AM 770 KTTH Religious Freedom Debate

wow thanks so much uh for coming out i want to thank everybody what a crowd tonight all we're missing is concessions like cotton candy and coffee and all that kind of thing well i want to thank you all for coming um and i want to thank all the people who helped make this happen a lot of them are unheralded because they never show up on stage for years michael medved and i have urged ktth events because of you asking for them and jason and tebby our ktth program director really took up that initiative and made it all happen that's jason right there walking down give him a hand i also want to thank jeanette warren head of ktth promotions but she's hiding in the back but she can hear you applaud if you want to do so i'd also like to recognize my producer nicole thompson who keeps me organized so that i remember to actually show up here and there you go she's hiding right over there and my former producer chris martin who has now been shapiro's producer and he does much the same for him every day where's chris martin he's hiding somewhere in there there he is right there okay so for the objective the objective of tonight is to have an interesting debate a compelling debate a civil debate but that doesn't mean a boring debate so at times things might get heated and that's okay because we're going to prove that you can disagree and still be civil about it um that's right i think i just heard an amen out there i want to go through a uh list here in boise idaho the intermountain fair housing council sued a christian homeless shelter for uh in their opinion violating the federal fair housing act because the shelter emphasized christian religious values in boston san francisco illinois and washington dc catholic adoption agencies have been closed down for their unwillingness to place children with same-sex couples because it violates their convictions and a u.s district court in california deemed quote religious speech expressing disapproval of homosexual acts as an infringement on the rights of other students in newark two sunni muslim police officers were refused an exemption on religious grounds to keep their beards as their faith dictates even though exemptions to the rule were granted to other officers on non-religious grounds in england a christian couple with an exemplary exemplary record of fostering children were denied a foster parenting license because the judge ruled that it was in the state's interest to protect children from being quote infected unquote by judeo-christian values on sexual morality are these things indications that religious liberty is fading that there's a growing intolerance of people of faith and an increasing compulsion by the secular culture to enforce conformity or might some of the cultural changes we see actually be expansive expansions of religious liberty and we're actually poised for a new golden era tonight will be a debate on the nature of religious liberty its strengths benefits definitions and limitations we'll examine what constitutes religious oppression of an individual and how far into the public sphere religious influence should go please welcome our guest guest number one dr james wellman associate professor of the jackson school of international studies at the university of washington and your culture crusader michael medved dr valerie tarico psychologist and huffington post religious columnist reverend dr monica corsaro of the seattle united methodist church and from 3 to 6 pm battling ben shapiro please be seated panelists i do want to say a special expression of gratitude to our more left-leaning guests because it's always braver to come when you know the audience is generally tilted against you so we do appreciate your attendance here that's what i love about conservatives i didn't even have to say it you know you knew instinctively time to clap i like that here's what i'm going to do i'm going to pose some some general questions we're going to start on some philosophical grounds and then we're going to going to move to specific examples where individuals have asserted their religious liberty have been violated in recent news events and what i'm going to do is i'm going to throw out a question we're going to it's going to be generally informal so i'm not going to call on most of the time i won't call on a specific individual i'll toss it out there panelists who feel extra eager can snag it and start talking about it and we'll just go back and forth and then i'll have some follow-ups uh on that so that's the general format of the day toward the end i'll start incorporating uh some of the questions that i've received from you uh the audience so let's begin before we get into detail let's get an overview of where you stand where each of you stands we've been playing a promo where ted cruz said that religious liberties are in greater danger now than they have ever been do you agree with that and why somebody's got to be eager i think it's depend depends on what country you're in we're talking about the united states um i would say our religious liberties are fairly secure i think one of the things that's bothering conservatives is that seculars that is an atheist are growing in our population they're up to 15 to 17 percent of our population and very much growing among the younger generation um and they're beginning you know i think they've been doing this for a while but they're beginning to say hey we should have a voice in the public sphere and traditionally for the most part americans have been sort of non-denominational christians up until at least the 1950s and i think there's a way in which we're not used to that sort of competition and so for the first time i think there's real competition in the public square and i think it's fascinating and you see that at the university of washington uh where you know 30 40 percent of my students are not religious at all um so it's a very you know we live in interesting times that michael and i were talking about that uh it's a good thing to live in interesting times so i would say no i you're probably disappointed i thought that was a chinese curse to live in interesting times it is i i would by the way i think it's great that professor wellman rightly said depends on what country you're in religious liberties are an assault all over the world and uh and not so much in the united states certainly when you compare what is going on in uh china or what is going on in nigeria where i mean which is unbelievable we are so saturated with horrible news and much of it uh either aimed against religion or perpetrated in the name of some religion and usually one particular religion um that it's we we've become numb to it but but here in the united states i just want to take your issue with one thing that you said uh james which is that uh those numbers that people use all the time where they say that 15 to 17 percent are secular that's 15 or 17 who are unaffiliated there's a difference between being unchurched and being secular and if you actually ask those people and you break down all these surveys the majority of those people say they pray regularly they don't do it in church actually one of the things one of my favorite numbers is they american atheists just was thrilled because they found a survey that said there were six percent of americans who were described themselves as atheists or agnostic a third of the atheists are agnostics say they pray every day so i i don't know to whom they pray or to what they pray but they do i i think that the the depth of religious feeling in the united states is much greater than is indicated by surveys indicating church or synagogue or mosque membership well um because it's an event about religion somebody's gonna have to preach the apocalypse so um so here we go uh yes uh my my feeling is that religious liberty is under a definite and growing assault in the united states and when i say religious liberties under assault i don't mean just in terms of people disagreeing that's not a violation of liberty that's that's the exercise of liberty i'm talking about the intervention of government and the use of government as a weapon against people's religious not only beliefs but against people's religious activities and we're seeing that in terms of discrimination against businesses that don't wish to service particular events that they feel are sinful we're seeing it with regard to a new found moral superiority in government that suggests that it can trump uh the the religious beliefs and precepts of an enormous number of people honestly i'm the hobby lobby decision is going to come down on monday and i'm sure we'll talk about this in a little bit but i am befuddled and bewildered and dismayed that we have now become a country where we're all supposed to sit around on monday and wait for the nine wisest and most moral among us to descend in their robes and inform us to what extent we're allowed to worship god in our business lives this is what the threat i believe is and i think that the threat is quite deep i think what we're going to watch in the next two years to make another apocalyptic prediction i think what we're going to watch in the next few years is states like washington try to withdraw the nonprofit status of various churches that refuse to perform same-sex marriages once those non-profit staff under under the guise of the bob jones university decision from the 1980s and then they will attempt to remove any business license from churches that refuse to perform