After baseless attacks on the SPLC, Pastor Joel Webbon says America needs “more racism”

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Christian Nationalist Pastor Joel Webbon insists “America does not have a racist problem” and that, “if anything, we could probably use a little bit more racism in America.” If that strikes you as a wildly ignorant rant from someone who slept through every single grade school history class, you’d be absolutely right.

But he’s not alone in saying things like this. Conservatives like him are whitewashing history even more than usual on the back of an indictment against a group that’s been fighting hate groups for decades now.

For the past week, conservatives have been downright giddy over the Trump-controlled Justice Department indicting the Southern Poverty Law Center. After years of watching many of their organizations accurately labeled “hate groups” by the SPLC—not because they’re merely anti-LGBTQ but because they spread untrue and harmful lies about the groups they rail against—they’re eager to see the SPLC destroyed by the Trump administration.

The problem is that the indictment means very little and the actual case against the group is extremely thin.

The entire case against the SPLC, according to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, revolves around a couple of major allegations: that the SPLC was financially propping up the very groups they claimed to fight against, and that it lied to banks about who they were in order to make those payments. That’s why the 11-count indictment includes charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The more nuanced understanding is that the SPLC knew that they could learn more about a variety of hate groups if they had someone on the inside who could feed them information about upcoming plans or attacks. They paid several of those informants to give them this information, which was also shared with the FBI. And to protect everyone’s cover, and to make sure the money wasn’t traced back to the SPLC, they created fake companies to make the payments. (It’s unclear if the FBI was aware of this.)

The government argues that this method deceived the banking system as well as donors. They need to fight the SPLC on behalf of liberals who love them!

At a press conference earlier this week, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche focused largely on the wire fraud charges, saying that between 2014 through 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center paid at least $3 million to eight different informants who were affiliated with groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist Movement and the Aryan Nation.

To prove wire fraud, the government must show at trial that the Southern Poverty Law Center intentionally tried to fleece its donors and that those misstatements or omissions of facts were material.

If the SPLC told donors it wanted to “dismantle white supremacy,” but paid hate group insiders to help take them down, is that deception? Not if I’m a donor. Seems like a perfectly smart way to do that kind of work. That’s why experts say this case isn’t strong and may even be dismissed before any kind of trial.

But conservatives have spent the past week arguing that the indictments prove the SPLC was fueling hate, not stopping it. Blanche said the SPLC was “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.” Others are going even further, arguing that these supposed hate groups never existed at all. Some conspiracy theorists claimed the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville was a false flag:

Those attempts to pretend violent hate groups never existed aren’t getting very far, though, in part because there’s video proof of the violence and some of the people involved are openly confessing to what they did. Even white nationalist Jared Taylor said the indictment “seems hokeyed up to me.”

Joel Webbon doesn’t care about any of those pesky details. Webbon, pastor of Covenant Bible Church in Georgetown, Texas (not far from Austin), is the sort of guy who believes false rape allegations would end if we just “publicly execute a few women,” that white parents should teach their children to avoid Black people, and that in his ideal world Jewish people wouldn’t “be able to serve in public office.”

In response to the SPLC indictment, Webbon says it’s proof that racism simply doesn’t exist. As if the organization made it up from scratch in the 1970s.

Right Wing Watch has the clip and transcript:

“It’s so clear that America does not have a racist problem, at least in terms of like pure, baseless, mindless hatred towards minority people,” Webbon said on his program last Friday.

…

“There’s a lot of money to be made in slaying dragons or pretending to slay dragons that have already been slain,” he continued. “Either the dragon doesn’t exist at all, and that’s why it’s lucrative, or—I’m just going to throw this out there—the dragon’s actually good and it’s actually the king who’s commissioned the knights and they’re actually the bad guys. This whole witch hunt for white supremacists who hate brown people simply because they’re brown, the reason why that’s so lucrative and there are NGOs with millions and millions of dollars for that is because the white people in America are predominantly, on the whole, not racist. White people in America are, if anything, I think, too trusting, too gullible, toxic empathy. White people in America are like, ‘You know what? I know that this will kill my grandchildren, but can we just import half of the country of Haiti, just to be nice?’ So not only is racism non-existent, if anything, we could probably use a little bit more racism in America.”

As Right Wing Watch points out, Webbon himself is living proof that racism is alive and well, especially in conservative Christianity.

He’s said he doesn’t trust Black doctors, that it’s Black people’s “fault” they’ve ever been oppressed, that he would tell his daughter not to marry anyone who’s Black, and it’s fair to generalize that all Black people are lazy.

In response to RWW’s clip, Webbon issued one correction: Racism was indeed real, he said. But white people were the victims of it:

There’s a reason he and his Christian allies are making these kinds of comments. If they can convince conservatives that racism is somehow over (if it ever existed at all), then any policies that harm marginalized groups can be reframed as neutral or justified. When Webbon says “a little bit more racism” would be beneficial, he’s trying to normalize his own bigotry.

