In this episode Gio and Joey talk about how covid united us to form this podcast that will talk about Cultural, political and social issues from a Protestant perspective. You can find this episode also on our podcast on iTunes, Spotify and Google play and wherever podcast are found.

Check us out on our YouTube Channel: The Gio and Joey Show

Our podcast website: The Gio and Joey Show

You can follow us on twitter @giomarin and @adventistcowboy

Thank you for listening please leave us a five star rating and honest review on your preferred podcast platform.

Thank you,

Gio and Joey

Hello everybody.

This is the inaugural launch of the Geo and Joey Podcast, where we talk

about, cultural, political, and social issues from a Protestant perspective.

Joey, say hello to the audience.

Hello everybody.

Joey, you and I are starting to get to know each other, and yet we found out that

you and I have a lot of things in common.

Share with the audience.

What is your passion in doing this podcast together?

well, I just, I, I really appreciate, certain voices

kind of in the media podcast.

Talking about different issues from kind of a conservative perspective, what I

think is sometimes kind of missing is that uniquely Protestant perspective, right?

Because especially some things I saw recently in the news, like

people questioning like, where do our values come from politically?

And I think the Protestant church really has some specific

things to add to this convers.

, they sometimes get missed.

Okay.

What about for the audience who thinks, ah, man, we don't want

to hear some bible thumping uh, preaching at me, even though we're

coming from a Protestant perspective.

How is this podcast gonna be different for those listeners who are wondering if we're

just gonna be preaching the Bible to them?

I think one of the core Protestant political theology is that, We want

to be able to ex, like we wanna be able to live in kind of a pluralistic

society, but have those values, right?

I think CS Lewis called it the Dow, right?

Things that reasonable people of whether they're atheists or Buddhist or Muslims

or Christians can all come to right?

From the scriptural perspective, it's like in Romans chapter one

and two, right, which says the things that God has put on our.

Without excuse.

And I think we all know that there are great people who don't believe in

God, but have a certain moral compass.

And I think we can really speak to those people as well.

Yeah, and for the audience listening, that's exactly, you know, we're not

gonna be here quoting Bible in verse even though we may do some at some time, but

the majority of this podcast, it's just.

There are many things, all religions, even atheists we have in common, you

know, hurting children is a no-go, right?

Nobody wants people to steal their stuff.

Nobody wants people to, uh, cheat on their spouse.

And so in another kind of Protestant thing, we're gonna be

doing what we call natural law.

Things that are common to man.

Understandably from our case, Gio and Joey's case, we have a Protestant

flavor to it and I think it's gonna be a great opportunity to address

these cultural, political, social issues without appealing to scripture.

The authority of scripture similar to some of the programs we like, like The

Daily Wire, Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, what makes you excited about doing that?

Just the fact that there's not a lot of it, right.

So in other words, there's a lot of really interesting perspectives.

I love the guys you mentioned, I think particularly on the children's front,

Matt Walsh is doing some awesome work with protecting kids and advocating for that.

And there's a lot of these different, like some other Christians and

other PE and Jews and stuff.

But I feel like a uniquely Protestant perspective is sometimes

missing, and that's what I.

I'm most excited about is just being able to get that other perspective in there.

Yeah, I agree.

Because like you, I'm a fan of Matt Walsh and, and Michael knows, but

they come from a Catholic perspective.

Ben Shapiro comes from a Jewish perspective and you and I hope to fill

in the Protestant perspective, even though we have many things in common.

When we first spoke, there was.

A genesis to both our desires to do something like this.

And it was, the cutting back of the liberty of conscience or the

freedoms during the covid time.

How, how did you experience covid?

Not necessarily the virus itself, but the time and what you were seeing,

what made you, . What brought up some, some of your concerns during that?

I think like most people, right?

When Covid first hit on the scene, right?

What was that like February, March of 2020?

I didn't know what it was.

Right?

I kind of just, for the most part, you know, believe what

I saw on the news, right?

There's this disease, I don't, I'm not a doctor, right?

I don't know exactly what's happening.

For the first couple weeks I was pretty careful about, you

know, masking social distancing.

. But I think over the course of the next, like especially after the 15 day original,

like slow the stop the spread or whatever.

Mm-hmm.

and slow the spread.