same-sex marriages and this will be a tremendous crackdown on religious freedom in america this is this is what the battle has become not a battle about whether two dudes or two ladies can get married but a battle about whether your religious institution can function as it sees fit in the public square let me do a follow up here hold on hold on first of all i didn't know orthodox believed in the apocalypse so you're going to have to help me on that one and then second of all i just want to be able to speak about gay marriage in washington state and how that law works the beautiful thing about washington state is we're spiritual not religious so the majority of people here are not church going people or moss going people or synagogue going people and boy we sure wish that would change so we better start teaching our people some bible and telling them how revolutionary it truly is but in the meantime the way that the marriage law works here in the state of washington because the state of washington does believe in religious freedom no religious organization has to perform a service now that really works out in my united methodist denomination because right now officially the united methodist denomination does not support gay marriage but i stand outside of that and i do marry gay couples because i can in the state of washington so that's where it's all at you don't have to if you don't want to or you can break your church law and honor your state law there there's there's no there's no there's no you know you actually actually brought our freedom you actually brought up an interesting point about washington state and i wanted to do a follow-up and general uh philosophical follow-up do religious liberties matter as much in unchurched washington as they might in a bible belt state what i don't get to answer the first question no you can't we're just adding to the conversation the way it works is we've thrown things out we're gonna have to do a complex sentence that's right or don't be so shy grab that microphone and when somebody's done think of it like a dinner table conversation with a lot of aggressive people so you either speak up or you miss out jewish thanksgiving now is your chance for italian dinners we'll start with you you go ahead and you can answer that and the other fair enough um actually in order for me to answer even that first question i need to read something from somebody who isn't here tonight um so i'm gonna unfold this piece of paper and you shouldn't panic because it's actually written really big because i'm old in radio terms there's nothing we love more than when people pull out a piece of paper i'm sure well i mean hostility right go ahead so there's there's nothing to lose as you guys pointed out in 1878 there was a case that came before the supreme court of the united states that had to do with religious liberty and it centered on the right of mormons to engage in polygamous marriages and i want to read what i want to read as a comment from then chief justice morrison wait he was the seventh chief justice of the united states um and in his comment um waits quotes thomas jefferson and then he makes his own comment and then i would like to add my comment presumptuously in terms of why i think um the solutions that they propose have not can cause these problems to go away so um wait says mr jefferson in reply to an address to him by a committee of the danbury baptist association took occasion to say believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god that he owes account to none other for his faith or worship that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only and not opinions i contemplate with sovereign reverence that the act of the whole american people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof thus building a wall of separation between church and state adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience i shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore man to all his natural rights convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties so that was jefferson's statement and then wait added this comment coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure meaning the first amendment it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere opinion but was left free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order so i'm a psychologist and the reason that i think that that proposed resolution the resolution that um thomas that that jefferson suggested that weight reiterated doesn't resolve the problem and the reason that we're all sitting here today is because as a psychologist i believe that beliefs dictate action and that is impossible to create a solution to this question of religious freedom that simply secures as jefferson did as he says the first amendment did freedom of opinion i said beliefs dictate behavior if you came to my front door and i believe from the depth of my being to the depth that people hold their religious beliefs that you are there to rape and murder my daughter i am going to shoot you and that of course we're going to applaud that they love guns so no michael dukakis moment here so i think i think as a psychologist and as a former evangelical christian that that beliefs dictate behavior in an incredibly powerful way and that religion dictates behaviors that are fundamental they're fundamentally incompatible with each other they and so that that we there is no way for us to get around the fact that affording certain religious liberties to one person in inhibits the religious liberties of other people and affording certain religious liberties to institutions um limits the religious liberties of individuals to some extent can i can i just just ask you very specifically on the case that you read because it's very provocative i mean we all know that the lds church changed its position on plural marriage in 1890. this is a case from 1878 do you think that this case was rightly adjudicated or do you think it was wrongly adjudicated the case the case determined that the federal government had the power to invalidate plural marriage that the government had had the right to tell mormons at the time that no we will not accept your definition of marriage do you think that that case was rightly decided or did they show disrespect to the religious liberties of the lds church at the time that's a great question well they made the decision and then they gave them utah right i mean uh they built utah they didn't give it to them right they god gave them utah because we in illinois wanted them out i mean we we uh we um you both are getting to the point of nev everything i think the point you're making is everything is not getting handled in the courts and then we end up doing our behaviors we end up we end up working there is polar marriage in uh the mormon church it's not the official stance of the lds but there's plural marriage and it's going on in utah so those are breakaway groups that are by the way just just to be fair behavior just to be fair let's be very clear the mormon church will excommunicate people who advocate for or practice plural marriage it is not acceptable mormon doctrine today the question was about the past the question was about the past the question is do you believe that people who think that they have god tells them that they want to have multiple wives like king solomon did do they have a right to go ahead and compel the state to recognize those marriages but the state didn't this is no the state didn't and doesn't not yet yes they did and the state said no so yes next i no it's actually the reason michael i assume the reason you're asking and it's a very important question because it really does go to i think your point which is this court decision is is it it's a case that proves too much it's a the argument that's being made in the case is that basically the state can encroach on any religious behavior whatsoever so long as it doesn't encroach on religious opinion and that's the problem with the case in and of itself and i think that the point that you're making michael is that people who use this case as a case against the exercise of religious freedom in the public square in terms of action are the same people in large part who are saying that the state has no right to regulate for example gay marriage which is which is in a completely illogical position so you have to believe that either the state has to make provision and make room for religious liberty in exercise or you have to believe that the state has the power to basically compel whatever behavior it seeks so long as it doesn't affect opinion okay now i think we've made everything clear let me assure you that the issue of uh same-sex marriage is going to return so we will be able to readdress anything left unsaid um also i think the question about whether or not religious liberties matter as much in unchurched washington as they might in a bible belt state was answered indirectly by that so uh let me do a follow-up on a separate issue here even those who advocate for religious liberty speak of the need to uphold religious rights and they usually use a phrase especially for those who have deeply held convictions yet when it comes to other first amendment rights such as the freedom of speech we don't argue that those rights are essential for those who deeply believe what they say but those rights are disposable for everybody else is deeply held an essential consideration and should it be a consideration at all when it