Christian Nationalism vs. Dr. Anthony Fauci

[0:00] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values, by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger. We spend most of this episode exploring the anti-science agenda of the Christian nationalists and the recent congressional kangaroo hearing of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Then we talk about an offensive billboard that attacked the LGBTQA plus community in Lima, Ohio. And finally, we talk about the recent lawsuit over Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission being dismissed using a ridiculous stretch of a reason that is the complete opposite of religious liberty. Glass City Humanist is an outreach project of the secular humanists of Western Lake Erie, building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow.

[1:00] If you follow the news at all, you are probably aware that in the last week of July, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was having a hearing and they had subpoenaed Dr. Anthony Fauci. And Dr. Anthony Fauci was the head of the National Institutes of Health, and he was the COVID czar during the pandemic. He led the response to the pandemic and advised President Trump at the time. He appeared often on TV talking about it. Well, the conservatives in this country, the extreme conservatives, like the people like Rand Paul, who is the chair of this committee that was interrogating Dr. Fauci the other day, they don’t believe that the pandemic was a thing. They think it was a hoax, that it was a setup, that Fauci was involved, and that he needed to be prosecuted.

[2:14] And they have been making these threats since the pandemic, and since Fauci left, retired from government service. They’ve been accusing him of nefarious things and that they were going to prosecute him and send him to prison for ruining this country. And they also accused him of killing people with the pandemic. The major claim that they make is that his agency, the National Institutes of Health, funded a gain of use for the COVID-19 virus, which means that they accused him of paying to have it developed, to weaponize it, to use it for nefarious reasons. And they believe that it escaped the lab in China. And so they want to blame him for the pandemic and all the resulting chaos and upheaval, saying that he intentionally set it off.

[3:17] Or he was an accessory to setting it off. Okay. Now, I’m not going to get into the politics because that’s beyond the scope, of this podcast insofar as it is a political issue. Um, science has been politicized in the last, uh, decade, decade, two decades, you know, ever since the conservatives started getting more assertive in, in the legislative branches around the country, they’ve been pretty much anti-science. They don’t believe the science, they believe in their own research, or they only believe in science that agrees with their political agenda. And we see that here in Ohio where the state legislature banned gender-affirming care, because in spite of the scientific consensus and the, advice of the major medical associations and hospitals and the hospitals in Ohio that said otherwise, they claimed that gender-affirming care was harming children and they needed to ban it. That’s just one example.

[4:38] Another example is they’re wanting to ban abortion for women, claiming that it harms women. Not only does it claim that it harms women, but that they’re murdering babies. We see that.

[4:56] With the head of the Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr., and his anti-vaccine crusade. We also see the anti-science in the conservative movement with the people that are called the, Maha Movement, make America healthy again. And a lot of the influencers, our social media influencers, aren’t doctors. They’re not scientists. They make wild accusations, wild claims about the food system and about chemicals. And usually it’s because they want to sell their, uh, snake oil. You know, that’s usually how these, these things work. They say you’re poisoning your body with this X thing. Uh, and how you can get rid of it is take my elixir. And so people spend millions of dollars and, and it’s on, there’s TV commercials with stuff like this, say snake oil stuff. I had a friend of mine that used to work for the Center for Inquiry, Nick Little, he’s a lawyer, and they sued Walmart and.

[6:10] CVS for marketing these Wu medications in their pharmacy departments.

[6:20] Putting it on the same shelf with actual medication that works. And this was stuff that was highly diluted. The benefits were suspect at best if it didn’t make you sick. And there’s a lot of stuff that’s on TV today, TV commercials for this medicine, this snake oil that they’re trying to sell. And if you watch these commercials closely at the end, they always have it at the end down at the bottom of the screen in small text so you can barely read it. It says the medical claims made in this ad have not been reviewed or approved by the Federal Drug Administration. And so that is a red, that is a red flag right there.

