Ep.4: What About Christian Persecution?

# Satanists Nextdoor
# Ep.4: What About Christian Persecution?

[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 listeners, today on Satanist Next Door, we are going to be covering the subject of persecution.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yes, so I guess we could kick it off with, um, what, what is persecution? So persecution is defined as hostility and ill-treatment, especially on the basis of ethnic, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation, or political beliefs. And, uh, yeah, they cite a example in here, uh, her family fled religious persecution.

So yes.

[Tommy Lavin]
And so the reason why this kind of came up is because, you know, for the last, I don't know, however, however long I can even remember, um, there's been this sort of Christian marching beat that Christians are persecuted, um, Christians are persecuted in America and all of this sort of stuff. And it's kind of another example of them redefining the meaning of a word.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, I will say that Christians and other religious people are persecuted in other countries. I will also say that the majority of people complaining about persecution are protected in a country that they are in fact not being persecuted. And I think earlier we were discussing this and you brought up a very good point that, uh, the people that are calling it persecution, in fact, are misunderstanding just because you were told, no, you can't make other people live this way, believe this way, do these things based on your beliefs.

That's not the same as being persecuted.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right. And, and ironically, the ones that are screaming the loudest about persecution are the ones that are actually persecuting other communities. They're persecuting the satanic community.

They're persecuting the LGBT plus community. They're persecuting people of color, immigrants, and, and, you know, other religions as well.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right. Because if you look at it, ill treatment, especially on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation. So I would honestly say in my personal perspective, I see the ethnicity and sexual orientation thing on a routine basis.

Um, it feels like I can't escape from the constant negative rhetoric that are lobbed towards those specific groups, minority groups. Um, you see it towards black community, Hispanic community. You see it, obviously antisemitic comments.

I can't tell you, I've been called antisemitic things. I know you've been called antisemitic things. Yep.

And, and it's just ironic to me that these are the same exact people. They'll say the one thing like very antisemitic slur and then there'll be, and I'm persecuted.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it's kind of like, and you had a good point.

There are countries definitely where Christians are persecuted. America is not one of those countries. No, there is no war on Christmas because people decide not to say Merry Christmas back to you is not persecution.

That is, they have either a different belief or they celebrate a different holiday. And sometimes because we did this as an experiment, we did as we, we walked through our neighborhood, which our neighborhood has a, a very big holiday festival. I mean, we get mile long traffic jams in our, in our neighborhood.

Um, you know, and people are always screaming, Merry Christmas to you. And, uh, you know, we'll, we'll come back and say something like happy solstice and the, or, you know, and the kids were having fun with it.

[Lilin Lavin]
We, we did because we do, they do the tours. So we have a lot of huge Christmas displays and it goes on from about after Thanksgiving, which we don't celebrate. It's no longer a thing in our house, but, uh, Thanksgiving time to the beginning of January, literally that entire period of time.

And you will have music, large trailers, and I mean, trailers, big Hayfield rides lit up with sound machines and bubbles and people pulling these large trailers. And apparently trailers don't have the same traffic rules as anyone else. So don't try to cross the street when they're doing these hay rides.

Cause they will, they will hit you. But, um, you know, when you're walking and they'll say, you know, Merry Christmas and we'll wave. And sometimes one of us will pop off at low Saturnalia and they're like, bah, humbug.

Like what?

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. I mean, we even, I got cursed out. You know?

And it's like, what the heck? And you guys say you're being persecuted. It's, it's, it's like, no, um, because other religions are allowed to, to celebrate their holiday as well.

Um, that's not persecution, not being able to force everybody to celebrate a Christian holiday is not persecution. If you were punished for celebrating a holiday, that is persecution.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right. And I don't want to take away from folks that celebrate Christmas. We do not.

We've always done more of a solstice kind of thing in our home because it's very approachable for everyone. We have people that are completely atheistic, agnostic and everything in between. And, you know, we have family that, that prays during holiday things.

So we are totally fine with those things. It's just when you go and you try to live out in the world and people try to say, well, you have to, if I say happy holidays to you, why isn't that good enough? It should be fine for me to just wish you well and go about your day.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. That's, that's not offensive to say happy holidays is a very inclusive statement, but for some reason that gets twisted around into this whole persecution thing that they have going on. Um, it's kind of funny.

It's a little off topic, but like, as you were describing the holiday thing that happens here, I always, I always like to compare to if you've ever seen Bram Stoker's Dracula, um, you know, the last part of Bram Stoker's Dracula where they're chasing the sunset, you know, they're like, they've got the horses, they've got everybody. And, and, you know, Dracula's in the back and they're waiting for the sun to go down. Um, they're trying to beat the sun going down in order to make it back to the castle.

That's actually how from, from the end of Thanksgiving to the beginning of January, it is for us in the neighborhood. It's like, can we get out and can we make it a home before the sunset? We literally raised this.

[Lilin Lavin]
I mean, you're like, oh crap, it's about to be dark. We have to go now, now, now, you know, the kids are rushing to the car. We've got our groceries.

We're like checking everything in so that we could hopefully miss the big throng of people. And I have to be honest, it wouldn't care. I don't care who they are, what their like personal, like religious things are.

