Welcome back everybody, It's Friday. You made it to the end of the week. Congratulations. And to close us out this week, there was an incident at Pride parade in Colorado. John has the details about it.
The Pike's Peak Pride Festival recently was held in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Participating in the parade and festival was a splinter group of the Satanic Temple, the Satanic Colorado. During the parade parade, the announcer read the submitted description of the group passing by, which was submitted in their application. I would assume that the city had vetted the statements submitted, did they? The pearl clutching moment happened at the end of the announcement
about a seven second announcement of Satanic Colorado. The ending salute on the submitted form was the common hail Satan. Terror on the city council. Let the fear mond entering begin and with that. This is a story from the friendly atheist Metha on June twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, and.
Eli awesome, Thanks John, so so you gave us a little bit of background in your interest, so I just to get a little bit more context for our audience about kind of leading up to this moment in the in the festival, how did this kind of play out?
Well, the Pride fessals herald every year in June, which is Pride Month. As everybody knows, Satanic Colorado is a secular, non religious group that advocates for separation of church and state. They've been participating the Pride Festival for many years in support of the LGBTQ plus community. The city council chowse this time not to issue any kind of proclamation honoring Pride Month, despite doing so for the last three years.
They justify that move by saying that they no longer wanted to engage in identity based or political gestures, and so they've refused to. You know, most city councils will give up acknowledgment to the days or the months assigned to a particular group of people, but hey, not this time, not this year. It's sort of like refusing to acknowledge
this systemic bop up words in justice spanning centuries. You know, It's like, it can be argued that MLK Day is both identity based and political, so you know, put that as a reference. But what else will fear keep from justice a good question. Calling the Satanic Colorado Hail Satan announcement and incident is an exaggeration and a little hyperbole by the city council people. Extreme emotional reaction to a
harmless two word phrase. This is stirred up by the usual They did this after the usual Nazi people on you TikTok had taken it up and showed the video of this happening and everybody laughing and cheering as a way of, you know, trying to other people, and of course the city coward in the face of a little backlash from the internet. Cowards is the right appellation, by the way, I don't use it lightly, but yeah, they
were pretty much yellowbillied, So I like that. Hemmett calls out that the libs of TikTok who started this as stochastic terrorists because they really are. They really are. What they are is they're using their platform to instigate more harm to groups of people or individuals. So yeah, they're terrorists and they should be labeled as such and called out as such. The city council should be singled out as collaborators and bigots. So the cowardly caved into a
small group of wanna be influencers. Perhaps we need one of our influencers to call them out the way they are and with.
That strong yeah, strong words, UH for the city council. But now you you pointed something out that and that they said they didn't want to participate in political gestures or identity based or political gestures, which I'll talk more about later. But I wondered too, and and I didn't think about it until now, but I wondered if they put out a statement regarding you know, men's Mental Health Awareness Months, which also I've seen posts about us, so
I believe is taking place in June. I don't know that for certain, but I think it's it's it's something that people are posting about in June, and I think there's maybe some attempt to do that in like to to take attention away from Pride Months, which not thrilled with if that's the case, but I don't know that, So I'd be curious to know if the if the City Council made any statements in that regard UH as far as not engaging and identity politics. But Damien, like
Jonathan haven't matter. The author had a pretty strong opinion about the social media page that kind of checked their all off. Did you disagree with them on that?
Well, look, I'm going to very politely counter Jonathan's point about Libs of TikTok being a stochastic terrorists. I do think that some words, that some terms that we use nowadays in the modern social media age can be overused or lose their original meaning, and so I think sarcastic terrorists may be one of them. Now, I personally don't agree with everything Libs of TikTok says, and I'm sure Jonathan's a bit like that. But however, I don't remember
any specific incident where Libs of TikTok has incited harm. Sure, insight ridicule of certain positions, but I think it becomes terrorism when there is calls to harm people, And I don't remember Libs of TikTok ever, actually calling for harm to be done to specific people, whereas I could point out early this year when there was a wave of people defacing keing smashing in Tesla's and there was a
whole social media movement about that. So I'm just findly interesting that you know, we call Limbs of TikTok sechastic terrorists, even though they haven't to the best of my knowledge anyway,
And I'm very happy to be corrected on this. Libs of TikTok haven't called for anyone to be harmed or any violence, whereas we've had a whole wave of people keen Tesla's to the point that there are prank videos of people setting up cameras and sewerage systems inside Tesla's to catch people defacing Tesla's and like that somehow isn't or not really thought of a stochastic terrorism. I'm just a little bit no, sorry, it is okay, cool, So were we agree on that? Now?
