Intrinsically Ordered

The Supreme Court just heard oral arguments in a major religious freedom case involving Catholic schools, LGBTQ families, and Colorado's taxpayer-funded preschool program. Can Catholic schools receive public funding while refusing to admit children because their parents are gay?I'm joined by  @cdamianwrites , a Catholic lawyer and writer, and Simon Kent-Fung, creator of the award-winning "Dear Alana" podcast, to break down the case, the oral arguments, and what this could mean for religious liberty in America.We discuss the Archdiocese of Denver's lawsuit against Colorado, the Becket Fund's legal strategy, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's questions about racial discrimination, and why several Supreme Court justices seemed confused about what exactly they were being asked to decide.We also examine the Catholic Church's own teachings on unjust discrimination, the history of religious freedom cases like 'Employment Division v. Smith' and 'Carson v. Makin,' and whether this latest lawsuit could ultimately backfire on religious institutions.As someone who has spent years studying Catholicism, LGBTQ issues, and the intersection of religion and law, I think this case raises much bigger questions than simply who gets admitted to a Catholic preschool.Chris Damien: https://chrisdamien.substack.comSimon Kent Fong: https://simonkentfeng.comSubscribe to Intrinsically Ordered for more conversations about Catholicism, religious deconstruction, LGBTQ issues, and the law.00:00 Welcome and Why Today00:49 Case Overview Colorado Pre-K02:12 Funding vs Discrimination Rules03:31 Supreme Court Standards Explained06:29 Colorado’s LGBT Religion Legal History09:20 Neutral Laws vs Religious Animus13:05 Why the Justices Asked Why Here20:00 Crash Course Key Precedents24:47 Culture War Optics and Real Families30:11 Downstream Effects If Colorado Loses37:20 Oral Argument Vibes and Justice Dynamics45:35 Protected Classes and Catholic Teaching Tension49:10 When Liberty Backfires50:23 Power Shifts and Smith51:09 Conscience Versus Religion53:45 Why This Case Exists56:10 Catholic Liberty Misused58:48 Prudence and Admissions01:02:11 Justices Seek the Harm01:08:43 Precedent and Carve Outs01:11:22 Public Private Blur01:16:29 Predictions and OutcomesTo join our discord community for $1 or to support my work/get early access to content, check out my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/gayextradTo be a guest on the episode, visit my YT channel and send me an email.

What happens when you stop learning about other religions from Christian apologists and actually read their sacred texts?In this episode of Intrinsically Ordered, I'm joined by River Ward (@SiennaRiverWard), a comparative religion content creator who has spent years studying the Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, Book of Mormon, and other foundational religious texts.Raised in conservative evangelical Christianity, River originally began studying other religions to defend her Christian faith. But the more she read, the more her understanding of God, religion, and belief began to change.We discuss what Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism actually teach, how religious traditions understand God differently, and why the beliefs of religious practitioners don't always reflect their sacred texts.We also explore the limitations of Christian apologetics, the differences between religion and cults, the relationship between belief and belonging, and why River continues to find beauty in religion despite identifying as agnostic.Follow River Ward:Instagram: @sienna.river.wardYouTube: @SiennaRiverWard00:00 Comparative Religion Online01:23 What Counts as Religion04:29 From Apologetics to Anthropology10:00 Reading the Core Texts14:26 Paradigm Shifts in Daoism21:24 Confucius to the Gita26:10 Revisiting the Quran31:53 Text Versus Tradition36:57 Mormonism and Upanishads43:10 What Does Belief Mean47:44 Defining God and Experience53:39 Whats Next in Her Journey58:09 Charity as the HeartTo join our discord community for $1 or to support my work/get early access to content, check out my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/gayextradTo be a guest on the episode, visit my YT channel and send me an email.

