Ep.22: Defending Progress - Battling Extremism for a Brighter Future

# Satanists Nextdoor
# Ep.22: Defending Progress - Battling Extremism for a Brighter Future

[Lilin Lavin]
Welcome, dear listeners, to Satanist Next Door. We're your hosts, Lilin Lavin and Tommy Lavin. Whether you're an open-minded curious onlooker or a fellow Satanist seeking camaraderie, our goal is to share our personal experiences and delve into the intricate tapestry of Satanism in our daily lives, occasionally inviting other guests to share their unique perspectives, leaving no pentagram unturned.

We'll explore how our beliefs shape our views on society, dive into struggles and triumphs we've encountered, and reveal the humanity that unites us all. So grab your favorite chalice and join us on this captivating journey. Satanist Next Door is ready to peel back the curtain and offer you a glimpse into our world, one captivating episode at a time.

[Tommy Lavin]
Hello and welcome to another episode of Satanist Next Door. Today's episode, we thought we'd talk a little bit about not only the election results that happened this previous week, the positive ones, and also some of the negativity, or I should say negative reaction that we've seen from those, which kind of reminds us of the threat that we all, whether you're Satanist or Pagan, a Buddhist, a Hindu, you know, unless you're a radical Christian, that we still live under right now, and the threat that's still there. And specifically that, you know, I see this passed around a lot, that America should be a theocracy. That was a big thing I saw this week, you know, because all their religious arguments lost, you know, or the laws that they were pushing based on religion lost.

And so now they're just sort of defaulting to America should be a Christian theocracy.

[Lilin Lavin]
It's that and then they're also trying to just argue that we were never created to be a democracy. I think that's the more disturbing. Forget the religious aspect.

They're trying to actually attack what was created to help create a more stable, honest government. And that's what the founders really wanted to do. It is in fact an experiment, a grand experiment that hadn't been touched on before.

You had democracies, you had republics, you had a lot of different, you know, monarchies, just different things that were in place at the time. And they said, you know, there's flaws in these systems. So how do we find the best of both worlds and try to create something lasting that can build a real opportunity for people to have a say in what happens?

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And I would say the, I don't want to call it a flaw. The part that it seemed they overlooked is that they trusted that the people or the government wouldn't, you know, the people wouldn't put bad people into government positions.

[Lilin Lavin]
I mean, yes and no. Right. So even the founders were flawed people.

Sure, they were a product of their time, but they definitely championed things that were not always good. I mean, slavery was something that whether or not we want to agree or address it was written into constitutional rights. It wasn't named specifically, but it was protected.

And there are a lot of different things that were protected. And eventually, those things were recognized to be abhorrent, and things were put in place to make things more equitable and to provide for all people, which is why it's so important. We have so many rights that we're able to enact right now, but if we don't codify them, if we don't ensure that these rights are protected, we will lose them.

Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
And, you know, you speak to codification. That's the part that pisses me off about both sides of the aisle, especially when it comes to abortion. They had 50 years, 50 years to codify this, and they just trusted or feared actually doing.

So one of the two, they trusted that it would just remain because it was a decision that was made. And so they thought, okay, cool, we're done with that. Move on.

We don't need to do anything else. Or they were fearful. Well, if we actually push to codify this, I might risk my seat, you know, because once these people are voted in, they want to be there forever, you know, so they don't really do what's best for you anymore.

They do what's best for them, you know, to keep their seat. So they had 50 years to codify this thing, and they didn't. And that pisses me off.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, there's so many things. I mean, people act like, and I see it spoken about a lot, not to say that men haven't had to fight for things they have historically, but realistically, women, minorities, all these other people have been left kind of in the lurch, you know, they don't have representation. And so it's been a hard fought battle to get to where the LGBTQIA plus community has representation to where black individuals are able to have higher places in government.

I mean, we just recently saw in Virginia, where the first speaker, the first black speaker was elected, why did it take this long? So, you know, when you have people saying, it's not like we don't have these rights, you've always had, no, we haven't.

[Tommy Lavin]
Always haven't had these rights. And they're always being tested, you know, because somebody's always going after them. I see a movement in the Christian movement now, the, I shouldn't just say broad Christian, the Christian extremists, the Christian nationalists, where women shouldn't vote, you know, repeal the 19th.

And even women are arguing it. Yeah. Or I should vote, but I should only vote what my husband tells me to vote.

I should do what my husband tells me. So I should vote the way my husband tells me. No, no, no, no, no, no, that is not.

[Lilin Lavin]
No, your vote, just like every other choice you make is yours. And you should vote based on what you would like to see for your future. And if you decide to have a family for their future, whether it's adopted or natural, whatever kind of family you have, even if it's extended family, you're related to or you've built, the way you vote affects more than just you and your home, it affects your broader community.

So is it building that or is it tearing it apart?

[Tommy Lavin]
Right. And I was having a, you know, somehow on one of my discussions, some MAGA mom jumped in there because I was talking about how they're trying to raise the voting age from 18 to like 25 or some shit like that. Because again, the conservatives are afraid of Gen Z there, you know, it's a more open and accepting generation.

So they're afraid of that. And this mom was arguing that, well, they should raise it because at that age, they're too stupid to vote. And I mean, she's saying this about her own children.

And I'm like, why did you raise them that way? Maybe you raise them. And she's like, and all I would tell them is just vote Trump, and they would go do it.

And I'm like, well, one, you should never tell anybody how to vote. That's flat wrong. I don't care if it's your kids, your wife, your unit.

