Director Marcus Pittman discusses "Babies Are Still Murdered Here," and the future of social media

Conversations That Matter

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00:05

Welcome once again to the conversations that matter podcast. My name is John Harris and I am pleased to have with me today.

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I don't know if I call you Marcus Pittman or King Ginger because you are known by both either one.

00:18

So I'm going to just call you Marcus if it's okay. I don't know if you remember this. I have a very vague memory but about 10 years ago.

00:25

Do you remember when we met first or is that just a shadow? No. Okay so this will be awkward.

00:33

So about 10 years ago you and I actually were riding in the back of a van together and that was when

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I met you for the first time. It was at a wretched conference. It might have been 11 years ago out in Cincinnati.

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Do you remember that? The deeper conference? The deeper conference yeah. So we're sitting in the back of this minivan and I think your friend

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Rhett was driving if I'm not mistaken and there was a few girls there from Germany who were with us.

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There was like a whole crew and they were going to do some open -air preaching in Cincinnati and the only thing

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I remember from our conversation is that this is like the one of the two things you're not supposed to say online but and those two things are

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Doug Wilson and Theonomy but Theonomy somehow came up and you and I were talking about it and agreeing on many things and I was like wow there's someone else out there who actually believes some of this and so yeah it was fun.

01:25

I remember that. Wow that was a long time ago. It was yeah. I don't hold it against you for not remembering.

01:31

I don't remember it at all but you have far too many details correct. Yeah yeah.

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So I guess it happened. Yeah yeah. To get even more weird was it

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I think it was you someone ate a scorpion at the Creation Museum. I want to say that was you.

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Do you remember this? No. No. Okay. I don't. It's gone.

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It's gone. It wasn't me. I have eaten crickets at the Creation Museum before.

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Maybe that's what it was. Maybe it was a cricket. I thought it was. Maybe that's what it was because I know they sell they sell like seasoned dry crickets at the

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Creation Museum for people to eat. I think that's what it was yeah so yeah kind of a weird way to start this off but that's how we became friends on Facebook and I know that we've chatted a little bit here there over the last like 10 years but I've seen you go from I think you're at Wretched and then

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I know you started with Jeff Durbin and those guys some of their podcasts and Summer White's podcast and and now

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I think you are with the CrossPolitik guys is that correct? Well yeah

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I do a show I do a show with them but mainly my full -time job right now is just making

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Babies Are Murdered Here for Apologia. Okay. So I'm kind of like all over the place.

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Yeah well I love it I mean just about everything you've done I think has been great and I was a fan of the

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Babies Are Murdered Here one and now you're doing the second one. Could you just talk to my audience just for a minute about kind of like one guy yourself what you can do with a camera and kind of the results of the first movie

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Babies Are Murdered Here. Well I would the first movie actually started by accident because I was going to John Speed's house to film his church plant but he got his he got his plane ticket for me to return home at Sunday morning at 8 a .m.

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instead of 8 p .m. and so we couldn't really film his church service so I was like well are you guys doing anything this weekend we could film something and he was like well we're going to the abortion clinic so when we went to the abortion clinic but the night before we went to the abortion clinic this guy by the name of Robert Gray went to the dollar store and he made this sign that said

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Babies Are Murdered Here and that's what we we just spent the day at the abortion clinic and was like you know it'd be a really good movie to like film all these people that go out of the abortion clinics and no one's ever done that before and so I raised

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I like made a trailer out of that weekend I think and raised I think in total maybe like five thousand dollars or whatever to make the movie and now

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I mean I didn't have a job at the time because I was just working on doing freelance gigs every now and then so what

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I would do is I would somebody would give me a donation and I would just buy a plane ticket and go see another street preacher somewhere and spend a day or two with them at the abortion clinic and then come home and then over the course of a year everybody across the country just started sharing these sharing these baby like having these their own

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Babies Are Murdered Here signs and it just went like all over the country it was just insane and then and then the movie came out so like people were sharing the