In this episode, I sit down with Catholic feminist, lay theologian, and spiritual director-in-training Salina Bear to talk about her unlikely journey from Reformed Protestantism, through deconstruction, and ultimately into the Catholic Church.Salina shares how growing up with Calvinist ideas about God led her to question Christianity from an early age, why she eventually stepped away from organized religion, and how an existential crisis during COVID unexpectedly brought faith back into her life. She also tells the story of attending Eucharistic adoration for the first time convinced she needed to become Catholic.We also get into some of the questions that have made Selena's online work controversial: Can you be a Catholic feminist? What does the Church actually teach about primacy of conscience? Can faithful Catholics disagree with Church teaching? Is contraception an infallible teaching? And why does online Catholicism often look so different from the Catholicism people actually encounter in their parishes?Finally, we talk about her marriage to an Orthodox Christian, spiritual trauma, deconstruction and reconstruction, online traditionalism, and why Salina is training to become a spiritual director for people who want to heal from harmful experiences with Christianity without necessarily abandoning their faith.00:00 Meet Salina Bear02:49 Growing Up Reformed03:53 Calvinism and God Image07:29 Teen Faith and Doubts09:02 Church Leadership Disillusionment13:43 Stepping Away to Deconstruct15:01 COVID Panic and Return to Prayer20:41 First Mass and Liturgy Surprise22:33 Adoration Changed Everything26:47 Catholic and Orthodox Marriage35:53 Two Traditions Marriage39:51 Conscience and Autonomy41:40 Online Trad Toxicity44:24 Birth Control & Forming Conscience56:46 Reading Church Authority01:03:13 Becoming Spiritual DirectorTo join our discord community for $1 or to support my work/get early access to content, check out my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/gayextradTo be a guest on the episode, visit my YT channel and send me an email.

In this episode of Apostate’s Imprimatur, Colin and I react to Jesusandwhatnot’s video titled "How the Communist Manifesto Proves God's Existence," explanation of Aquinas’s famous Five Ways: the arguments from motion, efficient causality, contingency, degrees of perfection, and final causality.We dig into act and potency, infinite regress, first causes, divine simplicity, Aristotle, physics vs. metaphysics, and the assumptions hiding underneath these arguments. Even if we grant some version of a “first cause” or “unmoved mover,” how do we get from there to an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving personal God, much less the God of Christianity?Along the way, we ask whether Aquinas’s arguments describe reality, whether confusing someone with technical philosophical language actually proves anything, and why arguments that have been debated for centuries are still sometimes presented as obvious and uncontested proofs of God.Noah's original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUOZcbNeKIE00:00 Who Is Jesusandwhatnot09:33 Aquinas Five Ways Intro10:26 Motion Proof Explained13:47 Potency and Ontology Debate26:10 Causation Chain and Regress31:50 Physics Pushback and Forces34:03 Nothing Truly Begins36:32 From Prime Mover to God39:46 Special Pleading and Language41:02 Perfection Smuggled In52:29 Efficient Cause Argument54:23 Physics vs Metaphysics Definitions01:01:59 Infinite Regress and Cosmology01:06:18 Contingency and Nothingness01:08:09 Third Way Rehash01:12:58 Logic Above God01:16:07 Blendered Proofs Critique01:17:22 Degrees of Perfection Setup01:20:49 Fire Causes Heat Debunked01:23:13 Nominalism and Genus Problems01:25:26 Goodness Category Errors01:34:00 Begging the Maximum Cause01:35:44 Fifth Way Explained01:36:59 Teleology Meets Evolution01:39:10 Ends Are Human Uses01:45:38 Special Pleading Intelligence01:49:36 Modern Physics Pushback01:54:33 Summa Ethics Detour01:57:52 Thomism As Party TrickTo join our discord community for $1 or to support my work/get early access to content, check out my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/gayextradTo be a guest on the episode, visit my YT channel and send me an email.