comes to uh when it comes to dealing with religious liberties no i mean it's an extraordinarily dangerous business the minute that you have the government deciding whose beliefs are deeply held versus what is not deeply held i mean then that literal that literally is the thought place i mean that is the government deciding what's in your head and then guaranteeing you certain rights based on what's in your head and the bottom line to this entire discussion is really does the government have the power to regulate your religious behavior if the government feels that it violates its morality that's really the central conflict that we're talking about here and the problem is that as the government decides that it can regulate particular behaviors and this is the point that i was making at the very beginning as the government decides it can regulate particular behaviors religious the sphere of religious liberty is going to shrink to exactly what chief justice wait said there it's going to shrink smaller and smaller and smaller until the only thing that you can do religiously speaking is think about your religion and maybe pray in your own home well so you're you're what i mean you're attributing that to wait but it's what thomas jefferson said and i i say that not because thomas jefferson wasn't in fact a deity but but to call attention to the fact that this conversation goes way back in america's history we have struggled with it for an incredibly long time and and if you look for example at this opinion what weight did say is he talks about the government being able to regulate behavior that is relevant to social duties and order and which is a malleable term and this is why i think both jefferson and wayne are wrong you know let me let me just break in i think you're being slightly paranoid i i don't know who you're talking about in america you can change your religion you can have no religion you can uh do they smoke peyote you can smoke biology as a religious right for goodness sakes man move to egypt move to pakistan move to saudi arabia then you can complain and i i for one think america is a fantastic country and you know as a liberal right you that's what you say about me and i think you're laughing and most liberals are self-hating americans right i love america and i teach american religion and i will stand up for what we have what we have built but you'll shut down my business it's a great cake together it's a great culture with great religious liberty but you will shut down my business if i don't serve a cake to a gay wedding but you'll shut down my business if i don't serve a cake to a gay wedding i can assure you we'll be getting to shutting down give me an example i'll give you an example of um that example that exact example just a second yeah i we will have those uh some examples uh coming up but uh follow-up um dr wellman you just said he ben shouldn't complain because we're not egypt or saudi arabia wouldn't it be a dog gone right wouldn't it be a good idea to in the preservation of liberty to have a heated debate about the nature of those rights because the same argument could be made for any given homosexual couple or any given far-left couple or many other or any non-muslim faith in the united states that they don't live in egypt or saudi arabia either so therefore they shouldn't complain well you know right yeah but i i don't think we have i thought the liberals were the complainers pardon me i thought liberals were the complainers in this country i don't know dr uh dr wellman brought up the idea that ben shouldn't speak out no you know i love the fact that ben is is controversial and he he does well because he is controversial that's that's why we like to hear him but let's get to the facts a little bit uh you know religious rights and religious liberties are not uh uh uh being compacted in america uh you know and i but let me go back to what michael asked what can you have a case of earlier example i think that was wrongly decided you think so you so you actually agree with me that a shop should be allowed to reject service to a gay wedding i think so the interesting question is publicly you like to interrupt it's a it's a public for-profit business and i think there is non-discrimination should go on there and it they should not be allowed to discriminate against gay people so in other words i agree with that wait wait wait wait wait hold the thought i assure you we will have a specific example that we'll be getting to later on that so i'm drawing the line save those thoughts for later and as a follow-up to uh valerie i assure you as a self-professed whiner uh conservatives do a lot of complaining too believe me all right in the hobby lobby case which is expected to be handed down from the supreme court on monday the obama administration ceased to enforce an aca the affordable care act mandate that would compel owners barbara and david greene to provide certain kinds of what they consider to be aboard efficient birth control is the obama administration infringe infringing on the rights of these business owners hold it hold it valerie would you like to would you like to launch us off on that i'd love to because our system of jurisprudence for for going way back um back to the constitutional days in fact differentiates organizations that come together for the purpose of worship and religious affiliation and religious indoctrination from other kinds of corporate bodies and and so i mean essentially if you what we're looking at now is individuals and corporations for-profit corporations claiming the rights that have been secured for religious congregations the the the special rights that are given to religious congregations are recognition of the fact that there it it's you can't practice worship um unless people are able to come together in community to do that that's very different than getting to impose your religious values on your employees and and i would argue that there it's impossible to have civil society if you give people the right to impose their religious beliefs on their societies christianity has fragmented into 32 000 different denominations at the last time i checked and each of them has a different set of moral priorities and a different understanding of god's will so if you start giving those people the right to impose their their version on other people i i don't know where that where that stops we end up any way you look at it having to make hard decisions that trade off the the rights and liberties of individuals against one another i i i'm very troubled by something that you just seem to have said and i want to make sure that i'm understanding you correctly because uh are you suggesting that religious liberty is not a personal individual right it is only a corporate right for religious organizations no do i have do i have a personal right as to all the women employees of hobby lobby they also wait for a personal right to practice their autonomy to get their health care maternal where is there a right guaranteed in the constitution to get their health care i i'm sorry talking constitution yes we are we are talking about the right to free exercise of religion you asked her about religion religion practice and correct no no i'm let me make clear what my question is monica please my question is very simple when the constitution speaks of free exercise of religion are they only granting that as free exercise for an organization or is that for an individual too i would argue that it is in fact only for individuals and the right to assembly for religious purposes is an extension of the rights of enemies okay so hold on for a moment let me just the rights of institutions have never religious institutions have never been threatened that wasn't if i can if i can if i can if you're saying this only has to do with the right to assemble for religious institutions what if it is a a single privately owned business it's a family business oh you keep wanting everyone's to go back to that don't they no no no no no i mean in other words because that's what you're talking about you're talking about corporate rights versus religious rights i'm talking about the rights of individuals to fulfill their conscience as church they go to synagogues but they go to their temple can i can i make it very very clear the constitution does not guarantee a right to freedom of worship it guarantees a right to freedom of religion and that's very different the constitution guarantees a right to freedom of religious opinion that's what we just heard the rest of this conversation is more complex than that but lobby is not a church hobby lobby has 500 employees it's a it's an enormous organization okay so if it were if it were an individually owned business i have i have a little business i have i have my family and we have two employees okay one of one of whom is here um and and plus my wife but um do i have the rights to with my little tiny business because i'm an individual and you you uh i believe everyone agrees that there is such a right as individual liberty to religion to practice religion to free exercise or religion do i then have the right to extend my free exercise of religion to my small individually totally owned family business let me ask you a question as an employee with an earned benefit which is health insurance that happens to get routed through my employer because that's how we structure it in this country do i have a right to use my health insurance to decide um to the best of my own spiritual