[7:07] And so that should tell you that if it has not been, if the claims have not been proven, then they’re BS. They’re just total BS and they should not be believable. And I I’ll throw I’ll throw a link or two in the show notes about some of the snake oil stuff, like the the lawsuit with Walmart and CBS I’ll try to find some uh previous articles about that and I think I might have did, I might have done a uh podcast episode I have to go back and look at my my uh records and if I did I’ll include that link as well.

[7:45] So this is what this is what Dr. Fauci came into when he showed up for this hearing so that they could try to rake him over the coals. And basically at the end of president Biden’s administration in 2024, 2024, yeah, 2024, uh, president Biden issued a preemptive pardon to Dr. Fauci because there was, um, Not rumors, but there was actual public statements by people like Rand Paul and other extreme Republicans that they were going to prosecute Dr. Fauci when they got control of the White House and the Congress and everything, and that they were going to put him in prison. And so President Biden.

[8:37] Did a preemptive pardon for Dr. Fauci, but that doesn’t cover anything after he left public service. So that’s why they brought him in to the hearing to answer questions. And so what they were going to do is they were going to try to catch him in a lie and charge him with perjury. Well Dr. Fauci had a lawyer he had several lawyers with him which is a good thing and he knew their intent and so when the hearing started he made a statement, complaining about the witch hunt and it is a political witch hunt against him, Rand Paul has had an unhinged obsession with him for years, and so that under advice of counsel he He was not going to answer any questions and he was going to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights not to. And I was like, good for him. You know, if somebody’s bringing you in to interrogate you and you don’t believe that they’re doing it in good faith or want to find the truth, just invoke your Fifth Amendment rights. And so that’s how the whole hearing played out. I forget. I didn’t watch the whole thing. I think it might have been an hour or two. So you had these extreme Republicans that want to get Dr. Fauci reading these extreme.

[10:05] Factless claims and innuendos and insults and everything to Dr. Fauci. And then he would say his response to every question was, under advice of counsel, I invoke my Fifth Amendment right not to answer the question. So I thought it was pretty funny because these guys, they had probably practiced, how they were going to get Dr. Fauci. And Dr. Fauci just kind of threw it back in their face. So now they’re going to, Dr.

[10:42] Rand Paul is going to submit him to the Department of Justice for obstruction of Congress. He showed up. He was subpoenaed. He showed up. He elected not to answer the questions. They knew, basically, they knew the answers they were looking for. And if he wasn’t going to say it, then they would get him for perjury. Okay. So, again, it wasn’t a good faith effort to find the truth, to figure out how something happened. Okay. Now, the science aspect of it.

[11:12] You know, they are blaming Dr. Fauci for weaponizing this virus and causing all the lockdowns and, school kids losing their almost a year of education because they couldn’t go to school and the businesses that suffered and the post-pandemic inflation. And they are putting that all on Dr. Fauci. That had nothing to do with him. The response had nothing to do with him. He was going by the best information that he had. And the thing about it is, it was a worldwide consensus. Dr. Fauci isn’t in a bubble. He’s not just one guy deciding all this stuff. This was a worldwide consensus that this pandemic was happening, and this was the response that needed to be taken. And one of the senators, I forget who it was, actually admitted 15, it might have been Senator Paul, 15 million people died worldwide due to the COVID-19 virus. 15 million people died. If it was a hoax, if it didn’t mean anything, how did 15 million people die? Almost a million people died in the United States alone.

[12:30] And, and most of those deaths were needless deaths. Most of those deaths were the, uh, besides the, the vulnerable people, like the immune compromised people, elderly people, um, drug users, you know, things like that. Those people were susceptible to, if they got it, they would possibly die. You know, if somebody had COPD or something like that. They, it’s a good chance that they would die. I mean, that’s what scared me about it. That’s why I never left my house for a couple of months is because, I didn’t know how I would, my body would react if I got the COVID, if I got COVID.