[Lilin Lavin]
And we have kids of voting age, and we've definitely sat down and had discussions. And our discussions typically go something like this. What is it that you'd like to see, you know, in your life or with your future?

These things? Okay, well, you know, here's the people on the ballot. And we research, I spend hours and hours and hours looking at all the different things that go into each election.

And I write down my thoughts, and I put down information. And then I give that, you know, and say, here, you know, go do your research, go look into it, and we have discussions. So that's really how things are supposed to go.

And I never, ever have the right to say, well, how could you vote for this person? Or what about your vote, your choice, your business, not mine? Yeah, we can have open discussions.

But I can never, it's not my right. No, no.

[Tommy Lavin]
And I've always told our children, if you you vote for who you want to vote for, you don't have to vote for the people I'm advocating or voting for talking about you, you vote for who you want, based on the world you want. Right. And that's exactly it.

You don't vote for somebody because your parent told you to, or and so many people do, they just don't question things. Or my dad was always this. So I'm just going to be that too.

I'm a generational conservative. You don't want to actually like use your own brain. And like, but again, that kind of falls back into radical Christianity.

[Lilin Lavin]
Radical Christianity kind of beats critical thinking out of you. It does. It really pushes the groupthink component and makes you feel like a negative outlier.

If you decide to have any kind of differing opinion, whether or not it's a valid opinion. And you're ostracized for doing that. It's a painful ostracization.

You're ostracized in a very painful way, where you'll often be secluded from events, and you'll be ridiculed, and you'll be kind of pushed to the outside from a position where you would have normally been very involved. And that kind of continues to evolve, the more you have those differing thoughts. Now, if you correct into what, you know, they prefer you to think, then you're welcome back in.

So this is a very unhealthy, toxic sort of relationship, where you're gaslighting somebody into following your way of thinking.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And, you know, the difference is with Satanism, it's an individualistic religion. I mean, we promote individuality, we promote critical thinking.

But like, we had a group of friends that they were Mormon. And he had some pretty cool views on how he thought Jesus, his interpretation of Jesus that, you know, he was like, you know, there's this gap or something like that. And when Jesus comes back, he's he's talking in this more Eastern philosophy way.

And so he had this, this theory that, you know, according to him, because he believes in Jesus, that Jesus went off and, you know, sort of visited Eastern countries and took on some Eastern philosophy with some gurus or things of that nature. Yeah. And because of his personal belief, not anything he was sharing or teaching or anything like that, he was removed from his position, which was, I think he was in charge of, like youth ministry or something like that.

And it was just like, wow. So because you personally weren't teaching it, weren't promoting it, but just because you had this sort of thought, you were removed from your position. Yeah, radical.

[Lilin Lavin]
It was pretty. I've known a lot of people from a lot of different faiths. And I think the problem that I ran into, even in Satanism is when individuals begin to become rigid in their beliefs and demand people look at things their way and their way alone.

And it's not as common in Satanism. But there's definitely a huge undercurrent of people that call themselves gatekeepers and try to push that. I don't care what religion it is.

You have no business telling someone how they're allowed to interpret their chosen belief. Yeah. I mean, you know, Christianity has how many denominations?

Right. And again, I feel like all of it's metaphorical. I don't feel like it's literal, but other people do.

Just because I feel like that doesn't mean I would tell other people they have to. When I start getting crappity about it is when they start telling me that I have to live a certain way. Then I'm going to say, well, as a matter of fact, I don't believe in any of that crap.

And I'm not about to take on your beliefs because they hurt your feelings that I won't. Right. So other than that, I support people if they're living a good life and not pushing themselves on people.

You know, we've said it a million times. I don't care what you believe. You just don't tell other people how to believe and you don't breach other people's private bodily autonomy and consent.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right. So I mean, as what we were talking about in the beginning was last week, things like women's rights, abortion, LGBTQIA+, right? Those sort of things won out.

Now the problem is, is you look in states like Ohio, as you said. So Ohio, the people spoke very loudly. They spoke with their votes.

And now the undercurrent or the way is, well, we should ignore those votes and we should just not do it. And it's like, well, we're not an autocracy that, you know, the people voted, they told you what they wanted. And it's amazing how these, these extremists that have gotten, that's how you could tell that they're extremists because in the past, in certain parties, when votes happened, if they didn't agree with the outcome, they said, well, that sucks.

I lost. And then they implemented what the people want.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right. I mean, I saw this starting when I was younger, hanging chads come to mind, you know, the Gore issue comes to mind. There were periods of time where we were left in a lurch trying to wait for things to be counted or accounted for, you know, where there was some of that there.

But what we see today is a huge difference where they're just blatantly saying they will not recognize people's chosen outcome. I think Ohio Republicans are saying that they're going to block the abortion amendment that was passed because of, and they say, they're saying it was foreign interference.

[Tommy Lavin]
It's always something. I mean, it's amazing. But if they win, then there's, there's nothing.

[Lilin Lavin]
I mean, if this is the case, let's just say foreign interference, if anything they wanted happened, it too should be rejected. Right. I mean, because how do we only interfere with the one thing.

And that's the same thing. Let's just say, I agreed with this election denialism that's been going on now. And we're about to have a whole new presidential election cycle.

And we're still talking about the previous cycle, but let's just say I agreed with it. So you're saying every single Democratic elected person or Democrat that was elected democratically was fixed. But every single Republican that was elected was elected properly.

