I was going to put this one lower in the list until I listened closely to the end. In fact I repeated the last half twice to make sure I understood what he was saying. He is the first, maybe only Christ bible pusher who has said openly and publically that conversion to Christianity, that believing in being a good person and treating others the way Jesus talked about lets you have a spot in his fold, his heaven. He specifically doesn’t mention atheists, but he has before. Hugs. Scottie
In the following video Rev Trevors makes clear he not only dislikes the prosperity gospel preachers, he dislikes the message they send for not being biblical. He totally shoots down the new push all these getting rich by preaching people are touting, Christian Nationalism and the idea that the US was founded as a Christian nation. He also at the end says something many not watch long enough to hear. He says that not only do these preacher claim things they can’t prove he also can’t prove his god exists. He says he teachers about faith, not proof. He says when someone claims that he worships an invisible daddy in the sky, he can’t prove god exists. He is OK with that. I really respect this man. Hugs. Scottie
In the one below this time he explains something very important a lot of people miss. Things that when the writers of the bible wrote about giants or Nephilim they meant fierce hard to beat warriors, not real bigger than humans giants. He explains that the writers used phrases and ideas from their own time. He is sort of admitting that the bible not to be taken literally and was written by humans for the people of that time. Hugs. Scottie
I did not think to write a blurb about the rest of the videos, I posted these before it dawned on me people might not watch them without understanding what they might be about. If you are wondering, fast-forward towards the end of each video to see if the video strikes a nerve and I would post it. Just remember I am an atheist and I enjoy listening to this guy. Hugs. Scottie
As the article says church attendance is declining. That means less money in the donation plates. That happened when gathering in groups was banned during Covid pandemic, churches lost a lot of revenue. So they fought Covid prevention messures. It was not religious, it was financial. That is what drives a lot of the church stances, putting more asses in the pews which puts more money in donation plates. That is why they were against gay marraige, as same sex couples did not breed like opposite sex couples and bring those crotch fruit to church. Hugs. Scottie
by Darrell Lucus
Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)
Keith Giles tells me He Gets Us caved and admitted it sold data after publicly maintaining it didn’t do so. He’s working on a follow-up now. But we now have an admission that #TheyExploitUs.
For the last two-plus years, we’ve seen numerous ads for the “He Gets Us” advertising campaign, which has bought billions of dollars in advertising for the last two Super Bowls, as well as on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. While it bills itself as an effort to overcome the bad rap that Christians have gotten over the years, it was actually funded by outfits with unmistakably right-wing underpinnings.
One of the major donors for the campaign is David Green, the founder of the unshakably conservative craft store chain Hobby Lobby, which proudly touts its successful push for the right to restrict its employees’ access to birth control. Additionally, the nonprofit that originally started the campaign, Servantly, donated scads of money to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christianist legal advocacy group that is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Rebekah Slager diaried about it here in 2023.
But it turns out “He Gets Us” has problems more fundamental than just possible astroturfing. Christian left blogger and retired pastor Keith Giles recently discovered that the people behind “He Gets Us” have no qualms about selling your information to local churches, despite public claims to the contrary. What is more, He Gets Us partners with a data-mining company that makes it all too easy for bad actors to get said information.
Giles relates the story of “Kathy Wilson,” a woman from his hometown of El Paso who happened to see a He Gets Us ad on Instagram. Wilson had been going through a rough time of late. She clicked on a link that connected her with someone in her area who could offer support and prayer if she wanted it.
Shortly after entering her information, she began getting texts from “Janice,” who co-pastors a church in El Paso alongside her husband. Kathy thought she was getting a sympathetic ear in her time of need. But a few weeks later, Janice was speaking at a women’s conference about the need for women to reach out to their unsaved friends. She used that talk to reveal that her church partnered with Christian data-mining company Gloo (no relation to the British electronic music group) to get cell data from women looking for support in partnership with He Gets Us—a direct contradiction of He Gets Us’ own claim that it is “not a back to church campaign.” She then whipped out her phone and read several personal texts from Kathy about how she felt lonely at times, even going as far as to share information about her occupation and her work schedule. A recording of that talk soon appeared on the Website of Janice’s church.
A few weeks later, Giles was sitting for coffee with one of his friends, “Gustavo,” who revealed he’d recently gotten an invite to a local prayer meeting after years of being out of church. However, he had second thoughts about going when he happened to check out the church’s Website and discovered Janice’s talk at that women’s conference. Gustavo was dumbfounded that anyone could be so cavalier with someone else’s trust—even more so after a quick Google search revealed a trove of personal information about Kathy.