These folks, they don't, they put their hazards on. They're driving like five miles an hour down a street that is a 30. And you know, it takes me 45 minutes to get from a stop sign.

I could walk, I could block to my grocery store and back in a quicker time that I'm probably going to make it if I have to drive during that. So yes, it is nightmarish. It is nightmare before Christmas for real.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. So again, a little off topic, but it's a funny story because whenever we bring that up, I have to kind of bring up that because that like sets the vision of what it's like in our neighborhood. Once the sun goes down, it's absolutely insane.

But yeah, I mean, back to persecution, you hear Christians talking about they're being persecuted all the time. There's a church on every corner. I mean, sometimes two on every single corner in, you know, I know at least in Texas, you know, but most of the nation too.

We've lived in other states too. And there's churches all over the place. If you're persecuted, you don't have churches.

If you're persecuted, you have a situation where a few years ago, there was a left hand path organization, the Luciferians or something like that. Luciferian Church. They tried to create a, I'm going to say church.

[Lilin Lavin]
It was definitely a church because they did services. They had a place people, it was open to the public, which was balls. It was open to the public.

I did, you know, we both went a few times, you could come in, you sit and they would just, it was more Socratic discussions, not really like a church sermon, which was fine. But you know, it was a mix of you didn't know when someone's going to, they threw things through the window, things like that would happen. But it was very interesting because those sort of incidents would only occur when it was usually empty.

The weirder things were some of the folks that would just stroll in and sit down and you know, you get that weird vibe and you're like, okay, well, you know, just going to sit here and hope everything goes well.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, you know, and I can actually say there. So in the city of Houston, there was one left hand path building for a year and it was technically in spring. Yeah, it made it a year.

And in that year's time, they tried to burn it down. They tried to cut a tree limb. And this, this was like irony at its best.

They tried to cut this big tree limb off to crash down onto the building. Ironically, they hit the Christian bookstore behind it. Which, you know, maybe that's God's way of telling them.

Hey, we don't go into the I know, I know. But it was, you know, if you're thinking about it from that sort of a viewpoint, but that's persecution. If you can't have your own building without being stalked without being hunted without being protested just for right, celebrating your own religion.

That's that's persecution.

[Lilin Lavin]
A perfect example is we were invited to participate in a pagan market in Livingston, Texas. And it's a fantastic group of people. If you get a chance, go look up the the pagan market in Livingston.

They do them about every three, three and a half, four months. They have one coming up at the end of July. People showed up from a church.

I don't know which church. I don't think that's fair, because maybe it's not the entire church that's like that. So I'm not gonna even if I knew I probably I'm not going to say anything unless they I knew specifically it was the leadership from the church.

But these church individuals showed up. They were shouting things about bestiality. Mind you, this is an open air event.

There were children at this event. But yes, it was full of people of many different variety of pagan and just shouting disgusting, ugly things. They were told they couldn't come on to the section that was rented by the group that was doing the event.

They did anyway, they drove their vehicle up and down with music and a megaphone and they were told they couldn't use the megaphone because they didn't have a license. It was a lot of things. And to their credit, the police were called they did show up.

And you know, they were like, we really can't do anything. We didn't see anything going on that kind of nonsense. It's out in the boonies.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I'm gonna say the police kind of did a half ass job there because the police showed up. And the police said we it because they were blocking traffic.

[Lilin Lavin]
The these these other church, they actually told people they went the wrong way. And they were stopping them on the road.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, they were stopping them on the road. And they were saying they're not letting anybody else in or you're in the wrong area and stuff like that. And they were forcing cars to turn around, which is complete and total bullshit.

And so the the guy finally called the cops out there. And the cops went up to him and they showed the cops a video because they were videotaping some of their stuff. And they said, see, on my video, we're not turning anybody else around.

And I was like, this is kind of like if I rob a bank, and I videotape myself walking into the bank, and then I walk up to the teller, then I pause my video, I robbed the bank, and then I videotape myself walking out of the bank. And so when the police stop me and say, Hey, you robbed this bank? No, look, officer, I've got a video.

See, I walked into the bank, I went up to the teller up, and then it stops for a little while. And see, I'm walking out of the bank, I didn't rob the bank, it's on video.

[Lilin Lavin]
It is very much like that. And the messed up thing is, and that's the point about the religious persecution thing. Religious persecution is real.

People of every faith are persecuted in one place or another. I don't think it's fair, regardless of where it's really happening. I don't care if it's Christians, I don't whoever you are, if you're being persecuted for your beliefs, that's wrong.

But to say that as a predominant religion in a country, you're being while other people of other denominations of Christianity even can't do things without being ostracized by another branch of Christianity, it's very upsetting. And recently, I think it's a little top of mind for us more. So we had to deal with, there was a, an Instagram post put out there by, you know, a group that do things to try and counter the woke isms affecting children in the Houston area.

And they actually mentioned our book club. And I want to be very clear, we do not, this is not a children's book club. Occasionally, people will bring people in the, you know, youth of their own their children.

But it is not a children's book club. And even if it were, we weren't reading anything that was inappropriate, but we were actually reading.

[Tommy Lavin]
And I would I would ask, also add to that is the people that occasionally bring one of their, their children, their teenagers, right? No, little kids are showing up like this, we've got five year olds or six year olds or anything like that running around because say Satanists are very, it must be the left hand path as well are are very much against indoctrination, right?