So how the hell does that work? Someone please explain to me, like I'm five, and I have no idea about how any of this works.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, unfortunately, you'll, with that, you'll get a bunch of people that'll come back and actually try and, I mean, they could try, they'll spin some weird conspiracy theories.

[Lilin Lavin]
Here we have, you know, you talked about Ohio, something that's really not getting talked about Tennessee. Tennessee recently passed an ordinance banning public homosexuality. Yep.

Okay. Why is this not being talked about more? Why?

Why does it seem like nobody even noticed? Oh, because they're talking about all these other insane things. And Tennessee's been overrun by absolute extremists who were trying to eject elected members of their own house out because they didn't like that they were loud, young black voices.

Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
And is it the whole, I thought it was, it's one city, right? It's not the whole state?

[Lilin Lavin]
Right now, it's a pretty big city.

[Tommy Lavin]
Not to minimize it, but I was trying to understand, is it the whole state or is the city the way I understood it?

[Lilin Lavin]
It was a city ordinance in Rutherford County. Okay. Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
So yeah, I did see they made homosexuality illegal, which I was like, what the fuck? Public homosexuality.

[Lilin Lavin]
And how do you do? And I apologize if you live in Tennessee, in Mo Freesboro, Tennessee, there's a new ordinance targeting public homosexuality. And it's being, the first place it was really being pushed was in the libraries.

So now you've got people banning books, banning content in books. And now we're banning certain people from being who they are in the library while looking at those books. Any questions?

Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
I mean, again, it doesn't matter what, at this point, it doesn't matter what religion you are. If you're not a radical extremist, you are going to be affected if you don't get off your ass and do something. And do something means vote or something like that.

[Lilin Lavin]
I'm not out here saying people do negative, harmful things.

[Tommy Lavin]
Please don't do that.

[Lilin Lavin]
But we are in a place now where you can't keep shutting your eyes and saying, it's not me, it's not my problem. It will be at some point, and it will be someone you care about. It will be your neighbor, it will be your friend, it will be your neighbor or your friend's children.

These laws are geared to harm people. That's all they're geared to do. It's not going to help our society be better.

It's not going to push us into some kind of positive future. These things are bringing us backwards to a place that we know wasn't working, because we have long since moved past that.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And let me also be very clear, because I've seen some misinterpretation. Truly believe religion does not belong in government.

As a Satanist, fighting against religious bills in government is not religion being part of government. We're not trying to pass any religious-based laws. We're trying to stop religious-based laws.

So just sitting in the corner quiet with your thumb up your ass doesn't do anything. But if we were trying to pass laws based on Satanism, that would be wrong, too.

[Lilin Lavin]
Especially if we were quoting some doctrine while we were doing it, which I don't know if you've noticed happens quite a bit from the extreme conservative side.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right. But to fight against it as a religious organization is not- No, that's not religion in politics.

[Lilin Lavin]
People hold worldviews, which everyone does. You cannot show me one single person that has a position that's either a boss or a judge or a politician that doesn't have a worldview. Everyone has them.

They're made up of all of our experiences and all of our beliefs, everything rolled up together, and that's how we interpret the world. That's how we make decisions. That's natural.

What's really inappropriate is if we- Let's just say I was a politician and I had a constituency of many different belief systems. If I were to come out and say, as a Satanist, I'm going to demand that we live by the first tenet of my beliefs based on this, and this is what these laws are going to be built on, that's wrong. If I say, for the betterment of our society, these are the things that I think will benefit us as a whole, including recognizing your faith and your ability to practice and worship that faith, I'm not taking away from any of those people.

I'm saying, here are things that benefit all of us. Can we work together to just have an equitable society that recognizes that while we are different, we all share similar things that we need and want?

[Tommy Lavin]
Right. To say, hey, the Constitution says we are a pluralistic nation. We're supposed to be a pluralistic nation.

You cannot use your religion to push laws. Again, that's not- Now, make sure you're using the actual words or they're going to rip you up for that one. Yeah.

That is not religion being part of government. There is not a separation of religion and government issue there because you're basically saying, look, these are the rules. This is what the Constitution says.

You are trying to step over the rules. We're saying, no, you can't do that. So, it's weird how this sort of, you know, you shouldn't have religion in politics.

I agree. But that doesn't mean that you shut up and be quiet. It means you just don't allow other religions to push their religion into laws.

You speak up against that. There's nothing wrong with that.

[Lilin Lavin]
As a Satanist, and what I think a lot of people maybe don't understand, I don't worship a literal Satan. We've said that many times, whether or not you believe it, that's up to you. But the spirit of that character, why we chose it as imagery, why that literary character matters so much is because their desire was to fight against the things that we're seeing.

It was about striving for justice, pushing for freedom, rising up against authority when it's doing things abusively. And so, many of us are outspoken and are outgoing when it comes to things like this, where people are using oppressive tactics to take away people's rights, because that is the character we embody. That's why we chose it.

So, it is a natural way for us to express our beliefs, because that's what they're built around.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. I mean, you had a really interesting conversation on social today, where somebody was saying, America isn't a democracy or something like that.

[Lilin Lavin]
It was, hold on one second. Yeah, that was like a whole weird mess where people are trying, it's the same thing we were talking about earlier, where people are trying to push this idea that we are not a democracy. And in one way, they're not wrong, right?

So, what they said was, and that's like a shitty meme, crappy meme that people are putting out there. I'm certain that there's targeted accounts that push these kinds of things. And they're just an effort to try and people believe certain stuff.