Yeah.

Slow the spread or whatever.

And then as.

The, rather than being rescinded, a lot of these orders started

getting a little bit more extreme.

And then I saw certain types of political protests all of a sudden

magically, you know, they didn't cause covid, but other kinds of protests did.

And I thought, well, there's maybe a little disconnect.

And then just some of the other things I saw.

You know, um, neighbors being encouraged to turn on their neighbors.

I know in our neighborhood of the North Canada, I saw pastors who got

arrested for keeping their church open.

And I was like, yeah, that's just, that doesn't sit right with me.

So that's when I started getting a little bit more like, what's going on here?

Yeah, same here.

You know, in March of 2020, uh, I was involved with several churches.

Many of the churches here in the Houston area, I'm in Houston, Texas.

Um, were actually ahead of the.

And closing down because we kind of perceived what was coming and we

wanted to get ahead of the curve.

We were ahead of the curve in the Texas, uh, area, especially

here in the Houston area.

But like you, about a month into this, I started seeing things that make me

go, Hmm, like it didn't seem right, because you and I, especially myself,

we're big proponents of individual.

Of liberty, of conscience.

And I just saw that people were getting too authoritative, , they

just wanted to control too much.

And I started seeing ridiculous things.

Cuz look, my wife is a doctor.

we have some insights.

She's plugged into what was going on.

And when you saw people out in the open air in mask by

themselves, or people driving in cars by themselves with a mask on.

It started getting a little ridiculous.

And so I took a wait and see approach.

And I think you similarly took that approach, correct?

First out the gate, we didn't really know much about Covid.

I wore the mask, especially when I was around older people.

Mm-hmm.

, I, I thought, you know, can't.

it was actually, I started getting less.

So I guess I started out more like, I'll, I'll go along, and I

started go, I started going along less and less as time progressed.

Yeah.

And I don't want the audience to think that, yeah, I wore my mask when I went

out in public and I was like shopping at the supermarket and things like that.

But when I was alone going out for a walk in the.

Nah, I'm not wearing my mask and Yeah.

Outdoors now.

Yeah, exactly.

Because I knew just certain basic, uh, medical things, especially

being informed for my wife.

When did it start becoming a bigger concern for you?

so the business lockdowns, I know in Michigan, um, our governor

was pretty heavy on lockdown.

and I know some small business owners, particularly restaurant owners.

Um, and, and you guys, everyone, you should all Google this.

I don't wanna get the numbers wrong, but I believe I read summer, it was around a

quarter ish of, um, small businesses in the state of Michigan didn't end up coming

back, um, or suffered major financial.

Issues.

And so that kind of enforcement of businesses was kind of the first really

big kinda liberty issue that I saw.

Um, particularly we saw some hypocrisy with certain government officials here

would go do things with their family and their family would get caught

doing stuff that was technically, um, illegal under the, uh, quarantine law.

And there was that.

I was like, well, maybe they don't so much believe this.

. And the other big thing for me, my grandma was in a, uh, assisted living facility

at the time, and they shut it down.

They wouldn't let family go in, even if we had P C R tests, even

if, um, this was before the vaccine.

Mm-hmm.

. But like any, all precautions, they wouldn't let us take

'em outside for like a walk.

So basically like the last year of my grandma's life, she was, you

know, stuck inside with only the nurses and staff for human contact.

Man, that's horrible.

And I know what you're talking about.

You know, one of the more famous governors in, during this quarantine,

the governor from uh, California, several times he got caught in restaurants with

no mask in public events with no mask.

And it was that attitude of.

It's good for you, not for me, or it's, and, and that hypocrisy was very alarming.

Another thing for me that was, that I saw a contrast was that I, I'm in the

state of Texas and Texas was very laid back after a couple of months, they

kind of smelled the tea leaves as well.

Texas is big on liberty of conscious.

Houston is kind of different.

It's a little bit more liberal, but when I was hearing of how other states were

cracking down on people, especially my home state, where I was born in New York

City and how things were getting very authoritarian, and yet I'm living here

in Texas and I see none of the horror.

That are happening supposedly in New York City.

Not, I don't wanna say supposedly things were happening, people were dying.

I know people who died of covid, but the different approaches between

California, New York, Texas, and Florida.

