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Hello and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to creating conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, January 16th, and I'm Mark Ross, retired partner of PWC and president of the City Club Board of directors.

Today, we are here for a conversation with Aaron Baer, president of the center for Christian Virtue.

Before I formally introduce our guest, I believe it is important to put this section session into some context, given the attention it has received since its announcement in 113 years of the City Club's history.

There have been moments when our speaker invitations have caused some controversy.

For example, in 1916, when Pancho Villa had invaded New Mexico, a representative of the Mexican government spoke.

Also in 1967, segregationist George Wallace addressed this club and its guest.

And the list goes on.

Today's forum has clearly become one of these moments that tests our community's commitment to dialog across difference.

Many have weighed in.

We've heard from members of the LGBTQ plus community and others from the left, as well as Ohio's attorney general and others on the right.

And to be sure, plenty of people in the middle.

And then we heard from Chris Quinn, the editor of The Plain Dealer, who encouraged those who want insight into how power is exercised in Columbus.

Go inside and listen.

And to use the generous times these forums provide to ask questions and demand clarity.

The relevance of CCV in Ohio policymaking is exactly why we asked Mr.

Baer to be with us today, and are interested in hearing more about the organization and its priorities.

To me, a discussion around the outside legislative influence of CCV is what is meant by a conversation of consequence.

To close off this preamble, allow me to restate a few words I shared at our City Club annual meeting a few months back.

The first line of the City Club's creed captures why we are so committed to being guardians of free speech.

I hail and harbor and hear people of every belief and party, for within my portals prejudice grows less and bias dwindles again.

Prejudice grows less and bias dwindles.

Think about how rare this is in our nation right now.

A nation divided with people furiously following their curated social media feeds, misinformation running rampant and too often violence breaking out over disagreements about policy.

And yet, this diversity of ideas is exactly what happens at the City Club every week.

This year has shown us just how important these simple actions of listening, learning and speaking to each other are.

We listen to challenging ideas without fear.

We protect the platform where those ideas are shared.

We ask questions at the appropriate time in pursuit of understanding.

We believe the right conversation at the right time can change how our community deals with really challenging issues, including when that conversation is controversial to some or even many in the audience.

This is why we are committed to ensuring this stage continues to be a platform committed to diversity of thought, said differently.

If you feel we are focused on achieving diversity in the ideology of our speakers and topics, we are as that is how we all better understand the facts and our differences.

Whatever your political beliefs, we will continue to be a place where you can come to hear from candidates, lawmakers and policy leaders, including those you disagree with.

End quote.

Thank you all for being here today.

And now the formal introduction.

Much has been written recently about our speaker, Aaron Bear, and the organization he leads, the center for Christian Virtue.

Though they have been operating in Ohio since the 1980s, the organization has grown exponentially in recent years and has moved from Cincinnati to Columbus today with a 4.7 million annual budget and a staff of more than 30, they are lobbying in Columbus on a range of issues, including anti-abortion, anti-DEI, anti LGBTQ plus anti-gambling policies and in favor of parental leave, public school cell phone bans, and the champion championing of Ohio's Add Choice school voucher program.

In addition to their advocacy advocacy, they lead a Christian Business Council, a growing network of Christian schools, and political training for Christian clergy.

Moderating the conversation CEO City Club CEO Dan Moulthrop, who you all know.

Before we begin, a quick reminder for our live stream audience and radio audience.

If you have a question for our speaker during the Q&A portion, you can text it to (330)541-5794, and the City club staff will try to work it into the program now.

Members and friends of the City Club, Aaron Baer and Dan Moutlhrop Thank you.

Thank you very much.

So, Aaron, thank you for joining us.

Mark, thank you for the introduction.

We're going to jump right in here.

And I want to thank also everybody who has joined us here at the City Club today.

I want to start sort of generally and ask you to describe the center for Christian Virtue, its mission and its work.

We got kind of a summary from Mark, but I think you probably want to elaborate a little.

Yeah.

You know, at the heart of center for Christian Virtue, is the belief, that, we serve a creator god, who made every individual in this world and his image, and loved them so much that he sent his only son to die for them.

And that belief, compels and instructs a lot about then how we order our lives, how we order our society.

And how we interact with one another.

That's a very sort of traditional Orthodox Christian belief, throughout time.

And by the grace of God, we are a generation of Christians, that were born in a country where we get to participate in making our laws and, and the political process.

Right.

We see, Jesus, in his last words, in his great commission, telling us to go into all the world.

And, he didn't say go into all the world except for that dirty world of politics over there.

This is the political process.

In America, is a part of the world that we live in today.

And so for CVE, what we care about doing is bringing that perspective, of Christians to the political debate.

And in particular, bringing a perspective that we believe is eternally true for everybody, whether or not you believe, in the inerrancy of the Bible, whether or not you believe some Jewish guy 2000 years ago was crucified and came back from the dead.

We believe his word, is true for all of us.

And so, that's what we do, is we advocate for the truth that we see revealed in his eternal word.

Let's talk a little bit more specifically, if you would, about the advocacy you do at the statehouse.