And it says our founding fathers went to great lengths to ensure that we were a republic and not a democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or any of our founding documents. And so, I found that really upsetting.

Because, you know, they're not wrong that we are a republic. Yes. Right?

Yeah. But the way they're trying to bastardize this is by manipulating the understanding of what the founding fathers were trying to accomplish. So, yes, the United States is a republic, but it's a representative democracy.

And the term republic refers to a form of government where the country is considered a public matter, which is the rest public are right. Officials are elected by citizens. So, as citizens, we get to decide people we believe, based on what they've put out there, that they'll represent our best interest and what we would like to see as far as that period that they'll be in office representing us.

So, we have that in place to provide that opportunity. But the whole point was to prevent what we ended up seeing, you know, their solution, building the republic, democratic principles, checks and balances, because they wanted a separation of powers. Because what did they see?

They saw a monarchy. And they felt, well, that's, you know, that's wrong. That's one person ruling, they saw democracy, that's many people ruling, and both can be very easily manipulated.

How do we balance that? We combine the two things, so that we have representation in both ways. And the hope was that through that, you would have a more realistic representative of what people were actually wanting.

Now, for me, there's areas that need to be fine tuned, because we have so many more people now, the Electoral College, in my opinion, is not representative, because the way that they skew the numbers based on what states get what weight, I'm done with that. It needs to be popular vote, because there are just too many people. And when you disproportionately represent certain regions, because of the special number that they get back when, because there wasn't enough people to properly represent, we're past that.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, yeah. As a country, we're way, way past that. Yeah, so it's interesting, because, like I said, they're saying the inside words outside now.

We should be, or the Founding Fathers meant for us to be a theocracy. No, they had a big piece of paper, where they wrote a bunch of things, and it said specifically in that piece of paper, like the number one thing, part of number one was that, no, there's a separation of church and state. Yeah.

[Lilin Lavin]
And that was number one. And it was number one, because they knew after what they had gone through what the monarchy had pushed, manipulating the church to just grab power, and to do things that really shouldn't have been done under the name of God, they knew that that was a manipulation that was really prevalent. And they wanted to take that away.

So that was very important to them. So all this nonsense about we're the Christian nation is just crap. A lot of people that were involved in the Declaration and in the Constitution, they did believe in a type of higher power.

But that higher power is nothing like the extremist, conservative God that is so heavily pushed at this point in time.

[Tommy Lavin]
And even if they were Christian, that doesn't mean that they were able to compartmentalize their personal beliefs from what they thought the country would be. And that's the problem that we run into with the extremists. They cannot compartmentalize, and I see it with my own parents.

They literally cannot compartmentalize their personal religious beliefs from anything else. Everything else that influences, I mean, everything is part of their personal beliefs. So they don't understand how people who could have been Christian could have written something for the nation and not meant it to be a Christian declaration.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, it was a different type of Christianity, even if you look at it back then. So yes, some of them were absolutely Christian, devoutly so. And some were Catholic.

And there were very many different types of people at that point in our history, which is fine. I'm not taking away from any of their personal religious beliefs. What I'm saying is back then, those things made sense for a variety of reasons.

And each of them brought those reasons to the table and said, regardless of what we may believe, we're going to come together to create a society where people don't have to worry about whether or not their beliefs are popular or whether or not they have beliefs, they should have the same equal say. And that was really what they were trying to get to. Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, so it just comes down to we are a combination of democracy and republic. So when people try to do this bullcrap about, we're a republic, we're a republic. No, we are we are both.

We are republic because the public exercises will through elected representatives, like I said, and as a democracy, because the representatives are chosen through democratic elections by the people. So it's both things. So we are a representative democracy.

And that's the way that our republic was built. Right. And that's the way it's supposed to work.

[Tommy Lavin]
And yes, the people are supposed to be able to vote on issues. And when the people speak, the representatives who represent those people are supposed to put their personal beliefs aside and implement what the people want it.

[Lilin Lavin]
The founders wanted to prevent the concentration of power. I mean, that's why they looked at both systems and said, here are areas where both of them fall short, because this is how it can be manipulated. And here we are again, you know, because we are who we are.

And we find a way to manipulate everything where you now have people that are trying to do this yet again by pushing a false narrative. And that false narrative is that this is the way it was always supposed to be. And no, and we know that because we've seen the progress we've made when we recognize we're a diverse nation.

We're a pluralistic nation. Yeah, we have problems. Yeah, we have differences.

But look at the things that we have in common.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. But also look at how we're represented to, you know, as a nation, we are not a majority Caucasian country. Now, yeah, when you look at our representation, you would predominantly Yeah, we are.

And that's, that's an issue. And you would also think, as many people do, that you have to be Christian in order to become a politician. And that's, that's not the case.

Now, there are some states that try and have laws saying that you cannot be an atheist. And those are freedom of power issue. But yeah, those are going up to the Supreme Court, because no, that's, that's nowhere does it say you have to believe in a God to hold a seat.

That's, again, just another abuse of power.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. And then which God? Yeah.

You know, I honestly, I just tell him why I believe I'm my own God.

[Tommy Lavin]
So there you go. Yep.

[Lilin Lavin]
I believe in God myself. But I know I have no false notion that someone like me would be easily able to move into a political career. Because for one, you know, you've got a lot of negative people that will definitely push against you.