[Lilin Lavin]
So and should be because it doesn't lead anywhere good. But the point is, like, when we have kids, and I would say, I don't think we've ever had anybody under 14 that I'm aware of. And 14 would be our own, our own child.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah.

[Lilin Lavin]
And again, as a parent, what we choose to allow our kids to participate in is it should be as long as it's safe, and it's consensual, things like that. As long as we're being responsible, there should be no issue, right? That's the whole parents movement, we want to support parents educating kids.

So we were reading the book called genderqueer. And again, there were no children that were participating in this particular book club. So they found out about it, there were a bunch of posts out there.

And among the posts, which many of them were very interesting, they they put in a little Bible verse, you know, talking about what was being done. And, and then they were saying things about how, see, at least they're admitting that they're there, the book is satanic, or, you know, this, this ideology is satanic. And then one individual stood out that mentioned wanting to throw a pipe bomb through the window.

And it wasn't just like, oh, I'm going to throw it was I made a pipe bomb that I want to throw through the window. And as much as I get a lot of hate statements, I see these things, I just don't see it at that level. And that's what stood out to me.

And so we ended up having to write up a report. And then I ended up getting a call from the FBI. And I ended up having to go write out another report.

And so it was just this whole process, because we wanted to have a book club. It wasn't even like a service or any kind of religious thing. It was just a group of people getting together and discussing ideas about a book and how they felt about it, what they thought about it.

And this was offensive to them to the point where they asked for the crusades, where they said all these horrible things.

[Tommy Lavin]
And I well, I would compare to imagine if imagine if when Christians had Bible studies at each other's houses, if they were receiving death threats, and bomb threats, because they were having a Bible study at their house. Now, we all know there are 1000s and 1000s of Bible studies, which is great, which is fine. And again, that's fine.

Everybody has the right to practice their religion, what you don't have the right to do is say, I don't like your religion. So I'm going to threaten you. And I'm going to threaten your members because you're having a private gathering, right?

[Lilin Lavin]
And because I have to be responsible for everybody that I interact with, with the things that I do, we had to take it very seriously. And I knew in my heart, it was probably not serious. But the one time that you don't take it seriously, then that's going to be the time something happens.

And there are people that occasionally give me very uncomfortable feelings when they show up at events, because we do some public events. And we should be able to again, if you're going to have, you know, the pumpkin patch get together because you're, you know, denouncing Halloween, and you have kids doing festivals and everything else out in public, and that's fine. Other people should be able to do things out in public as well.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And you know, I would just ask any any Christian that is out there and is claiming to be persecuted out as this, if you have to walk through a picket line of protesters in order to get into church, and then your entire church service, you have people outside blasting music and on a bullhorn saying vile, disgusting things about you, your children and your family the whole time, that would be a perfect example of persecution.

But that's not what happens in America to churches. That is what happened. That is what churches do, not all, but that is what churches, especially the more evangelical churches do to other communities, specifically pagans, Satanists, you know, anybody that's on sort of alternative religion, and they go after, you know, Judaism and, you know, you know, they get they go after the Muslim communities are definitely attacked, Hindu communities are attacked.

[Lilin Lavin]
There's so many different groups, because it's confusing and uncomfortable for some people. So it's, I don't want to say natural, but there's a human instinct to rally against things that make them feel uncomfortable. And unfortunately, this particular group of people, and again, it's not all Christians, it's a particular interpretation of Christianity, where they see these things as adversarial.

So it was bad enough that the Air Force recently had put out a thing saying they had to move 15 military families in two years over racism, anti LGBTQ harassment, and things like that. You have to think this is people in the military. And I don't know how others feel about the military.

But the freedoms that we have are not given to us just because and I'm not going to get on a high horse about military and veterans and all that. But these are folks that have chosen for whatever reason to defend the rights and liberties that we have. And I respect that.

And the idea that a lot of the more conservative people, they constantly extol the virtues of the military. And yet at the same time, the military is having to deal with these incidents because some of their members are gay, some of their members are black or Native American or other groups that they want to come after. And for what?

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I mean, they're the military is now having to be aware of what states to to move certain members to because of the discrimination and persecution that is so widely accepted in those states. Now, if you think about that, I can make an argument all the way down to our national security for that, that that, you know, depending on what that person does for the military. I mean, so, you know, that's where I have a really, really, really hard time when I hear Christians jumping on their high horse about how they're being persecuted in America, because they can't force people to pray in school.

No, that's not persecution. You not being able to force people to follow your beliefs is not persecution.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. And when you look at I understand where some of this more extremist mentality comes from living in Texas, you're aware of certain movements that exist where people have things like seven mountains mandates where they want to create God's kingdom on earth. Yes, that's a real thing.

Feel free to look it up. People in the Texas GOP are involved.

[Tommy Lavin]
And well, Texas is run by I mean, a lot of the dominion, right? Yeah.

[Lilin Lavin]
But the issue is, you're not being persecuted when you can actually change the rules where you have to have in God, we trust plastered inside of schools. And I'm not saying that it's horrible for that to be there. It is our national model, but it wasn't.

