Dad’s Place Church: Zoning Disputes and the Fight for Religious Freedom

[0:04] In this episode, we get a final update on the effort by LifeWise Academy to force its way into our public schools.

[0:11] Then we learn there is some movement in the case of Dad’s Place Church in Bryan, Ohio, including the Ohio Attorney General and candidate for governor sticking his nose into the local issue. I’m Doug Berger. And this is Secular Left.

[0:31] Music.

[0:49] In the last episode, I mentioned about House Bill 8, which was a don’t say gay bill that was under consideration. In the lame duck session of the Ohio legislature and how they had the Senate, Ohio Senate, in considering the bill, had folded in the RTRI stuff, the release time religious instruction law, Senate Bill 293, which would require school districts to have a policy for release time religious instruction and how that was going to be kind of tearing me apart because you want to oppose it because of the anti-LGBT stuff, but you also want to oppose it because of the RTRI stuff. And so you’re trying to get a coalition together. And there was a lot of people that were concerned about it because of the RTRI stuff, not so much concerned about the anti-gay stuff. And so that was a little concerning.

[1:59] And so on December the 18th, it was in the evening, about four o’clock or so, the Senate considered House Bill 8 with their changes. One of the changes that they had made was, as I mentioned in my previous episode, they had added on what they were defining what core classes were. One of the contentions, bone of contentions between some of the districts and LifeWise was that the school districts were saying that all classes are core. And so that only left LifeWise open to operating during lunch or recess. And, of course, for LifeWise, that’s not optimal because they want to integrate themselves into the school day. They want to be a special. So they don’t want to be a non-class, like lunch or recess. They want to be considered like music or phys ed.

[3:02] So they added that. And then there was the part that they added in, too, that would prevent school districts from making the policy fit their district. It would control what they could put in the policy. And they had some vague thing about collaboration and about not being a burden to students exercising their so-called right. And so those were troubling additions. Well, when it finally was voted on in the Senate, they had changed, they had stripped out the core, defining what core classes were. And they added in a section saying that a school district may require background checks. And so that was kind of like a panacea to some people, I guess, that were on the fence. You know, there’s no guardrails in the RTRI law at all. No, nothing at all. And so they added in that part. They took out the core classes, but they left in the collaboration part.

[4:14] And so it finally came up to a vote, and it passed 24 to 7. So there’s 24 senators that voted for it, 7 senators that voted against it. So what happens after that was then it got sent back to the Ohio House for reconsideration with the changes. They had to agree to the changes.

[4:43] So they decided to save the bill till towards the end of the session. And this was going to be the last day that the Ohio legislature was going to be in session, December the 18th. And so approximately 11.20 p.m. On December the 18th, they brought up substitute House Bill 8 with the changes from the Senate. There was a spirited debate on the bill. Several members of the House spoke against it. Several members voted for it. One of the people that voted for it was Representative Josh Williams from my neck of the woods. And it was funny because he had championed during the whole debate over it in the House was that a school district could do whatever they wanted with this policy. They could make it however they wanted. They could have release time once a year. They could limit it to only people that had good grades. They could limit it to people that weren’t on suspension, et cetera, et cetera.

[5:51] And, of course, in a previous episode, I talked about how that might not be legal. They might not be able to do that because that would be infringing on a kid’s religious freedom. Because if you had the policy and then you still restrict them, that could be an issue. It could open up a school district to legal issues. And Keith Comer, who does the Respect Our School website, pointed out that according to the court cases, like Zorich v. Klassen, a school should do no more than release the student. That’s all they need to do. They can’t put any differing requirements. But, be that as it may, that’s what Representative Williams said. So, when he got up to speak about the bill on Wednesday night, on December the 18th, he basically…

[6:50] Countered himself. He rebutted himself in a very aggressive tone. And he was basically, basically he said, and I’ll play the clip of his audio here after I make this statement. He basically said that if school districts tried to work around the law, that he would and his fellow people that support this concept of release time will come back to the legislature and make it worse for the school districts. And basically, he used the term FAFO, fuck around and find out.