After seeing Catholic apologist Noah ( @Jesus.andwhatnot )  argue that pornography may cause homosexual desires, I decided to dig into the actual research.In this video, I work through more than two dozen academic sources covering sexual orientation, sexual identity formation, pornography use, childhood abuse, correlation vs. causation, sexual fluidity, and sexual orientation change efforts. I also explain some of the basic research concepts that can help us distinguish a provocative correlation from evidence that one thing actually causes another.As a gay former traditional Catholic apologist myself, I also want to talk about why these claims matter beyond an academic debate. Ideas about sexual orientation being caused or changed by particular behaviors can quickly overlap with claims underlying conversion therapy and sexual orientation change efforts.My sources: https://gayextrad.substack.com/p/debunking-with-actual-studies-doesNoah's original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXtY2xa9lFQ00:00 Does Porn Make You Gay?01:17 It's Not a Study01:34 Survey Not Study01:58 Orientation Is Complex03:44 Identity Attraction Behavior05:54 Porn Survey Problems12:32 Correlation Not Causation14:43 How To Test It17:17 Puberty And Timing18:34 What The Data Show21:54 Abuse Claim Reversed28:04 Hypothetheory Critique29:44 Disordered Language Harm31:28 Conversion Therapy Harms32:38 Causality And Methods35:55 Expert Consensus Matters41:12 Motte BaileyTo join our discord community for $1 or to support my work/get early access to content, check out my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/gayextradTo be a guest on the episode, visit my YT channel and send me an email.

Is the resurrection of Jesus actually a historical fact or does the argument only work if you begin with Christian assumptions?In part two of our deep dive into the historical case for the Resurrection, Colin and I examine some of the most popular arguments used by Christian apologists: the claim that the apostles wouldn’t die for a lie, the supposed eyewitness accounts of the risen Jesus, the 500 witnesses mentioned by Paul, the early creed in 1 Corinthians 15, and attempts to use probability and Bayes’ theorem to argue that the Resurrection is historically likely.We look at what we actually know about the deaths of the apostles, how the resurrection narratives developed across the Gospels, what Paul does—and doesn’t—claim to have witnessed, and whether early belief in the Resurrection is the same thing as evidence that it actually happened.00:00 Recap Minimal Facts02:20 Escaping Apologetics Maze03:55 Apostles Die for Lie11:11 Roman Guards Doubts24:10 500 Witnesses Problem26:49 Women at the Tomb Motif29:08 Doubting Thomas and Belief31:32 Memory and Legend Growth35:46 Mythic Tropes and Other Gospels39:57 Paul and the 500 Witnesses50:25 Visions and Bereavement Experiences54:48 Skepticism About 50056:52 Pauline Creed Timeline01:02:37 Memory And Mythmaking01:09:44 God Assumption Debate01:11:20 Additive Evidence Claim01:13:35 What Resurrection MeansTo join our discord community for $1 or to support my work/get early access to content, check out my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/gayextradTo be a guest on the episode, visit my YT channel and send me an email.

In this episode of Intrinsically Ordered, I sit down with  @SigurdAuthentic , founder of Gay Unmasked, to hear his coming out story and explore what it actually takes to accept that you're gay.https://www.skool.com/gay-unmasked-4697/aboutSigurd opens up about recognizing his attraction to men as a teenager, falling for his male best friend, wrestling with stereotypes about gay men, and eventually reframing what being gay meant to him. We talk about masculinity, strength, CBT, shame, self-acceptance, dating, coming out to family and friends, and why building a life around purpose became so important after coming out.We also dig into the philosophy behind Gay Unmasked, Sigurd's growing community for gay men, and his argument that coming out shouldn't be about asking other people for permission to be yourself.00:00 Coming Out Is Ongoing02:15 Early Signs and Denial04:19 Growing Up Around Masculinity11:16 Accepting It at 1813:25 Mac and First Real Feelings18:16 Reframing Gay Identity21:51 CBT and Strength Mindset25:44 First Confession to a Friend30:01 Coming Out to Dad and Friends31:46 Tinder Screenshot Plot Twist36:01 Strength as Shield36:29 Gym as Emotional Outlet38:40 Life Moves On Mindset40:39 Unmasking and Alan Watts47:06 After Coming Out Purpose49:21 Redirecting the Fight55:56 Dating Men and Identity01:05:44 Community and CBT Coaching01:11:33 Success Stories and FarewellTo join our discord community for $1 or to support my work/get early access to content, check out my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/gayextradTo be a guest on the episode, visit my YT channel and send me an email.

