Alison, Liz, and Rebecca speak with Wisconsin State Senator Kelda Roys. They discuss what it’s like to be a nonreligious lawmaker in today’s legislative world as well as the threat of Christian Nationalism to our secular democracy and civil rights like reproductive freedom.
Background
Rebecca Markert: Welcome to We Dissent, the podcast with secular women attorneys discussing religious liberty issues in our federal and state courts and our work to keep religion and government separate. I’m Rebecca Markert with Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Liz Cavell: And I’m Liz Cavell with the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Alison Gill: And I’m Alison Gill with American Atheists. We’re excited to welcome to the podcast today, one of the most prominent secular lawmakers in the country, Wisconsin State Senator Kelda Helen Roys. Welcome to the show!
Sen. Kelda Roys: Thank you so much for having me.
Alison Gill: Senator Roys was elected to the Wisconsin State Senate in 2020, before which she served from 2009 to 2013, so four years in the Wisconsin State Assembly. Kelda is a small business owner, an attorney, and a champion for women’s rights.
Rebecca Markert: And I just want to jump in here to tack on to Alison’s wonderful introduction because I’ve known Kelda for years now. We’ve traveled in a lot of the same circles here in Madison, Wisconsin, and I just wanted to highlight for our listeners just what a gem she is and what a fabulous lawmaker we have here in Wisconsin. She’s an incredible public servant. I can’t even say politician because I do believe that you are so much more than that. You’ve dedicated your life to public service. Having worked for NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin, immediately after getting her law degree from the University of Wisconsin and then serving as a member of our State House. A couple of stories about Kelda that people outside of Wisconsin might not know because they don’t regularly make her bio, but I really do think that they should. In 2011 when tens of thousands of people protested at the capitol every day for weeks over a bill that would limit union power in Wisconsin and our then Governor Scott Walker locked the capitol doors so citizens could not enter the building. Senator Roys, who was then in the state assembly took her desk out to the Capitol lawn to meet her constituents.
Sen. Kelda Roys: It was really cold. I will just say it was like February.
Rebecca Markert: Yes, this was in February.
Liz Cavell: It’s important for listeners to understand this was in Wisconsin.
Sen. Kelda Roys: Not California.
Rebecca Markert: But those pictures did make national news and it was just a fabulous story and a little bit of an insight into who she is and the kind of elected official that she is. She also made national headlines again in 2018 during her race for governor in our state when she famously breastfed her daughter during a campaign commercial. I believe that was one of the, probably the first of its kind in our country. And I’ve always really admired you as a working, I’m going to have to say outside the home, Mom. And I fondly remember you carrying your daughter during a training that you did for our staff at FFRF on lobbying. So I’m so excited that you’re here to talk to us today
Liz Cavell: And not to make you feel super awkward. Rebecca and I are both Wisconsinites, we’re both Madison lawyers and just total fan girls for Senator Roys. You’re the best. I really did tear up and cry when I saw that governor spot with you breastfeeding your daughter in your campaign commercial. It just like that visibility especially. And yes, there were postpartum hormones in the mix when I was watching it, but also just that different kind of visibility was really refreshing and just I felt very seen.
Alison Gill: I have to say I didn’t see that one, but I think I’d much prefer it to the ones we see on the other side featuring them shooting guns or whatever. You know what I mean? So I think that’s amazing.
Sen. Kelda Roys: Well, I’m so so excited to be here with you and the admiration is very much mutual. I’m really grateful for the work that you all do every day to preserve the most fundamental of American values, the separation of church and state.
Alison Gill: Well, thank you Senator Roys. I’d love to hear a little bit more about yourself and what motivates you to do the incredible work that we’ve been talking about.
Sen. Kelda Roys: Well, I’m a lawyer by training, so I think I tend to approach public policy from a question of how can we put law into action to help improve people’s lives? How can we make public policy and government work better? On the personal front, I definitely consider myself more of an advocate than a politician. That’s certainly been my background working in the nonprofit world and just being a volunteer and an active community member, just trying to figure out little ways that I can make a positive impact on a certain issue or in people’s lives. And on a personal level, I have three kids and two step kids, so I love that we now have Mom-Ala, a stepmom that could potentially be the president. That’s very exciting to meet, and I love serving in the state senate, but I also really like the fact that I have this kind of entrepreneurship streak.
I started a business after I left the assembly, I dunno, 11 years ago, something like that. And it’s a kind of a high tech real estate brokerage that helps people buy and sell homes more affordably. And it’s just really nice to have that kind of business counterbalance to all the politics day and night. And it’s also really nice to have something that I can use my law degree to help people versus what I find myself doing so often lately in the Capitol, which is just banging my head against that marble wall because not one of my bills are getting a ton of traction in this very, very Republican dominated legislature right now.
Alison Gill: Yeah, yeah, that’s fair enough. So you are publicly known as a non-religious lawmaker. I’m curious what that’s like for you. Do you ever get questions from your constituents? How do you relate and show your values? I think that’s important for all leaders to be able to do. How do you do that and how does your impact your relationships with your fellow lawmakers as well?
Sen. Kelda Roys: Well, I think because Madison is a pretty liberal community and it’s a diverse community. I mean, we’re a college town, and so it isn’t necessarily a big risk for me to be out as a secular lawmaker as somebody who is an atheist. I was raised Unitarian Universalist and kind of raised practicing Jewish holidays, but basically I’ve always pretty much been a humanist and a secular person. And I think the response has been pretty positive for most people. And I think when I describe myself, I say I’m your friendly neighborhood atheist. I think one thing is really important is that I really respect when people have religious beliefs and they express them to me. And I draw a really clear line around what I view as my role as a policymaker, which is never to insert religion into our state laws, but also really respecting what brings people into my office or into my email inbox to tell me what they care about and what matters to them.