You moved the kV from Cincinnati to Columbus to a building right across the street from the statehouse.

That's different from just advocating believing in the Word of God.

Yeah, yeah.

No, absolutely.

And by all means, it wasn't a direct path from, you know, our little Sharon ville office to, to 62 East Broad.

It was first to a little house off State Street and so it was a growing process.

By all means.

Didn't happen overnight.

But the the the way that really went about and the way we go about doing our work, I actually the Cincinnati Enquirer did a story, a couple of weeks ago, on on the growth of kV, and what I appreciated about it is that they pointed out that kV has, I have never made a single political donation.

In Ohio.

I've, I've never kV has never made a political donation under my tenure.

They're we've not bought our influence in any stretch of the imagination.

We do community organizing.

We do grassroots organizing.

And let me say, I am not anti political donation.

I think, you know, everybody in this room, if you see a candidate you believe in, that is your constitutional American, right.

And and you should be supporting them financially, it's a good thing.

Otherwise it's just the lobbyists that are doing it, just the corporations that are doing it.

I believe they have the right to do it too.

But it's important when grassroots folks, can now get can get out there and, and make their voice heard.

But the, the secret sauce, the success that CCV has had.

Yeah.

By all means.

Having that proximity to the statehouse is very important because we build relationships with lawmakers.

Right.

It's just that process of seeing a great lawmaker like Representative Milton Miller who's here and saying, hey, what do you believe in?

What do you care about?

Here's some things we're seeing all over the state.

Can we work together on doing something good?

That's really the day in, day out work that we do.

And by the grace of God, there's a lot of people in the state who agree with us.

And there's a lot of people in the state House and, ultimately the governor's office and even in Washington that share our perspective and say, sure, let's do this together.

Let's talk about some of the issues that you've been advocating on.

The feedback that we received the most, has to do.

We want to know, you know, it has to do with the LGBT community and specifically that the, the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric that comes out of the center for Christian Virtue causes harm.

There.

There.

That notion that specifically the rhetoric leads to an increase in suicidal behavior, suicidal ideation, and attempts by LGBT youth.

Research in the Journal for Adolescent Health, Jama Pediatrics, and other publications.

How do you respond to that?

So there's a lot of ways, that I would respond to that.

One, I disagree.

I don't just disagree.

The the the UK Cass report, which was the largest review of the research on this front, along with the recent review of pediatric medicine and transgender pediatric medicine from the Health and Human Services Department, in Washington, DC, And that's based on evidence that has been peer reviewed.

we are seeing a, a yes, there certainly has been a rise in the.

Sure.

I'm talking specifically about rhetoric that that makes people feel bullied, feel unwanted, that then creates this sense.

I'm not talking about about how the Department of Health and Human Services sees when that gender reassignment.

No, no, no, what what that report also talked about the claims that this rhetoric is causing, individuals to commit suicide.

That's a very serious claim to make.

And it's one that again, the the review of the data doesn't back up.

There is certainly been a rise in, in transgender suicides, which is terrible.

But the idea that rhetoric causes that I want to get back to the nature of that claim, but I want to I want to follow this through.

The problem with that claim, Dan, is that if you look at the increase in, pediatric suicides, particularly with individuals, with gender dysphoria, you will see, an increase in the 20 tens.

Have you seen this data?

You'll see an increase in the 20 tens.

Right.

And so, so the basis of their claim then would be that, it is harder to be a transgender youth today, in the 20 tens or today than it was in the 1990s and the 2000 that America is less accepting today of individuals with, you know, so-called non non-binary identities, things like that.

And that is, I think, fundamentally untrue.

I think everybody here could, but most folks in the room probably didn't know what a preferred pronoun was before 2015.

And at the same time what what did come online then in the 20 tens.

Right.

You see the rise of pediatric gender clinics, right?

All over the country.

You saw these these clinics at Cleveland Clinic, at Nationwide Children's, at Cincinnati Children's pop up.

And was when these clinics started coming on and we started injecting children, with dangerous cross-sex hormones on, on procedures that path the the leading transgender, medical, organization in the world has said, yeah, we were kind of winging it with these procedures.

That's when you see the rise of these things.

And actually, what the what the recent report from Health and Human Services has said, is that there is no everybody, all of these children, there's no direct evidence that shows that, the suicides related to these, these individuals, these kids who have committed suicide is directly related to their gender dysphoria because all of them have other comorbidities, anxiety, depression, things that typically we know can lead to suicide.

So the claims that are about to see me ask you this, does the rhetoric help?

So what the rhetoric is doing?

Yes, I believe the rhetoric helps because what actually is healthy for these kids is for them to never go down this path in the first place.

The the reality is these these children, their parents are being bullied and pressured into something that is a biological and medical impossibility and us pulling punches on something when children are being sterilized for life and children are being harmed irreparably, is not loving them.

It is.

You cannot know.

No child was ever born in the wrong body.

Telling a child you were born in the wrong body is a is a heinous act.

And it's whose body were they supposed to be born in?

And that's, that's the, the fundamental question with this language that we use that is, is nonsensical.