[13:16] And so then you had a lot of people that died because they had no defense for it. They were compromised. Their health was already compromised. And then you had the people that knew better and thought they knew better than a scientist. And these were the people that didn’t wear a mask, didn’t have the six feet separation. They went out to parties, to bars, to fairs. They went to church. Remember, there was a Supreme Court case that allowed people to go to church because the churches were complaining that they were being discriminated against and, that people need to get together to praise God, which doesn’t make any sense because you can praise God at home. You don’t need to be in a church. obviously and so.

[14:13] You know and and so you had all these people that thought they knew better they got sick they ended up dying or you had the people that thought they knew better and they found the snake oil uh, solutions to covid like the ivermectin which doesn’t take care of viruses in humans. You had President Trump claiming people could drink bleach and protect themselves from COVID.

[14:46] And these guys wanted to prosecute Dr. Fauci because he knew what he was doing. He got us through the pandemic. His leadership in the response got us through the pandemic with only a million people dying. It could have been much, much worse.

[15:06] And the government supported the research at the time into the vaccines, which once the conservative, extreme conservatives got control of the government, they got rid of all that stuff. The Doge cuts cut a lot of the RNA research money because it was political. They didn’t agree with their political agenda, even though RNA vaccines are relatively safe. And then you have somebody that’s in charge of health and human services who doesn’t think vaccines are safe and wants to get rid of them, who has a major measle outbreak. Then you have these scientific behemoths in charge of the Department of Agriculture, and you have diarrhea lettuce. You have E. coli outbreaks going on now in the food supply. Again, salmonella and eggs. Again, again.

[16:17] And then you have Dr. Fauci. And the thing is, Dr. Fauci has a long history of knowing his job and working his butt off to protect people like he did during the pandemic. He was at the forefront of the AIDS crisis in the 80s. And the thing is, like most people at that time, he thought it was a gay plague. And he didn’t take it seriously until he talked to people who had it. And looked at the evidence and saw, this is something that’s major. We need to deal with it. And he started dealing with it. He was one of the lead scientists on trying to find a way to stop the AIDS crisis. Even though he had little to no support from the government, President Ronald Reagan at the time thought it was a gay plague and ignored it for many, many years.

[17:14] But we had Dr. Fauci. So when I heard that they were having this hearing, knowing who was involved, it made me mad. It made me angry. You know, anti-science people make me angry, personally make me angry. You know, it’s the kind of people I want to smack around. And I’m not, I don’t do that. I know that’s not good. But sometimes I get that mad. Now, what I’m not talking about is I’m not talking about scientism. You know, the undue acceptance of science. I’m not saying that at all. Science has been wrong in the past, and we know that. We have proof of that. The eugenics movement was wrong. The scientists that did gonorrhea tests on black people back in the 30s and 40s, I think it was, that was wrong.

[18:18] There’s been quite a bit of stuff going on. Dr. Mengele, the Nazi doctor that was doing experiments on prisoners, that was wrong. So I’m not saying that we can never criticize science or take a critical look at it. We should. And as somebody online recently said that scientists have at least two major things about them. One is they want you to know everything. They want to give you all the information about something. Whatever it is. They aren’t trying to hide anything. You know, you get a lot of these Maha influencers saying that scientists don’t want you to know this thing works or whatever. Scientists, credible scientists, ethical scientists are not like that. They want you to know everything. The second major point with scientists is they love telling other scientists that they’re wrong.

[19:23] And that’s the scientific method. What you do is somebody makes a claim. Other scientists try to replicate that claim and the conclusion. If they can’t, then they tell that scientist you’re wrong. They love doing that. So that’s why for finding out the truth in our world, our natural world, I believe the Dr. Fauci’s of the world far more often than I believe the Maha influencers or people like Robert Kennedy Jr. who saw a video about something. Or ChatGTP, that’s the big thing nowadays is people put in ChatGTP and got the information. And all that does, that chat GPT for most part, is it just scrapes stuff that’s already out there. You know, it’s stuff that you can find if you look for it. If you’re not lazy.

