 Going live, live on the Metal Voice today. Wow, it's just quickly jumping on. I agree, this topic with Steph Angelou, of course, CTV journalist, reporter, of course, part of the Metal Voice family as well. And I agree, this topic, let me just fix this here. Okay, perfect. I know everybody's jumping on. This is a pretty hot topic in the press today, actually all week, I should say. This is, in recent news, three, four days ago, Eden High School Principal, this is a Canadian high school in St. Catherine's, close to the Niagara region in Ontario. The High School Principal, Sharon Burns, needs to be transferred immediately, says the parents, the concerned parents. The parents, just to, let me just get this there. You know, let me start over here. Let me start over here. I'm just confusing myself. There's just so much information. A high school principal in Canada is being asked to leave her job or being dismissed or transferred to another school because she posted a picture of Eddie and the symbol 666 on the school's Instagram, the school's social media. That's clear now, right? This happened in the past few days. A petition by a lady named Debbie Lynn has been put up signed by about 500 parents or people concerned to dismiss her or to transfer her to another school. And then a counter petition was put up by the students and something like 10,000 or 15,000 signatures saying, no, no, our principal, she's open to diversity. She's a good person. She always looks out for the students. And this is what we're talking about today. Should this Iron Maiden fan principal be dismissed or transferred based on her freedom of expression or freedom of religion to a degree by posting something very controversial or satanic images on the school's social media. And with me, of course, Stefan, as you do, see TV news and of course the metal voice. Stefan, right off the bat, what did you first think when you saw this report? I laughed and I felt like I was transported back to 1984 because I remember when Iron Maiden were doing their number of the beast tour and back then in the early eighties, the Christian fundamentalists still had a fair amount of power in the US. Actually, probably less so than now, I would say, but it was common. Everywhere Maiden went in 1982, anywhere any rock band went in the early eighties, you had groups of Christian fundamentalist protesters outside. I mean, as late as 1990, I remember taking my wife to Robert Plant in Portland, Maine, Maine of all places. And in the end, there was a Bible-thumping guy yelling and shouting, don't go in. It's Robert Land of Devil's voice and blah, blah, blah. And Elvis, it was the same thing in the fifties, Beatles. Remember the burning disc, the burning, come and burn your Beatles records? You remember the Rolling Stones with sympathy for the devil, the outrage? It never stopped. And I thought, so when I saw this news this week, I thought, huh, stupidity is not gone yet. And you may know that I'm a complete atheist. I do not, I reject the very existence of God in the Bible. So I always chuckle whenever I see parents saying, we don't have a problem with her musical taste. We have a problem with the word 666, which we all know is Satan worshiping. He's like, no, it's not. It's stupid. It is a public school. Okay, it's a public school. All right, let me show the pictures, okay? I want everybody, and again, I should set this up nicely so people understand exactly what's going on. So this, I'm showing it on my screen now and you, I don't know if you could see it or not, but it shows a picture of her dashboard, the principles. It has in her hand written, it has Eddie 666, a heart. And it says minus. I'm not sure what the minus is, but regardless it shows Eddie 666 and minus. Now, other pictures that I found on the Instagram site was a teacher. So you got to also look at what this Instagram site is used for. So there was a teacher and what it does, what I noticed was on the Instagram account, the goal was for the school's Instagram account was to talk about announcements, you know, what's going on at the school as well as behind the mask of each teacher, what they love to do or who they are as a people that when they're not teaching, there was one picture of a teacher and it says teach peace. And it shows the Christian sign, the Jewish sort of symbol, the star David and the Muslim sign. So that is acceptable. Nobody sort of harped on that. There was another picture on the Instagram site that shows of course, you know, the gay pride, you know, the colors, the rainbow, right? Now, but this, which was the teacher, you know, doing the devil horns with iron maiden and that's the principle, they're on the right and that's Shannon Burns, Sharon Burns, sorry. So my take from there, my take from there is that obviously the Instagram account is controlled by the principle. If, and I see the pictures now with the rainbow, with the teach and preach and all of that, it is quite obvious that these Christian activists are very, you know, they pick and choose what she should be posting, you know, those parents are not stupid enough to denounce the LGBT imagery because I mean, they know that they would be, you know, shamed in