So I suspect there's going to be a number of questions in the second half of the program.

I'm looking forward to them.

About that.

The and I know you guys work on a lot of other issues as well.

So I don't want to spend too much time focused on that.

But do you do you think that as the one of the leading advocacy organizations in the state of Ohio, or, you know, perhaps the leading advocacy, one of the most influential advocacy organizations in the state of Ohio, you bear a special responsibility to use rhetoric that is more inclusive and less prone to, to even being perceived as harmful.

The reality is, the if we are silent on massive harm that's being done to children, we are being derelict in our duty.

And when we see children being harmed, when we see again, when we see a gaming industry that's targeting, young men and targeting our communities with exploitative, apps, that are meant to drain them of every cent and I hope and I and I say anything other than these greedy gaming companies that don't give a rip about, how people are doing and or just trying to milk them dry.

I'm not loving the people in our state, and I, we're not loving people.

If we say, yeah, it's okay for a dude to play in girls sports.

So so that lie so in when that kind of language though, like you recognize that that kind of language is what people in the, in the LGBT community find most inflammatory and most offensive.

It doesn't make it any less true.

And actually, Dan, when we veil our language in political correctness and we we play around with these ideas that are ultimately leading to children being sterilized for life to 16 year old girls having their breasts chopped off and boys having their penis removed.

Oh, what?

What?

Wait a minute.

I'm sorry.

What?

This is what's happening?

If you guys don't like what we're talking about here, then you should be upset with the, pediatric clinics that are doing these things.

If we're not being honest and clear about these are the medical procedures that are happening, to kids.

Then then we're not loving our neighbors, and we're not being clear.

This is why we I mean, again, go, go see Chloe Cole, who at 16 had her breast removed.

This is this is real.

And we're not helping anybody when we we're not clear about what's actually happening.

Okay?

There's, And as I said, there's a lot of other issues that that CVE works on.

I know there's going to be more questions about this in the second half of the program.

Let's talk about public education.

It's an area where I think, CVE has had a lot of impact.

You said on your podcast, we have to tear down this public education system.

Yes.

Why?

Because the system is fundamentally broken and it's no longer focused on educating children.

It's focused on employing adults and pushing ideology.

You've.

If you look at the numbers that we spend on education today is shocking, right?

Our our spending adjusted for inflation, has gone through the roof in public education and our results are getting worse.

Dan, I mean, there is nothing like there's no very few things that are worse for a child than to not learn to read.

And the National Assessment on Education Progress shows less than 40% of fourth graders are proficient in reading.

And yet we're spending more than ever before.

So again, this is one of these things a lot of folks pull punches when talking about the public education system.

And again, I'm the product of the public education system, actually one of the worst performing public schools, in Ohio, Warren City schools.

But us talking nicely about the system that we have today to make a number of adults feel better about themselves because they don't want to hear that, hey, what they're doing is failing and kids are suffering is not helping anybody.

But I guess what I'm asking is, I mean, you say tear down the public education system, which at the end of that there's no public education system.

I don't.

So what do you mean?

Yeah, I don't I don't believe that.

And again, I think in in the broader conversations we've have we've made this clear.

We've said constantly actually school choice is our path forward to fixing the government education system.

Because it brings competitive, competition to the space.

It gives parents the opportunity.

Again, this is a, an organization that believes in diversity.

And the idea that we're going to have we're going to force every child into a monolith education system is a bad idea, and we see it playing out poorly.

And there's great data.

University of Arkansas did a great study on how, school choice programs actually improve the outcomes in public education because as families have choice, those families there can say they bring competitive forces to bear on a, on a government school that's failing and not meeting their needs.

So that may be true in well-resourced communities that have access to alternatives.

A lot of Ohio, you've got one school district and it's a rural school district, and there aren't access to alternatives.

And that's a shame.

And that's the type of system we need to tear down and build something up.

So there's lots more opportunities there.

Let's keep that public school there.

Let's get some charter schools there.

Let's get some crystal realistic.

Realistically, in rural communities, farming communities like there aren't there aren't the resources, aren't the demographics, aren't the population to support alternatives to existing school that that is there.

That's fundamentally not true, Dan.

I mean, there would be if we think of school differently, right?

We we've shown the TCV, we've launched 15 Christian schools in the last three years alone.

Many of these schools are 20, 30, 40 kids.

And you know what?

They're doing it on.

They're doing it on the $6,100 voucher and choice, scholarship every year, as opposed to the 20,000, 15 to $20,000, even more that, public schools get from the, the state.

We don't have to push every kid into a massive public school.

And, you know, it is.

And this is where we get really hard on the body of Christ is we look at those rural communities and we say, hey, there is a church all over the place here that you guys poured millions of dollars in to build this great sanctuary and a gym and these great Sunday school classrooms, and this building is empty six days a week.

There's nothing going on there, for the most part, except for maybe a few nighttime activities.

And there's kids in your community who are suffering and are never learning to read, which means they can't access that for themselves.

The eternal Word of God.

Right?

So they're looking for hope.

They're looking for for a future.