And it was a reactionary change because of communism and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, during the Soviet era. And I'm not going to bore everybody to death with those facts. But we have that in there.

So okay, fine. We'll deal with it. We can't fight it.

It's the motto. And then they want to put the 10 commandments, which I applaud one of the Republican politicians in Texas actually is a Christian. And he explained very eloquently why he felt that it was inappropriate, because it was idolization, it was different things that were anti what they believe that Christianity stood for.

And I thought that he did a really good job countering this ludicrous notion that that belonged in schools in the same schools that they do not want to allow people to learn about their own sexuality. And I'm not talking just the members of the LGBTQ community, where they actually shame, you know, kids learning in an age appropriate manner about sexuality, where they don't even want to teach them that that's okay, that you're gonna have feelings that you have body parts and things are happening. They just want kids to know that they they have a body and they shouldn't touch it.

And it's, you know, don't do things you shouldn't do.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I mean, sex ed in Texas is is absent.

[Lilin Lavin]
It is abstinence based. For the most part, they do teach some aspects, but they do still split up boys and girls. And for some parts, I get it, because it's probably embarrassing to talk about certain details.

But there are things I believe that you should learn across and I'm getting into another subject entirely that we can touch on at a different point. But you know, they wanted to put the 10 Commandments, that did not happen. But then they did change it so that some schools which will they'll have to opt in.

So this is not mandatory across all of Texas, you've probably heard about it, though, where counselors are being replaced with chaplains. And I have very many issues with this. One of the biggest obviously, counselors are there to help guide and be there for kids that are dealing with very real difficult situations.

And it is a place that it's sometimes the only place that they'll get to go to talk to anyone about things that they're struggling with. And to replace those people, those trained individuals with chaplains who do not have to receive a specific type of training, who are not mandatory reporters for sexual abuse, and who will, in some instances, absolutely make issues worse, because they will use religious guilt and logic, which I don't mean it as real logic, but they will use religious ideology to try and explain to kids things that they're going through and tell them to pray and tell them about these Bible verses. And there are kids that are not Christian. And how is that going to go over with kids who are Muslim children?

How's that going to go over with kids that are atheists? How's that going to go? It's not right to put that into those spaces.

There are Christian schools, you know, if that's the education for your kid, that's your choice.

[Tommy Lavin]
And yeah, and again, this all comes back to if you're able to change the laws in a state where we are, I would almost say Texas is just a few laws or a few lawmakers away from a theocracy. I mean, we're changing our public schools to basically be religious schools trying to, you know, they're trying everything they can, some of the things get through some of them don't, I'm sure they're going to have a second go at the 10 commandments, and I'm sure that it'll eventually get through. That's again, you're not being persecuted, you are persecuting other people at that point.

And to your point, if you want your child to have a religious education, send them to a religious school. And if that religious school is too expensive, tell the pastor to sell one of his mansions and lower the cost of the school so you can afford to go there. But public schools are supposed to be secular.

And again, when you are changing laws based on your ideology, you're not being persecuted, you are persecuting.

[Lilin Lavin]
I find it interesting. I've definitely had this conversation with people and they said, well, what are you basing laws on then? Well, I do have fundamental beliefs that do include empathy, compassion and utilizing reason.

However, when I apply this, it's with a very broad brush towards as many people as it can possibly apply to. I do not look at you based on the color of your skin, your, you know, gender, your sexual identity, none of these things are accounted for. The only thing I'm looking at, how are you treating me as a person?

Because I'm going to reciprocate that. How are you treating other people? Because you should get that in return.

And I think if you're a great person, people should treat you well. It shouldn't be based on anything other than that. And if that's a religion, you know, okay, fine.

But I feel like that's just being an open minded person that's trying to do the best for the most people possible, not trying to take away from people based on what it is you believe they should have to live by.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well, I mean, these, these are, there's general laws that are social contracts, right? You don't murder, you don't rape, you don't, you don't rob, we don't need a book with a pretend sky person to tell us that those are wrong. That's those are basic social contracts.

And I would take it a further and say, because, you know, Christians try and say that atheists are bad, and all these people are bad, because, you know, we don't have a book telling us this, but I would almost flip that and say, if you need a book, and the threat of internal damnation to tell you not to rob or not to kill, I'm sorry, but you're worse than the person that is able to do that without the threat.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, yeah, I think eternal damnation is a horrible thing anyway. And I would say, even though, you know, we were talking about religious schools, I would say one thing on that, and I don't know that we'll have a lot of religious people that listen to the things that we're talking about. But I don't know that that's necessarily fair, unless you're going to expose people to multiple different ideas and beliefs, because it's wrong, in my opinion, to force someone and pigeonhole them into a belief because you think it's how they should live.

If your faith is such a great faith, and you're living that faith, and you're giving people a life that they can be proud of and be happy with, then it should be enough. And letting them know about other people so that they don't ostracize based on differences, so that they don't, you know, take things out on others, because they're confused or scared. To allow people to have a wider understanding of the world around them would be a healthy thing.

So of course, as a parent, it's up to you. But I think you're doing a disservice to yourself and to your children, not to give them the opportunity to learn about the greater world around them, so that they can know who they are and feel comfortable in what they've decided to be.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I mean, I agree with that completely. You know, again, my stance really is that religion as a whole doesn't belong in school.