[20:23] You can get the information. So that’s what I wanted to talk about today about Dr. Fauci and the anti-science crusade in our current government. And it’s a problem. It’s going to be a problem for quite some time, no matter how the November elections turn out. And so I can’t tell you specifically who to vote for, but I can tell you that I would not vote for somebody who did not trust science, who was anti-science. I would not vote for somebody who believes that Dr. Fauci should be in prison.

[21:02] Because that person does not have my well-being in mind. They have a political agenda that doesn’t match my health and well-being. And that’s a problem. For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[21:48] Last week, it was noted by some people in the community that there was some billboards with questionable language on them that popped up. It was noticed, first of all, in this area in Lima. And it was a billboard that, said, no child has two dads, no child has two moms. And it had some kind of website that you could go to and, and whatever it was and so basically it was a seattle-based organization called them before us and the buckeye flame has a good article about it so i’m going to read some of it, some of their article but i’ll throw a link up into the, show notes so you can read the full thing.

[22:43] Them Before Us is an anti-LGBTQ plus organization that wants to end marriage equality, in vitro fertilization, and no fault to the wars. The organization was founded by Katie Faust, who has a history of protesting against marriage equality and has ties to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s designated anti-LGBTQ, plus hate groups, Family Research Council, and Alliance Defending Freedom. Them. So she’s a good person, right? She’s a good Christian. And so when I made a comment about this billboard, I think the Toledo Blade had an article and some people, they were like, liked it. And I said, you know, that there might’ve been one of the Republican groups that had it was talking about it. I thought it amazed me that they didn’t understand why that billboard was offensive to some people. You know, they claimed it was just promoting heterosexual marriage.

[23:50] But just look at the phrasing where it says, no child has two dads, no child has two moms. Basically, you’re saying that if a child has two dads or two moms, that they’re not a real family. You know, just think about that, what that says to a kid or to a family that is that way. You know, who are they to say that that wasn’t, that’s not a good family? You know, if you wanted to promote heterosexual marriage, then be straight about it. Just say it. Say, hey, you know, heterosexual marriage is the best marriage. And be done with it. Instead of throwing children under a bus because they happen to have a loving family that doesn’t comport to your bigoted, strict, version of what a family should be.

[24:51] And so that went up in Lima, I believe, is when it was discovered. And it says that Them Before Us replied to a comment on Facebook that was protesting the billboards. It says, our movement is not about adult feelings, and no children do not have a right to loving adults, the organization said. They have a right to the one man and one woman that created them. And the Lima Pride Alliance said the billboards are divisive and cruel, and they are. And so what happened was that this other group, Have a Gay Day, announced that they bought a week of advertising space for a positive queer message online. After asking for funds to keep the advertisements up, founder Michael Note said his nonprofit has raised over $18,000.

[25:45] And again, Equality Ohio released a statement on Tuesday to push back against the billboard’s messaging, the negative billboard. It says these billboards don’t just attack LGBTQ families. They erase every Ohio kid whose home doesn’t fit a narrow manufactured mold. And that’s exactly what I was saying. And so I think it’s a good thing that the community came together and bought space on that billboard. These are electronic billboards. So it’s not an excessive cost like it used to be where they used to have to do the wallpaper type advertisements on these signs. These are the digital billboards so that they can be changed easily. Yeah, so, you know, it’s glad. I’m really happy that the community came together and pushed back against that.

[26:41] And so just check that out. that’s on the Buckeye Flame article, and I’ll have a link to it in the show notes.

[27:19] If we remember right, back in 2025, President Trump formed this blue ribbon panel to examine religious liberty in the United States. And basically what it was is it was the Religious Liberty Commission. It was put under the Department of Justice.

[27:43] The chairperson was Dan Patrick, who is the lieutenant governor of Texas. And the vice chairperson was Ben Carson, and it included a wide range of Catholics and Christians, evangelicals, and a token Jewish person. And they were going to examine the religious persecution done in the name of the government in this country. And they ended up putting out a report. They finished their work. They put out a report that said that religious people have gotten the short end of the stick in the United States over the last few years, and that separation of church and state was the problem, and that needs to go away, et cetera, et cetera. We all knew that. What was interesting about this commission was that it didn’t include any other religions. It didn’t include Buddhists. It didn’t include Rastafarians. It didn’t even include atheists. And basically, it turned into a bitch session where Christians would come in and complain that they weren’t allowed to force their religion on somebody. And they were very, very upset about that.