And I think you can respect people’s individual beliefs and also say what my role is, which is not to impose anybody’s religious beliefs on anybody else. And I think in recent years I’ve really tried to talk more and more with audiences both on the right and the left about the importance of pluralism and that if we want to live in a free country, we have to accept pluralism and not allow our own disgust or distaste or sense of moral superiority, infect our lawmaking. You can’t legislate things that you don’t like, whether that’s things that you believe are immoral or things that you believe are wrong on the left, it’s like we want to legislate things like racism and bigotry and on the right they want to legislate things like our healthcare decisions and what we’re allowed to read and learn, but in a free society, we have to let people do things that we disagree with. And that really starts very much with the first amendment, with religion.
Alison Gill: That’s really, it’s interesting way you’re framing that. I think it’s really helpful for folks to understand. I am curious about the right is increasingly pushing this vision of religious freedom that is basically for Christians and nobody else.
Sen. Kelda Roys: Right, it’s not religious freedom, and we should say that, right? Every other thing they say pro-life and it has nothing to do with helping any baby or doing anything for infant mortality. And they say religious freedom and what they mean is you shut up unless you agree with me, and by the way, you have to obey the laws of my religion.
Alison Gill: Exactly. It’s the opposite of religious freedom and yet that’s portrayed, it’s helpful to talk about pluralism. I think that’s a really great framing. So I’d love to hear about your legislative accomplishments. What have you accomplished while you’ve been in office that you’re most proud of? And maybe you could talk about some of what you’re excited about for the future.
Sen. Kelda Roys: Sure. Well, when I was in the assembly, I was in the majority for one brief shining session and I was really very proud of some of the work that we did there. I helped pass the Healthy Youth Act, which was at the time probably the most preeminent evidence-based sex ed law for young people. I mean, it helps them make healthy choices. It was age appropriate, medically accurate, comprehensive, dealt with all kinds of things from stereotypes to preventing sexual violence to healthy relationships, and of course protecting yourself by making good choices around sex. And unfortunately that was repealed in the very next session, which is very sad.
Alison Gill: Oh, that’s so disappointing. I mean I, I have to be frank, there was so much opposition to teaching decent sex ed around the country still even in this day and age. It’s just amazing. I’d love to hear what was the rationale behind that from your colleagues.
Sen. Kelda Roys: For repealing it you mean?
Alison Gill: Yes.
Sen. Kelda Roys: They would rather that their kids have unsafe sex and make life-changing bad decisions than to hear about and learn about safe sex. And the data is so clear that abstinence only approaches fail young people. I mean, there are really two things that you need to learn as a young person that are going to carry you through your life as an adult no matter what you do. And one is financial literacy, figuring out how to manage money and be smart about money, and the other is sex ed. And there aren’t really sex ed classes that you can take as an adult. A lot of families don’t talk about this and a lot of parents feel like they would like to, but they don’t know where to start. It is really important that we don’t just leave it to the internet and we don’t just leave it to the schoolyard gossip. For young people to learn these really critical things about their own bodies, about what a healthy relationship looks like. Really good sex ed programs help identify and stop child abuse.
Alison Gill: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Sen. Kelda Roys: It’s so clear when you equip young people with the knowledge about how their bodies work, what their body parts are called and how to behave in a way that’s respectful of others. We are building a world where there’s less sexual assault, less predation on children, and more kids can thrive and will thrive as adults.
Alison Gill: You’re exactly right, it has lifelong positive impacts from reducing domestic violence, abuse, bullying, and it’s extremely popular with parents too. So it’s kind of amazing to me.
Sen. Kelda Roys: Of course, teen pregnancy and STIs, you’re going to have lower incidents of both of those things when you have comprehensive sex ed, when you teach kids about abstinence and contraception.
Liz Cavell: As we’re talking about sex ed, there’s such an obvious rational science-based approach that we know leads to better outcomes for our kids. It’s like Alison said, what’s the rationale for your opponents in the State House repealing this obviously reason based science-based law that helps kids. And I can’t help but think that a big part of that is a lack of just a shared understanding that the job you’re doing is secular, that all you’re supposed to look at is the data, the science, the outcomes, and you go from there and the choices are really not that hard, but it’s so frustrating. It is really just this conflation of the job of a legislator is somehow to enforce some sort of moral and theological beliefs about how to raise kids, how to do sex, how to talk about sex and all of these other things. And it just so confuses these issues that are so clear. And then the result is we leave our kids and all of our other vulnerable populations that we’re supposed to be sending people to the State House to protect and to help. We leave them just totally out in the cold with just to fend for themselves in these hard things in life. I’m just curious as a legislator who’s actually trying to get things done or to persuade people maybe, I know it’s probably not happening often in the Wisconsin State Senate, but what do you think about that and how do you deal with it?
Sen. Kelda Roys: Well, I still haven’t figured out how to persuade people who have a deeply held religious belief and they think that they should use their position of power to force others to comply. And I think that it really does go back to educating people, not just in math and reading and science, but also in civics, in citizenship and what it means to be an American, and the idea that we are all part of a common civic project and if we are going to have a functioning democracy, we have to learn to get along with each other and to agree to disagree on things. And I think for a long time, the religious right has been the biggest offenders in terms of trying to step over that line and force their beliefs on everybody else. And I mean this current Supreme Court that we have, the US Supreme Court is the worst.
They just have their moral do and they force it on the rest of us. But I also think there is lately kind of an illiberal stream on the left, and that troubles me as well. Of course. I think racism and bigotry are horrible. I don’t think anybody deserves to be treated poorly because of who they are or how they look or what their background is or who they love or anything like that, nor should people be denied educational or employment opportunities or housing or anything like that. But I also think we are not going to rid the world of sexism, racism, homophobia by legislating it. We’re going to do it by educating and bringing people in, and to the extent that people want to use the strong arm of the government to try to force people into having certain beliefs even if we think they’re good beliefs, I just think that’s profound misunderstanding of how society works and what the purpose of government is.