[Lilin Lavin]
And, you know, I'm going to caveat that I do think it belongs in school as a broad area of study when you touch on as appropriate with history. And when you're learning about those aspects of our development in society, where it makes sense, I absolutely think it should be applied. But we have to be careful that we're not applying it in a way that ostracizes people that are of different faiths, because that's, that's not right.

I'm not going to say that religions themselves, there's there's issues with with some of them, but that's not for me to decide.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, well, and again, once you start ostracizing people for religion, you are now persecuting them again, you know, so we keep coming back, we keep kind of coming full circle back to this whole, no, Christians are not being persecuted in America, Christians are the ones persecuting, and yet they're the ones out there screaming the loudest about being persecuted. It's almost like false flag type, type attack, you know, again, if in order for you to get to Sunday service, you had to walk through a picket line, if you had to hear screaming and protest, just to get to church.

[Lilin Lavin]
And just so people are clear, we're not just talking about issues that happen outside of a clinic or something. This is something that we have personally experienced when we've tried to do events, when we've gone to other people's events, when we've seen people we know holding events, people will show up because they feel the need to defend the world of Christianity against Satan. And I don't know if you guys know this, I know some of you listening probably do, we do not believe in a literal Satan.

So when you come to us with these signs about how Satan's an eternal loser, and blah, blah, blah, I need you to understand, when you do this, you are the only one in the space who literally believes in Satan.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, you know, and I, like I said, I would take your example, because we've had plenty of events. And in some of those events, we actually had to have the police out there, in order for the police to put up a bit of a line, a police line that the Christians and radical Catholics could not go past. It was for our own safety.

And what is our only sin, we are gathering together as a congregation with other people, because there was there was members of the public, but they were voluntarily, you know, they wanted to be there. They wanted to see the ritual. And we were doing a ritual.

[Lilin Lavin]
Are you talking about the Black Mass? Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
But again, what is a church service? A church service is a ritual, right?

[Lilin Lavin]
I mean, but don't tell them that.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I mean, but if you look at it, that's a church service. Every Sunday, the people that go to church, you listen to music, everybody's focused that you have somebody up on stage, they've got, you know, we're just going to call it an altar, because you know, it's the same sort of thing. It is.

And they're out there talking and everybody is focused. You know, they've got hands up in the air and all of this sort of stuff that if you go really radical with it, they're going to talk in tongues and all of that sort of shit. You know, that's a ritual.

And that happens every Sunday without the threat. I mean, TST isn't sitting out front of churches. No protesting and trying to stop people from going inside.

And the police need to be called in order to keep us from barging in the door. Because when we did a ritual, the people were literally trying to come across the street, they were trying to get into the ritual. Their goal was to stop our ritual.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right.

[Tommy Lavin]
And I will say the Houston police did a very good job. Fantastic. Yeah.

A fantastic job of just, you know, standing out there, it had to be somewhat uncomfortable, because you know, it's hot, it's humid in Houston, no matter what time of year, this is a waste of their time, to be very honest with you.

[Lilin Lavin]
It's what they're supposed to do. I do understand that. But this should not be a necessary thing.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And so again, I circle back to that is an example of religious persecution. We are simply trying to get together with people, like minded people, and do a ritual, which again, I go back to Sunday morning at church, it's a ritual, I don't really care what you want to call it, you can call it a service, you could call it whatever the hell you want.

It's a ritual.

[Lilin Lavin]
It's a group of individuals gathered together for a singular goal. And they're focused on reaching that goal.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, you know, and so again, satanic rituals, we don't believe in an actual Satan. So ours are more psychodrama.

[Lilin Lavin]
And I'll be honest, I'm sure there are some out there. And I don't mean to be, you know, ostracizing to you, if that's your thing, that's fine. If you believe in Satan, or Lilith, or whomever, again, Satanism is very individualistic.

And if that's your path, I respect that as long as you're not, you know, violating the whole bodily autonomy and respect and consent. Those are very important things to me. And there's not a religion out there that has the right to breach those boundaries.

As long as you're doing the right thing. I don't care what it is that you believe.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. I mean, I have no problem sitting down having a very cordial discussion with Christians. Actually, I enjoy speaking about theology, you know, I can have, I can have really good deep discussions on it.

[Lilin Lavin]
What's fascinating, honestly, when you look at it from a metaphorical standpoint, when you look at the time period in which it was written, when you look at what they were trying to achieve, I mean, if you think about it, I feel personally like this character of Jesus, who may very well have been an actual historical person that existed, I don't believe the attached things, the deific stuff, but they were trying to accomplish a monumental task of overthrowing a tyrannical, you know, leadership and to free people.

And it was, if you think about it, Jesus was pretty woke.

[Tommy Lavin]
But Jesus was very woke.

[Lilin Lavin]
He was, he was a radical, he was someone that believed in throwing over tables. And, you know, that guy, when I did study Christianity, when I was involved with people, when we know I went to Bible studies, because I do love the conversations and learning about the different aspects and the Greek with the 50 million freaking definitions for one word, because it wasn't that way in Greek, but just learning about all these different components. It's fascinating that we started out in that place and where we are today, and the things that are reminiscent that we've brought forward and why they apply.