[7:34] And that came from the 2024 election in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, somebody was talking about that. I concentrate on what this bill does. It changes one word. It makes it where the school boards have to adopt a policy, but it provides no guidance for what that policy is. It could limit it to only during lunchtime, only during recess. It could limit it to just one day a year for release. There’s no guidance from the state on what the policy is. That’s the discretion left up to the school board. The districts must come up with a policy. We do not tell them what that policy has to be. They can allow for one day of release time for religious instruction per year or per week or per month. They can guide when it has to happen throughout the day. Schools can come up with a myriad of policies. They could say that a particular entire class is not allowed to participate in this release time if their scores are below a certain level. Eventually, eventually, as a colleague said, school districts are going to try to figure out a workaround.

[8:39] I heard one of my colleagues say, try us. I won’t use bad language on the floor, but I’ll put it in in letters. F-A-F-O.

[8:50] If we need to step up again, we will. If we want to make it mandatory to have a specific policy, we will. We’re trying to give local school districts the option to decide how best to fit it in their school day and make it fit for that school district. But we are not going to stand here and try to infringe on our parents’ right to raise their children inside the home and inside the classroom. The fact we even had to introduce the underlying bill or this amendment to protect the constitutional rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit is absurd. Now, that’s just odd. You know, he goes around saying you can do whatever you want with this bill, but don’t do anything with this bill that I don’t like. So the House reconsidered the bill with the changes. It ended up that the bill was adopted, the changes were adopted. But if anything, if there’s any good news about this was that the bill got less votes this time than it did the first time it passed when it was just attacking LGBT kids. When that was the only part of the bill that existed, it got like over 60 votes.

[10:18] And adding in the RTRI stuff, and they were considering the changes, it ended up only getting 57 House member votes for it, 31 against it. And interestingly, 11 House members did not vote.

[10:35] I don’t know what that’s about. I don’t know if they agreed with the bill and didn’t want to be on the record, or they disagreed with the bill and didn’t want to be on the record. I don’t know. But that’s what you get when you have supermajority religious bigots running the things. You get bills like this so-called Parents’ Bill of Rights. So, unfortunately, the bill passed. It was sent to the governor. As of this recording, here in late December, he has not signed it yet. He has up to 10 days after it’s sent to him in order to sign it or he could veto it. Probably more than likely he’s not going to veto it. I just don’t think he’s going to veto it. He doesn’t care about gay kids. He doesn’t care, and he supports RTRI, so I think he’s not going to veto it. I hope he does, but he’s not. One of the bills that he has said he’s going to veto, and he’s publicly said he’s going to veto, is they passed a medical free speech bill or some crap like that, whatever they called it, where people that are against health advisories couldn’t lose their medical license if they opposed it.

[11:53] Which is a stupid law. Anyway, so that’s how that all turned out, the RTRI thing that I’ve been focused on almost since the spring.

[12:07] You know win some you lose some you know that’s how it goes with politics, and like I said I’m hoping the governor will veto it I’ve sent messages I probably won’t happen especially in an environment that we live in today, and unfortunately some LGBT kids are going to be hurt, and LifeWise gets what it wants makes it tough sometimes. But we’ll move on. We’ll continue. We’ll continue the fight in other areas.

[12:44] For more information about any of the topics covered in this episode, check out our show notes at secularleft.com.

[12:51] Music.

[12:57] Another update on a legal matter that I’ve covered in the past, and in fact, it was back in February, I believe, when I covered this last time, was the case of Pastor Chris Avell in his church dad’s place in Bryan, Ohio. Just to refresh your memory on this case, this was Chris Avell has a church in downtown Bryan in the back of an arcade, a video arcade that he also runs. And he decided to, due to his religious beliefs, that he had to assist homeless people in Bryan. Bryan, Ohio is the county seat of Williams County, and that is the county that’s in the northwest corner of the state of Ohio, mostly rural.

[13:55] And Bryan, I believe, is the largest town, the largest city in the county. It’s also the county seat. So he decided to start helping homeless people at his church. And one of that help was that he allowed them to stay at his church and sleep, eat, sleep, do laundry, etc. And he ran into trouble with the city because he didn’t get any permits, he didn’t get any zoning waivers or anything like that. And he also had many code violations, zoning code violations, that he wouldn’t address. And so the city filed a complaint, took him to court, wanted him to get rid of the homeless shelter.