and religious values when and whether to bring a child into this world sure you have a right to get any insurance you want all that hobby lobby is insisting is that they not be forced to pay for insurance they do not choose to pay for there's nothing preventing someone from getting health insurance that covers abortions or abortifacients or anything else and and this is sort of the point i think is that when you look at the word imposition is being thrown around a lot you know again imposition that you that people are imposing their beliefs on others there's only one group in this country that is using the government to impose their beliefs on others at the point of a gun and that is not hobby lobby hobby lobby is involved in a consensual relationship between the employer and the employee churches are involved in consensual relationships between themselves and their constituents the government is not involved in a consensual relationship when it tells a business that it will revoke its license and it will come to their it will come to their front door if they remain open and it will forcibly shut down their business there's only one person in one group that is coming to the coming to the party here with a gun and the only the only group i mean you said conservatives love guns liberals love guns far more they just love guns that are being used by the government against conservatives let me let you know i think this let me uh dr wilma let me add something to the conversation because kind of very much related can i get in absolutely but it's related so you'll be able to jump in right afterward no problem the little sisters of the poor a religious order of women devoted to caring for needy elderly people now face the possibility of millions of dollars in fines unless they give in a similar situation unless they provide for their employees free coverage for sterilization contraception and what they see as abortion-inducing drugs should government be able to compel these women to act in violation of their convictions um is this the hobby lobby case here well there's hobby lobby as well and i'm adding a little let me just report to the mix i i kind of i think we're making a mountain out of a molehill okay bear with me so there's i think 25 types of contraception that uh that this insurance covers and i believe in the case there's four that are problematic for hobby lobby this could be simply simply dealt with and solved with the government simply saying yeah we understand we'll pay for those four solved okay so let's just uh get over ourselves i mean come on and and uh and if they don't do that they're dumb and but uh they're dumb yeah they haven't done that by the by the way i don't think uh ben that that say perfectly in other words for people rather than suing hobby lobby and compelling them to pay for the bordeaux fascias if president obama wanted to say i'm going to go to the house of representatives and see if we can get an appropriation so we will pay for it no i agree and it wouldn't work but he could try so i want to come back to the hobby lobby case too because i think it beautifully illustrates the point i was making earlier about trade-offs between people's deeply held religious values and because i think ultimately in that case the question you have to ask is which is a more core spiritual value being able to make your own decisions between consultation with yourself your clergy and your god if you believe in god at the beginnings and ends of life or getting or being able to decide to try and impose your religious beliefs to constrain the behavior of your employees because that's what they're trying to do if their employees all agreed with them if their employees all thought that god's will was the same thing that the owners of hobby lobby think god's will is there wouldn't be an issue here would they because they could give the insurance whatever insurance and they could rest assured that their employees would choose like they would the question in hobby lobby is whose freedom is being infringed upon employees freedom is not infringed upon when they enter into a consensual relationship with an employer that includes certain types of health not consensual of course it is they can quit who is forcing them where is the gun where is the gun who is forcing them where is the chain who's locking them with the gun language no but this is the no this is the reason that i use the gun language is because it is vitally important for people to understand that every government measure at the end of the day has it must be compelled by force that's what government measures are for there is a vast difference a huge difference in terms of personal liberty and freedom between the government compelling behavior and a company saying that we are not going to provide certain types of coverage and if you don't like that you can quit or buy your own coverage there's a vast difference the gun's the whole issue health insurance health insurance is an earned benefit it's not given for free to employees they earn it should your employer be able to decide how you spend your money earned from home okay i may think that i earn twice the salary that i get from this radio station that doesn't mean that i have an earned benefit from the radio station for twice what they're willing to pay me it's always a consensual relationship pay for your health care i well first of all i i do because it was negotiated in the contract that i signed and which in which i voluntarily engaged and if i don't like that i can quit tomorrow you know i think and and let me say that michael let me just introduce a third case they're all related it'll be just uh just fine there's a similar case still in the courts from washington state where the state pharmacy board after initially allowing for religious exemptions came under pressure from former governor gregoire to mandate that pharmacies and pharmacists provide plan b regardless of religious convictions that act is widely seen as targeting ralph's thriftway in olympia and its owner kevin stormans two individual pharmacists uh also felt that providing plan b would violate their religious freedoms they're also involved in the suit uh was the state pharmacy board correct in trying to compel ralph's pharmacy despite the fact that uh there were multiple pharmacies uh within a short time that were offering the same thing but the thing that was requested plan b obviously and it's outrageous and and so much of this is outrageous and i want to go back to a point that um ben has made and he's made so wonderfully forcefully which is you you're you're literally talking about force here and and to bring up yet another case that we've all touched upon arnets flowers the attorney general of the state of washington the honorable bob ferguson has agreed that ultimately if uh there is a refusal to acknowledge and pay fines and to uh make up for the fact that she chooses not to provide flowers for a wedding that she doesn't want to work for that she could go to jail that's force my wife and i my wife is here and we're planning the wedding of our son on august 31st uh and actually that's true that's true i'll cop to that um uh i'm i'm signing a whole lot of checks um and in any event um so i i cannot imagine that we would want to compel a florist who didn't want to service our particular wedding it's it's it seems to me that this is an area honestly and i know james and and uh and monica and valerie you're all people of conscience i mean surely you you must see the injustice and the threat to religious liberty in this that especially when this is not denying people the right to marry they have the right to marry in washington state she even provided a list of other florists who she knew would be happy to serve them she was not discriminating against gay people she had served these two people as individual clients on many occasions before what she was saying is this is a wedding that i choose not to participate in shouldn't someone have the basic right to say no again um i think it just goes mike i think it goes back to who gets to discriminate and where would it stop what if it was a jewish wedding okay bear with me and the floor said i don't want to participate in that kind of religious system i would find another florist happily yeah okay but once we set that kind of precedence where will it end and i think you know in the with them going out of business because everybody will find another floor that's where it lands that's all cute that's all cute that's not cute that's real no no the lunch counter protests against the lunch counter protests that are so famous in the civil rights movement occurred as a voluntary boycott in the early 60s long before the civil rights movement and it integrated they integrated the business because of that capitalism discriminates against no color no creed and no sexuality they want the cash integration was done by force let's make sure we're here again segregation one second ben let's make sure we're hearing each other what was it that ben you concluded with it was it was it was woolworths that was about botlane of segregation in the first place government people who think that jim crow was a voluntary system in which people just decided they wanted to segregate their businesses are incorrect there were jim crow laws on the books the law in the state of alabama is that you needed a seven foot high wall in your restaurant okay this idea that the government always has clean hands and it's individuals who