And the book that tells them that they are worth something and God loves them dearly.

They can't even read themselves because the government school system is failing.

This is why then we say we need to destroy the system we have right now, because it is fundamentally failing too many kids.

And we need intervene.

I want to ask you, shift gears, for a second, ask you where your views differ from mainstream Republican views, because I know there are a few places where they where they do, you know, marijuana and the the removing of marijuana from schedule one is an issue that you've raised your voice on.

Talk about where where you diverge.

Yeah.

I think, broadly on, on marijuana is a great example of that.

I think on, obviously gaming is an area we see is incredibly exploitative.

If you look at things like the lottery, we can't even talk about the lottery in the state House today because it's brings in so much money for the state.

But, it fundamentally is a scheme.

It's consumer fraud, exploiting people for the opportunity.

You know, you can't win if you don't play.

And where do all these lottery tickets get sold?

They get sold in East Cleveland.

They don't get sold in Hudson.

Hudson.

Right.

And, and and fundamentally, and what we do then is we say we're going to, we're going to exploit these poor folks and Warren City and Youngstown and all these players to play a game they can't win.

And then we take that money to fund Olentangy schools, right?

The wealthy school districts and things like it's.

So those are things that we, we separate from from a lot of Republicans, I'll say as well, more and more, we see ourselves separating from, mainstream from a lot of Republicans and things like, I, we are I is coming.

It's something we need to be, leveraging and using and being aware of.

But there are massive implications, for human dignity.

There's massive implications, for even what does it mean to be a human today, that we have concerns about when you hear folks like Elon or Ted Cruz, who I probably agree with Ted Cruz on 90 to 95% of the issues, saying we need a ten year moratorium on AI regulation in the states.

That's a terrible idea.

Actually, right now we need states being innovative on AI regulation so that we can figure out what's the best way of going about leveraging this incredible tool that, I mean, even if you really listen to Sam Altman and his conversations, he doesn't even really know where this is all going to go.

And, you know, the implications that has for our workforce, the implications that has for our children, for the elderly.

Oh goodness me, are are massive.

And so those areas, and then, you know, again, like, Mike DeWine vetoed the Safe act, right?

The ban on transgender medicine on kids.

And so, you know, we don't always agree with with even our friends here, the cell phone ban in public schools, something that, you advocated for, something that I think had probably a very broad coalition of support.

Can you talk a little bit about how the advocacy that went into that?

It seemed to happen very fast.

Yeah.

Well, and that's I'll just say this is one of these things that I think technology in the classroom, and I know we have some good narrative, podcast listeners here.

We just had a really good interview, last week with, with a, a Harvard professor on tech in the classroom.

And it's one of these areas, that we have just, experimented on a generation of students in a terrible way.

And it was all just because, I mean, the the well intentioned folks were saying, well, it's every kid needs the opportunity for this technology.

It's the technology for the future.

The real play was, you had companies like Google, who, just saw, hey, this is a great market here.

If we can put one of our Chromebooks in every classroom and get kids signed up at the age of nine for a Google account, we can put everybody on a, on a, on a tablet and a, Google Chromebook and a cell phone.

And they need these things because you and I, we use our cell phones and our tablets and our laptops every day.

So we have to train these kids up on these things.

When there was no data showing this was actually good for kids.

So, you know, the cell phone ban, that's an easy one where you could go to a school and say, hey, I can improve your test results by at least 15% and you don't have to spend a dime.

All you have to do is keep phones out of the classroom from bell to bell.

And yeah, that first year is going to be hell.

It's going to be awful.

It's, you know, it's not going to be fun.

But after that, you see everything.

And actually, we were just I was talking to a school administrator, or a teacher, the other day, and she told us how, after, the Christmas break, she asked her kids, hey, what are your what are your New Year's goals?

What what are the things you want to do?

And, of the 60 kids she said almost every single one of them said, I want a doom scroll less.

I want to be on my phone less.

I want to be on social media less.

All of us here know the tug of social media and phones, and the distracting nature of these things.

And so, you know, things like the cell phone ban were great.

I want to see the state, move to paper testing.

That's another thing, taking a test on paper as opposed to a tablet or a screen.

You see far better results.

We learn better on paper than on screens.

This 1 to 1 computer to child, experiment that we're doing on, children today is a disaster.

And actually, the guy we just had on the podcast, Jared Horvath.

Doctor.

Jared Horvath said, Gen Z is the first generation in American history that's doing worse academically than the previous generation.

Which doesn't make sense because we are the most affluent and we have more technology and we have all the it, like you and I literally have every book that we had in our school in our pockets right now.

And yet we're doing worse.

And it's because of the tech.

And so there's things like that that we see as big opportunities for us to help kids.

We're going to move to audience questions in a second.

But before we do, I wonder if you could talk about, what's on the agenda for the coming years?

What are your highest legislative priorities?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing right now, and it's it's hard to call this a legislative priority, because it in and of itself is not a, a first and foremost policy issue.

But this area creates is at the root and at the core of all of the policy problems we face today.

And that's the the decline of marriage and the collapse of family.