I took an atheist and a Mormon on a road trip to St. Mary’s, Kansas to experience the SSPX firsthand.We attended a traditional Latin Mass, toured the massive Immaculata, talked with members of the community, and tried to understand what draws people to this intensely traditional form of Catholicism. Coming from three very different religious backgrounds (ex-traditional Catholic / current atheist, former Pentecostal / current atheist, and practicing Latter-day Saint), we each walked away with very different reactions.We talk about the beauty (and boredom) of the Latin Mass, Catholic tradition, relics, hell, Vatican II, the SSPX’s conflict with Rome, how outsiders are treated, and whether this community actually succeeds at its stated mission of saving souls.00:00 Heliocentric & All Those In Favor01:41 What Is the SSPX03:24 Expectations Going In05:03 Road Trip to St Marys06:43 First Sight of the Church08:22 Drone Shots and Suspicious Locals10:12 Medieval Dinner and Hotel11:34 Mass Morning and Naming the Building13:35 Inside the Immaculata First Impressions16:48 Silence Sunlight and Getting Shushed18:41 Latin Mass Reactions22:11 Relics and Ranking Spirituality30:27 SSPX Identity and Excommunication Denial33:28 Latin Mass Confusion34:10 Sermon Advice: Read Books39:24 Hellfire Afterlife41:21 Communion Rail Awkwardness45:59 Tour Guides And Lunch52:55 Trad Culture And Politics54:27 Human Stories And Mary59:17 Seeker Friendly Critique01:05:08 Final Takeaways Next StepsTo join our discord community for $1 or to support my work/get early access to content, check out my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/gayextradTo be a guest on the episode, visit my YT channel and send me an email.

Can history actually establish that Jesus rose from the dead?In this episode of Atheist Imprimatur, Colin and I take on one of the central arguments in Christian apologetics: that the Resurrection isn't merely something Christians believe by faith, but something we have good historical reasons to accept as fact.We examine the “minimal facts” approach associated with Gary Habermas, claims about the empty tomb, eyewitness testimony, early Christian belief, and the role our assumptions about God and miracles play in evaluating the evidence.More importantly, we ask a basic question that often gets lost in apologetics: What can historians actually establish—and where does historical evidence end and faith begin?This is Part 1 of our very long attempt to answer that question.00:00 Why This Resurrection Video07:28 Apologetics as Reassurance11:13 Faith Versus Evidence13:06 Appeal to Authority Problems23:22 God Exists Then Miracles27:42 Supernatural Explanations Spiral32:23 Is God Really 50/50?34:11 Historians and Resurrection Claims42:16 Easter Meditation Not Proof44:38 Habermas and Minimal Facts52:38 Three Es and Empty Tomb56:46 Sherlock Holmes Historiography01:00:57 Empty Tomb Sources and Context01:04:17 Empty Tomb Objections01:08:42 Why Not Produce the Body01:10:53 Acts and Early Movement01:13:35 Roman Religious Tolerance01:16:17 Three Explanations Critique01:21:35 Tomb Worship Skepticism01:25:19 They Wouldnt Die for a LieTo join our discord community for $1 or to support my work/get early access to content, check out my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/gayextradTo be a guest on the episode, visit my YT channel and send me an email.

I sat down with  ⁨@onehandpolitics⁩ and  ⁨@GregFromVideo1⁩   to compare three very different journeys out of Christianity. We talk about growing up Catholic and Evangelical, youth group culture, religious colleges, belonging, political identity, critical thinking, and what life looks like after leaving faith behind. Rather than debating theology, we explore why people believe, why people leave, and what replaces religion once you've built your identity around it. Whether you're religious, deconstructing, or simply curious, I hope this conversation gives you something to think about.00:00 Mason's Backstory03:36 Greg Youth Group Spiral06:46 Cade Catholic Roots09:21 College Faith Cracks12:58 Scientology and Critical Thinking16:23 Mason Deconstruction Breakpoint22:54 Politics Meets Religion27:18 Biola Rules and Side B31:54 Belonging Beyond Religion38:19 Calvinism And NPC Thinking44:47 Will Religion Keep Declining?54:04 Is Atheism A Religion58:23 BITE Model Control Tactics01:03:28 In Groups Define Out Groups01:08:23 Tribalism And Power01:10:46 Which Atheists Irritate01:27:54 Science Is Not Ethics01:34:10 Religion Can LiberateTo join our discord community for $1 or to support my work/get early access to content, check out my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/gayextradTo be a guest on the episode, visit my YT channel and send me an email.