are the problem and that capitalism in the absence of government compulsion is not the solution to discrimination it must have missed the last 50 odd years of history in this country let's have the reverend you had something i mean you know the enormous inequality in our economic system is in part because of your divine term freedom and to think that and okay hey bear with me to think that freedom is always the answer it's always the answer isn't it hold up i would like to history folks why do you believe that government compulsion is always the answer read history you're you you turn okay ben i this is this is great i should use your trick because government is always the problem it's always the problem pretty much frankly friend jefferson created the possibility of constitution that allowed for your religious liberties that is not the problem my religious liberties and the founders believed that things were secured by the government for the sake of your freedom it wasn't your fault for the state of my freedom but it doesn't get government guarantees it and if we don't have policemen firemen it would be chaos of course that's true but the minute that the government infringes on my freedom it becomes irrelevant and it becomes unconstitutional and this is jefferson didn't just institute a government he rebelled against one we're talking about we're talking about religious freedom specifically and and from where i sit what i see is that what we have is an increasing fusion of religion and state and that when we look back through human history what that inevitably and it's a normal thing that religions especially religions that make exclusive truth claims inevitably seek to use the arm of the state to control religious liberties so if you look at washington state for example and we have in this state now 45 of our health care system and at some level is under the um control of the catholic bishops there are only 20 percent of washington residents who are catholic so what we have and these are these are these are public accommodations only five percent of the money that actually flows through them comes from catholic coffers it's mostly insurance funds and public funds of a variety of sorts and and and what we have is through because of these hospital mergers such that are putting catholic healthcare corporations at the top of secular institutions for example in in southern washington um after we passed the death with dignity act in this state which is a profoundly libertarian thing to do um there were seven providers just north of portland who were willing seven doctors who were willing to provide consultation to patients who wanted to decide um how to manage their dying process on their own they wanted control over their own pain they wanted the ability to con to to call it quits when they needed to if they needed to and after um franciscan took over that system i think i believe it was franciscan there are several major catholic corporations in this state they implemented language that did not allow the religious and um conscience freedom of either those providers or patients there was one of the patients in that system who repeatedly asked for consultation about the death with dignity process but the catholic um corporation language forbids even a discussion of that and eventually that patient shot himself in his bathtub he had the right to do that not on the panel don't ask a question yet go ahead the question is at what who's there there's a clear but it was his own who who's who's who decides whose spiritual values matter in the in the in the decisions that we make call think of as the most sacred decisions we can make when to bring a life into the world and when and how to leave it valerie let me i just honestly i want to understand because i i i think you're saying something that i would perceive as very extreme and i i you don't strike me as in any way an extreme person are you suggesting that a physician who as a matter of conscience would say that he or she does not want to perform abortions should be compelled to perform abortions as a condition of holding a medical license i understand but if let's let's abortion abortions is an even should be an even easier issue for you i mean but if you want to talk about death with dignity talk about that let us let us say are you suggesting that an individual doctor who says there has never those safeguards have been in place since the 1970s there is no compulsion about performing abortion what i'm talking about is a religiously um subject healthcare corporation that has a gag order in place that prevents a physician from from fulfilling what they may experience as their spiritual obligation to their patients provide information let me just understand the distinction here you agree that a an individual physician should have the right to refuse but that a religious hospital should not have the right to refuse that there's something about the nature of a catholic hospital when it it incorporates as a catholic hospital as a religious organization there they should be compelled to do things that the individual doctors may not choose to do catholic healthcare corporations get all kinds of concessions they are essentially monopolies in large tracts of this country and corporations when when people incorporate they incorporate because there are certain privileges that go with incorporation and you and and one could argue that there are also privileges that are given up with the process of incorporation so i think i think we're talking about a very different situation than a provider saying it violates my conscience to perform an abortion versus a corporation saying to a doctor you are not even allowed to talk about the fact that there are other medical if as a condition of working let me uh would this come as a surprise to any doctors working for a catholic hospital do you understand that 45 of the hospitals in this kind in this in this in this let me let me move this along i'm sorry we're late we're short on times we have to keep moving uh arlene's flowers was next but michael jumped ahead on that one so we will move forward reverend cursaro your church raynor beach united methodist church chartered a boy scout troop within your congregation and named an eagle scout jeff mcgrath as troop leader mr mcgrath was kicked out of the boy scouts organization for speaking openly of his sexuality as you wrote in time magazine you and your congregation believe that asking someone not to be open about their lives and sexuality when asked is not morally straight as the boy scouts profess to strive for do you feel the religious liberty of mr mcgrath was violated uh the religious liberty of our united methodist church was violated uh that this is our belief we we believe we speak a little more into the microphone oh a little more in the microphone our our belief as a congregation is uh we're open and affirming to all people um gay lesbian bisexual transgendered even straight and um oh you know all are welcome i i'd even welcome jim wellman middle-aged bald guy i mean that's how open we are uh and um and and jeffrey and so yes i i do believe we our religious liberty was violated there's an interesting relationship now that religious communities have with the boy scouts when we uh sign up with the boy scouts we are given full responsibility of the adults that are under us partly because of bad behaviors in the past so so i as the church representing the church we took full responsibility for the adults who are are with our young people and um and we have very strict rules you always have two adults you always have a view in another room um jeffrey's an msw has has a a dedication and so there's also a tenant in the boy scout understanding number 12 that they are a non-sectarian group and respect the religious beliefs of the organization they charter with oh i'm not supposed to yes ben do you agree that the religious liberties of mr mcgrath were violated or that i mean i just have one question by whom okay so in other words just to make sure i'm getting this your your position on this is that you have the right to volunteer into a relationship with them but they have no right to volunteer out of a relationship with you um in a partnership in partnerships and consensual partnerships that i'm in anyway we have a conversation about the contract i signed a lot of papers we are in contract together were you unaware that they were that they that they had a position like this about gay boy scout leaders were you really unaware of that were they unaware of our policy evidently they were because they signed us up correct they were unaware and you weren't so that means they got out of the contract you can't form a contract based on non-mutual consent done let's go back to religious liberty let me add something to this uh at eastside catholic principal mark zemuto served as a eucharistic minister a lay reader for mass was known to be gay by the school administration but also agreed to have his public life reflect quote the values and the teachings of the catholic church he had a same-sex wedding in november of 2012 and was fired after refusing to obtain a divorce by all accounts he was doing very well at his job massive student protests on his behalf illustrate he was a beloved educator was his firing and exercise of religious liberty going too far um david i want to and and ben i want to make a clarification in um in jeffrey's um firing and and our um de-chartering on good friday we thought that was