You see, today in Ohio, 53% of kids are raised in households without a married mom and dad.

And statistically speaking, if a kid is not in his household with his married mom and dad, his or her married mom and dad, the odds of them, experiencing hardship in life, whether that's, worse education outcomes, drug use, violence.

I mean, you name the the bulk of those things, their odds spike, right?

It goes through the roof, when they don't have a married mom and dad at home.

This is really a cultural issue first and foremost, right?

There's things the government does.

Like, Brad Wilcox from the University of Virginia has said, you know, the research shows marriage has become an elite institution, right.

And that's in part because of some government policies, like, I'm sure a lot of folks are in the, in the room, are aware of what's called the benefits.

Cliff.

So if you have two individuals who are on Snap or on Medicaid or on housing subsidies, if they get married, they get significantly less money, on those programs.

So they're actually the government is actually incentivizing them to, to make decisions that are more harmful for their well-being, ultimately more harmful for their ability to earn more money long term and and really more harmful for the children they might produce.

So there's things like that on the policy front we want to deal with.

And then there's like I said, there's more broader cultural issues.

I mean, this is something we work at with churches on right?

So a lot of the things we do are in the community.

You know, there's some data that shows 85% of churches spend $0 anymore on marriage and family ministry.

And why have we walked away from one of the greatest gifts of God, of of marriage and family.

And so, we want to be, encouraging that beyond that, we mentioned some of these things.

We are concerned about what this technology and I are going to do, the next generation.

We want to see responsible and ethical approaches to it.

There's continuing education reform that needs done.

Yeah.

I think that I cover everything, I don't know, we want to save lives.

We want to we'd love to see no more abortion in the state, but that's going to be a long, long time to get back to the ballot on something like that.

So, yeah.

Okay.

We're going to move to audience questions.

Now, if you're just joining us on the radio, I'm Dan Moulthrop CEO of the City Club of Cleveland.

We're joined by Aaron Baer.

He's president CEO of the center for Christian Virtue.

You if you have a question that you'd like to text, you can text it to (330)541-5794.

The number again is (330)541-5794.

And we're going to start with our first question now.

Thank you.

President Trump has had multiple marriages, infidelity in each of them bears false witness on almost a daily basis and has actively attacked marginalized communities for years.

How do you square his daily behaviors with those preached by Christ, and is there anything he has said or done that troubles you as a Christian and Christian voice in Ohio?

Absolutely.

Thank you for that.

This is such an important question, for really understanding where we're coming from.

So, I want to get to the things that President Trump has done to troubled us because he did something even yesterday, that that troubled us.

And we are speaking out against, but we have to understand the way we view this, these issues, the way we view elections.

Right.

As we are a government of the people, by the people for the people.

Right.

And so the question in our, our political debate today is, where does the buck stop in American politics about who decide and how we decide the direction we should go?

Right.

And again, a lot of times we think it's the president or we think it's the Supreme Court, or we think it's the governor or the legislature or things like that.

It's not it's us.

Right.

So our we are the ones that are our vote and who we put in office.

They are the people that are tools to enact policy that we agree with.

Right.

So when we get to an election time, we have to look at what is the most effective tool, for enacting righteous and good public policy.

Righteous and good laws of the land.

And that will do the most good and do the least harm.

Right.

That's that's the question.

Every time we go to the ballot boxes, which one of these people that I can vote for is going to do the most good and going to do the least harm?

Again, none of us, until Jesus Christ is on the ballot.

None of us are ever going to pick a perfect candidate.

But a lot of times were put in difficult situations.

This doesn't mean this doesn't mean that personal character, personal morality doesn't matter.

It does matter.

It's massively important.

But that's one factor of a number of factors that everybody in this room needs to.

And I would say everybody in this room does weigh when you're deciding who you're going to vote for.

So when we look at, one, when we look at the problems we're facing in our country today, it's not just that Donald Trump was the lesser of two evils between Joe Biden and Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump or Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, but also Donald Trump, is willing to take on the fundamental things in our country that are broken that that Republicans throughout time has said they're going to address and then never did, moving the the Israeli embassy from, to, to Jerusalem.

That was a huge thing for, for Christians, right.

And for Jewish, individuals as well.

You know, you know, dealing with the, dealing with a lot of abortion issues, right?

Like he, he defunded Planned Parenthood.

I can't tell you how many times I rallied for defunding Planned Parenthood, and Republicans didn't get it done.

Let me just interrupt for a second and ask you to answer the specifics of the question, though, which I would like.

I think I would sort of like on what where do you.

Yeah.

How does it how do you how how what troubles you about Donald Trump.

So on.

How do you see past that.

Yeah.

So I mean, I think it's how you see past it.

Yeah.

So all of the things she just said, his infidelities, his lying, his his brashness, I don't love any of that.

Right.

And I've said those things as much and I don't love you know, he's trying to push it.

Right.

Right now there's a there's a huge debate over whether we should extend the Obamacare subsidies, and the proposal that's out there and even that Max Miller just voted for Dave Joyce just voted for Mike.

Kerry just voted for three Republicans did not include the full Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding of abortion and so we've been very vocal to say, Mr.