[14:50] In flies the Christian nationalist legal group First Liberty. They’re the same outfit that represents LifeWise. In fact, one of their lawyers for First Liberty gave testimony for the RTRI bill in Columbus and said that parents did not have a right to have RTRI at public school. And he said that during a testimony but anyway so first liberty swoops in and starts defending him chris avell saying that it was uh violating his religious freedom he wanted wanted to help these homeless people they said it’s part of his religion his religious beliefs and that the city by trying to enforce these zoning codes were infringing on his religious beliefs and they filed a federal lawsuit.

[15:48] Well, much later, probably in February, the original case started in December when he was last December, 2023, when he was ticketed and the whole process started. And then in January is when they filed the lawsuit in court. And then First Liberty filed a federal lawsuit. And so in February, I believe it was, they came to a mutual decision, compromise, that the city would drop the charges if Chris Avell would start working towards getting the zoning violations corrected. They were going to give him plenty of time to do that, and they wouldn’t take him to court or try to punish him for that.

[16:35] Well, it seems that Pastor Avell did not keep up his end of the bargain, and so the city did a surprise fire inspection and cited him again, and this time they filed criminal charges against him. And those are pending. And there was still a court case then got started back up in court about whether or not it was violating his religious beliefs to not for the city to shut down his homeless shelter. And that was the case that First Liberty’s handling. Well, the guy, one of the lawyers for First Liberty, wrote an op-ed that appeared, I think, pretty much in all the newspapers in the state. I know I saw in the Toledo area, it was published in the Columbus Dispatch, etc. Not only that, but our great… Benevolent Attorney General David Yost, who, by the way, announced that he’s running for governor, weighed in. He inserted himself in by filing a brief in the case, the religious freedom case, in support of Dad’s Place Church.

[18:03] And so what happened then next was that the mayor of Bryan wrote a rebuttal op-ed that appeared in all the newspapers, again, including the Columbus Dispatch. And that’s where I saw it. I saw it in the Columbus Dispatch. And so I kind of want to go over some of these details.

[18:26] Other people have written about this case so I’m not going to get into the weeds on this very much so the friendly atheist, Hemet Mehta he has a good article summarizing everything that I’m going to talk about with more details than I’m probably going to get into, because I have a couple points that I want to make about this case.

[18:51] So but anyway one of the things that I wanted to do was I wanted to play the clip or the interview that David Yost, Attorney General David Yost, did with Tony Perkins, posted on Tony Perkins’ YouTube channel on December 11th. So probably the interview was probably the day before or day or two before. And so what I want to do is I want to play this interview for you, the whole video, the whole interview. And then I’m going to talk about some of the points that is made in here. And this is kind of the points that I want to discuss about this case. Earlier this month, a pastor, a pastor in Ohio, was put on trial facing criminal charges. His crime? Helping the homeless in his community by giving them a warm place that’s open 24-7 so that they can get out of the elements as winter closes in. He says he’s doing what the church has been called to do. Yes, but the city of Bryan, Ohio, says otherwise. Here now to share about this case is Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. General Yost submitted an amicus brief, or what’s called a friend of the court brief, in this case, in support of the pastor and the church. Attorney General Yost, welcome back to Washington Watch. Thanks for joining us. Good to see you, Tony. All right, tell us more about this case. Okay.

[20:15] Well, let’s start with the basics. Of course, if you’ve got a public building, you have to comply with the same rules as everybody else. But what the law interpreting the First Amendment says is you’re not allowed, the government’s not allowed to treat the church worse than anybody else. So Dad’s Place, I visited there and met Chris Evel, the pastor, love the work that they’re doing there they they take matthew 25 seriously the problem is they’re in an old building right downtown um the city and the powers that be don’t much like them having you know folks that are.

[20:57] Down on their luck hanging out right there but they are coming in and throwing the book at them on building code violations here’s the problem on the stand the fire chief admitted that they give waivers all the time to these kinds of building code violations if the building is old and it would be too expensive to comply or if there’s some other uh reason that just the cost of the thing to the business is untenable and they’ve actually given a waiver to a hotel where people sleep overnight in beds. So this is just like that case during COVID where the government tried to shut down all the schools, including the Christian schools, and let the casino open. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said you can’t treat churches worse than you treat other businesses. And I’m very hopeful that when this is completely litigated, that dad’s place will still be standing. So, General Yost, are there other factors here? I mean, this would suggest, since they’re giving waivers to others, that there could be some animus here on behalf of the city toward this church. Yes.