today's society, which does not support rejection and exclusion. And so one of them probably said, well, we can't go after coexist, we can't go after Jews, we can't go after Muslims, but metal seems like a fair play. And the amount of hypocrisy involved in saying, we don't have a problem with her musical taste, we have a problem with her use of the Instagram account to post something like this, shows the huge hypocrisy. As far as I'm concerned, because normally they would be against, because I checked her Instagram account and normally these parents should be against half of what she's posting. So the hypocrisy of religious activists, in my opinion, stinks throughout this story altogether. All right, so, but let me ask you some questions here. You know, I'm a parent. Yeah. And there are a group of parents who want their children. And you know what, I didn't want to make this a panel show where everybody's just bashing the parents that are petitioning here, right? I want to be, I want to be fair here. And I want you to be fair too. And I know you are. I'm a parent in a public school, a public institution. I'm on the board, the parental boards of that school. This is paid for by the taxpayers. Do I not have the right to put my kid in a safe environment that I consider safe and not expose them something that might be scary, that might incite them to, you know, do things they shouldn't be doing? I mean, and that's their perspective and that's their right to, right? The parents have just as much of a right to freedom of expression, to express themself or petition this teacher, then the teacher has also to express herself. Where's that line of freedom of expression? Does the teacher, the principal have the right in freedom of expression? And do the parents have that same right? That right is expressed in the ballot box at the school board election. Citizens elect their school board representatives and that school board hires and fires administrators at will, okay? That's how it works. So you bring up two things. The right of a teacher to speak up. Now, we live and it's generally accepted that, you know, the line between what's controversial and what's not in 2021 is complex. And you and I have had this debate on a personal level a few times. There's a lot of stuff you believe in that I don't and vice versa. And that's okay, except that people have, there is freedom of expression. The school board is the ultimate judge of what it tolerates from its employees. The company I work for, Bell Media, you know, because they want their journalists to come across as fair and objective, they have very stringent rules. But school principles, you would have to get from the school board, what is the social media policy for its employees? And in the case where an employee controls an Instagram or social media account on behalf of the school, it's up to the school board to decide what the limits are. And I don't know if that those policies are dictated by who. So yes, there's freedom of expression, but an employer also has the right to say, this is inappropriate for our line of business, so you can or cannot. So it's not as simple as saying she has the right to express herself. That is obvious. The parents have the right to express themselves, but signing a petition with 100,000, 100 million names sometimes has no impact because you cannot dictate the school board to say, you know, I mean, first of all, if this woman was dismissed or transferred, you know, she gets herself a lawyer and you know, within a few months, she's reinstated with a very large penalty for the school board to pay. We should add to our American friends that in Canada we have a Charter of Rights and it protects freedom of expression and freedom of religion with limits, of course with limits, right? As long as you don't hate anybody or you know, threaten somebody, those are sort of typically the limits, generally speaking. So we do have a Charter of Rights that protect freedom of expression. And what you're saying is there's also policies within the school board, right, that outline what can be used on social media and what cannot be used on social media. In this case, and that's what I looked at. I looked at what have they been using this Instagram for in the school? It seems like for gay rights or you know, gay pride we'll call it, they used it for expressing different religions and I think this fits in. If you can have all those other views, then this fits into what the Instagram account was for or being used as, there's precedent, that's what I'm saying. Absolutely. In fact, I looked at her Instagram account and a lot of it is about student achievements, you know, sports, tournaments, high school projects, high school outings and it's all about achievements. I have this in my mind, based on what I saw, you have a school principal who is extremely proud of her student body, of her student body and who is very committed to being close to her students and reflect their aspirations, you know. Was this teacher just faking her love of Iron Maiden to sound cool to her certain demographics? Maybe, you know, we turn her school. Personally, based on her age, demographics, it's probably fair to say that