Giles did his own search and corroborated what Gustavo told him. He then reached out to Kathy on Facebook and let her know Janice had essentially blasted out her information for all to see and hear. Kathy confronted Janice, who immediately offered an unreserved apology. That didn’t go far enough for Kathy, who retained a lawyer and sent a further message asking her to publicly apologize to her and give written assurance that she would never pull a stunt like this again. The talk was deleted soon afterward, and Janice promised to record another message apologizing to Kathy and post it to her church’s Website.
Giles soon discovered how Janice got her hands on Kathy’s information. It turned out that the Instagram ad was one of many ways Christian organizations “capture the personal data of people who are emotionally and spiritually vulnerable.” They then sell this data to Gloo, who then sells it to “local pastors seeking to grow their churches.” How does it work?
According to GLOO, a US-based Christian Data-Mining Company started by Scott and Theresa Beck in 2013, their mission is to “help ministry leaders scale their impact through technology.” To do that, they purchase meta-data from a variety of groups like He Gets Us, K-Love, Barna Research, and other organizations, to create a database of potential targets – like Kathy Wilson – and then they sell that data on their platform to more than 38,000 churches who sign up for their “Explorer” program.
Here’s how it works, according to GLOO’s own website:
“GLOO enables cooperative outreach by partnering with a wide range of campaign partners, including K-LOVE and He Gets Us. One partner, Churches Care, runs digital ads on channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Google on topics including faith, relationships, vocation, finance and health. When a person responds to an ad, they can provide their information to be connected to a church in their local area. The church can message the individual directly through the Gloo platform and help them with their inquiry, often resulting in the person receiving prayer, help for a need and even visiting that church in person.” (the emphasis is Giles’)
If that isn’t unnerving enough, Giles discovered that Gloo has almost no means of keeping people’s information from bad actors. He was able to sign up for a Gloo account with just his email address and a credit card. Once he paid $49.99 to set up an account, he immediately got a phone number to allow him to get texts forwarded to him from Gloo’s many partners—including He Gets Us. No one asked if he had any written evidence to prove he was affiliated with a church or religious organization.
He then found the “Explorer” program that Janice’s church had joined. Users with Premium accounts are automatically matched with “Explorers,” or people “reaching out for encouragement, prayer, or answers.” According to a Gloo press release, whenever “Explorers” interact with ads from Gloo partners, they have a chance to connect with a nearby church. Their ultimate goal is to amass data from over a million people.
In a statement, Come Near, the nonprofit that has run He Gets Us since 2023, maintains that it “does not, and has not, sold data to Gloo.” It added that it paused all Gloo-related activities this past February. But Giles discovered that Gloo lists He Gets Us as one of the campaigns with whom it partners, and discovered a screenshot from the Gloo Website that details how Gloo collects data from He Gets Us ads. Giles believes this means one of two things—either Gloo is lying about getting user information from He Gets Us, or He Gets Us may have given the data away for free. After all, Janice had to get Kathy’s information somehow.
Either way, Giles is being way too kind when he suggests a better description of “He Gets Us” is “He Tricked Us.” To my mind, it’s more accurate to say “They Exploit Us”—and are doing so in a textbook case of evangelicalism in its most unacceptable form. And in so doing, it is putting churches and pastors in astronomical reputational and legal danger. If I were Come Near and Gloo, I’d have lawyers on speed dial.
My dogs that love gravy! These laws are being driven by religion, more truthfully people that hid their true religious intent to get elected to then try to force their religious views on everyone else. To force everyone to live by their churches doctrines and their religious driven idea of what is moral or not. Do you understand this is a bunch of hyper religious people wagging their fingers at the people they dislike and telling them god sees what they are doing? This is our time of the temperance movement or the prohibition of alcohol that went so badly wrong. It is a small group of people who have extreme views of morality based on their own religious views who insist on forcing everyone else to live according to their views. It is the morality police and the vice patrols of the Islamic theocracies that the same people doing this in the US claim to hate. It is scary to me the regressive world they want to force the country into. Hugs. Scottie
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee’s version of the age verification bills being sponsored around the country by anti-porn religious conservative activists continues making its progress through the state legislature toward likely approval.
On Tuesday, the state’s Senate Finance Committee advanced SB 1792 — titled by its chief sponsor, Republican Senator Becky Duncan Massey, as the “Protect Tennessee Minors Act” — out of committee.