President, if you even the new health care policy he just put out is oddly vague on whether it's going to include full Hyde protections.

And so we're calling him out.

I mean, like you mentioned, he did say you've got to be flexible on how exactly and we're not happy with that.

And we've said as much to him and his administration and and our senators, we have an action alert out there right now saying, hey, Bernie Morano, John Hughes, Ted, you've been strong pro-life champions.

Please make sure I don't think the Obamacare subsidies should pass either way.

But if you are going to do it, it at least needs to have full height.

you claim that you are an advocate of educational choice, and obviously of religious freedom, but the schools you are seeking to fund with public dollars will only be open to born again Christians, which means people who don't share your religious beliefs will not be able to use those choices.

Oh, I'm not done yet.

Fundamentally, you sit here wanting to have your First Amendment right to spew all sorts of things that people would claim are untruths.

Starting with the statement you made in your podcast that the LGBT community wanted this forum to be canceled.

Nobody ever said that.

But you said it anyway.

So you're sitting here, one in your First Amendment rights, but then you also advocate that anything that has LGBTQ in it, in any public school, university or library must be censored.

You've gone so far as to say that LGBTQ people should be made illegal.

Oh, I did so you're your organization has.

Yes.

So okay.

You just said a massacre, but I'll keep going.

I don't understand the logic.

If there is any of on one hand saying there are rights that all Americans espouse and have a right to including you, but then you get to choose what rights those other Americans get to exercise.

So could you explain, am I wrong on that, or is that your advocacy?

Yeah.

So.

So Dan, you guys have had I think I saw a story where you said you've had 12 or 13 different LGBT speakers on the stage or something like that, somewhere in that range.

How many times did CCV or any of our folks ever reach out to you and call you to cancel on or to call you to say you need to have somebody else on stage with them?

Didn't happen, never happened.

So the idea that we are trying to cancel or keep LGBT folks out of the public square or the debate, it's just not true.

But as for the conversation about, about choice, that's absolutely correct.

We as a private organization are in the business of, helping start new Christian schools.

Because that's what we want to do.

What's great about that is anybody in this room has the religious freedom as private individuals to go and start your own schools, leveraging that choice.

And you can make those schools have their own, admission standards and statements of faith or statements of belief or all of those types of things.

That's fundamental freedom of association.

Right?

The same thing with the, you know, the same First Amendment that talks about free speech and religious freedom.

Also talks about free association.

And so, yeah, by all means, guys, go start your own schools that, that focus on whatever it is you want.

And if they're great and if they're meeting kids needs and families are happy, you'll have folks enroll.

And if they stink, you'll have folks leave and the school will shut down.

And that's just that's the free market.

So.

You have consistently advocated for the state to enforce policies rooted in explicitly Christian doctrine.

The Constitution's bedrock principle is the separation of church and state to protect religious freedom for everyone.

How is your position not a violation of that constitutional principle?

So appreciate the question.

The Constitution does not say there's the word separation of church and state does not appear in the Constitution.

They just don't.

The Constitution says there shall be no establishment of religion.

And again, that's regarding establishment of a church state.

And we would have we would oppose an official church state.

We believe that would violate, the First Amendment.

The this is one of my my favorite questions, for the day, because we have to understand, at the end of the day, again, the buck stops with we the people.

The buck stops with each of us.

And we have the, the fundamental right as Americans, to vote our conscience.

Right.

We have the ability to go and say, this is what I think is right, and this is what I think is wrong, and this is what I think is going to make our society and our state thrive.

And this is what I think is going to make us go backwards.

And so we encourage Christians to follow their conscience.

Now, the, the, in the eyes of the Constitution, whether you whether you call your conscience Jiminy Cricket or you call your conscience the Holy Spirit in the eyes of the Constitution, or you call your conscience Allah in the eyes of the Constitution, it's all legit.

It's all valid.

And so all we're calling to do is saying, hey, we let's make sure our voice is heard in this process as we're making decisions about what is right and wrong, saying again, saying, we ought not to have rape, right?

Rape ought to be illegal is a deeply Christian belief.

We go out and vote for that, right?

We should have laws that protect against rape or human trafficking.

Is that me forcing my religion on someone?

No, nobody would say that because that's something we all generally agree on.

It's just when we say we ought not to have child murder, and unborn children, that's when all of a sudden it's it's religion.

And that doesn't make sense.

That doesn't hold water.

I have a question about, the Bible.

Yes.

The Bible's because the books, a book or books that we call the Bible, really has had innumerable authors, editors, human authors, human editors, human translators and interpreters.

And as a result, the Bible can be cited and is cited as promoting or condemning slavery, promoting or condemning genocide, homosexuality, racism, etcetera, etcetera.

You get the point.

Isn't using the Bible as the basis for enacting laws in a democracy just a deceptive way to force one's personal prejudice and beliefs and values on the rest of society?

Yeah.

So I thank you for, when I say thank you for the question, especially something like this.

This is not filibustering.

This is awesome, because this is the kind of thing that I want to talk about.

So you guys can understand.