And it's dangerous. Um, for two, they're going to use the difference and fear monger. I mean, we've seen it time and time again, to push people to believe that it will take away their parental rights, or it will cause, you know, woke ism and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I mean, Can you imagine a Satan, an open Satanist running for?

[Tommy Lavin]
I mean, there have been some, but can you imagine the tag ads on that? Like, you know, I mean, killing babies or some shit. You just know it would be there.

You know, it would be there, you know?

[Lilin Lavin]
And that's, that's another problem. Why is it okay to just completely lie about something and nobody gets called out on it? And why is it okay to manipulate the system in a way, if you feel confident that you represent what people want, then just run on that, focus on that and let other people do it.

And then let whoever resonates better with the populace get the position. Yeah. It's crazy.

I know.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well, I mean, what I keep coming back to, um, as there was a North Dakota representative who said, we should be blatantly said we should be a theocracy. And I said, okay, thank you for, thank you for at least saying out loud, what the rest of your current extremist party is to chicken shit to say now, can you get the rest of them to actually admit what they want to do and then let the people vote on it? You know, if that's what the people want, then holy fuck.

But you know, if that's what the people want, then, you know, but I don't think that is. And I think we've clearly seen election after election, after election, especially since row went away, people were like, holy shit.

[Lilin Lavin]
No, because well, and I mean, I guess technically he didn't say he wanted a theocracy. Um, what he said was direct democracy should not exist. Case in point, Ohio legalized the slaughter of babies, it would be an act of courage to ignore the results of the election and not allow for the murder of Ohio babies.

But we're probably 10 years away from this opinion being acceptable.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, that that was well, I'm sorry, I messed that up.

[Lilin Lavin]
That's a different one.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, no, there was one in North Dakota that basically just said, like, flat out, America should be a Christian theocracy. And I was like, wow, okay. And you said that, okay, and you're an elected official.

[Lilin Lavin]
And there's so many of them, I have trouble keeping up anymore, because they just blatantly make statements that I guess, for the longest time would have been like, you just wouldn't, you just wouldn't say that.

[Tommy Lavin]
Um, you know, but I mean, so the good news is, again, abortion, one really big abortion rights, one, one big LGBTQIA plus rights, one big, the problem is, they're trying to just ignore, right, those, those wins, they're trying to ignore what the people said. And that is a scary situation. And, and, you know, kind of points to where, as a country, we could wind up being and if we, if we go that way, we're, you know, anybody who is not of that extreme is at risk.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right? Yeah, which is a lot of people, because I don't know if people realize it. Again, like you said, Christianity has a wide variety of, of beliefs, really.

And here you have this whole mess where they're kitty, kitty has some opinions.

[Tommy Lavin]
Decided to chime in on this. He's so pissed about it, too.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, he says, Yeah, what's exactly? I agree with my cat. Very upset.

[Tommy Lavin]
Very, very upset about the situation. You know? Gotta have the levity.

Yeah, you were, it was funny, you were watching something before. And this is how ridiculous that it's become. There is now a, a sense or a, is it a movement?

Is it? Yeah. So there's a, there's a new thing that's being passed around the churches that there is Christian atheist, or?

[Lilin Lavin]
Oh, no, I was. So a friend had actually sent me this really good video. And so there's this crazy dude that does parenting, Christian parenting videos.

And the dude's a wackadoodle, in my opinion, not an all licensed physician or anything, but um, you know, he's going on and on about how it's important corporal punishment, blah, blah, blah. And if your kid turns away from God, blah, blah, blah. And then and then it got really weird where they're like, and I used to be an atheist for a while in my 30s.

I, you know, I left the church because, you know, I love the church, but I just didn't like this, that and the other. And like, what?

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I still believed in God, but I was an atheist.

[Lilin Lavin]
That is not what atheism is, my friend. Again, and I've said this like a billion times, probably I wish, you know, that was an exaggeration, because this happens on a daily basis, many times a day. You know, you're an extremist atheist, you're, you're atheism is a belief, you're, you know, a devout atheist.

Hold on. Atheism is one thing and one thing alone. It is a single point on one single issue.

And that is the lack of belief in the existence of any gods or deities whatsoever. It's not that I'm mad at God, it's not that God's this, that, the other, it's that I don't believe in it at all. And you as an individual can, that's fantastic.

I don't want to have it pushed on me, because I'm not involved. I'm not interested in being involved. I've seen nothing ever in any point in my life to make me feel like, you know, that step's real.

You can, I don't. Do atheists have a variety of worldviews, come in many types of people with many different thoughts? Absolutely.

Atheism is not that. The only part that atheism covers is a lack of belief in the existence of gods or deities. And now somebody please take that and make that a soundbite so I can stop having to repost this over and over again.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. So no, you cannot be an atheist and believe in God.

[Lilin Lavin]
No, no, it was Professor Plink. And this was the first time I've ever heard Professor Plink, and I absolutely loved it. And I definitely will listen to more.

And it was terrible Catholic parenting advice. Because I guess somebody compared this gentleman, Professor Plink, with this insane Ray, whatever the hell his name is. And wow, I think it was just the demeanor or voice that they were saying.

And he was like, under no circumstances, even related to the way I characterize things, speak, represent, like, I never want to be compared to this individual ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. And here's why.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And so yeah, there's just no. And again, it goes back into, okay, we know we can't win on the truth.

So we're going to twist this into a lie, where you can be an atheist and you can believe in God.