I knew something wasn't right.

And I'm always for pro liberty of conscience.

I remember.

, particularly on one of the aspects, um, on the nursing homes.

And I remember an, um, yeah, that was his name.

Andrew Cuomo.

Mm-hmm.

, governor of New York.

He kind of got a lot of the headlines cuz he had a policy

that was actually quarantining.

So if there was older patients who weren't in nursing homes, they got

c they were quarantined into nursing homes and then they wouldn't release the

numbers of how many different people.

in the nursing homes because they were exposed to Covid because of this policy.

Well, it got a little bit less coverage, but basically the same

policy, but even at a wider scale was actually my governor in Michigan.

Uh, Gretchen Whitmer had the same policy but at a wider scale, and

they, to this day, I don't believe they've released nursing home numbers.

I know there was a, a foyer request, freedom of Information

Act, but I believe it, I believe it never really got answered.

So, We, to this day, we don't know exactly how many nursing home patients

died because they were exposed to the virus in these closed quarter.

Yeah, and eventually that's what brought Andrew Cuomo down is, uh, that policy

of his, and he eventually got, uh, taken out of office because of that

and other sexual harassment issues.

So the Prince Darling of New York City ended up being a big

fraud and ended up taking down his brother as well on CNN News.

As you started then hearing about the vaccine, what was your initial thoughts?

Because the vaccine was under Republican administration as far as

being brought to light, anything about that that gave you cause to pause?

my initial, my initial reaction is what it's generally been, the vaccines,

I think for the most part, vaccine.

And vaccine technology through the years has been a marvelous thing.

I think it's saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

I'm talking about vaccines in general.

Mm-hmm.

. And so my initial, I wasn't actually very vaccine skeptical at the beginning.

Like, like I would've encouraged most people to go get the vaccine.

Um, I never, I was always uncomfortable by vaccine mandates, like the ones in the

military and the on the private sector.

I just thought, like I, I know people, um, I have a lot of people in my church

who, for different reasons, some because of aboral aborted fetal cells don't want

to use it and others just because they personally don't believe in vaccines.

And I, um, while I disagree or I disagreed more then than I do now.

I always was for like, listen, this has gotta be a choice.

People who have conscience exceptions need to be given those.

So that I was always on.

Um, over the last year, really, um, since 2021, I've started to change a

little bit on these covid vaccines, especially for younger people.

Just some of the reports that we've been seeing.

Um, so my initial objection was coercion.

But I think I've, I've started to see a little bit of some unanswered questions

about the rush nature of these vaccines.

That has become a little bit more concerning to me.

Yeah.

To me, I am not against vaccines.

I have three daughters.

They're all vaccinated.

But as a thinking adult and as, uh, a individual married to a

doctor, we do not follow the vaccine schedule that pediatricians use.

Uh, we space 'em out a little bit more and we don't take all the

vaccines that they recommend just because we know our lifestyle, we

know who we hang out around with.

We know the needs of our children.

So in that sense, I'm not against vaccine.

. But when it came to this vaccine and the newness of it and the new technology of

it gave my wife and I, uh, reasons to, I don't wanna say be, say skeptical,

but to take a wait and see approach.

As the initial numbers started coming in, we started seeing

that, well, you know, older people may benefit from this vaccine.

Those were the first group of people encouraged to take it.

And to, for full disclosure, um, my father-in-law and my mother got

it and they asked us about it and we were not hesitant if they felt

that they wanted to take it and they felt they needed it and they felt

comfortable, we weren't gonna stop 'em.

And so they got it.

And praise God, no.

A adverse effects, however.

Quickly we started seeing that younger people didn't really need it, and my

wife and I are relatively well, we're in good shape, especially when you, uh,

considered the standard American person.

We're in great shape and so we didn't need it and we never got

covid for the first two years.

We finally got it like towards the tail end of it, and I've had flus

that were worse than covid and.

Now though, fast forward now and we see all these concerns, of people dying

suddenly and you can't necessarily attribute them to the vaccine.

But there is strong correlation, or at least in my eyes and in some of the

research I've seen, and more and more governments are coming saying that.

Perhaps we need to stop, uh, administrating these, uh, vaccines.