And I don’t want to suggest that there’s any equivalence between trying to stop homophobic or racist behavior and trying to ban abortion or ban birth control or force people to have Bibles in classrooms. But I think because obviously the right is so much more active on doing this, it’s the right that is banning books. It’s the right that is assaulting free speech and religious liberty every day in state houses across the country. But I do think it’s important that we all think about ways in which our own view of the world is not shared by others and how we might be contributing to the divide in this country, the deep divide and how intransigent some of our problems feel in the way that we want to address some of these things.
Alison Gill: Just to follow up on that, I’m curious because I don’t think, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you oppose non-discrimination laws and that sort of thing for people that are facing discrimination based on characteristics.
Sen. Kelda Roys: Absolutely not.
Alison Gill: So what are you–
Sen. Kelda Roys: The government to make sure that people have equal opportunities?
Alison Gill: So what sort of policies are you pointing to criticizing more specifically? I’m curious.
Sen. Kelda Roys: Well, I think this is why it isn’t really equivalent. You don’t have a lot of democratic politicians saying, let’s outlaw this kind of particular speech, although I do think that some hate speech codes are problematic. I mean–
Alison Gill: You mean on colleges
Sen. Kelda Roys: Sort of thing, on college campuses and public universities or public employers to sort of have people to make people sign statements saying that they believe a certain thing I think is problematic. I think what we should be punishing is bad behavior and not bad thoughts. And so to me, if you have someone that is clearly discriminating against someone or they’re sexually harassing them or they’re taunting them with slurs, you punish that behavior and you do it by firing them or suing them or whatever is the right punishment for that crime, punish you don’t punish people for the thoughts that they have and for the things that they’re doing that are outside of a work context or whatever is the regulated behavior school, et cetera.
Alison Gill: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I agree with you, and I think there are definitely some colleges, university, public colleges, universities that have sort of a liberal speech codes and those get pushed back on regularly. I do want to say I think it’s overblown though. I mean just because the right loves to point that out and talk about how the left is clamping down on speech and they’re the real sort of authoritarians here, but we’re talking about a small number of, we’re not talking about a real powerful influence in our society. We’re talking about a few number of colleges.
Sen. Kelda Roys: Right, exactly. And I think it’s like society, things are always kind of fluid. There’s a pendulum that swings back and forth, and I think the instinct on the left is to correct for historical wrongs, which is a good one, and some of the forms of that may be an overcorrection or going too far, but again, you don’t have politicians on the left that are going to their kids’ school library and pulling books off the shelves and then going out to the parking lot and burning them, right?
Alison Gill: Oh gosh, no, I hope not.
Liz Cavell: All the Bill O’Reilly books.
Sen. Kelda Roys: So again, that’s why I say there isn’t really an equivalence here, but I do think that it is important, especially when I talk to young audiences, because young people, I think one of the most exciting and hopeful things is that they really believe and want to demand that all of us behave better, that we make progress as a society, and I think that’s really, really good, and younger generations hold older generations accountable. That’s how we make progress in large part. But I do think that it’s important for everyone to have this context of, listen, if you want to be free to do what the religious right considers sinning, then you have to let them wear hats with racist slogans
Alison Gill: Or feel however they’re going to feel about different–
Sen. Kelda Roys: Exactly. Or say
Alison Gill: LGBTQ people or whatever.
Sen. Kelda Roys: We’re not going to marry gay people in our church. And it’s like, well–
Liz Cavell: Good luck with that.
Sen. Kelda Roys: You don’t have to do anything religious, but you’re not going to be signing the certificates for civil marriage.
Rebecca Markert: I think that a lot of it does go back to what you were saying earlier about education and making sure that our children and even us as adults have access to other views and differing opinions because that really helps boost everyone’s mindsets and helps us get closer as a community to understand each other. But I think it also really comes down to just educating people on how to think critically. I think that that has gotten really lost in our now very polarized society.
Sen. Kelda Roys: And I think one of the things that all of us who we all star in our own movie is hard, especially when you’re a policymaker, is to separate what are the things that I want and what’s the world that I want from what is acceptable for me to try to legislate? And there are a lot of things that I would love to see in this world that are just, they’re not appropriate subjects for legislation. And being able to draw that distinction between me, the choices I make, the way I want to live my life and what I want to prescribe universally, you have to be able to do that if you want to live in a democracy and in a free society.
Alison Gill: Absolutely. And it’s interesting, I think our opposition on the right wing often accuses our groups of wanting to force churches to marry gay couples and things like that. But I mean, I think we would all understand that there a gross violation of religious freedom and we’d never support that. And I think we do share certain core values that it just sort of glossed over in order to paint the other side sometimes as being particularly vile. Right?
Sen. Kelda Roys: Yes, absolutely.
Liz Cavell: Also Kelda, I think you’re speaking a good faith version of something that we see so manipulated and corrupted by our adversaries, which is, it is true that what we all want or what we should strive for is a pluralistic society where we all strive to be tolerant of each other and understand that in order to have a secular democracy. part of that comes with we all have vastly different beliefs. As many as you can come up with, that’s how many exist in our society. And it’s unfortunate that there’s sort of a bad faith version of this, which is kind of what Alison is hinting at, which is this idea that neutrality is the same as hostility towards whatever the threatened dominant religion is. Right? We always hear this refrain that, well, we’re actually the enemies of pluralism because we’re trying to drive Christians from the public square.
And these actions that we support, which are basically government neutrality when it comes to religious belief, is actually hostile. The government is hostile if they’re not clinging to past privileges that existed in our Christian dominant past. So this striving for a better America that we’re doing, which is what it always should have been, which was religiously neutral, and even if that wasn’t always the realized thing, and the same thing with racism and patriarchy and all the things that somehow striving more towards that is hostile to the pluralism of the past, which wasn’t as pluralistic as it should be. You know what I mean? There’s such a corrupted bad faith version of the two-way street that is pluralism, and we’re just screaming into the wind that no neutrality is neutral. It’s not hostile.