kind of funny um is uh it's not that he was gay it's that he talked about it yeah i didn't i did say that he was open about talking about it this is the same issue with with the principal the school didn't have a problem with him um being there it's when he got married and he told about it and and and i asked all of us this is this is the point i want us to really think about we have gay people amongst us and uh as as one bishop said one time he said you know we just knew them as the school teachers up the hill the point being we used to not talk about it we used to you know it was that open secret in in our small town it was that oh it's the choir director right that's a that's a big one in churchy world um but now what's happening is people are wanting to tell their full story and the boy scouts said that that's where we have a problem that he was being honest about his family life and i don't think i hope we're not asking people to be dishonest about who they are and who they love we were not when we filled out the paperwork and all the feedback we're getting is look you knew it's a don't ask don't tell policy and i can tell you from experience within the united methodist church that don't ask don't tell is very harmful to the whole being and we've been talking a lot about religious freedom religious people and i think of the whole person all the time i'm i'm working with the whole person all the time i'm i'm not just a talk show host i actually am at the nursing home i'm actually in the home of a family that's morning to lost somebody so i'm not just a professor though yeah i can i feel i can assure you it's not esoteric for me this is real i can assure you that even talk show hosts uh deal with loss and grief doctor this is it doctor that's a great issue um you actually write you write about a different way i don't want to talk about that different worldview we're not changing the topic here it's related you write about different mutually exclusive world views would you agree with the reverend there that those religious liberties are violated or is it a case of you have two conflicting private parties not a government interference but a private party and that kind of exclusion is inevitable in competing theologies yeah that's interesting but just to get to this concrete case the east like catholic um i think they had the right to fire him uh you know just on the facts and i re i reread the facts he uh to some extent covered up what he had done i'm not against it i am a i i am a proud presbyterian usa who just made a decision that their clergy in states where gay marriage is legal can perform gay marriage and so yeah i will but in this case i thought they had they had the uh the right to do that do i agree with it no i don't but uh um that was unfortunate he sounds like a great guy um i think this will go against uh the younger catholics and and and it's a bad mark for the catholic young catholics they'll they'll look at this case and go you know this is crazy so i don't think it's a good thing for the catholic church in general um but uh i think it was rightly decided i don't think he has a case i think i don't think he has a case i'm not arguing i don't care i know but but i do on the point of in both well what i do know about these cases is that the the system they were in was we know from the thunderbird district that we're part of with the boy scouts and i know from eastside catholic just chatting with some folks that um everybody knew who these guys were it's that when they were public about it and and like religious liberty being able to talk freely on the radio be like isn't that what we're about and so um yes but there are consequences about anything you say particularly something you say publicly and and the the idea of freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences and uh i i would i i would imagine that if you had an employee let's say you had an associate pastor at your church and i don't know if you do or you had a minister of music or you had somebody else who was teaching kids and he all of a sudden had an epiphany and had a religious awakening and he got up one day in church and he said you know monica i think you and the rest of the people here are all going straight to hell because you're not really saved and your doctrine is wrong here and your doctrine is wrong there would you have a right to fire his rear end you bet and you i would was expect that you would because basically the the yes you can talk and maybe he had that in his heart for a long time and he didn't want to talk about it good that's fine but as soon as you start talking against the doctrine of an institution particularly a religious institution with which you are affiliated then of course there are going to be consequences i i i'll here's this is another one david and this pardon me i don't mean to hijack this in one direction but yeah no hijacking but in a long time ago uh when when my wife and i still lived in los angeles there was a very very infamous case where there was a a rabbi who had gone through a divorce and this was at a conservative synagogue not an orthodox synagogue and he announced to the congregation that he didn't want to hide anymore he was living with his girlfriend out of wedlock there was a long tortured debate and the board fired him i am sure they would not do that today don't you think that a religious institution has a a very strong basis for imposing that kind of rule on behavior on practice religion uh if if if what you are doing is in violation of the kind of practice that you're trying to encourage yes if there's not the wink wink in both these cases there was the wink wink we we're glad we have you here you're our best vice principal ever oh but you got married and now you're telling people about it they knew he was was that's what he's going to argue reverend i'd like to i'd like to get a clarification from you are you saying um that it's morally wrong for these things to have happened uh but not asking for government compulsion or are you arguing for government compulsion in addition to saying that these firings were morally wrong oh no well east side catholic it's catholic school catholic uh doctrine i understand yes it's their right i agree with jim but but except for they he was okay well just he was okay as long as he was sort of in their closet that's what i have a problem with they were willing to break their own rules as long as he was quiet about it but on that one you're not arguing for government compulsion you're just saying okay what about the boy scout case in your case boy scout case well boy scouts different because the boy scouts again what's their theological statement what's their how how many times do they worship a week how many um you know again they're not i'm the church i'm the religious institution i don't need the government to to get in on this except that the boy scouts have this very interesting relationship with the the government and elected officials and there's a there's a a really strong relationship the accept kind of overrides the rest of the statement i mean are you arguing for government compulsions no i will argue for government compulsion broadly are you for government compulsion in both circumstances so let me tell you what i'm trying to say in every case that we've talked about tonight there's some kind of tension between either the the religious freedom the spiritual freedom of two individuals or between the spiritual freedom of an individual and an institution and in er and and what we've heard from every single panelist is situations that are either ridiculous or anguishing at some level because of those conflicts and so what we have in in a you know if we just simply say religious freedom is absolute that's that's the biggest kind of moral relativism that you could possibly imagine there it's there is no way to come together and create a a civil society of the kind that we have in this country that is unique in the world valerie i don't think anyone is saying that for one let me let me give you one example where i imagine everyone in this room would agree which is right now there are some muslims not most but some muslims in the united states who believe they have a religious right and in fact a religious duty to mutilate their little girls uh michael you have this habit of jumping ahead on totally different topics sorry but wait hold that thought for a moment and allow me to interject rather not hold that thought actually release that thought for a long moment and we'll get to that in just in just a moment um would you apply a valerie that this the same idea of government compulsion to say um the patriarch of duck dynasty when he was uh when he was uh shelved by a e did that organization the television network violate his religious freedom then in shelving him because of controversial religious statements that he made would it apply there where you would have government step in and say no he was expressing faith his faith in the in the public sphere did his religious freedom get violated i think it probably at some level um did but what i'm trying to say is that is that that's the problem here that our religious our deepest spiritual values put us into conflict with each other and sure but that's part of the role of holding there's been compulsion and conflict that's what i was trying to get but the job it's the job of governments the job of civil society and our elected officials to navigate some really messy kind of dynamic tension