This is where we're coming from, right?

So thank you for that question.

And I take it sincerely.

So a few different things.

Yes.

On the on the, the origins of the Bible itself.

I'm not a, you know, a, theologian or have my PhD and all this, and there are folks that folks like Wesley Huff and others that have written much more about why we can trust, the, the origins of the Bible and all of that.

I'll say general orthodox belief here again, believing that the Holy Spirit divinely inspired these individuals, you know, some 2000 years ago from some 5000 years ago to write these words, and then, maintain them in a, continuous, in a, in a consistent fashion throughout ages.

To us today, that is a fundamental belief and faith that Christians have, and it is a leap of faith to believe that.

I think that is totally legit.

As I often say, though, that's not the craziest thing, but I believe I believe a guy was murdered and came back to life.

So and he walked on water and did all this other crazy stuff.

So we there's a lot of other leaps of faith.

If you're going to call yourself a Christian, that you have to buy into them, that the Bible, has maintained, throughout time.

So two, no.

And actually, I actually think, Christians saying, hey, our moral authority are, are are deciding what is right and wrong, is based in this ancient text that has been preserved throughout history, is actually a far more legitimate, and, valid way of determining right and wrong than, than most secular Americans, because at the end of the day, we have to decide what is our authority for deciding what is right and wrong.

Right.

Where are we making that determination?

Where does that right come from?

And for most folks, what it would just be is what feels right to me.

And for Christians, we're saying, hey, this ancient text, interpreted as it has been pretty consistent consistently throughout these last several millennia, is how we make these determinations.

And that's why that's why we do that.

You acknowledge, though, I mean, there are pastors in the audience who would have a completely different interpretation of various biblical texts than you do 100%.

I think they would have to acknowledge that their beliefs, are far more, outside of the historical interpretation of these texts than the one that TCB texts.

Right.

So, so there might be debate on that, if they're going to disagree with it, that that doesn't make it any less factually true, just like men can't get pregnant.

But, yeah, yeah.

Our next question, please.

My question for you is the Muslims have been on American soil since Columbus, and yet you do not expect them to be part of society.

And your philosophy that it should be all Christian nation is totally opposite of when you say you are for diversity, it just makes no sense because you cannot oppose other religion, other people of different faiths to work and live here for centuries, and yet you want them to leave and make this just a Christian nation.

So and even the Christian nation, by your definition.

Christian, Christian, Christian nation, as you define it, rather than other people may define it.

I think there's a conflict in that.

So, sir, I'm sorry if there are things we've said that made you think that we don't want Muslims in our country.

There are things that we have very serious concerns about radical Islam.

And I think you can see that in Middle Eastern parts of the world.

That and I, I'm going to come back to it.

I mean, some Christian fundamentalists who are or Jewish fundamentalists, it doesn't.

The fundamental has nothing or radicalization has nothing to do with the religion.

It has to do with the people, and you have to separate those.

So.

So, sir, our our Christian beliefs, which were the beliefs of the founders of our country, established a nation, established a nation where people can come of all faiths and all background.

We don't want to say everybody has to be a Christian.

We would fundamentally oppose a law that would say, if you're going to live in America, you need to be a Christian.

That is a bad idea.

That's not what Jesus wants us to do.

We want the ability to proclaim him and live out the goodness of Jesus Christ.

And have the ability to persuade and tell people he is the way, the truth, and the life.

Right?

But we do.

We would oppose a law that says you need to convert to Christianity.

You or anybody needs to convert to Christianity.

And I would say Christianity on the whole, even a broadly Christian culture, which is fundamentally what we still have in America, our laws are still fundamentally based off of orthodox Christian beliefs, has allowed more people to thrive for more diverse backgrounds and more diverse religions than any country in world history.

This is what Christianity does.

Whether or not somebody wants to believe in Christianity or not.

It is a great thing that our nation was founded on Christian principles because it has allowed people from all types of different backgrounds and beliefs to thrive, and that's what we want to see continue.

Thank you.

Next question.

So, My question listening to the Supreme Court this week is, wouldn't it be better to have a third category transsexuals competing against transsexuals in sports, men competing against men and women competing against women?

Listen, if somebody wanted to, create a third category, that's fine.

I think what our priority is like, we saw, in the, and the Supreme Court is primarily keeping biological males out of female sports, to, to ensure fundamental fairness.

And that Andrea and I identify the reality that there are two sexes.

And so, again, I think that there's been conversation about that.

And that's not been something we've really weighed in on.

We were told twice before you began to speak that we should be an attentive and respectful audience.

But as I've listened to you answer questions, what I have observed is that whenever anyone disagrees with you, you jump right in and try to tell them that they're wrong.

And so I'm wondering, we live in a democracy.

It's nothing to smile about, sir.

Living in a democracy is not something to smile about.

You know what I'm saying?

Isn't something to smile about.

Okay?

Is it important in a democracy for us to reach compromise and common ground or is it, as I've been hearing you say, my way or the highway?

I'm so sorry.

That's a I. I don't think those words, have come out of my mouth.