When you cause harm or property damage to somebody, but harm can be defined in many, many different ways. I kind of use a broad use of it. When you are when you are specifically causing a city council to withhold support for something they've been supporting, you are damaging a subset of the population, and I call that horme.
Okay, But do we know that Lynette crow Iverson, who is the president of this of the of the Colorado Springs City Council, do we know that she was specifically
influenced by by libs of TikTok because Hemmet Metha. Whether you like the way he writes or not, he is He's right, he writes one after the other, and I'm just wondering if we're falling into the fallacy of after this therefore, because of this, so Hemma Metha is writing, you know, sychastic terrorism of libs of TikTok, and then two paragraphs down he's got if the location was that the city council was no longer inclusive, President Lynet crow
Ovison having that point home by lushing out against parade organizers. I was wondering, like, there's nothing I've read that indicates that President Lynet crow Ovison is on social media to see limbs of TikTok, to be influenced by them.
I'm just saying, yeah, I think I think I'm seeing this the way him it is, which is a little bit different from and of course I'm not in his mind. I can't speak for him, but how I view it. And as far as stochastic terrorism, because I didn't know what that meant I mentioned earlier before the recording, I thought it was just him being funny because I think
that the word terrorist, like I said, earlier. I think it's not used enough in hyperbole to its comedic potential, but and I do love some good hyperbole when it's appropriate. But so here is the idea of stochastic terrorism. Isn't necessarily that something that the person who is performing it says causes harm or something that they do causes harm.
But it is too in the context of libs of TikTok published content reinforce opinions or generate generates not the word I was looking for, cultivate an environment in which harm towards a specific group becomes more likely. It doesn't. You can't predict when or where the harm will take place. And that is the stochastic nature, which is the random,
probability based nature of stochastic terrorism. But it is that because of what libs of TikTok publishes and what they do, that increases a likelihood that harm will take place.
So when they.
Because at first there wasn't any reaction to this announcement, kind of like you mentioned, I think I think it was John that one of you mentioned the video that at the end they were cheering, people were clapping, you know, like the video last twenty six seconds and twenty seconds of it is thennouncements, and then for the last four of it, it's people cheering and clapping. Nobody is upset. But then Libs of TikTok finds the video, they say, whatever they say about it, I don't watch their video.
I'm not going to give them the traffic.
They basically said that the whole thing, the thing was demonic. They literally use the word demonic in there. So I'm just bringing up the.
Things that doesn't cause harm to anybody who's in that parade, now, does it?
Well, it's not that necessarily, it's that because Libs of TikTok published it and they have a wide audience, it became, you know, it was it was sensationalized, and that's sensational That sensation is what put the pressure on the city council to then respond with a statement.
A statistical organization walked in the Pike's Peak Pride parade as an announcer yells Hail Satan, and it's met with cheers. Demonic that's literally, and then there's a then there's a click of the video.
So yeah, and I think so it does it does imply that everybody that is represented in the video is demonic, which I think some might probably call that defamation, But then what it does is it's that reaction from that page's audience that created the pressure on city council, and that's why they then responded, because they didn't respond to the event until it had all this sensation, all of
this attention. So that's that's sort of my take on That's where I think that the idea of still stochastic terrorism and the city council being impacted by by that, is that making.