between those things that allow us to live in community together and um and and is it going to look ridiculous sometimes is it going to be painful sometimes is it gonna is somebody gonna get trampled on in a way that makes us all shudder absolutely i don't is there any alternative the alternative is is the kind of moral relativism that comes from having religion um extreme religious freedom that simply trumps civil society um and or the kind of theocracy that they have in the middle east that trumps religious liberty all together jump on in i think i have a way to to kind of clarify this um i think one of the problems is our religious freedom is bought for bought by the government for us that is we are non-profits and given breaks and therefore the government to some extent has the right to regulate now i would say and i have said this to to uh churches if you want to speak the truth to power that is to our government and i did during the iraq war then stop being a non-profit pull your own weight right then you have i think the kind of religious freedom that we're calling for and not compulsed you know and is there a logic hold for a business license though i mean because it because it because churches operate under that that would be kinks all the time that'd be interesting but i i i'm seeing what i'm saying to you i think it's i'm trying to get out of solution here because i think we are tied to the government because we are given a non-profit status and therefore to some extent we're under their compulsion and what i'm saying is both good and bad it's both good and bad because i i and you know i'm arguing both sides of my of this statement your professor you're allowed yeah well come on but seriously i think this is a difficult argument a difficult situation i have to challenge you because you keep talking about government as this external entity i mean at its best government is what abraham lincoln said it which was it was which is the way we come together to do things that we that we can't very well do alone i mean where in the you know we struggle with that in this country and most of us feel like our government has an unacceptable level of corruption most of us feel like there are things that that our elected representatives do that are not frankly nauseating but the reality is that is what we're after and so like when we talk about imposing kind of some kind of compulsion that that allows us to create civil society like it's us i mean i think michael would agree with me on this the government is sometimes the problem well it's not let's be honest you're arguing for the tyranny of the majority that i mean that that's what it is i mean if the essence is that anything that government does is legitimate because we voted for that government then anything the government does is legitimate including encroaching on the rights of minorities across the board this is this is not this very problematic michael i think the point that you were making before is a really important one so i want to get back to if you can get back to the you know what the limits are in terms of religious freedom because of course everybody agrees that the government has a space in regulating certain things that would presumably violate some religious freedoms right now of course they do but let me i actually find myself in at least partial agreement with what james is saying here about disentangling faith from government as much as we possibly can and and and part of what that means and it's something that troubles me a great deal as many things do about the current tax system is that when you allow certain contributions to be tax deductible and others not to be tax deductible and the government makes that decision the government is saying we believe that certain institutions and certain causes are more worthy than others that's the whole essence of this irs mess that we're in right now and i actually would prefer that the government does not have that power and what that probably means is that you give people some kind of standard deduction that they can use for charitable contributions but that the the government shouldn't be determining that if you want to give to a charity ex by the way i think that the nra actually is tax deductible right now and the fact that the nra is tax deductible and the sierra club is tax deductible but the democratic party is not and the republican party is not that seems to me completely nonsensical what what if it's political speech it's political action either treat it the same or don't and i don't want some bureaucrat certainly no one working for the internal revenue service going over oh yes well this is good yes we'll give you credit for this but no this no no this is too political that's outrageous to me let me move forward michael to something that you brought a little earlier and um because i want to get to at least two more topics before we run out of time i'm going to give a few examples and we can do a round table on all of these examples last year north carolina became the seventh state to prohibit state judges from considering islamic law sharia in family cases in alabama is supposed to have a similar measure on the ballot this year in oklahoma the measure was struck down as unconstitutional are these laws an assault on religious liberty from the right absolutely hold up i've got three examples let me get them all out there in france yay michael in france burqas have been banned as oppressive to women and against the open culture of france would such a ban be warranted here and finally last march nbc reported female genital mutilation is on the rise in the united states and the cdc reports that up to 200 000 girls are at risk in the united states is this a religious liberty issue okay i i do believe that that a saying that you cannot consult sharia law is a clear constitutional violation it's it's prima facie constitutional violation it's singling out one form of religious law among all of them and saying you can't consider that one if you want to say that judges can consider no religious doctrines or no religious laws well okay maybe but certainly not picking out one religious law concerning burqa bans i can think of some there are all kinds of clothing that i personally would like to see banned however however you know look we live in seattle i mean really and we live in america let a thousand flower flowers bloom i don't think anyone is threatened by seeing someone walking around in a black bag let them and third when it comes to genital mutilation yes yes we do have a right to protect uh little girls from permanent damage by their parents and i i believe that if there's a whole uh ben would know more but there is a whole range of jurisprudence that says uh no you don't i mean if god forbid you have a religious uh uh obligation in your own warped faith to commit human sacrifice sorry you can't do it by the way we ban animal sacrifice too and i also think that's that's uh that's appropriate most states i don't know about the state of washington i don't know the state of florida it's been a big issue for the centerists who want to go around sacrificing goats and chickens now this probably is not a very popular religion with peta but on this one uh i think they have a point i mean i agree with with michael's breakdown i think that the problem that we're seeing here is that issues that are really at the margins of society right issues that i think that everybody can agree with are now being lumped in with all religious issues so in other words people are saying okay well you can legitimately ban with government the clitorectomies of baby girls you can legitimately ban that well that means that you can also ban a church from from from not performing a gay marriage you can you can now lever these are not the same thing and using the argument at the margin to to say that broad legislation across everything is okay is is hugely mistaken and a dramatic misunderstanding of the role of government but we see this all the time and these these sorts of arguments the argument from the from the margin to now apply to everything is is probably the most dangerous thing that you can do when you're when you're creating public policy i've been that's what you've been doing that's what you've been doing all evening is talking at the margins about cases where that make us cringe and that's what we've been doing too and i don't think it's the margins to talk about gay marriage which is a central focus of what is going on in this country on social issues or abortion which has been a central focus for the last 40 years and what's going on i don't think that's anywhere near the neighborhood of child sacrifice for example but i'm saying in a different way it's at the march the headlines are going to say shapiro says gay marriage not equal to child sacrifice breaking breaking that's gonna be your people let me uh shift gears here unless any of you would like to add to that in 1976 my sister played the virgin mary in our christmas pageant i played a reindeer which one i was one of the boring ones unfortunately it was a long time tradition to have those kinds of pageants at our school in stanwood washington and at schools around the country now schools don't even call it christmas vacation they don't recognize easter they shy away from any religious references is this evidence of growing restrictions on religious liberty or do they reflect a growing recognition of diversity within our culture in texas and florida kids have had