 These comments might be strong, but it's how I genuinely feel. I don't care that you're a Christian. I don't care what the Bible says. I feel like it's a clown show, like sitting here trying to decipher what your little mythical book has to say about these very real political issues, right? I don't care if you're Christian. In fact, I will fight for you to have your religious liberty and practice your Christianity. I believe in that. I don't believe in Christianity, which means that you do not get to dictate the way I live my life based on your religion. I don't care what the Bible says. You have every right in the world, all those women who identify with your religion have every right in the world to not get an abortion, to not take birth control. But they do not have the right to dictate my life. And what I decide to do with my body, I don't care about your goddamn religion. I'm so tired of having nonstop conversations about what the Bible says. You live your life in the way that you interpret the Bible. Again, I don't care, but you don't get to take the Bible and tell me, well, the Bible says this in this chapter, in this verse. I don't care. I don't care. I don't believe in it. And I have the right, based on our Constitution, to not believe in it. That incredibly powerful and cathartic rant was made by the great Anakasparian of the Young Turks back in 2018. But last year, it blew up on TikTok. And now, following the news that Roe v. Wade was being overturned and this renewed conversation about the ways that fundamentalist Christians control our lives and our political system, well, it blew up once again for a good reason. And when I say blow up, it got like hundreds of millions of views. And the reason why so many people are sharing it is because it resonates with people. It cuts to the core. That clip speaks to me. And every time I see it on my For You page on TikTok, I've got to watch it because it's so important. What she's saying there, this is something that I feel like most young people identify with because young people are not religious. And even if we respect people's rights to be religious, that doesn't mean that we want you to shove it down our fucking throats, right? One of the funniest things that I heard when I was younger was that religion, you know, it's kind of like a penis. It's fine if you have one, but don't take it out and flop it around in my face, right? Put that thing back in your pants. But no, religion itself, in my opinion, I am somebody who hates religion. And I have no problem saying that. I am a staunch anti-theist because I was somebody who was brainwashed at a very young age, indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity. And as a young child, that harmed me irreparably so. It instilled horrible values in me and got me to think that myself, growing up as a gay man, was inferior to everyone else. That there was something wrong with me that I was defective. And this is specifically what the church teaches and that's harmful. So I'm not somebody who would ban people from practicing religion, but I do believe that as an atheist, we should proselytize. I think that we should actually convince people to stop being religious, not just because oftentimes people don't even realize that religion is harming them, but because religion is anti-factual. It convinces people to suspend belief in empirical reality. It convinces people to base their worldview not on facts and data, but on this belief in a higher power when there's no evidence to confirm the existence of a higher power. Now, again, if you wanna believe in religion, if it gives you comfort or purpose or meaning, that's fine, but I certainly draw the line when it comes to you imposing your religion on me. But more than that, I'm going to try to convince you to stop believing in religion because one thing that really kept me glued to religion as I grew up and started to have my doubts was this fear of death and this fear of the unknown, but religion kind of gives you an answer. All these loved ones that you knew, but they passed away, you're one day gonna see them again. When you die, you're gonna get to go to heaven if you're good, if you're lucky. Don't be gay though, you'll go to hell forever. But you get to go to heaven and so there's some inherent comfort with that. But as I grew older, I realized that religion had led to me inadvertently devaluing this life because I thought, well, you know, things don't really matter now because we're gonna have an internal life in heaven. So this is just temporary. So this life doesn't really matter. If I'm miserable right now, well, I'll be with Jesus, you know, soon. So who cares? But that's such a sad way to live your life. You have one life. There is no evidence that there's an afterlife. So what you have to do is make the best of right now. Live your life. Don't bank on the existence of some God. And if there is a God, it's probably not the God that you, you know, were indoctrinated into, right? And I certainly hope it's not the Christian God, if God were to be real, because that God is a petty fucking bitch. But Annika Sperian's rant blew up because so many young people feel the same way. I feel the same way and a lot of people feel the same way. And as Phil Zuckerman of Only Sky puts it, Gen Z is the least religious generation ever. And when you consider that Gen Z disproportionately uses TikTok, well, it's no wonder why this clip was so popular. So more than one in three Zoomers do not have a religion. And this is a number that grows with each subsequent generation, 29% of millennials have no religion. 