If this were one fringe guy with no audience, maybe it would be forgettable, but he’s not. He’s part of a white conservative Christian movement that has spent years minimizing systemic racism, rewriting American history, and reframing civil rights advocacy as the real threat. They’ve already been successful getting their bigotry enacted in red states and it’s widespread in pockets of social media. That’s why it must be countered at every turn.

American Humanist Association to Host Nationwide Day of Service on May 2

More than 100 community events across the country to put empathy into action

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 27, 2026

Contact: Court Beyer, cbeyer@americanhumanist.org

WASHINGTON – This Saturday, May 2, the American Humanist Association (AHA) will mobilize communities across the country for the American Empathy Project (AEP), a simultaneous national day of service taking place at more than 100 locations nationwide. The effort represents one of the largest coordinated days of humanist community action in the organization’s history.

Through $100,000 in grants awarded to individuals and organizations nationwide, the AHA has supported local changemakers in organizing service projects across a range of communities and causes. Events on May 2 will include mutual aid drives for immigrant families in Maryland, menstrual supply packing parties in Kentucky, and social programming for senior citizens, among more than 100 others taking place simultaneously across the country.

“The American Empathy Project is built on a simple, humanist idea: the belief that people are good, and that when we show up for each other, we build the kind of communities we all want to live in.” said Fish Stark, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association. “This Saturday, more than 100 communities across the country are proving that. The AHA has spent over 80 years fighting for a more compassionate world, and we’re proud to meet the extreme religious right’s ‘war on empathy’ with a groundswell of Americans taking care of our neighbors together.”

WHEN: Saturday, May 2, 2026

WHERE: 100+ events nationwide

WHO: American Empathy Project, a project of the American Humanist Association

Members of the public can find an event near them or learn more about the American Empathy Project at AmericanEmpathyProject.org.

Media interested in attending or covering May 2’s events are encouraged to reach out to press@americanhumanist.org for more information. A full map of service projects can be viewed here.

###

The American Humanist Association (AHA) works to protect the rights of humanists, atheists, and other nontheistic Americans. The AHA advances the ethical and life-affirming worldview of humanism, which—without beliefs in gods or other supernatural forces—encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

The post American Humanist Association to Host Nationwide Day of Service on May 2 appeared first on American Humanist Association.

American Humanist Association to Host Nationwide Day of Service on May 2

More than 100 community events across the country to put empathy into action

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 27, 2026

Contact: Court Beyer, cbeyer@americanhumanist.org

WASHINGTON – This Saturday, May 2, the American Humanist Association (AHA) will mobilize communities across the country for the American Empathy Project (AEP), a simultaneous national day of service taking place at more than 100 locations nationwide. The effort represents one of the largest coordinated days of humanist community action in the organization’s history.

Through $100,000 in grants awarded to individuals and organizations nationwide, the AHA has supported local changemakers in organizing service projects across a range of communities and causes. Events on May 2 will include mutual aid drives for immigrant families in Maryland, menstrual supply packing parties in Kentucky, and social programming for senior citizens, among more than 100 others taking place simultaneously across the country.

“The American Empathy Project is built on a simple, humanist idea: the belief that people are good, and that when we show up for each other, we build the kind of communities we all want to live in.” said Fish Stark, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association. “This Saturday, more than 100 communities across the country are proving that. The AHA has spent over 80 years fighting for a more compassionate world, and we’re proud to meet the extreme religious right’s ‘war on empathy’ with a groundswell of Americans taking care of our neighbors together.”

WHEN: Saturday, May 2, 2026

WHERE: 100+ events nationwide

WHO: American Empathy Project, a project of the American Humanist Association

Members of the public can find an event near them or learn more about the American Empathy Project at AmericanEmpathyProject.org.

Media interested in attending or covering May 2’s events are encouraged to reach out to press@americanhumanist.org for more information. A full map of service projects can be viewed here.

###

The American Humanist Association (AHA) works to protect the rights of humanists, atheists, and other nontheistic Americans. The AHA advances the ethical and life-affirming worldview of humanism, which—without beliefs in gods or other supernatural forces—encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

The post American Humanist Association to Host Nationwide Day of Service on May 2 appeared first on American Humanist Association.

Religious “switching” is an existential crisis for the Catholic Church

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In dozens of countries worldwide, more people are ditching Catholicism than entering into it, including countries where Catholicism is the default religion for many citizens. It suggests a perilous future for the Church if it can’t find new ways to bring people into the fold.

There’s a phrase for this: Religious switching. It’s when you were raised in one religious tradition but have since gone on to a different one. It’s been happening a lot in recent years and it threatens to upend one of the most basic beliefs about belief: That if you raise your children in your faith, it’ll stay with them in the future.