she really is an Iron Maiden student. Let's take a look at the other side now. Okay, there's freedom of expression means you can sort of express yourself, you know. Yeah. Publicly. Then there's freedom of religion. Let's say she's a Satanist. Yeah. You know, and it's a registered, you know, religion in the US and there's chapters around the world. Can she be discriminated against her religion? You know, and it might be her religion, right? And if you can have, you know, Christianity and Islam and you can have, you know, the Jewish, you know, religion, can you be discriminated against being a Satanist? Yeah. I mean, if you could show one side, can you not show the other? Yeah. Well, if I'm not a lawyer, but based on cases I've covered in the past as part of my job, you know, the parents would have to make a case that the beliefs of the teacher are detrimental to the education of the children and the wellbeing of the school, you know. So that right away is a very long shot. And that is also limitations to freedom of religion. You know, there's always limitations. As long as you're not infringing the security of others or hating others or inciting others, then there are limitations, but those are on the extreme side. This looks like she's a fan. It doesn't look like she's got a hood on and you know, there's like lamb blood all over the place and they're sacrificing someone. You know, this looks like it's a fan. So the parents. It sounds to me like I went through the petition. I even signed it myself. Look at that. Look at you, Mr. Democracy. Mr. Freedom. Here we go. Please note this petition, this is the parents one, okay? This is not about Sharon Byrne's love for Iron Maiden, but a lot of the headlines kind of. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, if you go on the petition and you read the comments of all the ones who signed, most of them don't even have kids who attend that school. Most of them are not even from St. Catherine's. You know, change.org is, you know, it's an ego thing. I mean, I couldn't write something completely outrageous and collect a million signature within a few weeks, I'm sure. And the pro Maiden fans are not stupid. I mean, the school got, you know, the parents got 500 signatures. If you remove the ones signed by Maiden fans who just wanted to insult them, you're down to about half that number. And then the students who started their own, they got like 15,000 signatures. Well, it's a lot easier for kids to pass share information, right? They're like on Twitter, Instagram, boom, boom, boom. They're sharing everything. Parents a little more harder. Yeah, yeah. Now, I, this morning, I read the article in the local press, not the metal press, not on our show, but in the standard, which is St. Catherine's newspaper, I Heart Radio, which followed the case. And the school board is telling the parents who look we're not getting into this, settle this among yourselves. That is one way for the school board to say, are you out of your fucking mind? No, we're not gonna get involved. So I think that right now at this hour, as we speak, you have a bunch of parents who are saying, gee, talk about a backlash and a Streisand effect. And you probably have a school principal who is not interested into getting in a fight with those parents, who's not interested in drawing more attention that she's already had. If you look at her Instagram account, she removed all reference to this and she resumed posting stuff about school activities. I think this has gone way, way, way. I think everybody people involved in St. Catherine's are right now are saying, how do we get that far? But there's a lesson learned. You can start a petition. Anyone can start a petition. And the sillier your petition is, the more attention you'll get. I can start a petition right now banning each and every slayer t-shirt in the world. And I would probably get, you know, 2,000 yes from US fundamentalists and a bazillion death threats from metalheads. And then just based on that, I would make headlines and lash and lash and lash. So change.org petitions and all of that. I mean, they're fun to grab a few headlines, but they don't change anything. Now, if you had 500 parents writing letters, individual letters, not copied and photocopied, but individual letters from actual parents from that actual school, then maybe the school board would say, shit, we got a problem on our hands. This change.org, please. All right, but, you know, but it's concerned parents. And I'm just gonna go on the parent side a bit. Just, you know, they're concerned. They might not be, understand what Aaron made it is, right? Like my parents didn't understand, right? I wanna address some questions here. Some people think this is in the US. This is in Canada, okay? But it's the same principle, our constitution and our charter of rights. There's freedom of expression, there's freedom of religion there. But the issue here is, can a principal post on the school's social media? In other words, let's put it another way for people to understand. You work at a job, at a corporation. Can you go on the corporation's Instagram account or social media and post what you feel like? That's not related to