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Babies Are Murdered Here signs before the film even came out and then once the film came out it really blew up it blew up to the point that Planned Parenthood started making signs as health care happens here instead of Babies Are Murdered Here so it obviously had an impact on Planned Parenthood to such a degree that they decided to hire a marketing firm to counter it to rebrand them because you gave them a negative rap yeah yeah yeah so I mean that's that's amazing only five thousand bucks and you know a little here here and there thing and became like this whole nationwide movement so yeah you never would have thought when your friend came back from the dollar store this would be something

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Planned Parenthood would be spending millions of dollars to combat right right that's just amazing and I've seen that sign you know at Planned Parenthood apart from hearing you talk about it and I had that that thought

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I was like man that sounds awfully similar to that movie I watched Babies Are Murdered Here so yeah congratulations on the success of that and man it's just I think a wonderful thing for the pro life movement let's watch the the trailer for your second movie right now and then

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I want to have you comment on it and talk about maybe what's changed since the first movie and now but Mr.

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Speaker here's the problem that we have 170 members signed on to this bill another good bunch of them want this bill to come to the floor and they want to vote on it the will of the people is reflected through the

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United States Congress especially the House of Representatives and unelected people on the outside of this

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Congress are the ones that are holding this bill back we do try to work on a scientific basis human rights basis certainly faith comes into a lot of what we do but that's not necessarily the basis for our arguments the people that aren't in church we need to share it with them another way

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Planned Parenthood comes out with a marketing campaign spending millions of dollars saying health care happens here because you've got people all across the country driving by Planned Parenthood's and abortion clinics holding a poster board sign it just cost a couple of bucks babies are murdered here

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I think we've changed the conversation every other organization that I name supports this bill the only organization that doesn't support it is national right to life abortion is murder stop killing babies put down your weapons and come quietly

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I don't think you need to be out here with signs that are say babies are murdered here all right

07:54

Marcus that was a fantastic trailer what what can you tell me about the difference between when you made your first movie and this movie what's the difference between them the budget's better well

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I mean with this movie I've had an entire year to be able to really just figure this film out so I think for the first six months

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I was traveling maybe at least once or twice a month for the first up till June till we called and and and into the production and then now

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I've been able to really just focus on the editing on it and you know being able to spend a day or two just researching pro -life lobbies and how they came about and who started them and and figuring out you know where the corruption is and just being able to spend time and research has been really great where I the first one was just kind of like this is the footage

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I have I have to make a movie out of it and now with this one I have so much stuff that I don't know how to the biggest challenge of it's been what's what stories do you tell what doesn't need to be told like and how do you like for example like this week

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I've been working on and I dropped that clip of like the national right to life's history against the heartbeat bills and this is years like since 2011

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I've been digging this stuff up wow now you start out heartbeat bills and then all of a sudden good

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I was gonna say that and then all of a sudden they're all of a sudden in favor of heartbeat bills and like how did that change happen and why did it happen and there's just so much there's just so much stuff that it's been really great to be able to spend time and focus on that because the the purpose of this film the first film the purpose was to get them and to get people in front of an abortion clinic and share the gospel the second film is to get them in front of their city council and share the gospel gotcha that's about legislation okay and that I think gives us kind of the purpose and the clear distinction between the two you start off the movie though with a clip of Steve King and he's he's talking about the national right to life opposing is this a heartbeat bill he's talking about there or a national heartbeat bill okay and and what's so for those listening who are pro -life who maybe haven't followed all the ins and outs of what different pro -life organizations believe what's the issue with the national right to life and and maybe some of these other organizations well like why would they ever oppose a heartbeat bill

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I don't get it well I was trying to ask the same question because you know

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I I oppose the heartbeat bill because I don't think it goes far enough and the national right to life opposes the heartbeat bill because it goes too far wow okay so completely different motives yeah yeah completely different um and so I was trying to figure that out because if you watch

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Steve King like Steve King's talked uh that he gave and it's almost

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I think it's an hour long of him just going off on the national right to life and how they stop these sort of things from happening and whatnot and it's really it's really fantastic and if you uh if if if you really just do the research