Think about that for a moment. One of the reasons religion has historically had so much power is because parents could safely assume that if they indoctrinated their kids from a young age, those beliefs and traditions will live on indefinitely. It’s the very idea at the core of the Quiverfull movement, famously exemplified by the Duggars: If you have lots of children, the religion will eventually spread to their own families, and within a few generations, your religion will mathematically outgrow all the other ones.

But the vertical continuation of religion isn’t a safe assumption.

People make friends outside their religious bubble when they go to school. They date and marry people who don’t share their faith (though their values likely overlap). They live in diverse communities where there’s no “default” faith, making the spread of different ideas a little easier. There’s also less stigma today in saying you’re not religious (or not Christian). That means the pressure to remain in the fold has largely evaporated. And, of course, there’s the internet, which allows people to see what life is like outside their particular bubbles.

When it comes to religion in general, the switching is intense. It’s especially bad news for the Catholic Church because far more people are leaving than entering.

Just take in this incredible chart from the Pew Research Center showing the percentages of people who have “switched” into or out of Catholicism in various countries. The blue bars represent people who left Catholicism despite being raised in the faith. The yellow bars show people who decided to convert to Catholicism.

In nearly every case, the blue bars dwarf the yellow ones. And in the few cases where Catholic converts outnumber those who’ve escaped, it’s only by a small amount.

Overall, more people left Catholicism than joined it in 21 of the 24 countries we analyzed. Hungary is the only country surveyed where more people joined (5%) than left the church (2%). In the remaining two countries – Kenya and South Korea – similar shares entered and exited Catholicism through switching.

It also helps to know how Catholic these nations were to begin with to better understand how porous they now are. Poland, for example, is almost entirely Catholic with a low leak rate. But Italy, which is also heavily Catholic, is on track to lose quite a few believers over the next few generations. (And who knows what might happen to religion in Hungary now that the autocrat Viktor Orbán has been ousted.)

The big question is: Why is this happening? The analysis doesn’t go into all that, but I would argue a lot of this is simply the Catholic Church shooting itself in the foot. Blame the sex scandals, the blatant hypocrisy, the desperate attempts by some conservative Catholics to worship Donald Trump while abandoning Jesus, the easy access to material for people questioning their faith, etc. Or maybe JD Vance’s relatively recent conversion scared them away.

It’s tempting to say these trends may reverse with Pope Leo at the helm, but so far, he’s really no different from his predecessor in terms of his PR savvy and positions on issues. And while some American dioceses are celebrating a rise in new converts—and receiving fawning media coverage for their self-reported numbers—the overall trend is still not good news for them.

Before you celebrate the global demise of religion, though, it’s important to recognize these trends aren’t the same for Protestantism. If you do the same kind of analysis in the same countries, you find that the shifts aren’t quite as drastic. In fact, Pew says, “Protestantism has seen a net gain from switching in nearly as many places as it has seen a net loss.” Those gains are especially noticeable in Latin America:

The question in places like Brazil and Ghana is whether those gains will remain in place in years to come. Or will people who switch to Protestantism eventually leave that religion for the same reason so many people are leaving Catholicism? It’s too early to tell.

If there’s a broader takeaway here, it’s that religious institutions no longer get to assume permanence. People around the world are willing to reconsider their religious upbringing and that sort of thinking is contagious. When you realize you don’t have to be trapped in a faith you no longer believe in and whose beliefs in certain areas are indefensible, it’s much easier to walk away when you see others doing it. Right now, the Catholic Church is hemorrhaging credibility faster than it can replace it.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

Indiana Lt. Gov. faces backlash after calling high school band kids “demonic”

This newsletter is free and goes out to over 24,000 subscribers, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can subscribe via Patreon or the Subscribe button below! You can also make one-time donations through Venmo or PayPal.

Subscribe now

Christian Nationalist Micah Beckwith, the lieutenant governor of Indiana, is now picking a fight with a public high school band, calling their show “demonic,” claiming their school is giving the middle finger to conservative Christians, and urging families to ditch public schools entirely.

Because there’s nothing Beckwith loves more than trashing his own state and the people in it if they don’t align with his right-wing conspiracy theories.

Here’s the situation: Westfield High School, just north of Indianapolis, has a very strong competitive marching band and a relatively new Indoor Percussion team. Last month, that percussion team wrapped up their season with a few big competitions performing a program called “The Red Line,” which included music from the opera “Carmen” and Ravel’s “Boléro.”

The band explained the theme in a February post on social media:

The Red Line follows a journey of knowing where boundaries exist, yet feeling an urge to cross them. From the restraint of Bolero to the fire of Carmen Fantasy and Capriccio Espagnol, restraint gives way to passion as precision collides with obsession, leaving us changed forever.