Rebecca Markert: But it’s also even worse than that, Liz, because it’s not just neutrality is hostile to religion, but we also often hear that being neutral towards religion or the state being neutral towards religion is also just promoting atheism, which is the worst thing that you could do outside of I guess, promoting satanism.
Liz Cavell: Right? Right. That’s somehow, like we’ve all heard the joke that not collecting stamps is a hobby kind of thing. It’s not, you know what I mean? The absence of something is not an affirmative thing. A lot of our adversaries think of the opposite of, whatever, religion is atheism, and therefore anything that’s neutral with regards to religion is atheistic, and it’s just so frustrating because it’s obviously not a good faith or logical place to start.
Sen. Kelda Roys: Yeah, it’s totally a-historical, I actually recently went to Monticello on a trip and it was fascinating. I had never been there before. And of course, Thomas Jefferson’s grave is there, and he was very specific about what he wanted on his marker, and he said he wanted to be known for authoring the Declaration of Independence for authoring the Virginia statute for religious freedom, which is the basis of later the First Amendment, and was foundational idea of what America would be and what freedom is. And then for founding the University of Virginia, because he felt public education was so important. Now, obviously Thomas Jefferson had a lot of flaws. It was not a perfect person by any means, but the idea that somehow the founders wanted to see a Christian nation or that they embraced religion and government is just totally false. And it was in fact a rejection of the way that religion had become intertwined with government and even in some of the colonies before the United States were formed. That was a big, big motivator for the founders in making sure that religion was kept separate from and was not given special status, unlike the way it had been in England and the way that some colonies had operated beforehand.
Alison Gill: I just love this positive, accurate history. You’re just reminding me about what’s going on in Oklahoma right now where the state superintendent of education has created this sort of commission of people like David Barton and right-wing ideologues to redefine the social studies curriculum in this Christian nationalist image. And it’s just so outrageous. I think it’s really important for us to propagate the actual history of the separation of church and state and just the founding of our country. So thank you. I appreciate that.
Rebecca Markert: Well, why don’t we shift gears here a little bit because I do want to talk about your history and experience in reproductive freedom and abortion rights efforts. You’ve always been a very strong proponent of reproductive freedom. Could you tell us a little bit more about your efforts to ensure access to abortion services and specifically medication abortion?
Sen. Kelda Roys: Sure. Well, since the Dobbs decision two years ago, Wisconsin had one of these pre-Civil war bans on the books that everybody thought was an abortion ban because that’s how it reads. And so abortion provision basically stopped immediately in Wisconsin. But I believe the ability to safely end your pregnancy is a fundamental human right. It’s a reproductive right, and women cannot be full and equal participants in society unless we have that information. So I’ve spent a lot of my time educating people about medication abortion and about the fact that you can, in any state, including states where abortion is heavily restricted or banned, you can go online to aidaccess.org or to plancpills.org and order medication abortion. It will be shipped to you within a matter of days. If you don’t have the money, I think it costs between a $100 and $150, but if you don’t have the money, they will send it to you anyway.
Everybody should have medication abortion on hand in your medicine cabinet before you need it. You don’t want to wake up one day with a splitting headache and then have to drive to the store and get Tylenol. And we should all have medication abortion on hand, especially given the threats that we face of a potential backdoor national abortion ban if Trump is elected. There is ample evidence from Project 2025 about the plans that Republicans have to enact a national abortion ban without any further congressional action. So even if Congress is still controlled by Democrats, Trump himself could direct the Department of Justice to start enforcing the Comstock Act, which is a crazy anti-obscenity law that bans contraception and pornography. And this could be used to shut down access to abortion, including medication abortion. Trump could also direct the Food and Drug Administration to reverse their approval, their 20 plus year approval of Mifepristone, which is one of the main medications that’s used in abortion medication.
And so we just cannot allow our own health and lives and those of our loved ones to be sacrificed to potential Trump presidency where abortion becomes absolutely unavailable. And I think it’s really important for people to, number one, know how to get medication abortion. Number two, know how to use it and keep that information somewhere safe. And number three, order it and have it on hand. There are also great legal organizations that will help you understand what the risks are in different places because it matters what state you are, how risky that can be. But there is a whole incredible network of people who are dedicated to helping ensure that all of us maintain the actual ability, even if we don’t have the legal right to control our own reproduction.
Alison Gill: We’ve actually talked about the Comstock Act a little bit on this podcast before, in a previous episode when we were talking about different Supreme Court cases. I think it came up in the mifepristone case discussion, and it’s interesting or not interesting, scary how the right keeps trying to use non-democratic means to impose its will, whether it be the courts, whether it being taking these old laws like in Wisconsin, for example, this old law that passed hundreds of years ago that no one’s ever applied and just trying to impose these old policies without any sort of democratic approval because there is no democratic approval for these policies. And I don’t know, it’s just kind of disgusting.
Sen. Kelda Roys: Well, and two of my favorite feminist writers, Jessica Valente and Jill Filipovic, both of whom have substack, and you should subscribe to them if you don’t already, they have talked repeatedly about the link between authoritarianism and restricting access to abortion, that feminism and democracy kind of go hand in hand, but if you’re going to restrict access to abortion, you also have to clamp down on democracy. And we’ve seen in states that are restricting access to abortion, people don’t want that. They can only do that if they have a gerrymandered legislature that is functionally a one party state. And even in red states that have banned abortion, when voters get their say, they say, no, Ohio, Kansas, we don’t want abortion to be banned. We want it to be legal and safe and protected. And so the only way that the anti-choice can have their say and can get their way is by abandoning a commitment to democratic governments.
Alison Gill: Yeah.