Sense an event that has been going on with this group's participation for many, many years, and every year they have something similar as far as an announcement for as the parade proceeds, and then this time it was they needed to help create the environment of other men and the environment of saying these people are not normal, the
environment of saying they're not part of our society. And that's the thing is that when you were in when you were inflating and causing people to think of your group as those guys over there, those evil people over there, you're basically creating an environment where they have to survive with a lot of negative people around them. And since queer people have had that problem, for the last thousand years. It's a big deal when somebody comes out and tries
to create you're not part of our society message. Okay, it hurts, it's painful, just you know, and people who aren't queer don't understand that. They don't understand that. Yeah, you can just laugh it off. Well yeah, but why why should we have to laugh it off? It hurts? You know? Why do I have to take the heat for that when they're the ones doing it. I could get into a whole bunch of other stuff with it.
As a queer individual myself, I get really pissed off when people start throwing slurs at us just because of who we are and with no real reason to. And that's where I stand on it. And these conservative culture wars people, they think it's fun that make their money by degrading people. That's fine, they have a right to do that. There is free speech. I don't think free speech encompasses that kind of terroristic activity. And I call it terrorism because it is. And you know, however, people
want to twist that to make it look normal. It's not normal and that I'm sorry I'm getting so demonstrative, but I really really just resent lives of TikTok for being what they are. They may hate me for what I am, but I really resent them for what they are, what they're causing to happen to me and other queer people, especially in this day and age when bigotry is okay.
I was raised in the sixties and seventies where bigotry was not, and I've seen more bigotry in my life in the last ten years, fifteen years, and i've seen in all the time before that. Wow, So I'm done over.
No, And I think with good reason, and it's it's it is ironic to look at the fur. The majority of the message a hold ten seconds of the message includes a portion where it describes how the group is dedicated to improving life for everybody, making it okay for everyone to be their authentic selves happily and comfortably and safely, and how they really just want like everyone to have
a generally decent time. And then they take this video and because of two words at the end, they're like, wow, this is demonic, Like it's it's demonic for you know, to want peace and just like happiness for people. And then the City Council coastlines that and says, yeah, peace and happiness for everybody, regardless of who they want to be.
That does not allow with our values. And I can absolutely see how that might, you know, come across as someone who was experiencing what you were describing, like, I can't I mean, I can't relate, but I can empathize that that might, you know, seem like just a really shitty thing, just to put it bluntly, And that's that's one of the reasons I think this, this response from
city council is so stupid. It's not only that, because let's say, if if you had the same announcement for a church group and at the end it said Praise God, would there have been any like, any response to that whatsoever? If it was like, oh, they would assume No, that's just what Christians do. Christians just want goodness for everybody and they say praise God at the end. There's no response from that. But but just because it was different sounds at the end, it's this group and I'm sorry,
I don't mean to ramble. I'm gonna let you guys, you know, finish it out with your thoughts here in the minute. But this group doesn't actually believe that Satan really exists and and it it's said that explicitly, and it's uh in the description they're non theistic group. Satan is their guy is a Christian. Does exactly two belief systems in the world that that recognize or believe that Satan is a real guy. We're just making fun of him.
And you'd think that not taking the bad guy seriously would resonate with like people who believe in in an unshakeable or have unshakeable faith in an omnipotent God, and like, I don't know, it's it's it. They're just playing into the same joke every time they get upset about you know, Hal Satan or Satan, Satanic temple or whoever it is. I and I almost want them to get it, But I I because I think uh gen Z Christians would probably be pretty funny roasting Satan.
So that doesn't.
I feel like some someone would do a pretty good job. But we got a couple of minutes here left. Did you guys have any any thoughts you wanted to close with Damien.
Look, I'm in no way trying to diminish Jonathan's personal experience. Just from my I suppose foreign perspective. I will make a couple of quick points. Firstly, is that Christian I suppose ultra conservatives have been doing this sort of dumb stuff for a very long time. I particularly remember, I think it was a late nineties where there was a Christian group that tried to have the word Hello renamed Heaven oh because Hallo had h E double L in
the name Ohga. So you know, it's like this, like this is nothing new under the sun, you know, for starters, And look, it's a I do get where Jonathan's coming from with regards to lives at TikTok. And I'm actually going through the quote tweets of the original posts and there's only a couple that actually mention Colorado, that actually tang the Colorado government Twitter account. So I'm not sure there's a massive pilon that was caused by this, or
if there is, it's done done by the means. But also I'm just looking at all of the hate that Elon Musk and Donald and Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth and all these high profile conservatives, right right wing figures get, and I without trying to be accused of what about ism, it's just interesting that.