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I think one of the things I've discovered is that you know from 1995 to 1999 this is that that's a long time ago but I don't have any reason to believe uh that it stopped happening um in 99 it's just those are the only documents

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I've found up to that point but essentially the the GOP the

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Republican National Convention gave national right to life over a million dollars over the course of those years which is weird for a lobby because lobbies are supposed to give money to politicians but now here you have the politicians giving money to the lobbyists and so if I went back after realizing that they're funded by the

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GOP I went back and listened to all their talks in opposition to let's say like the heartbeat bill and you find that they have this common thread of these bills aren't going to do anything what will do anything is voting

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Republicans in the office and so you realize that they're really just a tool of the GOP to keep electing

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Republicans and they say it over like like it's not like I'm not making the jump like they will

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I mean they will say uh with an utmost fire to oppose these bills because they pull unfavorably and they split the electorate like that's their language almost like that's what they say like we don't want we want to move people towards a pro -life position so if we that's how they cover it they say we want to move people slowly and gradually towards a pro -life position but really what it is is these laws split the electorate in a way that makes the people on the fence more willing to vote for a

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GOP it's harder to be able to do that and so that that is my theory as fascinating as to as to why the national right to life opposes stricter laws

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I don't think they have any intentions of actually being a resource to end abortion right as much as they are a resource to continue to help move the senate in the favor of the

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GOP yeah I know I don't know if you heard about this the urlc though I think it was a week or two ago it didn't show up for the hearings that were being done on Tennessee's heartbeat bill which actually isn't a heartbeat bill it's going to start on at conception essentially so it's in the urls the erlc epics and religious yeah liberty commission were they invited uh

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I I'm not I mean I'm not involved in that debate at all I've never heard of erlc really being involved in abortion legislation yeah that's what

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I was kind of leading to um because that was a question I had and I don't know if you knew anything about other organizations and evangelicalism because we're talking about national right to life that's outside of evangelicalism but right is is big eva as some people say are they what is there any indication that they're they've taken a stand in this either way or is it just as you just said like not really they don't deal with that when

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I think of big eva I don't think of big eva being involved in politics at all except for the erlc and I don't

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I don't want them to be involved in I don't blame you so so I I'm I'm glad the erlc wasn't there honestly um uh but the person that was there was a guy by the name of his last name is bop his first name escapes me right now he's a he is the general counsel for national right to life and he was there and he was there in opposition to the bill in Tennessee um and he spoke before the chambers and said very specifically and clearly he said if um oh man just lost my train oh he said he said god will end abortion uh in his divine time in his divine way but absent of god's divine intervention we have to do we have to look to more human ways of ending abortion more use more human reasoning so it's like you have all these christians that are finally getting involved in politics and god's encouraged them to write these bills that are really good and and and they're being led by the word and they're looking at the bible and seeing this and seeing that and then and then you get jim

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I think you get bop I think it's jim bop no probably we'll just go with that jim bop all right yeah you get this lloyd this general counsel for the nrlc and he's like hey uh there's no divine intervention at this moment in time so and it's just like what when like at what point do you say hey there's enough christians that's risen up that we should probably attempt this yeah

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I think it's james bop I think is the guy you're thinking of yeah it's a jim bop james bop yeah yeah so so james bop is uh the general counsel for national right to life now there's a video that he did in july of him there's video he did in july of him actually uh telling somebody ask him a question and he says and this is on the national right to life's youtube channel and they ask him a question