SB 1792 “would make porn websites criminally liable if they don’t verify the ages of users of their sites through photo matching,” local CBS affiliate WREG reported.
Massey compared the proposed new requirement to “age verification when folks go on an alcohol-related site,” and said her bill is necessary because, she believes, pornography “can cause damage” and “mental health issues.”
FSC Director of Public Affairs Mike Stabile, however, told XBIZ that Massey’s bill effectively criminalizes the distribution of adult content online, which he cited as a frequently stated goal of many conservatives.
Stabile also called SB 1792 “an escalation of what we’ve seen in other states” and deemed it “a grave threat” to First Amendment protections.
“First it was private lawsuits, then fines from attorneys general — Tennessee evidently wants to become the first state to begin arresting pornographers,” Stabile said, adding that the Tennessee bill’s chilling effect on legal speech will be substantial.
“The legislature’s own fiscal review committee says that it assumes ‘a majority of entities’ will simply stop publishing content in the state, but that, if not, ‘the increase in such convictions could be significant,’” he explained.
Stabile also pointed out that for many legislators, age verification is “just an excuse to increase liabilities for people that create, and platforms that host, material dealing in sex or sexuality. It’s no surprise that Tennessee has also recently expanded the definition of ‘material harmful to minors’ to include drag and other non-explicit LGBTQ+ content offline, and the bill itself criminalizes as little as the description of a nipple.”
Aylo: Recent Slew of AV Laws Are ‘Ineffective, Dangerous’
SB 1792 would also require websites to keep “anonymized age-verification data” for extended periods of time.
Massey told WREG, “They keep the data but not personally identifying data. They have to keep the data to prove that they did verify for seven years, but it can’t have their name, address. It can’t have any personal identifying markers.”
Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Utah and Virginia have passed similar age verification bills, all introduced by Republicans, while 19 other states have introduced similar legislation. Florida recently passed its version of the law, written by a legislator who is also a pastor, as part of a more comprehensive social media bill.
Aylo issued a statement about the Tennessee bill and the other laws, stating, “The way many jurisdictions worldwide have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy. Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws.”
Main Image: Anti-Porn crusader Tennessee Sen. Becky Duncan Massey (R)
Marchers carry a rainbow flag to the Alabama Capital during the 2019 Pride March and RallyPhoto: Mickey Welsh / Advertiser/ via IMAGN
Alabama’s legislature is advancing two censorious anti-LGBTQ bills: H.B. 130 would ban LGBTQ+ flags in classrooms and expand the state’s “Don’t say gay” law to include grades 6-8; H.B. 385 would jail librarians for giving “sexual or gender-oriented material” to minors without parental consent. Both bills were approved in the Alabama House of Representatives this week and now head to the state’s Republican-led upper legislative chamber.
Alabama’s current “Don’t Say Gay” law says that K-5 classrooms “shall not engage in classroom discussion or provide classroom instruction regarding sexual orientation or gender identity in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” H.B. 130 would also remove the section “in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards,” banning LGBTQ+ discussions completely.
The sweeping education bill also includes a trans bathroom ban.
The H.B. 130 expansion, which passed the state House on Tuesday, would expand the law to include grades 6-8 and also prohibit “flags symbolizing sexual orientations or gender identities” in all grade school levels.
The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Mack Butler (R), said the bill is necessary to “purify the schools” of “some indoctrination going on,” ABC News reported.
“[LGBTQ+ discussions and flags are] a component of Marxism where we’re – you know – destroying the family and teaching some of these things. Let it happen somewhere else other than our schools.” Butler said.
The ACLU of Alabama has spoken against the law, saying that it would silence “inclusive” and “essential” discussions among students and teachers in classrooms while violating their First Amendment rights to free speech.
On Thursday, the Alabama House also passed H.B. 385, a bill would expand the state’s definition of “sexual conduct” to include conduct that “knowingly exposes minors to persons who are dressed in sexually revealing, exaggerated, or provocative clothing or costumes, or are stripping, or engaged in lewd and lascivious dancing, presentations, or activities in K-12 public schools, public libraries, and other public places where minors are expected and are known to be present without parental consent.”
The law would place libraries in the same category as “adult-only” stores, movies, and entertainment” in order to criminalize librarians who provide “sexual or gender-oriented material” to minors without parental consent.
The bill would force school and public librarians to remove any books that other people find “obscene” or “harmful” to minors — though the law doesn’t specify who would determine what’s “obscene” or “harmful.” After filing a written objection to the library director or principal, librarians would then have seven days to remove the book from shelves.
