 I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do. Today I will be taught the word of God. I boldly confess my mind is alert. My heart is receptive. I will never be the same. I'm about to receive the incorruptible, indestructible, ever-living seed of the word of God. I'll never be the same. Never, never, never. I'll never be the same in Jesus' name. God bless you. It's my... Overture, girl! Hell no! You'll love to see it. Those were activists from the group Texas Rise Up for Abortion rights and even though televangelist Joel Osteen didn't acknowledge them during their protest, needless to say they got his attention given that he took to Twitter afterwards to block the activist group after they protested in his church. Now I know what a lot of you are going to respond by saying well, why disrupt a church service? Isn't this inappropriate? Joel Osteen doesn't have any political power. Shouldn't we leave the churches alone? Well, no. And the activist who was there leading this protest explained after she was kicked out why it's necessary to confront these televangelists right where they do these services, right where they disseminate the propaganda. Take a look. Today to break the silence and stand up because the Christians are not afraid to bother us and help their clinics where the laws are coming from. And she is exactly correct here. It is naive to continue to pretend as if preachers and televangelists don't have political power in this country. It's time to wake up and acknowledge that not only do they have political power and influence over politicians, they're setting the agenda. They're forcing all of us to live in their theocratic vision of the United States even if we have a secular constitution. People like Joel Osteen brainwashes millions of people, yet he gets to advance this political agenda while remaining completely tax-free. And that to me is completely unacceptable. No tax-exempt status for churches who push political agendas. Now to me, this is representative of a broader movement that needs to be renewed by the way and I think is coming back, but a movement that is pushing back against hate preachers setting the agenda. Now Joel Osteen doesn't necessarily speak of abortion as much as other hate preachers, but make no mistake about it, he's still a hate preacher nonetheless, even though he tries to market himself as a more loving and open-minded Christian. As the advocate explains, back in 2009 on The View, co-host Whoopi Goldberg asked Osteen if gay people are welcome at his church. He responded that they are, but homosexuality is not God's best. The following year he went on the show again and tried to clarify the statement with limited success. I don't think it's not God's best making us. In 2012, appearing on Oprah's next chapter, he told Oprah Winfrey, I believe that homosexuality is shown as a sin in the scripture, but he doesn't think anyone can become totally free of sin, so he believes gays will be accepted into heaven. Oh well, how loving. He thinks that human beings loving other human beings is sinful, but yet our God is so loving that he's willing to let you into heaven still despite that flaw. I say, go fuck yourself, Joel Osteen. This is hate. It may not be as explicit or in your face as other hate preachers, but it's hate and this rhetoric influences public policy because evangelicals in this country are the most powerful political group. They're represented by one of the two major parties in this country, so we have to start pushing back against these religious zealots, these Christian nationalists because like it or not, they're crafting public policy that affects all of our lives. Many of them have infiltrated Congress. Some of them are serving on the highest court in the land and today we just found out about some specifics of one of those Supreme Court justices. As the Guardian explains, the founder of the People of Praise, a secretive charismatic Christian group that counts the Supreme Court justice, Amy Coney Barrett as a member, was described in a sworn affidavit filed in the 1990s as exerting almost total control over one of the group's female members, including making all decisions about her finances and dating relationships. The court documents also described alleged instances of a sexualized atmosphere in the home of the founder Kevin Ranagan and his wife Dorothy Ranagan. So the church of Amy Coney Barrett asserts complete domination over women and then shockingly, her judicial philosophy, if we want to call it that, also happens to agree with the teachings of her church. Women shouldn't be able to control their own bodies. A popular propagandist on the far right, Matt Walsh who's a self-described theocratic fascist recently admitted that gender transitions should be banned full stop. We're not talking about gender affirming care for children he's saying even adults should not be able to transition. So these Christian nationalists literally want to control every single aspect of your life, right down to your gender expression. If you're male assigned at birth, sorry, you can't wear that dress, you can't paint your nails, you can't grow your hair because we say so, because our God says that that's bad, so we're going to make sure that we force you to live in the way that our religion dictates. Now let's go back to that video of these brave young ladies protesting at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church. The reason why this protest is good is because they are confronting these ideas at the source. These theocratic beliefs aren't spewed in a vacuum and the backwards beliefs they drill into the heads of their congregation profoundly affects public policy, which is why unequivocally accept this action. Now people will say, well Mike, what about other religions that hold bigoted beliefs? We absolutely must confront those bigoted beliefs, but the reason why it's important to target Christians is because they have political power in this country. It's not Muslims who are saying none of us can eat pork because they're not allowed to. It's not Jewish Americans who are saying every single parent must circumcise their children. It's Christians who are dictating how we live in society and they're showing us that they're going to ban women from controlling their own body, but it's not going to stop their contraception is next, gay marriage is next. It's going to keep going and going until they roll back the clock to the point where this country is unrecognizable. It's no longer the secular country that it once was despite our secular constitution. So we cannot allow these Christians to impose their views on all of us and if they're going to continue to preach hate and remain tax-exempt, if they're going to continue to influence public policy and remain tax-exempt sorry we're going to confront you at the source because if you're going to make our lives hell we're going to make your lives hell too. Sorry