And, actually, if you look at the nature of what CTV does, we work in a process by which, hey, we say, here's the direction we think we should go represent of Miller.

What way do you think we should go?

And speakers.

Huffman which way do you think we should go?

And we say, okay, if we can get 50 people in the house that agree on this is the direction we think we should go, let's do that.

If we can get, you know, 50 people, let's, let's take the Ed Choice expansion.

Right.

Our, our goal on that was the original backpack bill.

And the backpack bill was, what's called an empowerment savings account.

And every kid would be eligible for an essay.

No matter what their income is up to $6,100, right?

We we $6,100 K to eight, 84, 90, 12.

We could not get 50 votes, on that in the House and 17 votes in the Senate and one governor signature on that.

So we said, okay, what if we expand?

What?

We'll compromise.

Let's go to universal ed choice.

We'll just take the existing voucher, make every kid eligible for it.

And we got really close to getting that done.

And then at the last minute some Republicans said, let's put means testing on it.

So you get a little bit less the more you make.

We didn't like that.

But that's what the that's what could get 50 votes in the House at the time, and 17 votes in the Senate and one governor signature.

So that's what we did.

So the idea that we, like, force our beliefs on people or that we're uncompromising now we come with a perspective and say, this is the things we think we should do.

And if you agree, then let's vote.

Yes.

You are very pro-life and your organization and very anti-abortion.

What programs are you promoting to help babies and mothers and families after the baby is born?

Yeah, absolutely.

This is a funny one because you go across the the state right now and the, the, the, the pro-life community gets primarily, seen as a political organization.

But actually a week from today is the March for life, and you'll have hundreds of thousands, if not over a million, pro-life, individuals, at, the U.S.

Capitol.

And the vast majority exercise their pro-life advocacy in pregnancy centers.

And what are these pregnancy centers do?

Do they try to convince women not to have abortions?

Now, the vast majority of women that show up there, some some of them do.

That is true.

My apologies.

Yeah, a lot of them.

If a woman shows up, they'll say, hey, that's a child.

We're here to support you.

But they also do say, hey, here's your choice.

If you want to go someplace else, you can.

But where they spend 90% of their resources, right.

We actually the, CCV help form the Ohio Coalition of Pregnancy Centers.

90% of their resources go to helping mothers.

After their child is born, with car seats, with parenting classes, with baby formula, with food.

Right.

The pro-life community is somehow it's a it's an amen.

This messaging line that we're only pro birth, but where the church actually pours all of our resources in, if anyone actually takes the time to visit a church, they would see, where the church actually invest their time is helping these women after the child is born, where the dad has run off.

Can I before we go to the next question, this just remind me of one other thing real quick, because his name was invoked earlier, and I can't help but, not just encourage Chris Quinn, the editor of cleveland.com, to get outside of 480, sometimes get outside of Cleveland and go visit the state for you to sit on your podcast and mock, our attorney general for falling on his knees and worship as if that's some weird thing shows how little your worldview is and how little experience you have in the state.

Go to any church, any Pentecostal church, especially, but most churches across the state, you will see Christians who are so moved by the Holy Spirit because of the grace and love of Jesus Christ that's been poured out on them.

They can't help but fall on their knees and say, glory, glory, hallelujah!

I would, I would love to see Chris Quinn mock a muslim man for five times a day, going on his knees and touching his head to the ground.

He would never do that because that would be religious intolerance.

But doing that to a Christian and a Christian, that has been a that has achieved an incredible position of authority, shows an unbelievable religious bigotry and ignorance about the people of Ohio.

And maybe that's why the Cleveland Plain Dealer and cleveland.com are struggling so much financially right now, because they've turned off so many readers.

And these, two of Chris's colleagues are in the room right now.

So if he's not listening, he'll hear about it.

We're going to get to our last question right now.

Hi.

I think this is a good follow up to that.

Approximately 32% of Ohio's households are headed by women, and most families need two incomes to meet the modern cost of living.

How do you and kV view women's economic role in families, and what specific public policies do you believe?

Support mothers who work outside of the home and also ensure parents are supported beyond just having kids, but in the raising and caring for their children?

Thank you.

So there's a there's a number of, things in that.

This is a part of the reason why, we launched the Christian Business Partnership, at a, at CVX, which is our Christian Chamber of Commerce.

You know, women, have as much value, as men do.

That's a fundamental belief in the Christian faith.

And you can see that throughout time, and how Christianity has changed the world.

So when we advocated, for the flat tax that was just passed, we see that as a pro-woman policy that the more these women are working and the more of their own money they can keep, the better off they're going to be.

Fundamentally this issue, there are some issues that we have, like primed ourselves to think that the only thing we can do is the government has to intervene and fix it.

Right.

And we see how government programs often do a terrible job at fixing things.

This is where culture matters.

And so I come back to our marriage and family, initiative at Kvcr.

Hope in a future report, is massively important for the wellbeing of women, for the well-being of men and well-being of children.

I believe we're wrapping up on time here.

But just about more about later.

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you to Aaron Bear and Dan for this conversation today.

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I'm Mark Ross and this forum is adjourned.

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