Liz Cavell: Well, and it couldn’t be more obvious, right? This is not hidden. I think it was Ohio you mentioned as an example where the ultra conservative majority in the State House, they had to rush to change the threshold by which you could amend the constitution to make it higher than the percentage of people, it’s got to be more than 50% or whatever. Polling shows the huge majorities of people that support the referenda or the constitutional amendments that protect abortion before that abortion question could go to the people. The conservatives have to put another referendum on the ballot to raise the threshold. I mean, the projects go hand in hand. The people don’t want it. So you have to find a way to take power and consolidate it in the anti-democratic institutions and take it from the people.
Sen. Kelda Roys: And one of the really, really scary dystopian things about this that actually has not gotten much coverage yet in the mainstream media is about the fact that you will need an authoritarian police state in order to enforce these abortion bans.
Alison Gill: Absolutely.
Sen. Kelda Roys: And let me tell you, the Republicans and the sort of institutional conservative organizations that are behind Project 2025, they’re not messing around. They do intend to enforce these. This is not just to throw a bone to the Christian conservatives. They are true believers. They believe this. The Supreme Court is on board with this project. You need incredible menstrual surveillance, an absolutely powerful invasive state. So it isn’t just about saying, okay, we’re going to ignore the fact that most people want abortion to be safe and legal. It’s about we’re going to actually have the government in charge of your medical records. The government will be able to see what you search for on your phone. They will be able to see if you have a period tracking app, they will be able to see if you’re using contraception or not. We will track your movements with your phone, and if you live in a red state and we think you’re going to go to a state where there’s an abortion, then by God we will have the sheriff pick you up. This is JD Vance’s vision. He was one of the very few senators to vote basically and make statements in favor of menstrual surveillance. And it is really terrifying to think about how much control the state could have given that the way that modern technology works and how they could enforce these bans if those people got power.
Alison Gill: Absolutely. And this leads really well into maybe a discussion on white Christian nationalism. It really has become sort of mainstreamed and normalized around some lawmakers who are, some are actively identifying as Christian nationalists. So how do you convey the danger of this ideology, this really authoritarian ideology and the harm it’s causing to our country? How do you fight back against it?
Sen. Kelda Roys: Well, I mean, I think it is really important to lay out for people exactly what is being planned and to be able to cite everything so that when somebody asks a follow-up question, you can actually say, here, you can go read it for yourself. This isn’t something that I just found on some random blog. Literally this is mainstream conservative organizations putting in writing what their plans are for a second Trump presidency or whenever the next GOP president is in power. And the other big piece is trying to educate the media and help journalists and reporters who have a very difficult job to do with few resources, helping them understand what’s actually going on here. Because I think we do have a tendency in this culture, all of us just sort of just block out political stuff and they’re like, oh, well, this side says that. And the other side says that
Alison Gill: Absolutely, it’s all about the horse race, right?
Sen. Kelda Roys: I don’t want to hear this left right divide, and can’t we all just be moderates? And you just kind of toss it aside as political exaggeration or something. And I think it’s really, really important that the media not just say, okay, Senator Roys said this and Senator Christian Nationalist said that, and end of story. You have to say, Senator Roys said this, and then by the way, I verified this independently and help them have that context. I used to do this a lot when I was at NARAL. Just basically be educating people on pregnancy. How does pregnancy work? What are these terms? What is a blastocyst and how is that different from an embryo? Just really basic things for me, but not basic things for people who don’t work in it every day. So I think that that’s a big piece of it, and trying to reach the people that are reachable and not spending a bunch of time arguing with people who are clearly not reachable.
Alison Gill: Well, that’s a good point. I was going to say, you’re talking about media that reaches people that are gettable and sort of people that might agree with your positions on these things. But people live in bubbles nowadays. They all have their bespoke news sources and they all just get the information they want to get. And I mean, it’s hard to see how we can continue to live in such a divided society when we can’t even agree on basic facts and what the law is and whether crimes exist and whether the law exists. It’s kind of amazing. In this sort of society, is it possible for us to do more than just speak to people that already agree with us? Is it possible to do more persuasion? And what can we convey that can convince people of the danger of this sort of Christian nationalism?
Sen. Kelda Roys: I do think that the best persuasion happens one on one, and it happens not forcefully, I almost want to say unintentionally, because if you go into Thanksgiving dinner and you’re like, I’m going to get Uncle Carl, I’m going to teach him how wrong he was, that’s not going to be very effective. But if we all have these kind of families, relationships or neighbors or somebody that we work with and where it’s just like you don’t want to touch that dangerous political fault line. And I think that if we can keep communications open and respectful and approach people from a place of actual curiosity, because I do wonder how do people become incels? How do you become a person who thinks that white Christians are the only ones that should have rights, full rights in this country? How does that happen? And using all of our patience and curiosity and whatever personal care we might have for the individual that we’re talking to, that’s kind of the only way out of this. The other thing is education, public education, making sure that we’re teaching people media literacy and how to spot and be inoculated against misinformation and disinformation, which are going to become even more significant parts of our world at a time when we’ve got generative AI. In six months, it’s going to be five times better than it is today. So it’s really scary.
Alison Gill: Well, you just put your finger on the spot of why the conservatives are always targeting education and buying up things like social media and promoting things like PragerU, because this is sort of ideological battle to reach young people.
Sen. Kelda Roys: And part of the project isn’t just to convince, isn’t to get people to say, well, I agree with your right-wing facts or whatever. It’s just floods the zone so that people just don’t have the energy and just no longer believe anything that they hear.
Alison Gill: Yes, right.
Liz Cavell: It’s not a persuasion project.
Sen. Kelda Roys: It’s just makes people say, a pox on all their houses. I don’t have the bandwidth to worry about this. I’m just going to live my life. I got to get to the grocery store and pick up the kids.