[22:25] Yeah, and that’s a question for the court. But regardless of whether they’re against this church or simply don’t want, quote-unquote, those people, what Jesus called the least of these, hanging around their downtown, the bottom line is under the law, you’re not allowed to treat the church worse than you treat everybody else. Religious freedom would also i would think under the first amendment expression of faith give the church the benefit of the doubt to even have more latitude because this is a clear expression of the christian faith it’s a core function of a core belief of christianity in fact jesus talks in Matthew 25 about separating the sheep from the goats on the basis of how they act toward the hungry, toward the homeless.

[23:21] Here’s another thing. They’re trying him last week. They tried him on criminal charges. He might be the first guy in Brian ever to have been tried on criminal charges. Usually a code violation means you get a ticket. If you ignore the ticket, they might take you to court to get a court order to say you got to fix it or even padlock the front door. But to put somebody in jeopardy of their liberty, they’re trying to send a message here. And I’m hearing it at least. That’s why it sounds like to me there’s animus as I’ve read through the actions that they’ve taken. But we’ve also seen hostility from local governments toward churches, and I’m not suggesting it’s the case in here, but I’ve seen it clearly in others, where increasingly city governments do not like churches because they’re tax-exempt when it comes to property taxes. And they would rather see, and this is a former storefront, which I’m sure, I assume that at some point in time generated tax revenue for the city, is that they don’t like churches because they don’t make money off of them.

[24:32] Well, we don’t have that in the record, and as a former prosecutor, I live and die by the evidence I can produce on the record. What is on the record is that they’re treating this church differently than they treat other people in their town, and that’s a violation not only of the United States Constitution, but I would argue Section 7 of the Ohio Constitution. Well, and I’m a radio talk show host, so I probe and try to stir things up a little bit, because I think there’s more here than meets the eye. But I want to say thank you, as you have historically done, stepping in in defense of the First Amendment and hear a clear, what I see is a clear violation of the rights of this church to help those who are down and out there in the city. So I thank you for stepping in. I thank you for joining us as always. General Yost, always great to see you.

[25:24] It’s good to see you. Let me give a quick shout out to First Liberty. This is a privately funded group that is donating their legal expertise along with a couple of local firms to defend Dad’s Place. Yes, thank you for bringing that up because First Liberty, frequent guests on here do great work. We’re grateful for our partners like them and ADF that step in and do some of the heavy lifting on these cases. General Yost, have a Merry Christmas if I don’t see you before Christmas. Merry Christmas to you. So that was David Yost talking with Tony Perkins. And I need to point out that Tony Perkins is the leader of the Family Research Council based in Washington, D.C. They are a designated hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are anti-LGBT.

[26:13] Tony Perkins is also part of that. He’s also an extremist, a conservative religious extremist. And the point, if you look at this, if you go take the link and watch this video, they’ve got a crawl on his show that gives like some brief headlines. And one of them was they were celebrating that Daniel Perry guy, the guy that choked out the guy on the New York subway who was having a mental breakdown, choked him out and killed him. And he was found not guilty of manslaughter. In a court in New York this month.

[26:57] On the crawl, they said Daniel Perry is a hero or something like that. They were celebrating him as a hero. This is a Christian. This is a guy who wears his Christianity on his sleeve, and quotes the Bible all the time, et cetera, et cetera. And he’s celebrating some guy who murdered somebody because he was having a mental health break. Of a mental health issue. Like he deserved to die, I guess, is how his thing. Anyway, so that’s Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council. So it’s apropos that they had David Yost on. But what I wanted to do is I wanted to talk about what David Yost was referring to, that when a government has regulations or laws, that they’re not allowed to treat churches worse than any other non-church entity. And he brought up the pandemic. Now, this was what they call one of those shadow Supreme Court cases.