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I believe it's about 40 minutes into the video and they say what do we do if one of these idealist heartbeat bills comes before in our state and he said he looks something in the very in the eyes and he's like you don't vote for it you tell the politicians not to vote for it don't pass any sort of legislation don't bring it to committee don't give it a hearing like and it's just like wow there's but but the reason is because they have a responsibility towards the gop to be able to you know when when the national right to life endorses a candidate as being pro -life it moves a lot of votes right so so if if they want pro -life to be as generic as possible so that they can just be focused on getting people elected and it's not so much about the legislation or bills being passed so we have politicians profiting from the pro -life movement without necessarily being ideologically invested in it and wanting to see abortion ended and right you're you're making this movie and you're saying basically go around them you know if we have to pull the gop we can pull them but forget about them go to your local civil magistrate if that's i guess the county or the town or the city and and i've seen so many videos of people doing this i saw one of you doing it testify tell them to end it abortion within the confines of their their borders i guess their control and and enact the doctrine of the lesser magistrate essentially is that am i am i tracking with you yeah so essentially what i want to do is i want to show that these pro -life organizations they don't speak on behalf of orthodox christianity and they're never going to make any significant changes to ending abortion without the gospel so the film is focused on the gospel but it's about taking the gospel to this specific area of of legislation the city councils and stuff and so what we've discovered in just this very short amount of time that if christians go to their city councils and they become involved in how their city functions on a very local level they can make some significant changes and even one of the things john speed's working on right now is like sanctuary cities and like having the city council say in this city there will be no abortion clinics and they can make that mandate um so so that's you know a pretty big thing that's way more impactful than a heartbeat bill or a 20 week ban that the national right to life would push is just saying this whole city there's not to be abortion in there and so uh that idea actually came from liberals making sanctuary cities that defy the federal government when it comes to immigration right they're like we are not going to let ice you know deport anyone in our city you know so they're violating yeah they're violating federal law and so we're like well hey well let's just make abort uh you know sanctuary cities for abortion so and that's what um there's been a few of them that's been passed so we'll see if that holds out but as long as christians keep going to their city council and become involved and um i think uh it'll apply pressure on the city council to actually you know yeah yeah i mean i think that's great too just from a constitutional standpoint there's a long history of nullification and interposition and these kinds of things and lately it seems like you just said liberals are the only ones that want to take advantage of that to get marijuana or sanctuary cities for illegal aliens it's like why don't we you know look at the constitution and obviously there is no right to privacy that you know allows for the killing of babies let's let's make our state or our city a sanctuary for the unborn i i think it's brilliant and then you're going to the right source the layman which i think is and it's so much easier i mean if there's a if there's a if you have a pretty significant sized church that you attend in a city to win to win a city council seat it only takes sometimes maybe like a few thousand votes so if you have like a church of maybe like three or four hundred people you can do a lot of work um that would get guarantee someone in your church could be on that city council seat it's it's not that hard um i mean it is hard but it's not like statistically impossible right so it's going to take a lot of effort petitions getting signed and going door to door and you know all that sort of stuff on behalf of your church but i think i think the next step hopefully from this film what i would like to see is i would like to see churches um not the church institution when i say church is not the church institution but i'd like to see people in in their church getting together and strategically figuring out ways they can put godly men on their city council seats so so i think that would be a huge fruit from this film and and once that happens you have godly men who get on their city council maybe after a few years they can run for state legislator and then they're in a position to really you know tell the national right to life to go pound sand yeah and stuff like that yeah think local act local get involved i'm sold so where would we go if we wanted to donate to your project or get involved well you want to get involved you can go to inabortionnow .com

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um that's they're they're the ones really funding it and stuff like that you got in abortion now you can you can donate to them those guys are uh the ones really heading everything up and then also you can go to inabortionnow .com

