Hello, and welcome to episode 24 of The Spectrum. This was recorded on July 18, 2025. Today we’re going to examine what some people are saying about LGBTQ+ people and how, in my opinion, this is not free speech.

But, first, what is free speech? Most Americans grow up thinking that free speech is the right to say whatever they want. But, as we get older, we realize that isn’t true. The classic example is that we don’t have the right to yell “Fire!” In a theater when there isn’t one. Doing that would cause panic and cause injury and even death. But, somewhere between that and the everyday speech we all engage in is a boundary where speech can’t be restricted on one side and speech can be restricted on the other.

Before we go too far, I’m not a lawyer and I’m definitely not going to play one on the internet. I think most of us think, like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said in 1964 about hard core pornography, that we may not be able to define the boundary but we know when it’s been crossed.

I’m not sure that’s true and I think it very much depends upon your own perspective. That’s why we need clearly defined boundaries so that we know what speech is protected and what speech isn’t. 

Now, let’s look at a concrete example. This is based on reporting in The Advocate on July 7, 2025. A link to the article will be in the show notes (https://www.advocate.com/news/indiana-lgbtq-church-death-preach). 

An Indiana church held a “pray the gay away” event but it became clear that from the perspective of the speakers at this event, it wasn’t about prayer. They wanted stronger and more direct action.

Stephen Falco gave a sermon at Sure Foundation Baptist Church. He preached that gay people should die by suicide and called gays disgusting. Another speaker, Wade Rawley, said that queer people should be beaten and stomped in the mud and should kill themselves.

Church evangelist Justin Zhong defended the statements accusing LGBT+ people of being domestic terrorists and saying that the government should execute gay people. He did say that people shouldn’t take the law into their own hands but leave it to the government.

I followed the link to the so-called Church’s Facebook page and it was quickly clear that this organization in the mold of the Westboro Baptist Church made infamous by Fred Phelps. If you don’t recall and honestly, I’d like to be able to forget, Phelps was the person who picketed funerals with his followers holding signs saying like like “God hates fags”.

It’s time we stopped pretending these people are Christians. They have perverted and distorted religion until it has become a monstrosity. They are a thinly disguised attempt to control people and to convince others that their own intolerance is justified. Groups like Sure Foundation are sadly not alone. They exist all over the country.

As I said, I’m not a lawyer and I’m definitely not a preacher. But, to me this all sounds like hate speech. Calling for the death of a group of people based solely on who they are is the very essence of hate speech. The fact that they are calling for the government to do it and not the average person is not an excuse. If you need a history lesson, this is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany. The government started killing people solely because of their characteristics. They killed Jewish people. They killed gay people. They really liked killing people and this abomination of a church is only missing the Swastika to make them full-on Nazi. They call gay people disgusting but it is their own behavior that causes disgust. 

Their speech is not harmless. It will get people killed. Unfortunately, our current administration won’t do anything to stop it because they will call it free speech and say we can’t restrict that. But, it’s really hate speech and we all need to stand up and let everyone know we won’t tolerate that behavior, especially from an organization that pretends to be religious.

Our government officials are already rounding people up based solely on their ethnic background and carting them off the street and complaining that there are too many of them to actually follow the Constitution and give them due process. That’s a pretty clear sign that the people in the government are pretty comfortable with Nazi ideology. They are building concentration camps and if they run out of immigrants or can’t find enough to keep them full it isn’t a stretch to see them looking for easy targets. Will they start rounding up transgender people simply for existing publicly?

I don’t mean to be alarmist but at the same time, we need to be aware of the danger. What I’m describing doesn’t seem imminent but it also doesn’t seem impossible given a government staffed by people who think that human rights only apply to straight, white men.  At the very least, I don’t expect the people running the Justice Department to do anything at all, except possibly take notes on future ideas for their to-do list.

But, the rest of us know that this is not free speech. It is not speaking American values and it is not acceptable.

Before I go, I want to update everyone on episode 23’s call for likes and subscribes on YouTube to help get the word out. That picked up six subscribers and we also picked up 19 likes though we also picked up 10 dislikes so the overall percentage remains about the same. These are all very small numbers in absolute terms, but for a small channel trying to find its footing. I think it had an effect as we did get a higher viewership on that episode than any other. It did also seem to encourage the haters. Let’s keep it up. As my wife keeps reminding me, the podcast is a resource for people. Where the people that run Sure Foundation Baptist Church speak hate and control dressed up like Christianity, we want to speak truth and create understanding and compassion. We want to show people that we, as a society, are stronger for our differences. Help us get that message out by continuing to like the videos, subscribing and sharing on your social media. We’re not here to sell anything. We’re not looking for money. We only want to do our small part to help make the world a better place for all of us.

 If you have a story about LGBTQ+ life, positive or negative, please feel free to reach out to me at spectrumpodcasthost@gmail.com. Until next time, take care.