[28:11] Andrew Seidel talks about that in his book about weaponizing the Supreme Court for religious zealots. And it was a shadow ruling in that they didn’t have any. It wasn’t processed. It was like an emergency decision. It wasn’t, they didn’t have briefs and you didn’t show up at court and argue it. They had people submit briefs and then they made the ruling because of exigent, whatever they call it, the emergency stuff. And so they call it a shadow docket. And the Supreme Court ruled that laws that shut down places because of the pandemic, had to treat churches exactly like they treated other businesses. And one of the arguments that was used during that time period, and Yost reiterated it, was that casinos were allowed to stay open. Grocery stores were allowed to stay open. And what it was is it was an essential business, mostly essential, anything that was designated an essential business was allowed to stay open. If it wasn’t an essential business, then it had to close. And so the argument was made that churches are essential business. The Supreme Court agreed.

[29:32] I did not agree with that because it’s the whole thing about having religion in a building. That you have to, in order to have freedom, religious freedom, you had to be able to be in a church. You know, they made that same argument when the health departments closed the public schools. They closed all the schools in Lucas County, and the religious schools filed a lawsuit saying it was infringing on their religious freedom. So basically what Yost’s argument is, is that religious freedom should trump regulations.

[30:16] That’s what he’s saying. That’s clearly what he’s saying. And, of course, I don’t agree with that. I don’t believe that. Dad’s Place and Chris Avell are not being treated worse than any other. He talks about, Yost mentions about a hotel, and I think First Liberty in their editorial, and I’ll have a link on the show notes, talked about how a hotel and a senior center was allowed to not have to have sprinklers and they were given a waiver. Why wasn’t dad’s place given a waiver? Well, it’s perfectly explainable if you look at the details of the case and the timeline.

[31:00] The hotel and the senior center and the shelters that are also down there’s two shelters downtown including one right next to dad’s place they were all in operation before prior to 2017. 2017 the fire code changed Chris Avell started his homeless shelter in 2023 or 2022 something like that so in order for him to comply with the codes, he would have to apply with the current codes, since he would not have been in business before the codes were established. That’s what municipalities mean by grandfathering something in, is was this place established, was this place operating as this thing prior to the code change?

[31:57] And if not, if not, then they have to abide by the current code. You know, that’s why they talk about when they’re doing renovations for old houses. A lot of times places won’t do much renovating because if they do, then they have to comply with the current building codes. And a lot of these old homes and old buildings weren’t built during the time that those current codes were existing. And so it’s hard to retrofit them. So it’s reasonable for the hotel to have a waiver because they were established before the code changed.

[32:43] And so that was the argument that Yost makes there in his little interview with Tony Perkins. And it’s pretty ironic, too, that that’s the same argument that First Liberty is making in their court case. They filed an appeal from the municipal or the county court. I think it was the county court ruled against Avelle. There’s been three court cases that have ruled against Chris Avelle in the county. The other thing that I want to point out, too, is that Williams County is not a liberal bastion of anti-religion. Williams County is about as red as you can get. They voted for Trump. 73% of the county voted for Trump.

[33:35] All the people that are involved, the fire chief, the mayor, Brian, other city officials, they are all Christians. They go to church.

[33:46] Now, one of the arguments, though, that I agree with that First Liberty brings up and David Yost mentions is that city fathers or the city administrators don’t want another homeless shelter downtown. That would be a valid criticism of the city, that they are nitpicking, well, using their phrase, First Liberty’s phrase, nitpicking, and really trying to enforce the rules because they just don’t want a homeless shelter downtown, another one. And that plays into some of the way this case has been going. In an earlier news story about it, they talked about how the city tried to find Dad’s place another location, and they were going to move it, they wanted to move him to an industrial area of town, or a town where they had more like manufacturing factory or, you know, non-downtown area. and he refused. The other point also to make that’s not being addressed by Yost or First Liberty is the fact that he complied with the zoning laws when he established the business.

[35:11] Because it wasn’t zoned to be a church, and he wanted to put a church in the back of the store. This is a church in the back of a retail store. It was zoned for commercial purposes. So he had to get a waiver to put a church in. And one of the stipulations when they gave him the waiver was that he had to abide by the zoning regulations. And he refuses to do that. He has continually refused to do it. He believes that he doesn’t have to because it’s about his religious freedom. And so that is also where, you know, this religious privileging goes, that any time that a religious group has to abide by a law that everybody else has to abide by and they don’t like the law, then they claim that it’s infringing on their religious beliefs. Now, I don’t know too many religious beliefs where you could just not follow the law. I mean, it starts with the religion, right? The whole premise of a religion is that your deity’s laws, you have to follow your deity’s law.

