 Coming up next we have Edwina Rogers. She's gonna give a talk about the truth behind Washington. Lovely. She's the executive director of Secular Coalition of America. She's a lobbyist and an attorney. She's worked for two presidents and four senators. And I'll leave it up to you to guess which ones. She's a regular guest on MSNBC and Fox News. Again she's doing a talk called The Truth Behind Washington. Her haiku is deep in Washington. Edwina fights the good fight. I couldn't do it. Please welcome Edwina Rogers. Thank you everybody. Okay so we're going to have the truth according to Washington and I'm going to make it a little bit entertaining which is unusual when you're talking about politics. So as you were told I'm Edwina Rogers and I'm the executive director for the Secular Coalition for America and I've been in this position for approximately one year. So we're gonna start off with something very interesting. We will have a fairy tale. So the truth according to Washington. A fairy tale. So once upon a time Earth was created 6,000 years ago. Have you heard that before? There it is all of a sudden. Appeared one day. And then our next slide here. There's a quote. It says I want Louisiana to be a place where teachers can use an evangelical curriculum that teaches that humans walked alongside dinosaurs 6,000 years ago. And you see there? Who is that? Bobby Jindal. The current governor of Louisiana. Yes. You're thinking good thing. You're not in Louisiana. There you have the human being chased by the dinosaur. All right so who do we have next? Let's see. This is all very entertaining. So what this issue has to do with until dinosaur flatulence caused a flood that changed the earth. His quote was we don't know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. He said in February 2007 hearing could be dinosaur flatulence you know or who knows. We'll see what the dinosaur does here. There's a dinosaur. Another one. A little bit of dinosaur gas holding blows away. Nuclear blast. And then we have yes of course it's all cleaned up by the flood. Lucky Noah made a boat. There's the arc dropped down large enough to save creatures responsible for this gas induced flood. So we have here a quote from the Texas State Board of Education member Don McLeary Roy and he said there was a room on there for brontosaurus that they were included at that time. There we go. And then of course he's going to need a mate. There you see. She's got lipstick on. So we have another very famous quote here, one of my favorites. This one says even though the dinosaurs are now gone we humans can use all the resources we like because a new flood can just fix it all. All right. And so we have here this is this quote is by Dana Rackabocker and he is on the House Energy and Technology Space Committee. I know that's quite the shame. And he also said further I would point out that if you're a believer in the Bible one would have to say the great flood is an example of climate change that can certainly was a cause by mankind over developing hydrocarbon energy. So we have another interesting slide. We did look around to see if we could find a quote from a Democratic member in the House or the Senate. We had to look a little bit hard but we did find one here. We found several. It says good thing too because earth could tear away at any moment there's earth. And this quote here is by Hank Johnson. And he basically said my fear is that the whole island he's talking about increasing the size of the military in Guam would become so overly populated that it would tip over and capsize. So there you have Guam tipping over because too many military personnel have been stationed there in Guam and sliding into the Pacific Ocean. So that's the end of our fairy tale. But you know let's get let's get serious here. This was very amusing. These attitudes expressed in this narrative that have shared with you are the people who are shaping public policy throughout this country. The government that put a man on the moon has been replaced with leaders that seem to lack even the most basic understanding of how this world works. Senators that set environmental policy believe that dinosaur fluctuates may be the cause of global warming. Representatives on the science committee believe that dinosaurs are extinct because there was no room on the Ark for them. When we vote for public officials we do so believing that they are qualified informed and responsible enough to make sound decisions based on facts. But logic on the hill is more often based on opinion is based on religion and the most vocal demographic at any given time. In my 25 years as a lobbyist in Washington I've seen it all and I've heard even more. From education to social policy I've heard the truth according to Washington and their truth just doesn't add up. The Secure Coalition for America represents 85 percent of the Americans that believe that Earth is more than 6,000 years old. On behalf of the Secure Coalition for America it's my honor today to call out the fakes, unmask the charlatans and introduce you to elected officials that are enemies of science and reason. We have heard the truth according to Washington. Now I represent and present to you the truth about Washington. So the science committee is responsible for much of the political conversation on the environment and the space program and scientific research. So let's start right at the top. So here we have Ralph Hall. He's former chairman of the science committee. He doesn't believe that 97 percent of climate scientists with their research that suggests that human activity is causing global warming. When asked about global warming, Hall responded, I've had people tell me if we had all the money in the world and put it in Texas Stadium people couldn't change nature's future one iota. He also said that according to the BP oil spill in 2010 his quote was the BP oil spill could not dampen my enthusiasm for offshore drilling. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a tremendous blossoming energy flower. Next we have Jim Sensenbrenner. He's Republican from Wisconsin and he has a quote here. He says I personally believe that solar flares are more responsible for climate cycles than anything that human beings do. Next we have Dana Röckenbacher, Republican from Georgia. And at a congressional hearing he suggested that global warming is actually caused by trees. And he had a quote here. It says that is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of rainforests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases? It's very unwise when you say. Or would people be supportive of cutting down older trees in order to plant younger trees as a means to prevent this disaster from happening? Was the second half of this quote. We have here a Republican from Washington Ed Orcutt. He claimed you would be giving off more CO2 if you're riding a bike than driving a car. That's pretty shocking. So however this flawed thinking is not limited to just environmental policy. We see it spilling over into all kinds of policy. Like for example on gay marriage. We have this quote here from Republican Saxby Chambliss. Let me go back to that so you can see it. And he said that commenting on why he wouldn't support same-sex marriage, he said I'm not gay so I'm not going to marry one. Therefore I'm not supporting it. That sounds pretty unenlightened doesn't it? On immigration here we have a quote from Don Young from Alaska. He says my father had a ranch. We used to have 50 to 60 wet backs to pick tomatoes. And you're thinking oh well he must have said that 30 years ago. He said it in March of 2013. Now let's go on to one of my favorites. Rick Santorum. On abortion. He said the real social security, the reason social security is in big trouble is we don't have enough workers to support the retirees. Well a third of all young people in America are not in America today because of abortion. He said that in May of 2011 during our Republican debate, presidential debate. We also have Mycopathy on immigration. He said that America has to import so many workers because for the last 35 years we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce. On capital punishment we have Republican Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah. He says that capital punishment is our way of demonstrating the safety of life. And then we have this one also is a really good one. Most of you probably remember Mark Samford who was the governor of South Carolina. Well he's now back and he's a congressman as a matter of fact just as of May. He says that there are real chinks in the armor of evolution being the only way we came about. The idea of there being a you know a little mud hole and two mosquitoes getting together and the next thing you know we have a human being is completely at odds with you know one of the laws of thermodynamics which is the law of in essence destruction. We have Republican from Kentucky here. I would hope that creationism is present as a theory in the classrooms in a science classroom alongside evolution because remember evolution is just a theory. And probably most of you remember this lady who was running for the Senate in Delaware. She said well creationism in essence is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says that God created the earth in six days six twenty-four periods and there was just as much if not more evidence supporting that. I think she's best known for dabbling in witchcraft. And we have here a gentleman who serves on the United States House of Committee the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and he came out with this quote just about a year ago. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory all that is lies straight from the pit of hell and it's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. This is Paul Brown of Georgia who's currently serving on that committee. The current chair Lamar Smith is Christian scientist and there you have it. And so next we have on to reproductive rights issues. We've got a Republican from North Carolina Virginia Fox here. She said there's no more scientific fact than that absence is the only way to prevent STDs and pregnancy. And then of course my favorite one here is the current governor of South Carolina. Women don't care about contraception said Nikki Halley who's the current governor of South Carolina. Good thing we don't live there. Oh and this one unfortunately did in Congress and Aiken but he said first of all from what I understand from doctors pregnancy from rape is really rare. Aiken said if it's a legitimate rate the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. Remember him he was running for the Senate in Missouri last year and was a member of Congress. So those are the problems. Now here we are we're in Washington we're in all 50 states and we are certainly trying to combat that. We've got a list here you can see on the screens of bills that we're currently fighting equal protection rights for fetuses absence only money for absence only and not properly correct sex education vaccine research trying to prove that is causing autism for example. And we have some successes on the federal side. You can see here that we've been able to do a few things. We've been able to beat back the religious exemptions and the Employment Non-Determination Act. We're trying to get non-theist chaplains in the military prevent religious privileging and the tax cold and school vouchers where money is going off to religious schools federal taxpayer dollars. So we're working on health and safety issues. We're all over education issues which has a lot to do with creationism versus evolution. We are very involved in discrimination issues which would be marriage equality and things of that nature. We are very involved at the state level. We have Bobby Jindal here having that laying on the hands you know one day over at the state Capitol as you can see and there's quite a long list of most of the egregious things are actually happening at the state level. That's why we set up our 50 state chapters that we've got quite the list going here where pharmacists can refuse to dispense emergency contraceptions. Eight states don't expect religious child care centers 21 exempt employers from contraceptive coverage. 