[29:13] And so when it was getting ready to publish its report, an interfaith group that also included Americans United for the Separation of Church and State sued the Trump administration and federal court to basically stop the commission. Saying that it was formed illegally, that it didn’t represent all views, and that there was a federal law that when these commissions are formed, that it has to include the views of all people, and it has to have a balanced view. The claim that they made was that the overwhelmingly conservative Christian makeup lacked a legally required balance of viewpoints. On Monday, July the 27th, a federal judge tossed out the lawsuit.

[30:06] It was filed by the Progressive Interfaith Alliance, as well as Hindu-Muslim Sikh groups, and as I said, Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The judge said the lawsuit, which saw a more ideologically and religious diverse commission, failed to meet legal criteria to proceed. He wrote that the commission is diverse in other ways, such as including both clergy and lay people. And he said the commission has adherence of at least five different religions, by citing the one Jewish member and then members of various Christian denominations and identities. So basically, the judge was saying because these Christians and evangelicals all don’t go to the same church, then the interfaith group didn’t meet the legal standard that they needed to say that it was discriminatory.

[31:01] Oh, that cracked me up. When I heard that, when I initially read that, I thought I was reading it wrong. Honest to goodness, that’s what a federal judge said, that it did have, a diverse viewpoint because the adherents didn’t all go to the same church. Oh my gosh. Oh, I hope, I hope the interfaith group, I hope they appeal that, but probably not. They probably won’t because the lawsuit actually got dismissed. So maybe they’ll try it, try it again. I don’t know. Said Cronin, the judge, wrote that because Trump’s executive order creating the commission rejected the idea of religious liberty as inconsistent with civil rights, he wasn’t obligated to appoint someone who disagreed with that founding premise. And that’s not what they were talking about. Said the interfaith alliance argued that the commission lacked balance because members believed the law should protect the exercise of religious belief over the civil rights of minority groups and that’s exactly what they talked about that was just uh.

[32:14] That still is cracking me up the court case yeah yeah you know we got all these christians and evangelicals but because they don’t go to the same church. It’s a diverse viewpoint. The other interesting tidbit about this Religious Liberty Commission is they had a member. Yeah, her name was Carrie Prejean Bowler. She was a former beauty pageant participant who got in trouble at that time for being a religious conservative. She’s a Catholic. And so of course, you know, Donald Trump loving, uh, beauty pageant women appointed her to this commission and she got kicked off. She got kicked off, uh, back in March. She got removed from the commission because she was antisemitic. Turned out she was anti-Semitic.

[33:14] And so they had a committee hearing where they were hearing from students and other people in colleges who claimed that the colleges weren’t protecting, students from anti-Semitism. And Carrie Prejean Bowler said, disputed the fact that there was any anti-Semitism going on.

[33:43] And she is actually one of those Christians who believe that the Jews are responsible for killing Jesus. And other anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. She supports Candace Owens, who’s a podcaster who’s also made comments like that. And when she got kicked off, she actually claimed that the commissioner, the head of it, Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, was a Zionist. So, yeah, so she was a real piece of work. So yeah so we kind of knew that when they released their report that it was going to say what it was going to say that that the poor old, religious people mostly christians mostly evangelicals are so persecuted in the united states and we need to do more to make sure that they are taken care of and allowed to, practice their faith without any government intervention at all, You know, it’s like, why waste the time? Why waste the time on this commission? We knew exactly what they were going to say. And unfortunately, that lawsuit was dismissed. So we’ll see what happens after that.

[35:07] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show. Glass City Humanist is hosted, written, and produced by Douglas Berger, and he’s solely responsible for the content.