outspoken critic of these guys, because I do think people need to know their names, right?
Well, I think broadly we should say that using religion to control the people is a tale as old as time.
You open up your social media feed, you listen to the news, and you hear about Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick or even James Tallarico, but you don't actually hear about the two guys who run the whole thing.
But my point is that they spend so much of their energy and their money and their time trying to create wedges between people.
So let's just take schools, for instance.
The centerpiece of their agenda was this school voucher bill, which you probably heard about, which is basically taking money that would go to neighborhood public schools and sending that money to religious private schools.
Those who are around Dun & Wilkes say that their ultimate vision is to replace public schooling with religious schooling for everyone.
I mean, this is powerful stuff.
That's what they're trying to get to.
And so – but they know that Texans love their public schools, right?
Like, I mean, public education is enshrined in our state's constitution.
Friday Night Lights in a lot of these small towns, the school –
is not just an academic institution, it is the community hub that brings people together.
So if Dun & Wilkes want to get rid of public education, which I think they do, and I think the journalism bears this out,
It's part of why I made the decision to go to seminary because I was like, if I'm going to talk about my faith and my beliefs and my values in a public setting or on this podcast when millions of people are going to listen, I better know what I'm talking about.
they've got to drive a wedge between people in their public school community.
And so they deliberately fund a lot of the book stuff, a lot of the cultural stuff, the craziness at school boards.
A lot of that is kind of funded and organized through the Dun & Wilkes empire.
Of course, people should go to the school board if they have an authentic problem with the school district, which that happens a lot.
But when you actually look into where, when you follow the money about who's getting the people to show up,
Who is distributing the information?
Who is riling people up about some of this stuff and undermining trust in public education?
It's often done in Wilkes, and it isn't in pursuit of this policy goal, which is to defund and close neighborhood schools.
We've already seen schools close all over the state of Texas because they're being systematically underfunded.
So I use this as an example, not—
There are valid critiques of public schools.
And I've made those critiques myself.
But when you look at where the money's coming from and the fact that it is intentionally drawing a wedge or putting a wedge between people and undermining trust and education so that they can privatize it and profit off of it, I think that whole story needs to be recognized.
So people can understand how the left versus right stuff is actually not as important as the top versus bottom stuff.
That these billionaires are going to – we're not going to have public schools.
There's no way I'd be on Joe Rogan right now if I hadn't had Texas public schools because my mom didn't go to college.
The only way I got to college is because of public schools, free, high-quality public schools, period.
And I think there's a lot of people who would say the same thing.
Yes, because what they're worried about is – and I'll take the voucher fight in particular.
We almost beat this voucher bill because it was a coalition of Democrats in urban and suburban areas and then rural small-town Republicans coming together because we all benefit from public schools, right?
We set aside our party differences, even some of our ideological differences, and we said –
We all need well-funded public schools that can actually give our kids the opportunities they deserve.
That coalition was not only a threat to Greg Abbott or Dan Patrick.
I better be thoughtful in how I approach these things because it has real power.
It was a threat to Dun & Wilkes because if we recognize that we have far more in common.
then the stuff that divides us, then that's a threat to their power.
It's a threat to their wealth.
That unity, that loving your enemy is not just morally good.
It's not just idealistic.
It is good strategic advice because when we're united, when we're together, then we make it a lot harder for those two guys to come in and dismantle
These these ladders of opportunity that we have, you know, and we have fewer and fewer ladders of opportunity.
Public schools are one of them.
So I just I think this is a prime example of what I mean when I say a lot of the divisions, a lot of the platforms that are dividing us that are run by billionaires.
All of that is intentional so that we are fighting each other instead of asking hard questions about the wealthy special interests and what their agenda is.
And so I think you've seen that from the beginning of the Christian tradition.
That is just the phenomenon that I have seen in my four terms.
And I don't know if everyone is fully awake to that, that we're getting played.
I don't think people are.
Well, how would they know?
And this is a problem with media.
Like the mainstream media, for some reason, will not name these two guys.
I think it's like this gentleman's agreement or you have to talk about the elected officials.
I'm like, it doesn't matter who the elected officials are if these billionaires buy whoever's elected.
I mean, this to me is the real story.
There are some outlets that are covering it, but just most of them don't.
I'll even bring them up in an interview, like on local news.
You've seen it across traditions of those in power, whether it's people with political power, social power in terms of homosexuality or economic power.
It'll get taken out of the interview.
Because they don't want the lawsuits.
They don't want the attention.
I even put a video on TikTok explaining Dun & Wilkes, and it was like the TikTok was getting a lot of engagement, then it stopped all of a sudden.
And I think it was because the algorithm or the, I don't know how it works, but the platform itself had decided to stop the video from spreading.
So, I mean, that is, I just do think people have to, your listeners who maybe some of them are sick of politics.
They think it's all corrupt.
But until you educate yourself, until you do dig a little deeper.
Until you recognize the way this system is operating, you're not going to have the tools and the knowledge you need to upend that system, which it can absolutely be an upended.
We almost beat their voucher bill because we had that coalition of across the aisle and scattering the tribal dynamics of our politics.
Ultimately, we didn't win, kind of came down to a photo finish.
But it did, to me, provide a template for what happens if we actually loved our enemies, if we rebuilt these relationships.
Like, who could we take on if we did it together?
Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and progressives.
Sometimes I sound a little Pollyanna.
They have all the power.
You know, I think if I'm taking the journalism that's been done on Dun & Wilkes, I think their ultimate goal is a theocracy.
using that faith to hurt and control other people.
And again, this is very personal, given how important my faith is to me, but I'm a Christian, and I think there is no more dangerous form of government than theocracy.
