WEBVTT 00:00.051 --> 00:02.373 [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, you're really welcome back to the Prejoice Podcast. 00:02.413 --> 00:11.659 [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to record this as sort of a companion piece to an article that I released today titled, Sure, sexual abuse is bad, but his policies are so good. 00:12.120 --> 00:23.888 [SPEAKER_00]: And the article was talking about how we, as a society, are so quick to let sexual predators lead organizations both locally and on national stages or positions in government, 00:24.648 --> 00:41.956 [SPEAKER_00]: As long as those people are impressive enough in other areas, and I inkred the story with a experience I had growing up in an independent fundamental Baptist church, says that the church I grew up in a self-admitted predator got behind our pulpit every week, leading music, and singing specials. 00:42.476 --> 00:48.119 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not joking when I say that the song he sang most often was a rendition of he touched me. 00:48.759 --> 00:50.480 [SPEAKER_00]: The irony was enough to make you vomit. 00:51.320 --> 00:58.527 [SPEAKER_00]: Despite having very recently confessed to sexually abusing a teenage girl at a prior church, there he was, each Sunday, leading worship. 00:59.127 --> 01:02.430 [SPEAKER_00]: I remember asking a few people, is there no one else that can sing? 01:02.970 --> 01:05.913 [SPEAKER_00]: Was he talented enough to overshadow his horrific crimes? 01:06.494 --> 01:08.455 [SPEAKER_00]: Was this man completely irreplaceable? 01:09.256 --> 01:11.398 [SPEAKER_00]: I find myself now asking the same questions. 01:11.738 --> 01:15.041 [SPEAKER_00]: I'll be at about men on much larger stages than that 300-seat auditorium. 01:16.723 --> 01:28.167 [SPEAKER_00]: I injured the story in that not because I just want to beat the dead horse about my childhood and the things that I saw, but also those experiences were kind of like a major event for me. 01:28.447 --> 01:31.548 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a time where I got to see what the church valued. 01:32.428 --> 01:37.873 [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, it came down to a spot of, we like how this guy sings and leads music. 01:38.153 --> 01:41.376 [SPEAKER_00]: No one else will do it, and so we'll take this guy and put him up there. 01:42.116 --> 01:46.981 [SPEAKER_00]: And I just remember asked that question over and over again, like, can nobody else sing in this church? 01:47.521 --> 01:51.404 [SPEAKER_00]: And even if this person was the most talented singer in the entire world, 01:52.245 --> 01:56.469 [SPEAKER_00]: does he need to be the one representing the church on stage and leading us in worship? 01:57.149 --> 02:10.001 [SPEAKER_00]: And the answer I got time and time again was that this man's, you know, through action, this man's role as a worship leader overpowers any controversy that's around him or anything that he's admitted to in the past. 02:10.641 --> 02:16.362 [SPEAKER_00]: And so as I see in the article, now I find myself in a longer 16-year-old asking questions about my church. 02:17.543 --> 02:27.265 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a 30-year-old podcaster who's sitting here looking at the world and going, why are we putting men on stages and giving men immense amount of power? 02:28.025 --> 02:36.227 [SPEAKER_00]: Even when they've committed horrific crimes against, sometimes one person and other times, 10, 11, 12, 20 different people. 02:39.748 --> 02:49.714 [SPEAKER_00]: I continue in the article that in August of 2025, I read that 32% of Democrats maintain support for Andrew Cuomo in his mayoral run for New York City. 02:50.314 --> 02:52.976 [SPEAKER_00]: Cuomo sexually harassed at least 11 to 13 women from 2013 to 2021. 02:56.998 --> 03:11.916 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the very early videos I did on this channel was urging Democrats who are left leaning media publications to continue hammering on this Cuomo story because so often, and I've seen this pattern over and over again, so often. 03:12.697 --> 03:30.045 [SPEAKER_00]: If somebody aligns with someone's political values, they will brush aside very serious allegations or findings of investigations that, you know, like we saw with Cuomo, where you have 11 to 13 women who were all sexually abused by this man, all sexually harassed. 03:30.565 --> 03:32.465 [SPEAKER_00]: within his circle. 03:33.326 --> 03:42.468 [SPEAKER_00]: And so, when you're reading in 2025, the 32% of Democrats still maintain their support for him, that points to something very wrong here. 03:43.508 --> 03:54.330 [SPEAKER_00]: I continue talking about across the ocean, Conor McGregor felt comfortable enough to announce a bid for the presidency of Ireland, believe that was just his past week, even though it's been less than a year since 03:59.692 --> 04:08.851 [SPEAKER_00]: The aftermath of that rape left her hospitalized with injuries that included a tampon lodged inside her that had to be removed by forceps. 04:09.580 --> 04:13.842 [SPEAKER_00]: And again, going back to, if someone's talented enough, we overlook their crimes. 04:13.982 --> 04:18.864 [SPEAKER_00]: There are still people pushing to see Connor McGregor get back in the ring. 04:19.125 --> 04:25.407 [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't even come down to moral positions or political values or their view of the world. 04:26.388 --> 04:34.352 [SPEAKER_00]: If you can kick good enough, we're willing to discard victims to see your career progress, to see you move forward. 04:35.412 --> 04:42.279 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, of course, I move into the glaring example of Donald Trump who occupies the highest position in American politics. 04:42.539 --> 04:53.230 [SPEAKER_00]: It is a 40% approval rating among Americans with about 83% support among Republicans and, of course, and it includes this in the article, but a large swath of those are evangelicals. 