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and we they just launched this essentially like a social media platform is really what it is but it's like a social it's like a internal social media platform for all the churches that are signed up to uh do abortion clinic ministry and there's people on there like every day sharing photos of babies that were saved and like talking about their day and um being encouraged and stuff like that so that's it's really cool it's a really cool system they just set up uh that's private and it's only for you know when your church signs up so yeah well that is a perfect segue because you kind of knew where i was going i don't know if you planned that but i wanted to pick your brain about social media in general because those of us who are christian pro -life and hold you know positions that are politically incorrect we're getting banned and monitored and shadow banned and all this kind of stuff and i i see little social media websites uh like the gab and um i don't know there's there's a couple now mines that are springing up as alternatives but nothing's really like you know gone out and been like this is the one you know we can all go to this one from facebook so what do you see in the future and and what how do you think christians should think about social media and interacting using technology online um well well i think i think when we have to realize that um it's it's very important to the the propagation of the gospel for christians to have open access to the internet um the thing that concerns me is if you look at let's say all these like all the corruption within google and amazon and apple and and all and and youtube and all this corruption uh the one thing i don't want to happen is i don't want us to get mad and angry and demand that the government regulate the internet or regulate these companies that's the thing that concerns because because it's easy for for us to be like yeah google uh use their platform to sway all these people to vote democrat and like in my mind i'm like well if i had a platform i would want the ability to sway people to vote for christians so like i don't i don't care that they did that like it doesn't bother me um i i i i think it hurts their reputation and what they do um i think you know they're known for search and giving accurate search so when they start to twist results in an ideological favor that they hold to i i think it damages their brand um and i think they realize that it's damaging their brand and i think i i i think the market itself can fix google pretty clearly pretty pretty easily and then of course there are people that are going to start doing alternatives to google and there it might take a long time but it'll happen but it can't happen if businesses like that become highly regulated and monitored and and also i don't want the government to have access to the information that google has on people i you know and so like there's a lot of talk right now about monopoly let's break them up because they're a monopoly well i don't want i don't want the nsa to go to google and say hey look if you don't give us people's information and data we're gonna have the congress come after you and break break up your monopoly i want google to be able to have the courage to be able to defy the government just like any other business or christian business so i monopoly isn't an option i don't like that the government has power over google in that way and so and so the solution is as christians is one we need to invest in organizations that are creating their own content like let's say apologia i know fight left feast specifically is working on a plan uh to be completely independent and autonomous um from outside influence when it comes to that with their content so so they're already heading in that direction and and and the main thing really is just investing in these people who see it like they see what's coming and and just like now's the time to really invest there it's through a membership or like you know to the club the fight left feast club or whatever it's really important to just like invest in these people and and that way they can build these platforms that aren't affected by because the the gift of the internet is that it is essentially it's not completely but it's decentralized right right and so so the the challenge what people are doing now is to make it completely decentralized which is fantastic because i always thought the internet was decentralized but then you then you see like what people are working on the technology that's come up through blockchain and stuff like that to make the internet completely autonomous nobody hosts you know nobody can shut down a website or nobody can you know do this or do that i think that's what we saw with a chan i think it was a chan they the the guy who did the el paso shooting posted on a chan or whatever and then he went and and uh so then everybody calls for a chan to be shut down and then all their hosting is done or whatever and so the result is a chan pops back up on a completely autonomous infrastructure uh that means they can't be shut down so so before because they were on these like self -hosted uh servers and stuff like that if they posted like child pornography they could be shut down uh they they could be that could be stopped and and there'd be an incentive for the right the the owners of the website to not allow that but now they're completely autonomous nobody can shut them down because of how they set up their infrastructure and so there isn't that there isn't that ability for them to be shut down for posting child pornography anymore so we see like what these regulations are doing on one hand it's good but i think the founder gab was pointing out is like i'd rather have them on my platform so i can monitor them than to have them go to the dark web where they can't be monitored it can just do whatever they want so it's one of those things so i i think um i think the liberals are hurting themselves by demanding all these things be shut down like all these christian websites because it's only forcing people to to to find ways that they can't be shut down so you know what hn would do for child pornography christians will do for the gospel i know this is a terrible analogy but i think