Because the only thing worse than a tyrant is a tyrant who thinks they're on a mission from God.
And so, again, this is people trying to use my religion to control people.
That's the name of the game.
And we're seeing that here.
I mean, Texas is—I'm an eighth-generation Texan.
My family's been here since it was Mexico.
But I've just seen people like Dunham Wilkes just—
take us in this far right culture war direction at the expense of actual problems we need to solve.
Let's take the issue of homosexuality in particular.
One of the bills that didn't pass last legislative session was a bill that would have provided funding for flood mitigation and emergency systems to get the word out when there's a flood.
And we literally just saw the consequence of not passing that bill over the weekend.
That seems like— You want to know?
That bill was passed by Representative Ken King, a Republican, someone I often have disagreements with, but he's a good man.
He's from far north Panhandle, where they saw historic wildfires last year.
So he put this bill that would have addressed wildfires, also flooding—
And would have, I think, saved some of the lives in Hill Country over the weekend during those catastrophic floods.
That bill passed the state house, the lower chamber that I'm in, on a bipartisan basis.
Overwhelmingly, Democrats and Republicans said, this is good policy.
One is something Jesus never talks about, even though gay people existed in the ancient world.
Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor who controls the state Senate, which is the upper chamber, he held that bill hostage so that he could get his THC ban through.
And again, I know this may be confusing people outside of Texas.
We legalized hemp a few years ago.
It's a booming industry.
It's a product that's providing people a lot of relief.
Dan Patrick decided to put this bill forward that would ban all THC products in the state of Texas, basically close.
Hundreds of businesses across the state lay off thousands of people.
What industry do you think was most invested in taking this new product off the market?
And I guess I love beer.
That's not a critique of them.
Is it in the Old Testament?
My point is they use their influence to take a competitor out of the market.
By the way, a competitor that is...
Research suggests it is safer and less addictive than alcohol.
Again, I'm not disparaging alcohol, but it has a lot of negative side effects and is very addictive.
So in the Old Testament, there is a prohibition against men lying with other men.
I have members of my family who struggle with addiction and struggle with alcoholism.
THC can be, under the right circumstances, an alternative.
I mean, there are seniors who use it for chronic pain.
There are veterans who use it for PTSD.
They're just Texans with anxiety who use it to chill out at the end of a long, stressful day.
And so the fact that the Lieutenant Governor, one, would do the bidding of one industry over the other, two, would hold up literally a life-saving bill that could have possibly saved lives over the weekend in those floods just to cater to wealthy special interests, to me is just an encapsulation of everything that's wrong with politics, right?
I mean- Yeah, I would agree with that.
So that's the kind of, when I told you my second term, I started to feel discouraged.
Because you just walk, I mean, I'm still, politicians are still people.
Like, I walk out of that chamber just feeling totally and utterly defeated, right?
Like, I feel like I'm pushing against the ocean sometimes.
And people are going to suffer with this THC ban if it goes into place, needlessly, right?
And here's the thing, and any biblical scholar will tell you this,
I actually voted for a regulation bill.
We shouldn't have smoke shops right next to schools.
The packaging shouldn't look like kids candy.
Pesticides or pesticides, toxic chemicals being used on them.
In a lot of ways, we're dealing with ancient euphemisms.
But but to do a total draconian ban again, there's a thing with abortion.
Again, all I do is follow the money.
Again, I don't want to cast aspersions.
It's not like the lieutenant governor said, I'm just doing this for the alcohol industry.
I'm reading the tea leaves, especially when a policy doesn't make sense.
That's when I ask questions.
When you're just like, because they'll be like, well, too many kids are getting these products.
Well, okay, let's pass a reform bill where we keep it out of the hands of kids.
And it's hard to tell what a euphemism means thousands of years later, right?
I mean, that's also true.
Well, I mean, this is the whole thing about- It's not killing them.
This is the whole thing.
I never thought when I got elected to the state legislature I would talk so much about sex.
I literally – there are so many weird bills about pornography.
There was a bill about dildos, which I can't believe I even said that on this podcast.
What's the bill about dildos?
I think it's a bill regulating where dildos can be in a store.
Anyway, I've heard a lot of things from my constituents, healthcare, crime, education.
I've literally never had a constituent reach out about dildos, but my colleagues feel the need to pass bills about this stuff.
So I end up being in a weird position where I'm having to talk about some of these issues, like this issue of pornography.
which has been used to do book banning.
And it's an interesting discussion that we should get into.
I had a professor at seminary.
But the idea that teenagers are going to the school library for their pornography, again, just kind of, you know, it's common sense that I feel like sometimes we're just completely lacking in places like the Capitol.
This is going to sound weird.
But he was like, think about 2,000 years from now, how difficult it'll be for people to tell the difference between a butt dial and a booty call.
This is a special platform you've created here, and it really is an opportunity, I think, to love our enemies again.
So I just couldn't be prouder to be invited on.
Like those are two things that sound very similar on a piece of paper and they have very different meanings.
You know, so like in in in the Hebrew Bible, you do have this this prohibition.
We're not sure exactly what it means.
And so any attempt to erode that boundary, I feel like I have a special obligation to speak out against it.
And and if we're taking it just literally, does that mean that we're also we're prohibiting same sex relationships between women?
Right, because that's not prohibited in that particular scripture.
I mean, that's the one I just gave to you about men.
I mean, I think in most of these violations of the law, you know, the punishment, if it's, you know, called an abomination, the punishment can sometimes be death.
And this is true of eating certain foods, of planting two crops, different crops next to each other.
Wearing two different types of cloth.
Again, I'm not a rabbi, so I hesitate to be able to speak with authority on the Jewish scriptures.