Rebecca Markert: So again, shifting gears a little bit here, I’m interested to hear your thoughts about secular caucuses. You may know that in DC at our federal level, we have the Congressional Free Thought Caucus, which is chaired by both representatives, Jared Huffman from California and Jamie Raskin from Maryland. Yes. We don’t have a video aspect of our podcast, but Senator Roys just did a heart emoji with her hands.
Alison Gill: He’s my representative too.
Rebecca Markert: So a couple of years ago, also in Minnesota, we saw the formation of the secular government caucus in their state house, and that caucus was formed specifically to counter the rise of Christian nationalism and a lot of these impositions that we’re seeing in legislative work across the country. So what do you think of those efforts and is there anything similar happening in the state of Wisconsin?
Sen. Kelda Roys: Well, I think those efforts are really important and they’re excellent. And that’s one reason why I’ve been so open about my own lack of religious beliefs, because I do think that visibility is really important and normalizing not being religious matters. I mean, this is the fastest growing group of Americans are nones. So I think it’s quite timely. And yes, I have had some discussions with fellow legislators about doing this. I like the idea of having a secular caucus. I think because Wisconsin has been so heavily gerrymandered and we’ve got this really lopsided legislature that is totally not responsive to the people, I feel like in future legislative sessions when we’ve got a little bit more, we’re getting closer to balance and to having a more reflective legislature, then there will be an opportunity to have more working groups and caucuses than we have right now.
Because right now all of our working groups, it’s just like, oh, it’s the Democrats. It’s the Democrats doing it. And ideally, I mean, it would be great to have some actual real libertarians who really truly believe in religious freedom and separation of fricking state. And I bet there’ll be some Democrats. I know there are some Democrats, even some right in my backyard, who are very committed to religion, and they don’t necessarily see anything wrong with mixing religion and government. And so to tease out some of those differences I think will be helpful. You don’t want it to end up just being another partisan project, really.
Alison Gill: Yeah. I will say that the Congressional Free Thought Caucus, I think right now it’s all Democrats at the federal level. However, it’s just to be clear, it’s not just non-religious people. There’s all sorts of different lawmakers with different beliefs. It’s a commitment to church state separation, a commitment to science and reason based policymaking instead of being dominated by religion and things like environmentalism and access to reproductive care. So there’s a lot of other elements, but people sometimes think it’s about just representing atheists and non-religious people, but it’s much broader than that.
Sen. Kelda Roys: And I think that’s the way that it ought to be. When I was first in the assembly, they started every day with a prayer, and maybe once in a session they might have a rabbi. But basically it was all pretty much all Christian and I and a group of other lawmakers, most of whom were Jewish, would protest that by standing in the parlor and just not being present in the chamber for that, what we viewed as unconstitutional and certainly exclusionary prayer being done in a governmental body. And now that I’m in the Senate, I’m the only one who does that, but I still do. I go stand out in the lobby with the pages and the staff and I stand there and wait for the Pledge of Allegiance, and I go back and I do the pledge. But yeah, your commitment to church state separation is totally separate from whatever your personal religious beliefs are. And I know plenty of Christians, my colleagues in the Senate who have told me, Kelda, I appreciate and respect the fact that you go out, and I wish I could do that too, because even though I’m Christian or I’m this religion, I don’t think we should be doing this here in the Capitol, but they don’t feel comfortable yet coming out with me.
Liz Cavell: Who leads it? Is it clergy or is it whoever is–
Sen. Kelda Roys: Oh, yeah. Sometimes it’s members, sometimes it’s clergy. But in fact, I actually wrote a letter to the Senate president and majority leader after a couple that were just egregious. I mean, they were so far over the line, they were so exclusionary and negative, and they talked about our staff and legislative staff need to be servants of God and stuff like this. It was so offensive, and I just wrote this heartfelt letter. I didn’t send it to the media or anything. I was just like, guys, this is really wrong. Please don’t do this. Let’s have a poem. Let’s have a moment of silence. Let’s have nothing. And they didn’t respond.
Alison Gill: Does the minority party get to pick people occasionally or is it just all what the majority wants? Just curious.
Sen. Kelda Roys: It’s pretty much just what the majority wants. Although I think once, not this session, but maybe last session, the husband of one of the minority members is a minister was able to do it. And I don’t know if that was because of a last minute cancellation or what but.
Alison Gill: I asked because this has been a big deal in Arizona where there’s some secular lawmakers. They take turns sort of giving invocations or prayers or whatever. And former representative Athena Salman spoke up and she was really treated very poorly. They actually did a prayer after she sat down to sort of make up for the fact that she–
Sen. Kelda Roys: Cleanse the space?
Alison Gill: Basically.
Sen. Kelda Roys: Oh, wow.
Alison Gill: It’s really disgusting. So I was just curious if we’re seeing that sort of thing in Wisconsin as well.
Sen. Kelda Roys: No, I mean, I guess I could ask if I can make a statement and maybe I just read the Virginia statute for religious freedom or something.
Rebecca Markert: I do have to say some of the secular invocations that I’ve heard in state houses around the country, some of them are the best prayers I’ve ever heard. They’re so good about really solemnizing the space and telling everybody, let’s just think about the enormous task we have before us in governing the people of our state and the laws that we have to consider here. And they’re just beautiful and much, much better than what you’re describing, Kelda, where they’re just like fire and brimstone and hell is coming and all of that sort of thing that we also see at state houses.
Liz Cavell: Well, yeah, because usually they center the thing that everyone in the room has in common, which is public service instead of the thing that a handful of people deeply feel, which is your staff needs to be servants of God. I mean, that resonates with some people, but not probably most of the people. Are there representatives in the Wisconsin Senate who are minority, religious adherence, like Jewish senators. Everyone just sits there.
Sen. Kelda Roys: I don’t believe that we have any Jewish members in the Senate of 33 Senators.