[Lilin Lavin]
Nope. There are words for that. There are people that have beliefs in a god or gods or deities and do not find themselves associated with any of the standard religions.

Absolutely. There's agnostics. There's a variety of different types of people who have belief and just don't associate it with the standard idea of what beliefs are or religion is.

And that's fine. But an atheist is, as I've said, millions of times, exactly what I just explained. I'm not saying it again.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And then, of course, you get the follow up, which is, well, as an atheist, then what stops you from raping, killing? And it's like, I don't want to do those things.

I don't want to do this. Why do you, do you want to do those things? Yeah, seriously.

It's like, it sounds like you want to do those things. And the only thing stopping you from doing those is some book or some pretend sky person that you believe will punish you. And if that's the case, you need to get some help.

[Lilin Lavin]
No, seriously. It's freaky to me that someone, I run into this again, routinely, where someone will counter a conversation. I mean, I've had it happen in public, online, whatever.

How do you have morals or values if you don't believe in the Bible? Well, you do realize that the Bible is actually relatively new in the grand scheme of religious beliefs and beliefs in general, or the existence of societies. You do realize that it's new compared to society.

We now know there are other types of hominids that weren't, as you know, standard human beings that also had beliefs that also shared civilized communities that also managed to not do these things. So perhaps it's you that has an issue if you need that book just to be a decent human being.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. I can be a completely decent human being without the need of a pretend sky person, without the threat of damnation, without a book telling me what is right and what is wrong. I mean, a lot of these are general social contracts.

[Lilin Lavin]
I mean, these are just- Well, I mean, if you just look at it through an evolutionary perspective, I know so many out there, evolution, what? No, but in order for us to evolve, we would have had to learn to cooperate because it helps you to further your existence, right? So we learn ways to interact with one another that helps us to live and survive and, you know, continue moving forward.

Procreate and- Yeah, because you need to have a level of community to survive. Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. So it's just kind of crazy. I remember listening to that this morning.

Yeah, I spent a lot of time just listening to different- What is this guy talking about?

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, it was bizarre. And the other thing is, you'd have to watch the whole thing, but the guy, again, he shares videos on parenting. And in his parenting videos, one of the things he was talking about was universal truths about men and women.

And that's what this video was kind of going into, is the different things that this guy talks about, but obviously has no idea what he's saying. Because a universal truth is something that does not change between people. It's pretty much the same through and through.

And he was going on this tangent about how, you know, all men like the Three Stooges, which, what? And women don't because they find it ridiculous, which I don't know if he realized he owned himself a little bit there, but he did. Because if they find it ridiculous, there's valid reasons because we're talking about a depression-era comedy about people that were in poverty, that were struggling with not being able to actually function properly in the society that they were in, and doing things abusively to try and cope with it.

So, I mean, I could see where that's not necessarily something that you would find appealing. And, you know, he goes into that stuff a bit, but those are not universal truths. There are plenty of people that can find slapstick humor hilarious and still understand it's not appropriate outside of an environment where you're just allowed to have jokes and be, you know, funny.

There's a difference between acting that way in society. I know people have forgotten that. I understand with social media, we forget that being a total jack-and-ape online is not appropriate, you know, in public life.

But maybe you just don't do it online either. What?

[Tommy Lavin]
That's, that's radical.

[Lilin Lavin]
I know, I'm sorry. That's the woke.

[Tommy Lavin]
You're just talking crazy stuff there. I'm sorry. Yeah, that woke shit.

Sorry. Be more like Jesus. Oh, wait, he was woke too.

Right.

[Lilin Lavin]
And a bit of a push of, you know, certain thoughts and ideas and championing for those that couldn't speak for themselves. They mean conservative Jesus. Yeah.

Also, something I recommend looking up, there's a great YouTube video about that.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well, yeah, anyways, so good. Like I said, good news. These, you know, these subjects that are very near and dear to us.

Anyways, you know, there might be Satanists that are, that are, you know, think a different way.

[Lilin Lavin]
I'm sure there actually are.

[Tommy Lavin]
I hope there are. That's, that's their right to do that. You know, it is an individualistic religion.

[Lilin Lavin]
Um, I just think it gets weird when, regardless of who you vote for, right? If you're of a different type of group where you know that you're just going to get crapped on, like, why would you vote against or, you know, live in a way that is countered to your own best interest, your own safety, your own future. That's where it gets weird.

I mean, there is, I don't know who this person is, but it was a very popular, I don't know who this Ben Zeisel Loft is. But one of the things that really is weird, this guy put out on social media, you know, we've got to retake Ohio and he's got the Knights over there. I'm like, uh, pray for the church, uh, guy, you know, those were horrible people.

[Tommy Lavin]
Um, you know, just the weird horrible things, um, all in the name of God though. So it was, it was okay because it was as long as it's in the name of God and sanctified, you're, you're good.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. That's just where it gets weird. I don't care what other group, even Christians.

I mean, let's just face it. A lot of us are going to face some very ugly things if we just keep letting the extremists keep going with what they're going. And it's not just like, Oh, look at the way things happen in Italy.

It's not just the middle East. Many places have suffered because of this type of extremism. Poland suffered because of this type of extremism.

And they finally got sick of it to the point where they pushed it out through a democratic process. Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
Um, but even though it was rigged against them, I mean, it, it, I, I thought there's been so many times that I've thought, okay, this should be the wake up call for at least the conservatives that have a brain left, you know, not, I get it. The, the, the Christian nationalists and the extremists, there is no individual thought there anymore. It is there, there is no, it's a group thing project.