[36:23] But they don’t think it’s, since it’s not their deity’s law, that they don’t have to follow it. And I disagree on that. Now, I also have the link for the mayor’s, Mayor Brian and her rebuttal. And the one thing that concerned me about the whole rebuttal was the fact that they were pointing out a registered sex offender had been staying there at the dad’s place shelter, their quasi-shelter, and how that was just, they needed to protect the children. That just bothers me all right because no matter what your status in life whether you’re a convicted you know a criminal that that has served your time or you’re a registered sex offender if you’re a registered sex offender it means you’ve done your time and and you’re out and i have a pro i have a problem. I understand that you shouldn’t leave a registered sex offender alone with children. I get that. I agree with that. But a lot of places now restrict where registered sex offenders can even live.

[37:49] You can’t live next to a church, can’t live next to a school. In some places, you can’t live in the same block as a school because they don’t want registered sex offenders in their community. It looks like it should be that they served their time and they should be allowed to exist. And many people just want to continue to punish them for the rest of their lives. Yes, you should watch them. Yes, they should be restricted from working with children and being alone with children. But they don’t do that with these Catholic priests that get convicted of child abuse.

[38:35] They don’t force them to live in an industrial area in a trailer, like some places in California. Talk about religious privileging.

[38:46] I guess child abuse has a religious flavor? I don’t know. I don’t know how about that. But I was just concerned about the way that they kind of harped. And the title that the dispatch used for the mayor’s rebuttal was, Brian Mayer, sex offender, kids slept on church floor. My city needed to step in.

[39:13] Yeah, that is almost as bad as Yost nosing in on this case and making it all about religious freedom. You know, there’s valid concerns why they have issues with having a homeless shelter in that church, in that building. You know, he’s violated zoning ordinances. He refuses to fix them. And then he should be prosecuted for that. And the other thing, too, to mention is, you know, they’re talking about impeding his religious freedom. Them, most of the time, if it’s not a church, they would have shut the place down and locked it up and prevented people from going into it or using it. That’s one of the actions that a city can take when somebody violates zoning regulations is they can, especially if it’s a business, they can shut you down, close your business, lock your doors. You know, health departments, if you violate health department regulations, they can take your license away and shut you down. And you have to close, I think, seven days at least, minimum.

[40:27] They have the authority to do that, and they did not do it in this case. They didn’t shut the church down because he had religious freedom. They were protecting his religious freedom. As long as he didn’t do the homeless shelter part, he could operate his church. And, of course, he took advantage of that fact and still had people sleeping there, even after they told him not to do that.

[40:57] You know, if you’re going to violate the law, you need to be open to the consequences, even if you don’t agree with the law, even if the law is inappropriate and racist or derogatory or whatever. You still need to Because that’s the only way you can fight a bad law Is being injured by it And then you fight it in court, You don’t just ignore it And a lot of Christians A lot of people that consider themselves Christians Tend to ignore that fact I’m pretty sure the Bible says If you ignore God’s law, you’re going to hell And they wouldn’t, They wouldn’t debate me on that because they would agree with that. Well, if that’s the case with religious law, what about secular law? If you ignore secular law, shouldn’t you be punished for that? Many people say yes, even though we have more than a two-tier system of justice in this country. But the main thing is about this story with the Dad’s Place update, is that First Liberty is coming in, raising money off of it.

[42:22] Crisovell’s getting some of that conservative welfare. They’re making it all about religious freedom. The city has good reasons to be concerned and to hold him accountable for the health and safety of the people that stay in that building. But on the other hand, too, I really think that the city just doesn’t want another homeless shelter downtown, and so they’re being very tough on him. They want him to move to another part of town that is not downtown. And it also, all these actions and recriminations and court cases still doesn’t solve the problem of the homeless issue in Williams County and Bryan. Thank you for listening to this episode. You can check out more information, including links to sources used, in our show notes on our website at secularleft.us. Secular Left is hosted, written, and produced by Doug Berger, and he is solely responsible for the content. Send us your comments, either using the contact form on the website, or by sending us a note at comments at secularleft.us.

[43:46] Our theme music is Dank and Nasty, composed using Amplify Studio.

[43:55] Music.