Liz Cavell: Any non-Christian identifying religionists that seems crazy to me that no one else–
Sen. Kelda Roys: Well, yes, there are others who are not religious, although I don’t know. I mean, there’s definitely one I think, and she’s Melissa Agard, well known to FFRF, but, and I don’t know exactly how to characterize her beliefs, but she’s certainly a believer in secularism. The tradition is that senators are all there, and it is noticeable to be making a statement to walk out after the roll call and then walk back in for the pledge.
Liz Cavell: Right. Well, to all the judges who say that grown adults can’t feel indirect coercion, how else do you explain? There’s a tremendous pressure to just sit there and subject yourself to it, whether it’s something that excludes you or not. That’s because official government environments are coercive and yes, some less and some more than others, but it is a shame to think that everyone has to, or feels that they have to sit there every session.
Sen. Kelda Roys: And I think about even elected officials feel that pressure. And of course, we can do whatever we want. Nobody’s our boss, but think about the staff, all the staff that are forced to be there and think about being a citizen and coming to watch and how othered and excluded you would feel if you weren’t a part of that religious tradition. And you have no idea what’s going to come out of anybody’s mouth. Even my jaw hit the floor when I heard, and I’ve heard a million of these, and I don’t like any of them that are specific to one religion because I think it’s wrong to do that. But when I hear the really egregious ones, I’m just shocked. And what a terrible thing to make somebody have to sit through just to keep their paycheck or just to keep an eye on their government.
Rebecca Markert: So go back just a little bit because you’re saying that the senators are required to be there because this is in contrast to Congress in DC where the clergy member comes out and he’s basically speaking to an empty room.
Sen. Kelda Roys: It’s like just the C-span camera, the senators, we are present for the session unless you happen to be excused or you’re ill that day or something. But yeah, you’re in session. They call the roll and then they do the prayer, and then they do the Pledge of Allegiance, and then they start voting on bills.
Alison Gill: So we spoke about, just to change topics a little bit, we spoke about the election a little bit before, but we’re heading into possibly the most consequential election of our lives. I feel like I say that every election, but still, it definitely feels true. And so with the understanding that we all represent 501(c)(3)s, so we can engage in electioneering, I’d love your perspective on what’s happening this election and how it impacts the issues that we care about.
Sen. Kelda Roys: Yeah. Well, I think there is a huge contrast between different visions of our country, and I think there are obviously partisan labels that we can use, but I think there’s a really right wing version of the country that does want to take us not back to a time that ever really existed, but actually forward to a dystopia that none of us would ever want to live in. Where if you’re a woman of reproductive age, you are surveilled and where contraception is largely unavailable, where abortion is illegal and punished as a crime, where women who have treatable conditions that threaten their health or lives during pregnancy are forced to get C-sections or forced to carry doomed pregnancies to term or forced to sacrifice their lives or their organs or their fertility for these anti-choice ideology where religious schools get government funding and where right wingers get to decide what books our kids read and what classes can be taught in our public universities.
That’s one vision for America. Then we have another vision that’s very different, that is a liberal, pluralistic secular democracy where everyone is free to practice any religion that they wish, and your right to do so is protected by the government and the government can’t infringe on it, but the government can’t also be weaponized to force religion on you. And I think that is by and large the vision that most Americans have for the country that they want. And we’ve seen since the Dobbs decision how a country that has always been pro-choice has now said, yeah, we really don’t want the government involved in abortion. We don’t want involved at all. We don’t want restrictions. We don’t want time periods. We never, never want a politician telling us that they know better than we do, our doctors, our own bodies and our own lives and what we should be doing in terms of our pregnancies and our lives.
And I think the more that people see of this Christian nationalist vision, this very dark MAGA, Project 2025 world, the less they want it. But because of the way that our constitution is set up and the electoral college and the disproportionate weight that conservative voters get in this system and in the United States Senate, we have got to have all hands on deck. So if this is something you care about, find a candidate, find an organization, find an issue, get involved. We’ve got three months until this election and then the day after that, we still have to keep working because there’s going to be judicial appointments coming up. Right now we’ve got a Supreme Court that is desperately in need of reform. Many of the justices are deeply unethical, would never even survive on a circuit court because of their ethical issues.
Alison Gill: Absolutely.
Sen. Kelda Roys: They’d be disbarred in some states, and yet they’re taking away our rights on a daily basis. So there’s a lot of work to be done. However you sort of see yourself fitting into that. If you’re listening to this podcast, get out that checkbook, make a phone call, sign up to volunteer, get active.
Rebecca Markert: How do you keep yourself motivated in these times to do the work that you do? Because yeah, like you were just saying, banging your head on a marble wall does not sound like fun, but yet you’re there day in and day out. So what keeps you motivated to do it?
Sen. Kelda Roys: Well, I feel like I’m so lucky to have the job that I do and that I really feel a strong sense of purpose and obligation to make the most of my time as a senator holding this public trust. And also, I just love meeting and talking with other people, not just people who are like-minded, but people who haven’t thought about things for a while. And so knocking on doors, talking to voters, even calling people and raising money, it’s always an opportunity to connect with someone and learn something and see where you can come together on a shared vision. And I feel like that’s a huge privilege, and I’m very lucky to have that. So that keeps me motivated. And also seeing the horrible clips that we all see on social media of what Donald Trump or JD Vance or Eric Hovde or any of these other Republicans, the world that they want my daughters to go up in, absolutely not, not on my watch.
Alison Gill: You talked about this sort of vision where abortion is banned and we’re starting to see it unfortunately come to fruition in many states, and it’s not just a dark vision. We’re seeing the impact of this on people’s lives, the sky high number of women dying in pregnancy and birth, the doctors fleeing these states, the fact that these sort of exceptions that exist in these laws don’t work and they can never work because it’s just not a scheme that’s possible to have both harsh discipline and punishment at the same time. You have narrow ill-defined exceptions that will always find loopholes for, it’s just not, I mean, if you were drawing up a workable system, it’s just not feasible for that to work that way. It’s hard to imagine people supporting this when they see it playing out in their states. And I hope we start to move away from it given the democratic opportunities to do so.