your job. Okay, I'll answer that one. It depends on what the employer says. If the employer says you're in charge of the local social media account, here's the guidelines of what you can and cannot post. Then it's clear. If there are no guidelines, the school board can turn around says, hey, what you posted was inappropriate. Of course, unless it's sexual, nature really, really poor taste. But it all depends. Where I work, we have a very strict social media policy where other people work, actually no. So the worst that could happen out of this little scuffle is that there's gonna be at the next school board meeting, there's gonna be a motion to set up a committee to determine who should and what is acceptable on social media from institutions. So it's not, she has the right, she doesn't have the right. Her right to post what she wants in a social account of the school is determined by the school board. And if there's no policy written, then the board would have no rounds, other than clarify policies for the future. I know because as you know, Jimmy, I'm on top of being a metalhead, on top of being a broadcaster, I also happen to be a union activist in my union. That's another point too. Oh yeah, the union will, but even if the parents get to that point where they sort of push the school board pushed them into a corner and said you gotta get rid of this person, right? There are still the union to combat, especially for teachers in Canada. I can't speak for the US because some of them aren't, right? Yeah, absolutely. Principles and teachers are generally well protected with unions. Yeah, yeah. And look at these headlines, okay? These are the headlines I saw and they're kind of misleading. I think that's why people got more mad. And one headline was parents asked to boot principle over Iron Maiden fandom. I don't think that's really exactly what's going on. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Wait a second. Whenever I see parents saying do, do, do, do, do, do, you misread us, it's not about the fact she likes Iron Maiden, it's about her handmade 666 sign. That's bullshit. You know as much as I do that this is pure bullshit. Christian fundamentalists do not like associate, they generally associate heavy metal with satanic imagery, you know? And if the teacher had said that her favorite artist was Justin Bieber and you know, they wouldn't have said anything. It's because she's a metalhead. And then they realized that most of the parents at that school are probably within our age group. So they probably, a lot of them probably do love metal and then they puts them in a situation that says, oh shit, maybe we messed with the wrong demographics here. We're in 1980. You know what, metal is cool again because people are mad at metal. You know, like that's when metal is cool, right? When people are doing metal. So you know what? We win. That's what I said, the backlash, the backlash. It's what we love, because we're back. You know, that's part of the rebellion, right? This is what the petition said. And I want everybody to be clear here. I understand this. Petition one against Sharon Burns. This petition is not about Sharon Burns' love for Iron Maiden. At no point has it ever been. This petition is about a principal of a school openly displaying her own handmade sign with 666 clearly displayed on it, which she knows full well that that is a satanic symbol. Means to the vast majority of families in her school and she put it on a professional public social media account. Not a private one, which she very easily could have done. If she had not posted a picture of her own handmade 666 sign, this petition would not exist. Nobody cares what band she likes and this is not about her choice and what she listens to. That would be petty and nonsensical. This is only about openly choosing to display satanic symbols on a professional profile page. As all communities in schools are supposed to be about kindness, equity and inclusion, this displaying of satanic symbols is mocking and isolated large segments of that community she works in and clearly is not upholding those values. That's just the short form. What do you say about that? I will tell you what I say about this, says it's not respectful of the values. Well, who are these people to pretend they're the guardians of the values of their community? I will never accept personally any religious figure telling me that they're the guardian of values. That's one thing. So it's extremely self-serving on the part of a handful of parents to say we are the guardians of values because we're Christians. I think that they're essentially trying to regain control of a school that was once Catholic. That's a fact nowadays. They're not Catholic anymore. It's a public school. That's a very good point. That's a very good point. So just to your point there, I'm gonna add that Eden High School has a rich history in the Niagara community. What started off as a private Christian college in Niagara on the lake in 1945 has grown into a public school at a former Lakeport secondary school site in St. Catharine's current enrollment at 1,000. And the principal's message on the website is equity inclusion education. So what are