bibles and other religious books they've brought from home for reading time taken away from them as inappropriate and this kind of incident seems to be coming more common in the press do those incidents reflect a lot on a larger pattern of cultural intolerance of religion or are they the isolated actions of individuals you know what's one of the i think this is really complicated uh one of the problems or one one of the reasons that our the younger generation has disaffiliated from religious organizations is that they feel and and you're right they still pray and they believe in god but uh the reason is that they found that religion has become too politicized and and that really is the chief reason and so it's a problem and um with my students in particular they hate it when somebody gets up in class and begins to witness to their faith okay every surgery wait if i don't cut that off 10 20 students will come up to me and say teacher you know professor what that is just wrong i i won't stand for that so it's a it's uh so but but the the other side of this is that there is a sense at the university of washington i just wrote about this on my blog is that conservative religiously conservative students are often uh sort of name-called you know in in in sort of an offhanded way by professors and and so and there's a sense in which it's okay professor wellman you're doing a medved and jumping ahead to the next uh uh let's refocus on all elementary schools well that was pretty interesting though it is that's why we're coming back to it did you hear how messed up his pageant was there was a reindeer and the virgin mary i wanted we didn't have a lobster like i wanna i i'm i was kind of getting to the point that yeah that uh you know the dominance of christianity in these public settings is a problem and if we're gonna have religious liberty let's let's as you know michael said let's let a thousand flowers uh you know what's the word and uh and you know let's have multiple religious uh parties and whatnot that's i i think that's much better than sort of you know becoming nude of religion in our schools which is a terrible cultural you know destruction well said amen i mean i'm sure that michael and michael you went to public school right yeah yeah so did i for for elementary school and i i think i was in the christmas pageant i believe i was in elf um and uh and somehow i didn't magically turn into a christian um and my guess is that both you and i could probably sing in beautiful two-part harmony all of silent night um probably based on what we learned in public school the the idea that this is some sort of grand imposition or grand inquisition and that what in that the the acting out of the the mere saying of the word christmas in a public school is somehow an establishment of religion it's the exclusion of all other religions um you before you warned that uh perhaps i should take things a little more lightly on this one i do take it pretty lightly so yeah the the idea that the idea i'm proud of you man the idea that religion is being imposed on me by a public school when there is a christmas pageant i can opt in or out of is if if this is as bad as it gets then i'm willing to live with that yeah i i grew up as i was one of only three jewish children in my elementary school and the only jewish child in my grade and for the christmas pageant very regularly they had me saying uh they you would do we celebrate christmas around the world like this and then i'd say and in israel we don't celebrate christmas we celebrate hanukkah and that was that was okay it built character uh to go through talking about that and and and i think there is something useful to uh being able to stand out from the crowd and and and somehow man up and take it and however the one thing that i will not forgive will not forgive is so many of these multicultural pageants they have these wonderful christmas carols that are some of the best music in the whole world and then we have i had a little dreidel i made it out of clay i mean you know the christians are singing about the savior of the world and we're singing about a spinning top this is not fair this is not good michael we have bizet and we have and we have gershwin but we don't have beethoven or brahms we're gonna have to let it go gershwin the only depth i want to bring to this part of the conversation is is um i wish we practiced more if if everyone's gonna sing those um christmas and advent tunes uh then then know a little something about them and i'm just saying that to those who practice but i i think about um the trouble that your your conservative students are getting um at uw i i just want to lift up that any of any of you in the audience that practice a religion i'm proud of you because it's very hard in this part of the world to practice and be taken seriously because there's so much institutional anguish that's put on our shoulders and uh and it's hard work to say no i actually practice and i actually know what that silent night song is about and so i'm not gonna worry too much about singing frosty or not because that's secular see there's a difference on some of these but i wish that um those of us that that that get this rancor for being a practicing person i i wish we all took a little more time to new to know what we were about and what i know about at least our two religions that are up here is you love god with all your heart all your soul all your strength love your neighbor as yourself those are the beginning tenets of both of our traditions and so that's where i try to start and that's a nice segue back to professor wallman's blog which by the way this column is linked at khth.com if you're looking for it in a recent column professor waldman you wrote that discrimination against conservative religious beliefs are the last acceptable prejudice on college campuses and you urge universities to take steps to make these students more comfortable what kinds of religious hostility do you see on campus what kinds of steps would you recommend universities take and how does the failure to address this impact ethnic minority students and how did the situation come about wow well you know i think you know there's 30 seconds you know michael said we're not secular but i think there is a uh there is some secularization within american culture and a part of that and you know a lot of us want to say that higher education is the problem uh i'm not quite sure that's true but in general i think at the higher education level there's there is a great resistance to conservative religion i mean that's just i think a given um and um to some extent you know even from my perspective i think critique is really important but critique of liberal protestantism liberal judaism liberal catholicism is appropriate as well critique across the board uh and critique must be fair even-handed not name-calling i think what we get i think the biggest thing is name-calling is is fundamentalism is used kind of as a hammer that anyone's conservative oh you're a fundamentalist which means you're superstitious idiot uh and and you know my experience with with uh conservative religious folks is that there was some of our best students bar none so you know um so i think that's a real deal and i think you know to be honest i i guess i'm taking credit i think our international studies program kind of woke up they saw my article and they said uh i think you're right man can i throw something else in and this is something we we have uh two children one who is going to be graduating from university of washington and one who is now in a master's program and graduated undergraduate from uw uh some years ago and uh for both of those children it was occasionally a problem because we're religious uh we observe a lot of holidays that seem very weird to the world at large and that most people don't know about and i would say in 95 percent of the time faculty especially when you have a conflict with a final exam with a religious holiday like shavuot and what is shavuot people don't know it's actually one of the major jewish holidays it's one of three pilgrimage festivals it's important and what was surprising to me was those very rare occasions where you would run into an uncooperative faculty member unbelievable to me that that were willing to punish the academic consequences of taking off a religious holiday that it seems to me university-wide or to not be tolerated i agree with you i want to say this um i've got five things before we bring this evening to a close one i hope those of you who submitted questions noted how they were tied in to the topics brought up on stage uh i also want to thank the audience for being spirited but uh civil and excited for both sides uh proof that we can have civil conversations and actually hear one another um and i also want to have a special round of applause for our left wing or at least um closer to the left guests here dr wellman i'll nod toward you um for coming into uh what's perceived to be hostile territory thank you so much for being our guest tonight and of course for our cultural crusader and battling ben shapiro for uh being here and being very tired you

Channel: Stephanie Klein

Views: 709,131

Rating: 4.8593059 out of 5

Keywords: Religious Freedom, KTTH, Debate, AM 770 KTTH, David Boze, Ben Shapiro, Michael Medved, Monica Corsaro, Valerie Tarico, James Wellman, Hobby Lobby, Boy Scout

Id: o060w7URvAw

Length: 85min 27sec (5127 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 03 2014