Yeah, like we.
We are. I suppose condemning lived at TikTok for this, for this, But then I could also point out, just from my foreign perspective, that there's a lot there's also the same kind of thing on the other side. And so I think it's not so much that bigotry has has increased. I think it's just this general lack of civil discourse that has that has increased. And I think the sooner that we learn to handle disagreements better rather
than make it personal and oldest kind of thing. You know, what this is kind of in line with what the Attanic Temple want is, you know, you know, being mature humans that you know, I suppose how I'm trying to put it, you know, we can live in pace with respect and dignity as their authentic selves. And that's kind of what I want for everyone. And yeah, that's kind of my my final points, Jonathan.
What do you think I could get into a long discussion about about that. And I can disagree with you on certain points. I never wanted my diatribe to make you feel like you were the target of that in any way. I understand you're from another country, and I understand that your perspective is valuable. So I actually I like the fact that you gave that perspective because I would not have thought about it that way. And that's that's an important thing. That's why we're here. We're here
to have a different perspective. May not seem like it all the time, but we do argue about these things. So you know, uh, the next time I'm in Australia, I'll look you up. We can have that discussion.
That way.
But no, no, I mean, you know, there is something about you know, there is I wouldn't call it what about isn't But it's always about uh look shiny, you know, trying It gets to be a distraction from the conversation you're trying to have, you know, you know, and that's why that's why I that's where I would go with that, is that we want to get to the facts, you know, we want to get to the discussion why this is here at all? You know, why why do people hate age?
You know, why are they so why is this? Why are they so putting us down all the time. Why can't we just have a parade without everybody clutching their pearls and screaming through bullhorns at us. You know, that's a whole that's a whole nother show that we can have sometimes.
I do want to point out. So I do want to point out that, well, I think there was a councilor said that we don't want to sponsor anything that's personal or political or you know, into identity. But then it was talking about like military like I think parades for veterans and all this, all this kind of stuff, and it's like, well that that is a that is a identity based thing, you know exactly.
Yeah, it's says flip flopping back and forth. It's like say anything to cover your ass, but don't worry if it even makes sense, or worry about it later or whatever will make up something else later. They said, you know, we chose not to engage in identity or based or political gestures, which is city council Like, I thought that was kind of the point their job.
They're politically. Yeah, here we go.
I have to say I was shocked, says City council member Dave Donaldson. Veterans Day Parade will get nothing this year. The Festival of Lives will get nothing, but that celebration got sixty thousand was a fifty percent.
Increase sixty thousand for what front for.
The Pride Peaks, Pride Parade.
God, that's aure that is hard. Even a person's comment even relates to it though, like one time, right, that.
Is what about is? Well what about them getting all this money?
Yeah, that's that's what about? Is that we we really need to stop. It's like, yeah, that's stuff and that's just everything sponsor everything.
Yeah, not to push it even further, but I guess I don't know if it is what what about it? But it is to say that if they're gonna, if they're going to choose to avoid identity based gesture or political gestures, then they should avoid them and not you know, wait until it's like, oh well this is against Christianity and now we're going to get involved. Because Christianity is
very much an identity. I mean, if if, if your beliefs are certainly you know, a part of your identity, and Christianity is a belief So believing in Satan is a feature of like I said earlier, those two belief systems. Taking a stance on Satan is an identity based gesture.
Don't you know that Christianity is persecuted in America.
Oh my god. I mean it's not it's not like they're like, you know, gay or something. You know, they're they're persecuted more than that.
Right, And not only is it an identity based gesture, but since they're the government and it's a religious identity, it's also an illegal gesture. Well what are you gonna do anyway? Don't forget to check below for more nonprofits, Share, like and subscribe, tell all your friends about us, and don't forget to hail Satan. Take care of