Download Audio MP3 | 00:54:06

Josh, Tim, and Rachel talk about their recent outreach at Davidson College, which was a particularly difficult outreach for Tim and Rachel. They discuss what made it difficult as well as share some practical tips for handling discouragement at an outreach.

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Download Audio MP3 | 00:31:09

Josh, Tim, and Rachel interview Casey Mattox on how students should deal with free speech violations, and responding to common arguments from typically leftists defending free speech violations.

Casey Mattox joined Alliance Defending Freedom in 2009 litigating cases to protect the First Amendment rights of students and faculty at public colleges and universities across the nation. Since December 2016 he has served as Director of ADF’s Center for Academic Freedom, where he leads a team of attorneys that is one of the most active groups of litigators defending First Amendment rights on public university campuses.

Casey has testified three times before House committees on a variety of First Amendment and other constitutional issues. He has also made numerous media appearances, and his work has been featured at USA Today, The Federalist, and Townhall, among others.

He earned his J.D. from Boston College Law School in 2001, and clerked for the Alabama Supreme Court.

Questions:

1. How would you respond to someone who defends free speech violations by saying that the first amendment does not guarantee a right to be heard?
2. How would you respond to someone who says, “If you go to a public area to express your free speech rights but get drowned out by someone else expressing their free speech rights, you don’t get to shut down someone else’s rights because you want to be heard”?
3. Can you talk about the concept of a “heckler’s veto”?
4. What should students do if they’re trying to have a dialogue event and the pro-choice crowd comes out with noisemakers to drown that out, and the campus administration won’t do anything about it?
5. The First Amendment isn’t ambiguous about whether or not people can physically block people from a speaking event, so why is that still sometimes happening? Are the penalties not big enough?
6. Is there any path forward at a legal level to get around this problem? A way that would cause universities to get penalized in a way that would incentivize them to follow the law?
7. What is the difference between a case where you’re able to successfully sue the school versus a case where you don’t have enough evidence to move forward? What should students do to make sure that their cases don’t end up in the pile of cases where nothing happens?
8. What are some red flags that students should look out for so they can know when to call ADF?
9. How would you respond to someone who defends free speech violations based on the idea that if the speech in question is dangerous, like Naziism, then it’s good to block people from hearing that speech or even get violent in response to it?

Related Links:

• Timothy Brahm – Six Ways I’ve Seen Pro-Choice People Try to Censor Pro-Lifers. (Some of the defenses of free speech violations we discussed come from the comments under this article.) https://blog.equalrightsinstitute.com/six-ways-ive-seen-pro-choice-people-try-to-censor-pro-lifers/
• Timothy Brahm – How Should Conservatives Respond to the Disturbing Trend of Campus Censorship? https://blog.equalrightsinstitute.com/conservatives-respond-disturbing-trend-campus-censorship/
• Alliance Defending Freedom: https://www.adflegal.org
• Follow Casey Mattox on Twitter: https://twitter.com/caseymattox_

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Download Audio MP3 | 00:57:41

Josh, Tim, and Jacob sit down to respond to more listener mail questions. Topics include pro-choice Fetus Tunnel Vision, whether or not we should allow people to “insta-correct” their views, and what to do if they say, “Let’s just agree to disagree.”

Download Audio MP3 | 01:16:01

Josh, Tim, and Rachel answer your questions!

Questions:

1. This question from Ellen on the forum prompts a larger discussion of labels that pro-life and pro-choice people use for either side, what precisely is so wrong with “pro-abort,” as well as labels used for the unborn: “I think a good thing to discuss on the podcast or just here on the forum is issues within the movement and how we should approach them . . . Also, dealing with people who are super entrenched in some of the habits mentioned in module one. I know several people who can’t talk about abortion without using terms like “deathscort” and “pro-abort.”
2. Ellen: “Another one that comes to mind is how many major pro-life organizations both nationally and locally feel the need to also include topics such as traditional marriage as part of their message. I’m a Christian myself so I don’t even necessarily disagree with their views on this, but it just seems like a weird, unrelated thing to bring up. It makes it difficult for me to involve my atheist, LGBT friends in pro-life events.”
3. Malessa from Australia: “When having discussions about the equality of the pre-born, do you get push back about equality of homosexuals? I know these are two very different discussions, and no one is talking about killing homosexuals because they are unequal/not human, but I imagine the ‘marriage equality’ topic may come up in conversations. Maybe not so much in the US since the Supreme Court ruling, but here in Australia same-sex marriage is still not recognized/legally valid relationship, so I imagine someone calling me some sort of hypocrite if I use the word “equality” and yet am against SSM.”
4. Jason: “How do you respond to a friend who has had a lot of good experiences at Planned Parenthood and says that she will support them no matter what?”

Related Link:

• Secular Pro-Life article published on how they felt as atheists at a seminar Josh Brahm led

Subscribe to the Equipped for Life Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Subscribe to ERI’s other podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.