Yeah. The, the, there is, there's just none of that left, but for the ones that still have somewhat of a brain left that can think for themselves, I thought so many times, okay, this is, this is a time that will wake them up and be like, holy shit, we have to get these people out of here. We, you know, we've got to do something, but it doesn't.

Um, I don't know if it's fear. I don't know. That's part of it.

I don't know what is, is, is holding them to this, but I guess they like losing that much as true.

[Lilin Lavin]
It seems, I don't know. It's just weird. Just watching this stuff kind of happen.

Everyone says, oh, it's not, it's not, it's not. And then it just gets blatant to the point where you can't deny it. And in Ohio was a perfect example of that because the, the people voted and now they're trying to find ways to blatantly deny it.

I mean, we have that starting to happen already. You look at the last election cycle for presidential elections, same sort of thing. If we lost, it was rigged.

If we won, it was the way it was supposed to be. And now we just have, well, we lost. So it's obviously, uh, you know, for foreign election interference, it was rigged.

We're not going to accept it. That is not the way this works.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well, and not just Ohio, but then like you pointed out, we have Tennessee now where, like you said, public homosexuality is illegal. Are we back in the fifties? Are we, are we back?

[Lilin Lavin]
Shoot, that was still happening in the seventies, but it was worse the prior, but it was still happening. We still had laws on the books for being put on the books from, from the seventies where it was very, uh, you know, homophobic and generally pushing against that sort of thing. But during that period, we still had people that couldn't deal with interracial marriage.

We still have, this stuff is so new and yet we still keep acting like it's always been fine and we need to stop being overreactive. We still have freaking sun downtown throughout the South folks. I'm not sure if you're aware of that.

Go ahead and look it up. They exist and they're still very much on the books. So don't tell me that our rights are just all PG Keene and there's no way that we're going to lose them because they're not.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And so sitting on your butt doing nothing, um, or having a temper tantrum and staying home and not, not voting. I don't care what, I care which way you vote, but I'm not going to tell you which way to vote.

What I'm going to tell you is go out and fucking vote. Um, if you sit at home and you throw a temper tantrum and you don't go out to vote because you don't perfectly like the person, your choices, they don't line up perfectly. Guess what?

Nothing's perfect. No person is ever going to line up perfectly with what you want. But if you stay home, you have no room to complain.

Don't bitch. Don't moan. Don't do anything.

Sit in the corner and shut up because that's what you did.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. And that's what you opted for because inaction is still an action.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yep.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yep. You've made a choice. Your choice was just not to enact choice.

[Tommy Lavin]
So I don't want to hear from, and I've, I've known people that were like, ah, I don't vote. And then they start bitching. And I tell them, shut the fuck up then.

If you didn't vote, I don't want to hear a goddamn thing from you. You don't like it. Guess you should have done something about it.

Now, if you voted, even if you voted the other way and you want to bitch and moan, fine, we can have a disagreement we can do because you actually did something. But if you didn't, if you stayed home.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. And so as far as Satanism goes, when it comes to politics, we're not here to tell people how to vote or what they're supposed to do. We're here to say, think about how you're voting, how it affects other people.

And, uh, you know, you see us out there doing things. It's not us pushing our religion. It's us countering the religion that's already been pushed.

So like when you see us doing the afterschool Satan clubs, right. There's another one that comes up a lot. I'm seeing it more and more.

And you have parents that are, I don't entirely remember the quote, so I'm going to completely screwed up, but we had essentially a mom and I'm like paraphrasing where she was like, they're pushing that people have critical thinking and it's absolutely against what parents want. Um, wait a minute. What did you say that it's essentially what they're saying.

So the reason why afterschool Satan clubs happen, guess what, is because there's a good news club in the school.

[Tommy Lavin]
That's a prerequisite. Yeah. If there is no good news club, there is no after school Satan.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. So if you're fine with a good news club being there, then you should be fine with an alternative. And I have to tell you in the afterschool Satan program, they're not speaking to kids about Satan.

They're not talking to kids about any of those things. All they're doing is helping to educate them on science, on understanding that their surroundings and community on empathy, on compassion, you know, yes, bodily autonomy, because Hey, we all have the right to know about that. If you guys believe like you supposedly do on what was in the damn Bible.

Again, I think it's literature thing. It's not literal, it's literary. But choice was supposedly given to man.

So if you believe in choice, then let people have it and make their decisions. Yeah, I mean, we were supposed to have free will. That's supposedly, it seems like that's sort of frowned upon.

But yeah, I totally feel like if you're gonna sit here and push this and you believe people have choice, then let them use their choices. You're supposed at least let that be God's thing, right? And you're not supposed to be the one trying to be the deciding factor at the end of the day.

So if you're so content with what you have, be content with it, live it, do your thing. Yeah, but it's just Yeah, so I, I could go on and on. But, you know, it's just, I think I'm a little bit upset about it.

Because the Ohio thing was one of many things. And I live in a state like Texas, where you don't get to put things onto the ballot, like other states. It's not an easy process by any means.

[Tommy Lavin]
And, you know, our Senate, now we're run, Texas is around by Dominionist.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, predominantly, predominantly, it's run by the GOP, we do have a diverse representation, though, the representatives are definitely, you know, handcuffed in a way and what they can really do. So we do have a representative, you know, democracy here, too, is just the way things work is different than the way it works in other states. And so when you have the things going on that are going on, it's difficult to really deal with sometimes because like Abbott right now, and guys, 2024 is just around the corner.