25% of Gen X has no religion, compared to 18% of boomers and 9% of the silent generation. And I'd say that the silent generation is like 90% responsible for sharing all those really creepy Jesus photos on Facebook. Now what's even more encouraging is where we're headed. So 58% of Zoomers, 48% of millennials and 39% of Gen Xers say that it's not important for children to be brought up in religion. And finally, with each subsequent generation, families get less and less religious. So to put everything into perspective, to contextualize this moment right now, it's no wonder why the theocrats are desperate and they're doing everything in their power now to bring back prayer in schools, to make sure that, you know, people are attending these private religious institutions. It's because they know religion is on the way out. Rather than learning from their past mistakes if they wanted to promote their religions, they're choosing again to shove it down people's throats, which is what made them unpopular in the first place. And generally speaking, like I usually don't like to generalize groups of people, but Christians are the most hateful, most judgmental, most miserable people I've ever met. And basically everyone in my social circle either grew up religious or is religious currently. And I have never met anyone more judgmental. The people who are non-religious, the atheists, they seemingly have more morals and values than the Christians. So, you know, there's this last-ditch effort by the theocrats to enforce religion on everyone before it goes the way of the dodo permanently. But unfortunately, what they don't realize is that they're turning people off to religion with their behavior. And even if you try to indoctrinate people, brainwash people, that doesn't necessarily mean that that brainwashing will be permanent because I was brainwashed. I left the Christian fundamentalist cult and now I am a staunch anti-theist. And they just don't know how to adapt, right? Like all institutions, religion has to adapt in order to maintain relevancy in society but they've refused to adapt. They refuse to grow at the times. They refuse to accept LGBTQ plus people. And because this is an inherently regressive institution, society is leaving it behind. But what we're hearing right now, what we're seeing right now is religion make its last attempt to cling to society. It's hanging on for dear life but the theocrats ultimately are losing and they might have power right now but the next generations have all but guaranteed less religion in society. Now I wanna get to a response to Anna's rant because Benny Johnson, conservative, shared this on Twitter and he writes, Lib anchor goes into unhinged rage after Roe overturned, leaves Christians stunned. So I love this tweet for a number of reasons. First of all, the video is from 2018 but second of all, Benny Johnson let me remind you is the individual who accidentally outed himself as a homosexual by complaining about a Google ad for a gay cruise. And I don't know how he didn't realize this but the ad he was complaining about was a targeted ad based off of his internet search history. So people like that prove Anna Kasparian's point because he is a fundamentalist Christian but yet he has inadvertently made it very clear that he would be living a very different life had religion not been pumped into his head probably at a young age, right? He's pretending to be straight. He's married to a woman, larping as a straight man when he accidentally outed himself as a gay man. He's looking at gay stuff, gay porn. I don't know what it is, but I mean if you're getting an ad for a gay cruise you're pretty gay. Look, I'm a married gay man. I've never gotten an ad for a gay cruise. So you're probably more gay than me in actuality, bro. Now Anna Kasparian responded to that saying, Christians stunned that we don't live under theocratic rule based on our constitution. Maybe they should learn more about our country and what it means to be an American. Spoiler alert, acting like thugs and rushing the Capitol in a bitter temper tantrum ain't it. And this is a really important point to make because more and more we're seeing Republicans just outright reject the separation of church and state. I mean, Clarence Thomas basically inadvertently admitted that he doesn't believe in the separation of church and state. He believes that states should be allowed to establish their own religions which is an explicit violation of the constitution. Lauren Boebert said that she's tired of hearing about the separation of church and state. So it is unfathomable to these Christian zealots that they won't be able to enforce their religion on all of us, force all of us to live by the way that they believe their God wants us to live. I mean, if we really were trying to apply the Bible, you know, Jesus was more of a socialist figure but to get to Anna's point, I really don't care what's in the Bible. I don't give a fuck what's in the Bible. I don't wanna pretend as if, you know, I have to find ways to hypocrisy burn Christians for not following their Bible correctly because at the end of the day, I don't care, the Bible is irrelevant. I wipe my ass with the pages of the Bible. It means nothing to me. It's not sacred to me. It has no inherent value to me because I reject the Bible. I don't believe in your God but they can't get it through the thick skulls that they're not able to force all of us to live under their theocratic version of society but they're trying and right now they're gonna win. They're gonna have some gains but really what gives me a little bit of hope is knowing that these future generations are less religious and they're just, they're not going to accept it because Christians haven't been able to win by convincing us because their arguments are shit quite frankly. So what they're doing is plan B, enforce religion on all of us through American institutions. It's gonna work temporarily for sure but at the end of the day, they're losing and I look forward to the day when religion is politically irrelevant in America because really if there were like 90% Christians in America that wouldn't really matter if they didn't take up such a huge amount of government, if they didn't actually govern using their religion as justification for certain policies but that's not the case. We have a religious majority in this country that is imposing their will, their tyrannical will on everyone and that's just not acceptable. So you know for those reasons that's why Annakasparian's rant went viral and it's bound to go viral again because this is going to be an issue in the foreseeable future and they're afraid because they know Gen Z and future generations are rejecting their disgusting draconian religion and we're gonna keep rejecting their disgusting draconian religion. So yeah, Annakasparian speaks for me there and I absolutely love that rant because she speaks for all of us, not just me but all young people who are tired of these religious zealots who won't leave us the fuck alone.