04:53.751 --> 04:57.875 [SPEAKER_00]: The same type of people that I grew up around, the same type of people I heard sermons from. 04:58.495 --> 05:00.757 [SPEAKER_00]: as a kid growing up in fundamentalism. 05:01.378 --> 05:12.568 [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't seem to matter that Trump rub shoulders was sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein for years, or that at least 28 women have accused him of sexual harassment, assault, and rape since the 1970s. 05:13.129 --> 05:17.713 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, one of the things that really got me frustrated and right in the article was that on September 8th, 2025, 05:19.434 --> 05:26.359 [SPEAKER_00]: An 83 million dollar civil judgment against him was appheld for his sexual abuse of and defamation against E.G. 05:26.379 --> 05:26.919 [SPEAKER_00]: and Carol. 05:27.499 --> 05:37.326 [SPEAKER_00]: And what really fired me up is on that same day, the White House released their article about a hundred things that Trump had done positively for faith-based movements in this country. 05:37.986 --> 05:50.293 [SPEAKER_00]: And so you have someone position themselves as a icon for evangelical support as someone who is one of, I believe in the article, it's something like one of the most faith positive presidents in American history. 05:51.133 --> 05:59.598 [SPEAKER_00]: And that same day, you're seeing a verdict against him upheld for rape and for defamation against his victim. 06:00.736 --> 06:21.464 [SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, when you examine just those candidates alone, when you look at whether it's a Democrat like Andrew Cuomo, whether it's someone who's running as an independent in Ireland, like a Conor McGregor, or whether you see a Republican like Donald Trump, it's easy to see that a history of sexual misconduct is a mere speed bump for men who want to pursue the highest positions in their lands. 06:22.044 --> 06:26.686 [SPEAKER_00]: So I have to ask, and I reiterate here, is Cuomo's progressive platform worth discarding 06:28.867 --> 06:34.989 [SPEAKER_00]: Is Trump's prayer with faith leaders worth pretending he has an assaulted women and bragged about grabbing them by the pussy? 06:35.910 --> 06:42.812 [SPEAKER_00]: Is McGregor raping a woman to the point of hospitalization not enough to disqualify him from announcing a presidential run? 06:43.753 --> 06:48.074 [SPEAKER_00]: If these things aren't enough to disqualify these men, then what is? 06:48.094 --> 06:57.237 [SPEAKER_00]: I close out the article by saying that cancel culture gets talked about constantly, but I'm perplexed, because literal rape and sexual abuse don't seem to be enough to get 06:59.320 --> 07:07.922 [SPEAKER_00]: If we don't have the moral clarity to bar predators from pulpits, perhaps it should not surprise me that we also fail to keep them from political office. 07:08.722 --> 07:10.242 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's how I closed out the article. 07:10.462 --> 07:14.523 [SPEAKER_00]: And again, these conversations always go back to, what do we value? 07:15.263 --> 07:16.384 [SPEAKER_00]: What do we value as people? 07:16.464 --> 07:18.644 [SPEAKER_00]: Do we just value a number in someone's bank account? 07:19.124 --> 07:23.125 [SPEAKER_00]: I often hear stuff like when people are critical of an Elon Musk. 07:23.805 --> 07:30.409 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I haven't seen you build a multi-billion dollar company, or if you're talking about a Donald Trump, I haven't seen you close that many deals. 07:31.250 --> 07:50.283 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, there's a monetary value there, or when there's a countermeasure, who is, you know, a top fighter, you know, well, what have you done, or your jealous of his fame, or you wish you could have accomplished half the things he has, or you look at a Cuomo, who, you know, tries to rest on these progressive principles, 07:54.771 --> 08:00.417 [SPEAKER_00]: All those things should not be enough to outweigh these horrific crimes that are carried out by these men. 08:00.958 --> 08:02.400 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, what do we value? 08:02.840 --> 08:04.422 [SPEAKER_00]: Do we value the victims? 08:05.102 --> 08:07.745 [SPEAKER_00]: Or do we value the people who made them victims? 08:08.366 --> 08:10.869 [SPEAKER_00]: That's a question that everybody needs to be asking themselves. 08:11.129 --> 08:16.715 [SPEAKER_00]: And again, I know this is the shorter episode, but I wanted to just record this and kind of get out on my system. 08:17.015 --> 08:31.611 [SPEAKER_00]: Why wrote this article and I post it on my Instagram and whatever it is, the thing where you can message all your followers there and I just said, every time I write a sub-stack article, it's usually because I just feel so overwhelmingly frustrated, I'm seeing right out of the corner my eyes. 08:32.291 --> 08:43.717 [SPEAKER_00]: where you see this cognitive dissonance between, you know, this being a figure like Trump being like the evangelical president, the president that's making us a Christian nation again. 08:44.597 --> 08:53.622 [SPEAKER_00]: While on the same day, there's a very stark reminder that he has been incredibly accused many times and found civilly liable for sexual assault. 08:54.602 --> 08:55.787 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what are we doing? 08:56.349 --> 08:59.520 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, is there nobody better that we can platform? 09:00.021 --> 09:02.410 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's my question for everybody watching today. 09:02.490 --> 09:06.765 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for tuning in, and I'll see you on another episode of The Prejudice by the Gas.