James Talarico is a Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives, representing District 50. www.jamestalarico.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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The Joe Rogan Experience. Showing by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. How are you? Very good. Nice to meet you. It's nice to meet you. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. I found out about you from my friend Brian Simpson. He was in the green room of the comedy mothership and he was telling me how excited he was about you. He said he watched some lecture, I think.
I think it was probably not a lecture, a speech you were giving about the Ten Commandments in schools. And so then I watched it and I said, oh, OK, this is very interesting. So I thought we'd have a cool conversation.
Yeah. Well, I'm just honored to be here.
My pleasure. Thanks for including me. Thank you. I'm honored to have you. It's always interesting. Interesting to see a person who is a Christian who is not for the Ten Commandments in schools. Yeah. And I think you made a very compelling argument, you know.
Yeah. You know, I've gotten that a lot. People who are like, you're in seminary, you're studying to become a minister. Why wouldn't you want the Ten Commandments in every classroom? So I recognize that it's kind of a weird position to be in.
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. And so any attempt to erode that boundary, I feel like I have a special obligation to speak out against it.
And so I told my colleagues that I thought the bill was unconstitutional, the bill was un-American. But I went one step further and I said I thought the bill was unchristian, which again probably sounds weird to people. 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.
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. And I just think if Jesus saw that, he would weep for those students and would demand that we love them as ourselves.
And so that's why I kind of spoke out against the bill on theological grounds, not just constitutional grounds. So what is the bill? Can you explain? Yeah. So the bill forces every teacher in the state to display the Ten Commandments in their classrooms.
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