Remember the kind of crap that's happening right now, if you live in Texas, but Abbott is just continuing to push and continuing to push special session after special session to wear people down. And right now to the bills that are like going out Bill one and Bill four are horrific, because Bill one is going to create a big divide in the of people like equity, not equality, because equality is anyway, when you get into it, you've got the two tiered system of education, when you take 500 million, which is what this would out of the education system to reallocate to private schools to provide 800 $8,000 a per like a student to go to a private school, you're not helping families, they can't afford it $8,000 a year does jack squat when it comes to the cost of a private school, jack squat, unless you could already afford it, it helps to take a little bit of the burden off.

Honestly, you're still not affording the damn private school.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah.

[Lilin Lavin]
And then they want to allocate certain amount of fun toward homeschooling. And I think there's some criteria around that. But for me, this is a big issue, because schools are already underfunded.

In my opinion, we had a rather large amount of money in our coffers for the state. And there's other ways could utilize it to help bring in more teachers to help benefit teachers that are exist to help expand on programs to help, you know, add more schools, there's a lot of areas that are definitely overcrowded, ours is one of them. But to just disproportionately disadvantaged people that otherwise are just still not going to be able to get the school and education that they need and further push a divide is not going to help anything.

The other one, which is also a big problem for me is for because now I give it would give police and law enforcement, general law enforcement, the ability to act as, you know, border security, border patrol, they get basically, they're, they're, they're basically given the powers of ice, right? So I mean, that would give the police the ability to just go ahead and assume, because I don't know how else they're gonna know, right? That that person isn't supposed to be here, they've come here illegally, and that they essentially can arrest them.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah.

[Lilin Lavin]
And how do you assume that somebody's supposedly they have to come through an illegal port of entry? And I'm thinking to myself, what are you talking about?

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, no, no, no, that's not the way that anybody who thinks that the police will not abuse? No, it's a show me your papers bill. Yeah, is all that it is, you know, just hasn't been playing paying attention to the issues that we've been having with police over the last just on and on.

[Lilin Lavin]
So we've got people trying to build more walls, walls between states within the United States, we've got people trying to build pretend borders that prevent people from using roadways for travel, which you can't do Constitution. Hello, there's just thing after thing after thing. And if you're not paying attention to the fact that they're trying to take away your constitutional rights in the Constitution, like everybody keeps pushing, then there's something going on here, you need to stop, look at what's actually happening and recognize if you like that paper that gives you the rights that you have, then stand up and actually defend what it's giving you.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And again, as a satanist, or a satanic organization saying, hey, this is against the Constitution, you shouldn't be doing that is not a separation of church and state issue. If a satanic organization was trying to push a law, that is a separation of church and state issue.

So no, fighting against issues is not separation of church.

[Lilin Lavin]
And I'll give you a perfect example of when you've got a problem where the church and state is overlapping in an unhealthy way. Earlier this year, the state of Texas tried to get rid of corporal punishment in school, we've talked about it, we definitely are very involved in this kind of stuff. The Protect Children project definitely faces this head on and tries to address it.

Who fought against taking away corporal punishment? Anybody want to guess? Would that be Christian nationalism?

Ding, ding, ding. That's correct. They use the Bible to advocate that it's a biblical thing to make sure to spare the rod for all the child.

So this is a breach. You're a representative of many different people saying that the reason why we need to keep an archaic, barbaric thing like corporal punishment in our schools, because the Bible says that we should do that. I don't care.

There's a bunch of actual psychological studies that are done by people that have degrees in this field that will tell you that abusing people and constant threat of abuse is not the way to grow a healthy society or to create a better person.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, no, hitting people doesn't, doesn't, especially children does not teach them a lesson.

[Lilin Lavin]
It teaches them fear. And that fear is a good weapon or that aggression is appropriate when you don't like the way things are going. And if you look at a lot of the problems we have, I would definitely say that that message has been taught well, because a lot of people that are pushing these hateful things are using fear as a tactic to enforce these rules.

That if you don't do it this way, this is a horrible thing that are going to happen like for the Ohio issue. And again, I don't live in Ohio. So I mean, other people that live there are free to come in and give us more insight on that.

But there was politicians trying to say that it would take away parental rights, nothing to do with that. Zero. It was all about making sure that, you know, pregnant individuals would be protected should they need to have an abortion at the, the, you know, research and study of actual physicians that were involved with whatever is going on.

So this is again, just a manipulation through fear to try and get people to vote in a that they want. So yeah, the lesson works, works very well.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well, I mean, beat it to death. Yeah, we're coming up. I was gonna say we're coming up on an hour.

I don't want to push it too far past my hot button issue. I'm over here just like, I know it was like, I knew this would be a hot one. You know, but yeah, I guess, like I said, a couple of times, good news is people seem to be moving in the direction.

The bad news is the representatives are trying to find ways to ignore what the people are saying.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right. And as I say, many, many times, that doesn't mean stop, stop doing what you're doing or act out in any way that's inappropriate. We have been making progress as people to continue to push for most people to be represented and have their rights respected.

And we just need to keep doing that. We're together to stand up for one another, and to make sure our voices are heard. And if people want to ignore who we are, as their constituents, then we need new people.

Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
And with that, I give you a Hail Satan.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yes. So good morning, good afternoon, and good night, wherever you may be. And a happy Hail Satan to you.

Hail Satan.