Those things are absolutely amazing to me. What I don't follow in with is the literal beliefs of, you know, I'm going to go to a special place when I die.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And I think a lot of that, again, you know, we're getting into a different subject there, which we cover at a different time. You know, but it's fear of death, fear of the unknown fear of being left behind, you know, I mean, but again, I kind of circle back to this whole persecution argument.

I'm sorry, when you take rights away from women, when you change the law that has been on the books for 50 years, and, and you change it, and it's, it's not changed because of science, that law was changed based off of religious doctrine, period, end of story. And they took us back 50 years. And that, again, I see as persecution towards women.

[Lilin Lavin]
There's a greater, you know, group of individuals, there's plenty of people that are along the whole spectrum of individuals, you've got trans women, you've got, you know, trans men, who are still in some biological sense as women, and they are victimized. And now they find themselves in a situation. There are asexuals who again, find them, there's a common denominator here.

But there's also people that need abortions that do not necessarily align with a lot of these things. But they find themselves in a situation where they end up needing a medical procedure. And you're right, now they can't get it.

And why? Because a specific group of people felt that it was offensive to them based on their moral religious positions. And granted, not everyone I've had these arguments with says it is related to religion.

But I will tell you, much to the chagrin of many people like us, there is a lot of religious quoting happening during these legislative sessions. Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
And and so again, if you're changing laws, if you're taking rights away from people based on religion, you are persecuting other religion. So, you know, again, I kind of be like, get off your fucking high horse.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, you are not being persecuted. Persecution is happening. You are not the persecuted party.

[Tommy Lavin]
You are persecuting, unfortunately, other people, everything from religion to to other communities, other minority communities, you know, are being persecuted. And the amount of hate and bigotry that we see now, which has become almost viral with inside of the evangelical and the Christian nationalist movement, it's it's just utterly disgusting. The the things that I hear, the things that are said to me, I can't tell you.

I, you know, I was on a Twitter post the the other day and I was probably called a Jew 50 times. I had pictures of Hitler. I mean, this is just vile stuff.

And it's coming from good Christian people, right?

[Lilin Lavin]
It's disgusting because persecution is a thing that I think right now one of the biggest groups that I could recognize, the Ukrainian people are being persecuted hardcore. And if you put any kind of support anywhere, then you are being called very gross things like a Nazi. And they say, well, there's Nazis there and they're part of the blah, I'm sorry if you're unaware, but the United States has a rather healthy population of Nazis.

So if we're going to go by that, does that mean we're a Nazi country? No. So you guys stop with that.

But that's another form of persecution. You're saying the Ukrainian people who are fighting for their literal lives, for their home, for things that we take for granted on on a daily basis, they're fighting just to live day to day. And these are persecuted people.

And you cannot even stop and recognize the suffering and the magnitude at which that suffering is happening to just stop fixating on yourself and your selfish frickin needs to to be able to run the country based on your religion. And it makes me just sick.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I mean, it is kind of scary because and I really wish that the the GOP would just go ahead and let's just come out with it. You know, we all know on the laws that you're looking to pass. We all know about Project Blitz.

[Lilin Lavin]
Maybe we don't all know.

[Tommy Lavin]
So please go and look it up if you don't. Yeah, if you don't know about it, go look it up. But there's a very obvious trend there where they are trying to change America into a theocracy.

And part of me wants them to just go ahead and hey, why don't y'all just be honest about it? And why don't you run on it? And let's see how that actually plays out in the polls.

Not any of this. We're going to do this. We're going to do that.

No, let's let's be actually honest, because you hear it in churches. I can't tell you how many clips I've heard where they've said even representatives from the House and Senate have said, you know, yes, America is a Christian country. We should be run as a Christian nation.

No, it's not. But if you want to run on changing America to a theocracy, then why don't you run on that?

[Lilin Lavin]
And let's honestly, yeah, be honest. I think it was Jason Rapert that put out a call for everything from school boards up Christians need to run, run, run. And that was really quite alarming to me, because I don't have a problem with Christian people in in leadership positions for anything, if they can compartmentalize their beliefs and respect the individuals that they're representing, which are not all Christian people.

And there was an interesting article that I read about Christian persecution, where they were talking about how they were being persecuted. And there was a few really interesting things. But they did recognize that the definition of persecution includes hostility and ill treatment, especially because of race or politics, religious beliefs, just like we had talked about early on.

So and then they go on to say that while they're not being fed the lines just yet, there's no conceivable doubt that Christians are facing hostility and ill treatment for their faith in America. Then they go on to say even worse, they're wrong from a biblical understanding of the word, Jesus clearly taught that persecution can and will take on many forms that don't result in death, and go on to quote some scripture that I'm not going to quote. And then, but essentially, it creates this ugly fear mongering idea of what persecution is, and that you were warned that the people would turn on you and be hateful towards you.

And they, you know, talk about how the warning signs were all listed. But the thing is, what they're talking about is persecution really falls under martyrdom, to me, and that they're trying to put themselves out there as victims and victimization is a very dangerous road to hoe when you're trying to talk about things, because now you're trying to make this about how people are hurting you and how you are the injured party in everything. And that just doesn't go to any place good.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, well, and the examples they're giving are examples of people standing up and saying, No, you can't force your religion on me. And they're trying to use those as examples of persecution. No, that's defense.