the Christians complaining about? That's exactly what it is. Now, when I went to the Instagram account, if I did not see other teachers on there sort of giving their profile of what they like to do in their past time, if that wasn't there, then I could understand the parent's point. Like here's this anomaly post of Iron Maiden in 666 and the Devil horns, but that's not the case on this Instagram account. The precedent is, and I'll repeat the backstory of all the teachers and the people who work there. So it fits in with what she has been doing over the past years working there. Hope that makes sense. I agree completely. You know, I work at CTV as you know, I'm a relatively popular broadcaster over there. And when all of us were encouraged to get social media accounts, they said, you know, don't hesitate to express your personality as long as you don't jeopardize the news. And they thought, oh, Stefan, metalhead. Like who knew? You know, because I'm suit and tie all day. And they liked that. And they think it's pretty cool, you know? But others, maybe not. You know, I've been criticized on social media before for being unprofessional because I do the devil's horn whenever I go see a metal show because I post from, you know, Megadeth saying, wow, what a great night. I get that. It's okay, but I don't care. And I think if I was this teacher, what she did was right. Look, I don't wanna piss off parents because their kids are in my classroom. I don't want bad blood. I don't want bad feelings. She removed the photo. She's obviously- In good faith, in good faith, yeah. She's obviously ignoring all the attention, not returning interview requests and stuff like that because she wants to keep the peace. She knows she's dealing with a very small minority of parents. I think we can all agree on that. And tomorrow, next week, I'm pretty sure the story will be forgotten unless, of course, a mad bunch of parents show up and wanna burn her like a witch, maybe. But I- You know, just to play devil's advocate here, I gotta say something. Playing devil's advocate here, and a parent, and you're a parent too, and you know, my kids, okay, they're older now, but if there was, I don't know, let's say let's remove Iron Maiden and let's put, there was a class in witchery. Yep. You know, today, kids were boiling bat's wings and you know, where do you draw the line, right? Just because Iron Maiden is near and dear to us we're sort of, you know, sort of defending them in a sense, but let's say it was something else. Let's say it was really, you know, let's do a class in, you know, a seance. Let's do the Ouija board. Let's dab into the supernatural. Is that, don't the parents have a right to, to express themselves and you know, not be ridiculed? You know, just like the principal doesn't have, you know, shouldn't be ridiculed as well, right? You may have a point on this, but she was not teaching the merits of Iron Maiden and witchcraft and the devil. It's not what she was doing, you know. Had she done that, well, maybe somebody at the school board would say, where does that fit in, in the curriculum that you're given at the beginning of the year. And if it's part of your, of an experiment, where are the boundaries? Then yeah, I would probably say, yeah, parents have a point. But you know, when Harry Potter became a big thing in the nineties, no, no, no, see what I'm getting at here. When Harry Potter became a big thing in the nineties, I remember very clearly Christian fundamentalists across America, sorry, across the United States. Who were complaining about the fact that kids were reading about sorcerers and witchcraft, while the Bible is, cannot be taught in school. And they face the same amount of, oh, there we go again, you know. Look, parents, in my opinion, if they want an education that reflects their Christian values and nothing else but their Christian values, send their kids to a Christian school, not a public school. Yeah, well, let's dab into 666 now. All right, it's been used, oh boy, since, you know, I don't know, the year 300, right? Yeah, well, let's, you know, like, I mean, is it really? Like, if you and I, you know, write 666, you know, on our social media, just as a general statement, I mean, are we dabbling with the devil? Is there any merit to revelation? I think it was chapter 13, verse 18, the book of revelations. Let us count or reckon or vote the number of the beast. Some say it's even 616. I mean, we could have got the numbers wrong, 666, because the oldest manuscript, you know, says actually 616. So they're saying like, what? Because the history behind 666 is numerology. It's basically what they've kind of discovered over the years is it wasn't necessarily this tattoo of 666, a sort of beast number, it was actually the numerology of someone's name. So that was Nero, Caesar Nero at the time, and that's what, if you take the Hebrew writings and you just, you know, do the math, it comes out to 666. Well, that for me is further evidence that the Bible is bullshit. It's a nice history book. It's a great mythical history book of a great people, of the great people of Israel, the Hebrews. But as a testament of a set of beliefs are rejected. I mean, for 