But the biggest thing for me before I throw it back to you is some of

the people in our own social circles, uh, other Protestants, , they

were taking an approach that was demeaning those who wanted to

protect their liberty of conscience.

And I know you've ran into some issues with, uh, with that for the sake of

privacy, let's not mention any names, but share some of the stories you ran across.

so I, especially on the, the shame element, um, I know there

was a, uh, there was a massive.

And the only name I'll say, because this person was officiated with,

with the gov, with government, so it's not nothing private.

Okay.

But, um, I know Francis Shafer, no, Francis, he was the head of one

of the scientific, uh, agencies.

Can't think of his last name.

First name was Francis.

Mm-hmm.

. But, um, he was one of the major pu pushers with Dr.

Fauci for the vaccine.

and he happened to be an evangelical Christian.

He had written some books way back when about creation.

And um, and uh, a person who has done some tremendous work on

this journalism is Meg Basham.

She's a, a journalist over at the Daily Wire, but she actually did

some, uh, some incredible reporting on how some major Protestant churches,

um, had had secret conversation.

. I don't wanna make it sound like a conspiracy.

Mm-hmm.

. But like, they had conversations behind closed doors about bringing him in

and having him talk to their flocks.

He talked to a lot of the megachurches.

He spoke to their congregations and he urged all these like conservative

Protestant Christians to get the vaccine.

And he didn't talk about the myocarditis risk.

Uh, he didn't talk about the doctors like a Marty McKay.

And, um, some of the other ones that had a few questions about the vaccines

and the speed, they just told 'em like, no, you gotta get vaccinated and

you're gonna kill people if you don't.

And this was happening in a lot of Protestant churches.

I know, like I've read, I've read some articles basically calling Christians

who had conscious objections to the vaccine, calling them, you know,

uncaring saying they didn't care about their neighbor, and it was just

like their grandma and one thing.

I really appreciate it is my personal home church pastor, because my

home church was split in two camps.

There was one group that was very much anti all the regulations and stuff,

and another group was the other.

And my pastor, his, his focus in the whole thing was, how do we stay one church?

And so I just think that was one thing that, well, on a national

level in the church, um, I.

Was lacking.

I think it's good to highlight those good local examples of pastors who

actually really navigated it in a way that kept the unity of the faith.

So I, I, that was just one thing that, um, stuck out to me.

But yeah, and for me, a as well, the notion that there were

people who were very dogmatic.

who were basically, as you shared with me in a conversation, they were

saying anybody who didn't get the vaccine was second class citizens.

And anything that happened to them, they deserved it.

And some even outside of the Protestant circles were calling

for like concentration type camps and things like that.

And, Once the spirit, the, the, the spirit of the masses begins to get like that.

I know they're on the wrong side of history.

And time has proven us right, because you look at things like the

Twitter files, uh, since Elon Musk took over Twitter, exposing all the

disinformation of giving alternatives to the covid vaccine, that actually

now people are talking about that.

I know there was a church near me, um, that I, I went to this event they hosted,

um, I don't know if you've heard of Dr.

Peter McCullough?

Yes, I have.

But he's been kind of one of the major, like he's a legitimate published

medical position, Baylor here in Texas.

Yeah.

And there was a church near me here in Michigan that had a freedom of conscious

event and they had people on both sides.

They had, they had an expert who was provac.

and they had experts that were, you know, against the vaccines.

So it was ba, very much a freedom of conscience.

Here's all the options, here's all the facts, you gonna have

to make your own decision.

And I know there was some other churches in our area who actually wrote letters

and tried to get this event shut down because they said this was just

awful, that a church was hosting this.

And I saw one person who's fairly prominent in Christian circles, Tweet out.

He's like, it's a sad day when YouTube sensors have a better

idea of truth than church leaders.

And I'm like, they're having both sides, right.

They're having like, that's what we're supposed to do in like a, a free

country, a self-governing country.

We gotta have all the information and we gotta be free to make the decisions.

You can't make a free decision on 50% of the inform.

And it made me laugh during this whole pandemic when they tried to use the

phrase, follow the science to shut down conversation when science in itself is

basically a field of questioning, question everything and follow the evidence.

And we see now, unfortunately, I am glad I never took the vaccine

and uh, I don't know, did you ever.