30 states ban all forms of marriage except for one man one woman 32 states sex education curricula is not medically accurate and 44 states require school children to use under God in their pledge of allegiance and the list is very long. We have just recently Louisiana Tennessee have passed laws that require and allow teaching of creationism in public schools. We've got lots of states that also allow teaching of Bible study in those states. The long list there in the public schools. We have been able to have some state wins over the last year since we've created most of the state chapters. There were two about a year ago and now we have all 50 different degrees of maturity. So we'd love everybody in the room to get involved in your state chapter. For example, in North Carolina, they introduce a bill to allow North Carolina to declare their official religion and anybody want to guess what it was going to be. Southern Baptist. And so we've been able to beat that back. In California, we were able to beat back public dollars going to religious schools in Colorado. There was an intelligent design which sort of the new term for teaching of creationism. We're able to beat that back in Colorado. We're fighting that in 12 states as a matter of fact. We were able to kill the bill in Montana also and in Rhode Island, we had some success in bringing marriage equality to that state and also we had success with the governor signing a bill to have a national day of reason. We're scoring these people. We score all of the 435 members of Congress. We score all hundred senators. We score everybody who's running for president. And this year we're scoring all the state elections. But fortunately for us and my staff, there are only two. We've got Virginia and New Jersey. Next year, of course, there'll be many states that are having the state elections. So we'll be coming out with those score cards and being very active in those two states come September. And we're looking for states where they're facing, we're looking for elected officials that base their public policy decisions on reason and science and not base it on their own personal religious beliefs or pseudo science. And so how do we do this? We, Secret College of America, we work to unify the movement. We work to facilitate the coordination within the movement among mainly the other national organizations. And so every Thursday at noon, you can find us all on the phone for 30 minutes. And we're going over what it's the White House up to with Congress, all the secular events and the news, what's happening internationally with the UN. We give a judicial update. Also, we go over the state chapters. Any new research that helps us make our case, of course, is something that we're very focused on in expanding the coalition and then also making sure that we're involved in charity work. We have a new guide that's going to be coming out in September that will be most helpful and will very much help us to turn around this trend that we just went over. It's called the Secure Policy Guide for Legislatures and Decision Makers. We've got our co-chairs in place. And so we're going to talk about and describe the constitutional framework, all the health and safety issues, education, discrimination, military discrimination, tax policy, international policy. And the reason something like this is so important as a former Senate staff person and someone who worked at the White House, you might have just an hour or two or three hours and your member will come to you and say, Edwina, there's going to be a vote. In one hour, I need the best arguments from the original sources, from the stakeholders, pros and cons. Perhaps it might be anything like it could be teaching creationism in the public schools. So we've been at a disadvantage because in the past, our side of the story hasn't been really accessible. So it's going to be very accessible, searchable, electronic, sent to all the staff for every senator, congressman in all states and also at the national level. So we're very pleased to be coming out with this document in September. We offer all types of other resources. We've got, we talked about the call. We have a national sector calendar. We do legislative tracking. We have that at the national level in all 50 states. We mentioned the scorecards. We're also working on a very aggressive outreach program for women and minorities. We do action alerts. We have all kinds of research available in our 50 state chapters, of course. So we're certainly trying to make a difference here. And so how can you get involved? I would very much urge you to vote and vote in a very informed way and do your research before you vote for some of these elected officials that then we have to deal with when they come to Washington or at the state level. And then also I would encourage you highly to get involved in your local state chapter for the Secure Coalition for America. You can just go to our website, Secure.org, and you can just get into the database. It doesn't cost anything. And put in your zip code and we know which state you're in, and you'll be getting your state materials. And then of course, as your, before you leave the website, you can hit the donate button. And so just a little bit more about the Secure Coalition for America and what we're here to do. Of course, you know, we're dealing with a very serious threat here to our most basic freedom, freedom of thought and conscience. And so I would like for everyone in the room to please stop being what I would call a polite extremist by doing nothing. You're being very polite and you're allowing the extremists to come over. So please consider joining the Secure Coalition for America and take back America. And so here we have my information, our contact information. We have a table right out front where you can stop by and you can sign up to get into our database or you can go to our website. We've got key chains and other giveaways and all kinds of information. And I am the one who's standing in between everyone in this room and lunch. So I told myself since I'm right before lunch that I would not get up here and be long winded, that I would be very aggressive even though I'm from rural Alabama, I would speak as quickly as I could so that you can get out and enjoy the fine food. So thank you very much. I look forward to meeting all of you in person. Thank you so much, Edwina Rogers. Edwina Rogers.