Sen. Kelda Roys: And I feel very hopeful about that. I mean, I do think that we’re going to continue to see referenda pass all around the country protecting abortion rights. I think it’s unfortunate that some of these are drafted in a more limited way than I think is necessary. But I think that the challenge that we face is that our opponents, these Christian nationalists, these anti-choicers, they’re not stupid. They’ve been working on this project for a long time, and they’re deeply committed to a world where women are subservient, where women not just don’t have access to abortion, but women don’t have freedom and independence. We don’t have accurate sex ed. We don’t have access to contraception. We don’t have access to IVF to help build our families. We are under God and we’re under our husbands, and that’s the world they want to see. And they are not stupid.
And so they have been preparing for this for a long time, not by helping to reduce infant mortality and have great subsidized childcare and make sure everybody’s got paid family leave. No, they have been preparing by creating mechanisms to collect data by having all these little test cases for how they can try to criminalize people going to other states, by figuring out ways that they can get public money to try to coerce women against having abortion. I mean, we have been funding these fake clinic, crisis pregnancy centers to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars of public money. And it’s all going to proselytize and shame and lie to women, and in some cases, even potentially giving them STDs because they don’t have medical personnel on staff, and their whole goal is to keep women from having abortions. So it’s a very scary situation, but I also think that every time abortion rights are on the ballot, freedom wins.
And that is really powerful. And we still do have a democracy. We still do have the ability to make our voices heard, to vote, to talk openly about politics. We shouldn’t take these things for granted. We should use them, and we should not quit and not give up. And we should never become inured to the idea that women should just have to risk death in order to become parents. And that it’s normal for women to die from pregnancy because it, and they will try to juke the stats and they will try to make it seem like, oh, well, pregnancy is dangerous. Too bad that women are dying. We’re seeing spikes in maternal and infant mortality in states with abortion bans. They have the worst outcomes, and we need to keep the spotlight on that and not become numb to it and play into the anti-choice movement’s hands.
Alison Gill: And we discussed that a little bit in our recent discussion on the Idaho case before the Supreme Court, certainly relevant and the EMTALA issues, which was kicked back to the lower court. The other issue we’re talking about is bodily autonomy and choices. The other issue we’re seeing massive clamp down on rights and access across the country is on trans access to care, unfortunately. And I very much worry what might happen in the future Republican administration about that issue as well. And we’re also seeing, of course, I think Wisconsin itself banned certain types of care for trans young people.
Sen. Kelda Roys: It is very scary, and I think we have to see how connected all these issues are. And we don’t want doctors to fear prosecution and losing their medical license because they’re offering care to people that some might ideologically disagree with. And we don’t want anyone to feel like they’re not able to seek care. And I think we have to have some humility on anything related to science and medicine and human body, because we don’t know everything. We don’t know how to cure every type of cancer. We don’t know what the outcome is going to be of every pregnancy. We don’t know. We can’t tell for 100% certainty what is going to happen if X then Y, right? It’s not direct like that. And so you have to allow for human judgment and human error in these very complex matters of health and medicine and life and death, and just the complications of being human in an imperfect world. And I think that’s not always comfortable, and that’s maybe one reason why people turn to religion because they want to have some certainty and they want to have some comfort in an uncomfortable world. But ultimately we just can’t legislate based on that. We can’t criminalize healthcare experimentation, even new treatments that we might not fully understand.
Liz Cavell: From the perspective of the legislator, in such a polarized political world that we live in. I know as a constituent, I feel this way all the time. You either feel like, well, I live in Madison, Wisconsin and my legislator already agrees with me, or I live in the middle of nowhere and nobody agrees with me, and my legislator is a kook. And so why bother? What is your advice to people like that from a legislator’s perspective, in terms of either way, it kind of always feels when people are like, contact your legislator. I know it sounds so fruitless, no matter which of those boats you’re in as a constituent. What do you say to that?
Sen. Kelda Roys: Well, I would say it’s definitely not fruitless. I mean, an enormous amount of my time is spent responding to constituents who’ve emailed me or written me letters or called me. And for the most part, I really, really appreciate it and enjoy it. Except when it’s like midnight, I still have four more letters to do, but I’m just, oh, why are my people so politically engaged? Why are they every fricking thing I say, even when I said something stupid on the news or whatever. But, yes. And even if your legislator doesn’t respond, don’t assume that they’re not seeing it. They’re just annoyed and there’s a value in annoying people too when needed. So I think it’s always very valuable, but that is just one little piece of the democracy puzzle, and there are a lot of ways to get involved. Writing a letter to the editor is a really good way.
Even posting on social media, texting your friends to make sure they all have plans to vote. Raising money for a cause that you care about or a candidate. There’s so many different things that you can do. And just educating yourself and raising awareness about different ways in which our state is, or your local government or our country is violating the separation of church and state. I mean, there are a lot of things to get informed about and be angry about, but ultimately all of them happened because of decisions that people made. And they can be undone, they can be changed. We can make different decisions, and it’s up to us to basically be identifying and educating and organizing so that we can have a different, better freer world for ourselves and for future generations.
Alison Gill: Well, that’s wonderful. I think that’s a perfect wrap for our conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today, Senator Roys.
Sen. Kelda Roys: Such a pleasure to be with you all. Thank you.
Rebecca Markert: Thank you so much. I’m Rebecca Markert.
Alison Gill: I’m Alison Gill.
Liz Cavell: And I’m Liz Cavell. If you haven’t already, please follow us on our socials, Facebook, Instagram, and X. Please also remember to let us know how you’re liking the show by leaving a review. You can also find us we-dissent.org. Thanks for listening.