5,000 years, the words were transferred through oral tradition and then transcripted by a bunch of people who heard it in different languages and then cut and paste and sliced by one king in 400, you know, AC, the whole imagery of hell and the devil is something that was invented in the Middle Ages. 666, as you said, is about as accurate as Apple map. It's just somebody who- And just to tell everybody out there, there are also some Christian chapters that people call it or different groups that don't even accept the book of revelations. They accept it all, the rest of the stuff, the New Testament, but they don't even accept the book of revelations as sort of part of their Christian teaching. So the reality is 666 evil. What does everybody think out there? Is 666 a sign of evil? Or is it just sort of a number? Of course it's a number of pull out of somebody's ass. I mean, I'm a believer that 6668 is a neighbor of the beast and it's just a good and cheaper. That's the old joke, right? So I think that to set a belief into a number that has no base in the scriptures or any of their further interpretation, but it's just based on somebody's obsession at some point in history. But you know what, I'm gonna take the Christian side here because I know you're taking the atheist side and it's near and dear Christianity and even though if you don't believe in the sort of the truth about it, you could believe in the spirituality of it all or the philosophy of it all and the teachings of it all. So Christianity is a good thing in my opinion and I could see that some parents are concerned that it might look back in 1980 something, there was a Geraldo. You remember Geraldo, he did a whole show on the Satanism, right? And the cult of Satanism and kids sort of following Satanism and they did blame heavy metal back then but it was kind of ridiculous. But the point was that sometimes that when you have vulnerable children in society, they cling on to these kinds of things and it leads them down this dark path and parents, they wanna protect their children. So there is some legitimacy to say that, parents do also have a right to be heard. You can't just let the school run wild and tell them or preach to them whatever they want because the parents do have rights. I totally agree with this and they exercise that right at the ballot box. But you cannot unilaterally decide that a handmade 666 sign is proof of devil worshiping and that therefore the person needs to be removed. They have no right to determine the value of their belief in relation to what the standard should be for everybody else. This is where I have a serious problem with. You know, what's next? You know, I mean, a bunch of parents circulating a petition to ban meat at the school in the school cafeteria. Hell no, you know, pack a different lunch box if that's what you want. And for metal, for me, it is the same thing. For musical taste, it's the same thing. The problem with these parents, they can believe what they want but in their set of belief, they've come across a number that offends them. And because that number offends them, the teacher is guilty of should be removed. No, no, you know, what's next? A bunch of flat earthers will demand that the geography professor gets moved because they're teaching that the planet is round. No. Yeah, I agree with you. You know, some great points. I mean, we talked about freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and you can't really dismiss somebody based on their, as long as they're not inciting any violence or they're not hurting anyone, that is the bottom line. Has anybody been hurt here? Has anybody, you know, turned evil here? Has anybody gone out on some sort of rampage of hurting others? No, so I guess you have to look at the big picture. The precedent is there. So this is an open and shut case for you and me, Stefan. Yeah, but I will tell you something, Jimmy. As you know, I've always lived in Quebec all my life. This is a province that embraced Catholicism, Christianity, for all of its existence, and everything was thrown out the windows, maybe in the bathwater at the same time in the 1960s. And Quebec has grown into a religion-free society. Crossing the rest of Canada, I discovered that it is not the case in other provinces, including Ontario, the further away you go. I would argue, you know, sometimes, you know, you trade one religion for a government religion sometimes, you know, and I'm not just saying that specifically to Quebec. I'm saying that to all areas of the world. Sometimes, you know, you just might abandon this, but you're grabbing something else. So you can say that, but as long as you're not hurting anybody, you know, with that belief, right? Because religion is a very loose in general term, right? Yeah. And, you know, and there are people or other countries in the world who maybe there is no, I mean, look at communism. That was a religion, right? And it hurt more people than anything else, right? Or any other religion, right? So I'm just, I'm sorry, I'm gonna debate with you. You know, just debate all the merits of everything, right? That's all. I agree with you. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll give you an example. We're talking about communism and communism was anti-religion. Yeah, you know, there's some nuances there. During the Cold War, for example, religion was banned in Russia and churches were turned into movie theaters, but in East Germany and in Poland, religion was still tolerated. It varied from one country to another. But yeah, ultimately forcing people to give up their religion is just as bad as imposing it in the first place. I agree, I agree, I agree. Yeah. Good conversation, my friend. Good to Sunday conversation. I didn't, you know, I wanna be fair to both sides because we don't have the other side on. So you gotta really, you know, we gotta look at all the angles from the parent's point of view to the principal's. But at the end of the day, she did do the right thing. You know, she upset some parents and she goes, you know what? I don't wanna upset anyone. I'll just take it down nicely and kindly. And that's the right thing to do. That was a class act on the part of that principal. The fact that she's not joining the conversation, the fact that the school board said, deal with it proves to me that the school was extremely skillful in handling this. They're leaving it to the fundamentalists. And now the fundamentalists are dealing with a very ugly backlash. It may empower some to show up at the next school board meeting and demand a resignation. But the school commissioners around the table will tell them, yeah, except we don't have a legal leg to stand on. Other than maybe review social media policy. Yeah, yeah. Any final notes? I think that it would have been great to have somebody like Michael Sweet, you know, to be in this debate, Ron Keel, people in the past who have expressed certain attachment to religious value through their heavy metal music. But I think in the end, even though I'm an atheist, I do have to say that people of various beliefs were the Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, respect them. If you cannot agree with them. I agree. And I like not to insult them because for every Bible thumping crazy, you have 90 quite reasonable Christians who put the scriptures to work and they agree with the message of kindness, support, generosity, involvement and things like that. The crazies with their cancel culture ignore them. You know, we didn't talk about that. Is this just cancel? Is this another woke, you know, like every day we're waking up to, you know, I don't know, Pepula Pew being, you know, ousted, you know, we're, you know, we're seeing so many sort of. Well, I think this is evidence that cancel culture is not a lefty woke thing. It works both ways. Works both ways. Yeah, yeah. Well, back in, you know, it's interesting because, you know, the PRMC back in the day, even though it was driven by Democrats, it was Ronald Reagan, you know, who was a conservative in power at the time, right? The Republicans. So it was, it's strange how it was actually Tipper, Tipper Gore, right? Who though the, you know, part of the Democrat commit that, that was the committee. That was a Democratic committee that set it up. It wasn't the Republicans that set up that committee. Yeah, but wait a second here. In the 1980s, Republican Democrat thing was not what it is today. Democrats were a lot more centrist and so were Republicans. A difference between Democrat and Republican was in name only because it was more of the same. These days, you're talking about a gap, a division with no middle ground. But back then and up until the Bush era, the Bush junior era, Congress, the US Republican Democrat, it was all middle of the road. But do you think it's the left or the right that's driving this censorship society today? I think it's the right. Personally, I think it is the right. You have, you have to understand the word woke it's a word that became. Because I know a lot of, I know a lot of right guys were good friends, but they think it's the left that's driving us. Yeah, and the left thinks it's the right. So woke is originally a word used by the African-American community to describe people who were committed to fighting racism and discrimination. I'm awake to the fact that there's racism and discrimination. Now to say some of it took it a step too far, yeah. But a lot of people will tell you that on the right, there was always the cancel culture targeting LGBTs. They shouldn't have special rights or they shouldn't have rights. Liberal thinkers were banned from schools. Liberal thinking books were banned from schools. I remember very well in the 90s. Remember the 90s where the whole discussion was, should we teach evolution alongside with creation in school? Well, one is science, the other one is religion. No, no, no, no, no, it should be in science class. And teachers who were, I mean, I remember science teachers who were getting threats because they refused to teach creationism in a science class. So cancel culture has always been used on both sides. It's just that neither recognizes they're doing it. That's very well said. And I would agree to that. I think cancel culture is happening on both sides and each one is saying the other guys are responsible. I agree with that. In the 1980s, the PMRC and the labeling of