So I actually, I almost took the vaccine and when I was weighing my

options, my boss at the place I was working said that it was gonna be

a requirement and my like, freedom.

So I'm like, I don't like that pressure for making this decision.

And so I quit that job and then I never, I ended up working for another company with,

um, some really solid Christian owner.

and they weren't gonna make me, and I never ended up getting

it and I don't regret it.

I, I've had covid, so I have natural immunity now.

Mm-hmm.

and, um, I don't regret my decision.

Um, whereas my parents are both, um, older and they are vaccinated

and I think that was probably a good decision on their part.

Mm-hmm.

, because most of the negative side effects we're seeing, like

myocarditis are in younger people.

Mm-hmm.

. Mm-hmm.

and most of.

Covid death is an older people.

Mm-hmm.

. So if the vaccines do anything to prevent death and hospitalization, to me it

seems like it makes sense for older, older Americans, older people to get it.

Whereas I don't think it makes sense with younger people,

especially kids, five, six.

You know, my oldest, who at the time was seven.

She got Covid?

No, she was six actually.

She got Covid and as God is my witness, she got it on a Tuesday.

She tested on a Tuesday.

By Thursday she was over it.

Yeah.

You know, and that's one thing we knew from the beginning was that kids were

not, which thank God, kids weren't highly, like literally since like March, 2020.

That's.

And yet we still had to do the school closures.

Mm-hmm.

and we had to do the, you know, vaccine man.

I don't know if anyone ex, I think California might have mandated it

for young, for kids going to school.

I know most states didn't end up doing the full mandate for kids

because there was so much backlash.

But I, I think a few states did.

And I just, I don't get that.

It doesn't make sense to me.

And I know now count certain countries in Europe, Stopping the vaccine because

there's too much, uh, coincidence of, uh, sudden deaths happening during this

time when the vaccines were released.

And so it's dangerous, um, it's dangerous to force somebody to do things against

their will, and that leads to the protest.

Notion that the, the purest thing is liberty of conscious.

Yes, we are to look out for our neighbor.

Yes, we are to do the best we can for everybody.

But in the, in the end, you have to be true to your convictions and

honor the conviction of others.

When we can't find common ground and learn to live at peace, even

if it's at tension, we can't run.

From fighting for the freedoms that we are afforded, not only in this country,

but in scripture, and that man is to be free and accountable to God primarily.

During this podcast, during this, adventure that Joey and I have going,

we're gonna be discussing everything because liberty of conscience in this

issue may play itself out different in other issues like capital punishment

or abortion, or, gay rights.

so we wanna tackle all this with a loving heart, with, a passion for truth.

But to be able to, uh, give it that Protestant flavor.

Any other thoughts, Joey, that you have on during this Covid time?

Go ahead.

On that note, perfectly said that you, that you just said, I wanted

to, um, read this quote from Martin Luther when he was at the Diet of

Worms when he was called there.

Um, for those, for those who don't know because of his theological

disagreements with, at that time.

The Pope in Rome.

and there was just certain things on salvation and certain things that he

was teaching about salvation only in faith in Christ, and he was getting

rebuked and he ended up getting called to, to testify and told to recant.

And this is, this was his response.

He said, my conscience is captive to the word of God.

Thus I cannot, and I will not.

Or can't because acting against one's conscience is neither safe nor sound.

Here I stand, I can do no other God help me.

And I just think Martin Luther's always been one of my like historical heroes.

And I just think in all these issues, right, that we're gonna

end up talking about, like that freedom element is so important.

It was like when you actually, speaking of Daily Wire guys, a point Andrew

Klavin makes in his book, um, the Truth and Beauty where he says, he's like,

there's this paradox right between, for a free society, you need virtue.

But if you enforce it, it ceases to be virtue.

Right?

So in other words, like, and that's why like when you look at the founders

of, of America, I know John Adams, the second president, said our constitution

was made for moral and religious people and is wholly inadequate for any other.

Now, I don't think, that doesn't, I don't think that means that,

you know, goodhearted atheists can't live in a free society.

That's not what I'm saying.

But when, the moral fiber.

, like the personal moral five.

And it can't be forced.

I mean, because then you get tyranny.

So in other words, a free society requires individuals to choose virtue.