uh you get what i'm saying yeah we won't end the show on that note i promise you know one of the things i've loved about you is that you are passionate about christians going and building things and being creative uh you know you know chick -fil -a has the best chicken because they invented the chicken sandwich you're like that's what christians should be doing everywhere and i agree with you so did they really invent it well you i thought you said that at one point i mean i mean they kind of did they say that they say we invented the chicken sandwich so i just i was like oh it's really yeah i'm pretty sure i mean they vetted the sauce you know that makes it well i mean they invented chick -fil -a sauce for sure yeah so i mean i don't really know if there is a chicken sandwich without that sauce no i think i think they should absolutely take credit especially if nobody knows who did it so you might as well yeah absolutely so i mean let's let's just you know replicate that in every field uh make things better and christians can do that now um you have you're on twitter i'm king ginger is your your people want to follow you but do you have like alternative sites that you're looking at that you're like okay maybe that's the next one that's not gonna be you know stomping on christians as much like do you have a minds or a gap i do have a minds account that's i'm king ginger and i have a gab account that's i'm king you do just there for redundancy i guess but i don't like like none of them are winning me over like i was really excited about minds for a short period of time but then they started classifying religious uh they started classifying religious posts as not safe for work in the same category as like pornography and stuff so in order for christians to search for religious content on minds they had to uncheck you know blocking not for not safe for work posts so that opens them up to porn art which is this is weird it was just i was like that is weird it's so strange and it's you know and a lot of people i think actually left minds and stopped talking about it once they made that move um so because they were like well you can't you're either going to be open or you're not and so but see that's just the problem the problem is that there's just this mentality that there should be neutrality but there is no neutrality everybody's make their own position so so the the the solution is just to create a better platform and to create a better technology um that's available to everyone um you know we me and my wife were in chick -fil -a the other day and there was a transgendered person getting the chick -fil -a sandwich um and you know she was allowed to buy it they didn't shut her down or stop her they took her money you know and you know the bible shows that you know the egyptians took the money of the egyptians i mean the israelites took the money of the egyptians right they took the gold of them and so so we have you know this basis of where god you know i think it says in proverbs or somewhere it says uh uh the the the wealth of the wicked is is stored up for the righteous or something like that right so we do have the ability to create businesses and create um technology and infrastructures that are profitable that the entire world uses and chick -fil -a is a great example of that for sure um and and hobby lobby hobby lobby as well um they do a great job um so so so we see that that happens and so we just we just need to continue to really focus and develop our time and energy into creating technology and platforms that really really advance the god like i'm excited about quantum computing right now i'm not even sure what that is but like i watched it i know i know me neither and then like i found out what it was and i was like please lord let christians just get into this because it's so essentially like the way a computer works it's just i'll go through this really quickly i know you gotta go but the way a computer works it's ones and zeros right just ones and zeros on and off right quantum computing works in a way that there's like on off and then there's like one that's like on and off at the same time or both are off like it's just like there adds another bit instead of just ones and zeros there's one zeros on or whatever so so the ability of that you know multiplies the computing power tremendously to a point where they're saying that the killer app of quantum computing is the ability to replicate physics and biology perfectly so for example if i were to replicate like a bottle of water and i were to pour it out from a certain height at a certain angle the quantum computer can replicate every drop of molecule every molecule of water like where it'll flow and go like not like computer rendering where we simulate it'll actually replicate that and the the the ability of the computers is that it'll be able to i you know in the future who knows how long but the idea is that it can be able to scan your every molecule of your body and replicate the effect of medicine perfectly or if you you know do brain surgery and you cut this cell or do cut this tumor out this will be the effect before you even do it because it can replicate biology and we've never been able to do that we could simulate it with like 3d animation but this is actual simulation of of uh of and i was just like wow and so i guess some scientists have already replicated um an entire atom or molecule already with a with a quantum computer so it's just a matter of time man like that's the sort of stuff i want christians to be involved in because the bible says you know that you know that god will extend the age of man as the gospel goes forth and that sounds like a really good way of using the world god has given us to be able to like replicate stuff like that and extend the life of men yeah anyway that's sidetracked but those are the sort of things like christians should really see that and go like now's the time to really be the influencers and leaders of that and you know artificial intelligence and all that stuff yeah well marcus um i appreciate you joining me and if folks want to find you i know your twitter handle is i'm king ginger and you just said you're on mines and gab uh anywhere else you want to send folks uh just twitter and then go to endabortionnow .com