music on records, PG-13 and all of that, it was cancel culture because when those labels on records came out, you had large chains like Walmart who said, as a policy, we will not stock controversial albums that have a label that says PG or whatever. That was canceled when large chains of bookstores decide not to keep in stock certain books because they don't wanna upset their conservatives among themselves, it's canceled. Same thing if they cancel a book from the other side. So cancel folks' views, get it done, go on Twitter goes out of their way to block certain messages where they're not blocking other messages. Well, that's canceled culture too, but on a global corporate level. And whatever that message is, right or left, right? You just, but then again, it's a private company. It could do whatever it wants, right? They don't have to answer to the public. So. Exactly. Is it institutionalized? Public institution. Is it institutionalized cancel culture or is it driven by the media cancel culture? I don't know. I mean, it's going back and forth. And the perfect example is the PRMC. You had Reagan who was a Republican in power, but the committee was driven by Democrats. So, you know, and they were the ones responsible back then to sort of knock heavy metal out, right? Yeah, well, I remember I interviewed Rob Alford in 1986 on this very, very subject. And he was quite vocal about it and denouncing the PMRC, the parents, the cancel culture. He was brilliant and Alford being such a well-spoken man could express it in a way that I thought was brilliant. If you recall, there was once a lawsuit against the bans from parents who thought that their son committed suicide because of the lyrics of, I think, better you, better than me, something like that. I'm not sure. That's right, yeah. And Judas Priest made a point of sitting in the courtroom every day of the trial. You know, okay, it was a bit of publicity for them there, but the cancel culture was the lyrics of the songs might have pushed their highly depressive, highly addicted, big-time loser son who finally, unfortunately, offed himself. Was it because of a Judas Priest song? No, it was because of a demand was suffering from mental health issues, but rather than provide mental health issues, mental health issues later on. There's a difference between Canada and the US, and it's a slight difference. In the US, freedom of expression and freedom of the press, there are less limits. They've kind of tested that with Larry Flint, I believe, where he said, what is the limit of freedom of expression or freedom of the press, right? And it's a lot further in the US than it is in Canada. Canada, we're kind of... There are more restrictions in Canada, yeah. There are more restrictions in Canada. If there's any sort of hate speech there, it's taken down right away, you know? But in the US, there's a little more leeway what I'm trying to say. And I'm not saying that's good or bad, it's just what it is, that's what I'm trying to say. In some cases it could be good, some cases it could be bad, yeah. But I don't think we should equate this petition from those parents as cancel culture. Cancel culture is a bad word because essentially it says, you know, on the left, cancel culture is canceling or removing from public display statues, worshiping war criminals, you know, Robert Lee Lee and people like that. While on the right, cancel culture is stopping minorities from asserting certain rights. So I think it's a bad use of the word. This is just, in my opinion, a tiny group of parents who missed the days where their school was a Christian one and, you know, they decided to hang on to this tiny little thread they thought could gather support, you know, and find support for their common outrage. And as we can see in the numbers, it's not working. People are not. And you know what? Too many, and I know too many Christians who love heavy metal too. Well, I mean, for one, I mean, it's like, you know, it's Michael Sweet. I mean, you know, he, I bet you if Michael was on, he'd be very, you know, open-minded about the subject and, but I'm not gonna speak for him. I'm just gonna tell everybody out there that I would be more than happy to speak to a parent on both sides of the debate. And I was trying to reach out to the parents on both sides of the debate. I don't wanna make this a bigger, I'm sorry. There's none. On both sides. This is Sunday morning, they're all at church. Yeah, they're all at, well, no, not no, the ones that are on each side. So I'm saying the side for the principal and the side that were against the principal. And I'm more than happy to speak to anyone in a fair, you know, debate. I'm not trying to slander either side here. We're just trying to talk about it in a very constructive, ethical, constitutional, and legal manner and a moral manner too. That's it. All right. All right, it's the fan. I'm gonna put some iron meeting on right after this. It's the number of the beast, please. I left a long one there. My back was blessed. It's karaoke time. All right, my friend, we'll talk soon. Okay, thanks for joining me. Jimmy, always a pleasure to be on your show. All right, man. Talk soon, bye. Bye, bye. And God.