Librarians who fail to do so could initially face a misdemeanor criminal charge and a fine of up to $10,000 and a county jail or hard labor sentence of up to one year. If a librarian is convicted of a second or subsequent violation, they could face a class C felony charge punishable by up to 10 years in prison, The Alabama Reflector reported.
State Rep. Neil Rafferty (D) said the law is so broadly written that it could allow a single complaint to result in a warrant being issued for someone who wears an objectionable Halloween costume or sundress.
“I do still have some serious problems with this because I feel like this is a violation of First Amendment, I feel like is easily going to be abused, and we will be dealing with unintended consequences of it,” Rafferty said.
“This bill is government overreach, robs parents of their rights, and would have a chilling effect on free speech by potentially incarcerating librarians because particular books are available, including even the Bible,” wrote Craig Scott, president of the Alabama Library Association.
Both bills are among several copycat laws across the country that seek to block minors from accessing LGBTQ+ content under the belief that such content “sexualizes” and “indoctrinates” children. Sponsors of these bills never note that numerous types of classroom and library materials have depicted heterosexual romance and issues without much parental or political objection.
Think about the US republicans in congress and the fundamentalist Christians preaching the great values of Russia under Putin’s dictatorship and this is why. These people want what Russia did, a complete ban and outlawing anything / all things LGBTQ+ from society. It is the same thing Islamic theocracies do. The culture warriors in the US, the fundamentalist and the Russian loving republicans want the ability to do this so very much. That is why they want tRump to be a dictator, so they can also do what Russia does, enforce a strict white male society free of any dissent and pushing a straight cis society on the public while the state fully endorses the fundamentalist Christian church. We really need to understand and fear what these people truly want. Hugs. Scottie
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Three novels – including James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” – have already been banned by a special council.
Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Chekov beware: Putin is coming for the books.
The latest front in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on LGBTQ+ people is purging books with LGBTQ+ content from Russia’s bookshelves and the internet.
A pony in the show has a rainbow mane, and Russian television speculates that that was enough to inspire the raid.
A new council set up by the Russian Book Union, a nominally independent body representing publishing professionals, has been tasked with conforming the publishing industry to Russia’s trifecta of anti-gay laws and rulings, according to France 24.
The council’s first act was to ban the sale of novels A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham, Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, and Heritage by Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin.
The council decided those works contravened article 6.21 of Russia’s code of administrative offenses, which prohibits “propaganda” advocating “non-traditional sexual relationships.”
Human Rights Watch says the law has been widely used to ban “sharing positive and even neutral information” about LGBTQ+ individuals and organizations.
While the Kremlin did not directly establish the new council, it is stocked with its representatives, including members of the Russian military and Orthodox Church who are reliably subservient to Putin and his authoritarian government.
Putin’s anti-LGBTQ+ campaign began in earnest in 2013 with the passage of the original law banning “gay propaganda” allegedly aimed at children. It was expanded in 2022 to ban any depiction of same-sex relationships in popular media, including advertisements, films, and video games. Last year, Russia’s Supreme Court ruled the so-called “International LGBT movement” is a terrorist organization.
While books were also covered under the propaganda law’s expansion in 2022, the esteem Russians hold for literature and the fraught history of censorship under Soviet rule meant officials were wary of targeting books in the same way as more popular forms of information and entertainment like the internet and television.
The new council’s focus on books is “part of a broader information-warfare crackdown related to the anti-gay-propaganda law”, said Jeff Hawn, a Russia specialist at the London School of Economics.
In Russia, “Literature has always enjoyed a special status because censorship of books was a very important part of the Soviet regime,” Hawn said. “And freedom for writers after the fall of the Soviet Union was enshrined.”
Mass media, however, has been a priority up until this point, according to Stephen Hutchings, a specialist in Russian and Soviet cultural history at the University of Manchester.
“What people see in the news [and the] press is much more significant, in that regard, than what is portrayed in fictional writing,” said Hutchings. “So it’s more pressing to control these platforms.”
But the publishing world has been waiting for the other shoe to drop.
In early 2022, an independent Russian journalist published a list on Telegram of 250 books at risk of being withdrawn from sale with adoption of the expanded propaganda law. Authorities at the time described it as alarmist.
All three recently banned novels were on the list.
The American Library Association (ALA) has released its top 10 most challenged books of 2023, and seven of them were challenged for containing LGBTQ+ content.
“In looking at the title of the most challenged books from last year, it’s obvious that the pressure groups are targeting books about LGBTQ+ people and people of color,” said ALA President Emily Drabinski in a press release.