And so I don't know, that's just something that really struck out at me in this whole

conversation about liberty of conscience.

No, that makes sense because for example, let's pick on, I

don't wanna say pick on, but.

Talk about two atheists in this example, right?

Neither of them believe in God yet.

They have a sense of what is right and wrong.

They have a sense of what's fair, right?

One atheist doesn't allow another atheist to steal from him.

He knows that's wrong, whether they appeal to God or to whatever.

one atheist is not going to let another one steal their car or steal

their cash or steal their stocks.

They just know inherently that's wrong, and so everybody has to pursue.

A sense of morality wherever they pin it on.

You and I are Protestants.

We believe it comes from God, but an atheist, wherever he puts his

anchor on, we all need to come collectively as a society with laws

that are moral that benefit everybody.

However, as you were saying, when those are.

when people are being forced to do that, then there's a tension

that leads to tyranny or a tension that leads to revolution or a

tension that doesn't make it work.

And so we are here to try to find a balance that works for everybody because

even though Joey and I are Protestant, we, that doesn't mean that we wanna force.

To be Protestant.

I think persuasively, Jesus is the answer to the world's problems, but he himself

will not force anybody to follow him.

One thing I really wanted to highlight, there's this group.

I absolutely love 'em.

I probably disagree with them on like 90% of issues, , but

they're, they're progressive.

This is the name of, I recommend Go follow 'em.

They're on Instagram, Facebook, uh, YouTube, Twitter, but it's called, they're

the progressive anti-abortion uprising.

Uh, they, uh, yeah, that's what they call themself, P A A U, the

progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising.

These are leftists feminists.

. Um, like on most issues, they're socially left, and yet even they are like,

they're, they're out there proving right.

That there is a law that is, that is that God puts on all of

our hearts that we don't have to appeal to scripture for, right.

Some problems people think.

Oh, all the people that oppose abortion, they're just bible thumpers.

They just mm-hmm.

wanna cram the religion down.

And I just, I love these guys and these, most of their

activists are women actually.

And they'll go through and they'll tell these stories of like, women

who have been abused by this.

And so I'm, we don't, we're not really talking about abortion today, but I just

thought it really, it illustrated that.

As Protestants, right, and as Catholics and as Jews, as we're trying to figure

out how to live together, where we don't, um, we live together with moral laws,

but not enforcing, you know, religious views on people who don't believe.

I just think it's really important to highlight.

Are areas of commonality.

And I just, I love, I follow these guys and I'm, I like,

like almost all of their stuff.

So give 'em another shout out for the audience.

Yeah.

So they're, um, they're called the progressive anti-abortion uprising.

Okay.

And for us, if you guys wanna follow us on social media, my Twitter handle is

G i o m a r i n G o, Marin at Twitter.

And Joey, let them know your Twitter.

Yeah, my Twitter handle is at Adventist Cowboy, uh, a d v e n t i s t c o w b o Y.

Cowboy Mercy.

I hope you don't like the Cowboy football teams, cuz I'm a New York Giants fan.

. No, I'm a, I'm a sad, sad Lions fan.

. Oh, mercy.

Mercy.

This, this year actually wasn't that bad, but generally, I'm glad you

guys knocked out the Packers there in the last week of the season.

That was fun.

Me too.

any closing thoughts as we close this first?

I'm just excited for this journey and it's, you know, for, especially as

those that come and follow us, um, I'm excited to get to know you guys as well.

Yeah, same here.

Uh, Gio and Joey, we might change the name in the future.

We just may leave it.

We just wanted to press record and get started, and we are going

to have, YouTube channel as well.

So stay tuned to that.

We'll post that perhaps in the second episode or third episode.

You can follow us on Twitter.

Eventually we'll be on Instagram as well, and we just.

This to be a conversation.

If we find some of you intriguing, we may have you on the show as well, and

we are open to any kind of view as long as we could discuss them cordially.

We're not just gonna have people that agree with us on the podcast

or on the YouTube channel.

What we're after is truth.

Truth.

That binds us all together because we all have truth.

As long as we agree, and we can do it cordially, or even if we disagree, we

need to live in a society together.

Joey, thank you for tonight.

thank you for our budding friendship as well.

And let's do it again soon.