And it's the same sort of thing that I have run into where when I've seen bigotry, and I call bigotry out, then I can't tell you how many times people have said, Well, by you calling me a bigot, you're a bigot. It's like, No, no, no.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, I mean, like they said, any number of different things, it could be mocked slandered for your faith. Well, I'm going to disagree. I don't like it when people do that.

But that's not necessarily being persecuted. But then they talk about being passed over for a promotion. Okay, well, that's maybe that falls under and that's wrong.

But the way that they said it, which I found interesting was or being passed over for a promotion at your consulting firm, because you refused to fly the pride frag pride flag from your cupholder during June. Well, I don't know what kind of cupholder carries a pride flag. But the important thing is that they made a specific claim about them not being able to do something based on their religion, which was in fact, persecution.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And, you know, to anybody who says you're gonna get passed over for a promotion, because you're Christian, let's try this experiment. Let's, let's, let's go to a place of work.

And let's let the boss know that you're Christian and the boss know that I'm a Satanist. And let's see which one of us actually gets passed over for that promotion. In fact, why don't we look at politics and see how many non Christian politicians are there?

Most people will almost change their, their, their faith once they get into politics, because they know if they run as a Christian, they're going to get the votes, especially if they're on the GOP side. Do you see many Satanists or pagan politicians out there?

[Lilin Lavin]
No, as a matter of fact, when when we've ever discussed looking at politics, we've received death threats.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yep. Because I, I said, Hey, you know, maybe, maybe I should run because it was that whole Jason Rayford thing where he was saying, you know, Christians need to run for everything from school boards to this to that. So I kind of put a post out there.

And I was like, Okay, you know what, you're right, maybe maybe we should run, I will run. And these are these are the things that I'm going to focus on equal rights, immigration, criminal reform, legalizing marijuana, you know, it's just a whole list of things. Oh, and by the way, I'm a Satanist.

And then you get followed up.

[Lilin Lavin]
Even people that are on board with things that you might have said may feel very uncomfortable with that. But I do feel like that's something as a society we have to work to move out of. It shouldn't be Oh, what is it that you believe?

It's what do you stand for? And do you showcase that in your daily life? Is that who you truly are?

And how will your leadership and who you are as an individual affect what it is that you're out there doing? And that's one of the things I think that I often try to express to people, it doesn't matter what you believe as long as what you're doing reflects a positive thing that's going to affect people well and help people. It shouldn't matter.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I mean, actions speak louder than words. You know, what what you personally believe shouldn't matter at all. No, it comes to politics, because you're supposed to compartmentalize your religious beliefs from the laws that you are looking past.

But we all know, they have a very hard time doing that. And so that's why people vote based on religion, which, again, I would kind of, again, go back to the argument and say that's a form of persecution. Because if you're purposely not voting for an individual, even though they hold all the same standards, as you would, but they're of a different faith, then right, at the end of the day, I think it comes down to don't claim to be something that you're in fact putting on other people.

[Lilin Lavin]
And there is a group of people that identify as Christian. I don't know if I would say that they fit what I understand Christianity to be. But they do go after people of color.

They do go after individuals from the LGBTQIA plus community. They do go after other Christians. They do go after atheists and agnostics and Satanists and Jewish people.

There is no short list of who is being attacked right now in this country, to the point that I cannot even stream TV without getting an ad about anti-Semitism and the rising violence against certain, you know, it's mind boggling to me. I could not have imagined a world that I'm going to live in where we've gone so far backwards that we're looking at, you know, circa 1940s, you know, anti-Semitism.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, it is. It is pretty crazy, because it's, it's like they they've gotten the okay to say their inside words outside. You know, I grew up in Texas.

So things like the Klan and stuff like that, that was part of, you know, you knew it was there. You know, you knew it was there. Now, in Dallas itself, it wasn't really there.

But once you got outside of Dallas, it was definitely there. And then there was a time as this country moved forward, where that went away. And unfortunately, we are going backward.

And these groups are becoming more prevalent, and they're vocal. And it's, it seems to be okay, in so many people's eyes that, oh, okay, no, no, they're, they're fine. That's freedom propaganda, right?

It's freedom of speech.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. And that that's coming from Paul, I will say, devoid, take the religion out of it for a minute. There is a political force that's that's definitely out there very loudly, preaching hate, that is very loudly pushing ideas about, you know, people being othered, because they don't fall in line with a specific nationalistic viewpoint.

And they have no problem really literally persecuting people of many types. And nobody thinks twice about it. It's like reality TV, 24 seven, they just get to spout off whatever kind of crap they want.

But because they're allowed part of the gallery, nobody wants to say anything to them.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And I have no problem calling out, you know, Christian nationalists on on Twitter, and I'm doing it because of the laws that they're trying to pass. I'm doing it because what they're trying to do in America, if they were not trying to change our country, if they weren't acting in a bigotry, you know, in a bigoted way, I wouldn't have shit to say about them.

I wouldn't give I would not give two shits what religion they are. I care about their action. And and that's where I try and call that stuff out, which is very fair.