The vocal protests of the ALA emphasize the ways in which libraries and their workers have striven to address the needs of their readers with progressive and crucial services.
“At ALA, we are fighting for the freedom to choose what you want to read. Shining a light on the harmful workings of these pressure groups is one of the actions we must take to protect our right to read,” Drabinski said.
The number of titles at risk for censorship increased by 65% in 2023 compared to the year before, the highest ever recorded by ALA.
The 10 most challenged books of 2023 are as follows:
Genderqueer by Maia Kobabe
Reasons: LGBTQ+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
Reasons: LGBTQ+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson
Reasons: LGBTQ+ content, sex education, claimed to be sexually explicit
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit, LGBTQ+ content, rape, drugs, profanity
Flamer by Mike Curato
Reasons: LGBTQ+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Reasons: Rape, incest, claimed to be sexually explicit, EDI content
Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit, drugs, rape, LGBTQ+ content
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit, profanity
Let’s Talk About It by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan
Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit, sex education, LGBTQ+ content
Sold by Patricia McCormick
Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicitly, rape
“These are books that contain the ideas, the opinions, and the voices that censors want to silence — stories by and about LGBTQ+ persons and people of color,” said Deborah Caldwell, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
“Each challenge, each demand to censor these books is an attack on our freedom to read, our right to live the life we choose, and an attack on libraries as community institutions that reflect the rich diversity of our nation. When we tolerate censorship, we risk losing all of this. During National Library Week, we should all take action to protect and preserve libraries and our rights.”
According to the ALA, most of the challenges prior to 2021 sought to remove access to a single title, whereas more recent challenges – fueled by the so-called parents’ rights movement and anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups like Moms for Liberty – target multiple titles 90% of the time.
“Overwhelmingly, we’re seeing these challenges come from organized censorship groups that target local library board meetings to demand removal of a long list of books they share on social media,” said Caldwell-Stone.
“Their aim is to suppress the voices of those traditionally excluded from our nation’s conversations, such as people in the LGBTQIA+ community or people of color. Each attempt to ban a book by one of these groups represents a direct attack on every person’s constitutionally protected right to freely choose what books to read and what ideas to explore. The choice of what to read must be left to the reader or, in the case of children, to parents. That choice does not belong to self-appointed book police.”
Why oh why are these people so scared of sex? Did they fail to get any as teenagers? Still failing to get some? Sad. Then somewhere I read it was all about increasing the white baby count while stopping any brown people from coming into the country. See I guess the plan is banning abortion, ban contraception, ban porn to keep males super horny with pent up need … causes early marriage and kids. Doubt it, see Utah. But it gets worse. These guys want to deny women the right to vote and ban divorce making them dependent on men again. Hugs. Scottie
Project 2025 operative John McEntee also supports abolishing the 19th Amendment
Former Trump aide John McEntee promised a ban on pornography was coming in the United States in a recent interview with Daily Wire host Michael Knowles. McEntee had a senior position in the Trump White House and is a key contributor to the infamous Project 2025, a collection of policy proposals
to transition the United States to Christian nationalist authoritarianism in the first 180 days of Trump’s second term.
“You bring up the elephant in the room,” McEntee told Knowles, “which is a stain on not only society but the entire dating culture as well, which is pornography. Whenever America bans that, which will be happening at some point, everyone will be much better off.”
The Project 2025 plan specifically lists a ban on pornography stating, “[Pornography] is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.”
“The minute that goes away, this country will flourish,” McEntee told Knowles.
McEntee was Donald Trump’s former personal aide but was fired from the White House over a gambling debt issue that prevented him access to a security clearance. Trump hired McEntee back in 2020 and made him director of the White House Personnel Office.
In that role, McEntee was instrumental in drawing up the policy proposal for Trump’s immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan right after Biden won the 2020 election in order to throw the early days of Biden’s term into chaos. McEntee’s plan was not implemented, and Biden withdrew troops from Afghanistan in August of 2021.
After leaving the White House, McEntee received seed money from billionaire tech investor, and Trump supporter, Peter Thiel to create a dating app for conservatives called “The Right Stuff.” McEntee subsequently gained a large following on social media promoting the dating app with short videos reciting pithy MAGA talking points while out at restaurants.
In the interview with Knowles, McEntee, now the CEO of a dating app, also said he was “rethinking the 19th Amendment,” which gave women the right to vote, after being shown a TikTok video about feminism.
Photo: Shutterstock
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