[Lilin Lavin]
And like I've told many people when I'm working, not working, but when I'm on social media, interacting with individuals, and I will get into arguments with people, I honestly, I'm not ever truly think I'm going to win over the person that I'm having the difficulty with, I do try to maintain a certain type of decorum where I will not go to certain lengths, I do not believe in body shaming, even if I don't like the person I'm discussing something with, I'm not going to attack them personally, because that's a logical fallacy. That is just I try not to even get into any of those. But when you as an individual are being a hateful person, and I'm interacting with you, it's to let the people that you're hating on know that people will stand up for you.

And I would love to see more people do those things where you're not necessarily going to change the individual that's starting the negativity, but you let other people know and the more we do that, the louder that voice becomes and the more positive change we can push for.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I totally agree. Because I used to not understand I would be like, Why are you arguing with these people, you're never going to change their mind. But then as I started watching, I was like, Okay, you're right, it's not their mind that you're looking to change.

It's one letting other people, other groups, other communities know that no, there are people out there defending them. And then there's also people that are on the fence. And sometimes when you when you make logical arguments, and you know, you stick to a very logical, you know, kind of base discussion, these people go off the rails, then that person can kind of look at that and be like, Wow, okay, yeah, I started to go down that road of crazy.

And no, I don't want to continue down that road of crazy, because this is where it brings you.

[Lilin Lavin]
And right.

[Tommy Lavin]
Um, yeah, but I mean, it's getting on about 55 minutes here. So we're getting close to an hour. I want to keep the podcast at or under an hour.

Just because after that, then they they start to drag on. And I think we've probably talked the subject pretty well. I say, you know, persecution.

Did you have anything else you were thinking of? Or?

[Lilin Lavin]
No, I just I think the only thing I could say is persecution is definitely happening at an alarming rate. There are definitely religious people that are being persecuted. I don't believe it's those that are often claiming the persecution, and that we as individuals have the ability to stand up against it in a positive, healthy manner.

And to let people know that that's not going to be accepted, and that we we do all deserve the right to live and believe and have lives that others don't agree with, provided they're not harming people. And we have that right as individuals to be supported in that regardless of whether other people agree with us, I should be able to look at you as a human being and say you have a right to whatever it is that makes you happy. And that's not up to me to decide.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And having laws where people are allowed to have choices isn't isn't persecution. It's it's giving choices, having laws where you take choices away from people, right?

That's persecution. And that's, that's kind of a real key difference there.

[Lilin Lavin]
That's a big one with the the pro choice movement. Literally, it's called pro choice, because I believe that most people involved in it would be just as happy to support women that want to have children but are facing socioeconomic issues that prevent them from having children and feel like they have to make a decision because they won't be able to feed their other kids that they won't be able to keep their home if they do this. And it's a heartbreaking thing for them to have to realize and to put themselves through emotionally, physically, because they're trying to be a responsible person.

They know they can't offer somebody a life and they can't go through that. They can't miss work. There's so many things that nobody considers.

And when you take those choices away, you leave them with nothing. And a lot of these people that are anti the pro choice, the pro birth people, they don't care about what that individual is going through and they vote for things that intentionally take away health programs, that take away medical care, that take away child care, that take away all the things people need to be able to have kids that they may want, but they don't they don't have the choice. And just as much as a person that doesn't ever want kids finds themselves pregnant and they should be able to have healthy sex lives, so no, pregnancy should not be a result of sex.

It happens, and by all means, please be cautious so that you can prevent it, but that doesn't always work. You know, you have fallibility when it comes to, you know, birth control. There's issues when when you're using condoms or pills, you take an antibiotic and it nullifies that.

It's about giving everyone the option to decide what happens for their life, their body. Their reality is that not everyone can have children, and those that want them should have safety protocols in place so that they can safely do that in a good way, so the kids are ending up in foster care, so their parents aren't homeless with kids, so that people have a roof over their head and an education and health care.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, and abortion is and women's rights, that's totally another subject that it is, we will definitely dive into. I think there is a greater reason why they're pushing the they're pushing the pro birth so much. And I do believe that it goes into, you know, the whole really trying to move America backwards and trying to move women out of the workforce and back into the house.

[Lilin Lavin]
It's one of the it's one of the biggest forms of persecution that's happening right now is taking away the women's right to choose, taking away an individual's right to choose, and then going up against the LGBTQ community and dividing members of that community and telling people they don't belong to that community and taking away rights for people in that community and threatening even basic things like marriage and saying, well, marriage is only because of God, blah, blah, blah.

And no, these are all real persecutions that are happening on a routine basis. And these are the real things that we have to do something to stand up against because it is affecting the majority of people that live here.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yes, I agree with that. And I think that is a great ending to this segment. And I would, you know, further segments, we're going to dive much deeper into some of these other subjects where we can have, you know, discussions on women's rights, pro-choice things, things like that, and really, really get into those subjects as well.

So I think, I think you ended this, this perfectly when it comes to persecution, what is persecution, and that no Christians get off your high horse, you're not being persecuted. You all are the ones that are persecuting. Let's, let's be real here.

And with that, I will bid you all adieu.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yes. And throw you out a happy Hail Satan.

[Tommy Lavin]
Hail Satan. And we will speak to you next time.