That’s a very elaborate description of where the music came from, but remember: We’re talking about percussion players. They weren’t acting out these scenes even if their amazing costumes fit the theme. They were simply interpreting the music. Hell, you can see their show right here: It’s fascinating!

The bottom line is they worked hard, performed at a high level, and the school community rallied behind those students, which is exactly what you hope to see from a high school activity.

Leave it to Micah Beckwith to ruin things for everyone. He saw public school students excited and enthusiastic and he immediately decided he would make their lives worse, as is the Republican way.

Sharing the reel seen above, with performers clad in red and black costumes, Beckwith chimed in to say that “schools like Westfield LOVE giving the [middle finger emoji] to Christian Conservative families of our community.” He then urged parents to use taxpayer-funded vouchers to get their kids out of public high schools.

It’s beyond appalling to see a high-ranking public official trash his own constituents for the crime of having fun while showing off their musical talent… for no reason whatsoever. Beckwith didn’t even elaborate in that post. The assumption is that something about this performance was anti-Christian, but he didn’t bother offering any evidence of that. So we’re all left to believe it’s the costumes and eye makeup.

A responsible, sane politician would congratulate the students for their hard work and the staff for their time and commitment. But Beckwith is a conservative Christian whose religion teaches him to be an asshole at every turn.

This is, after all, the guy who said the LGBTQ movement is operating out of a “demonic playbook,” that the infamous three-fifths compromise was “a good thing,” that his own election was a choice between “godly boldness” and “the Jezebel spirit,” that people who advocate for church/state separation are “the LGBTQ community trying to support Hamas,” that he would only allow exceptions to his state’s anti-abortion laws in the case of child rape victims as long as the rapist was murdered, and that Zohran Mamdani was wrongly trying to “force his values onto New York” by daring to be Muslim in a country that Beckwith falsely claims is founded on Christianity.

And now he’s making up ambiguous reasons to be mad about marching band costumes. As if the school is somehow promoting Satanism when what they’re actually doing is exposing students to classical music. (Some commenters online were quick to point out that their own children, or children they know, were part of that percussion program, and there was nothing anti-Christian about any of it.)

This is all happening, by the way, while Beckwith’s own church is mired in a child sex scandal. But sure. Get mad about red costumes.

On Friday, Beckwith appeared on a conservative talk radio show to talk about his post. As you would predict, he chose to double down on his stupidity instead of apologizing to the children, calling the show “demonic” when it’s clear he never saw the actual performance.

“I was made aware of this from Christian students who attend Westfield, and they said they felt uncomfortable but didn’t want to speak out because they were afraid to speak out. They were not being seen, they were not being heard, so I didn’t go looking for this — it was brought to my attention,” Beckwith told Blakeslee.

“When I looked at it, I said, ‘Yeah, this is demonic,’ and then, we looked into it even more, and their theme for the drum line — let me explain this — it’s the red line, and the red line follows the journey of knowing where boundaries exist, yet feeling an urge to cross them from the restraint of the fires of Carmen, the Carmen fantasy. Now if you don’t know who Carmen is, it’s a fantasy novel, it’s a character, and this is a woman, she’s a seductive witch, this is what self-identified. Her job in this opera that they are actually playing music from is to seduce a husband and a father out of his marriage into an affair, so the music they’re playing is from that opera, a seductive witch, her whole goal is to try to get a man to cheat on his wife to destroy their family, and Westfield tax dollars are promoting this, and we pay a lot of freaking money in property taxes in Westfield.”

It’s hard to believe Christian students complained about this when (1) Beckwith has a history of lying and (2) there’s nothing to complain about. But does anyone seriously believe that there are no Christians in that drumline? In Indiana? And if there were concerns about the show, then students should have gone to the administration about it, not complain to the lieutenant governor. There’s no indication they did that.

Also, he has no clue what the opera is about. Beckwith says Carmen’s “whole goal is to try to get a man to cheat on his wife to destroy their family.” That’s… not even close to true. The man in question, Don José, isn’t married and has no children. So there’s no “affair.” Beckwith couldn’t even bother himself to read the Wikipedia synopsis of the plot.

And what did Beckwith look at? A couple of pictures of the band? Or the actual performance? Because the performance has nothing in it that’s controversial. Saying that music from an opera shouldn’t be used because the full show (which they aren’t performing) has some adult themes in it would also mean you can’t read excerpts from damn near any classical novel. Or the Bible, which is full of rape and genocide and slavery.

To pretend that this percussion performance was advocating for family destruction by way of seduction is such a wild distortion that even Christian pseudo-historian David Barton would say, “I think you’re taking this a bit too far…”

And we know Beckwith doesn’t actually give a shit about people having affairs given that he fully supports thrice-married, affair-having, Epstein-loving Donald Trump.

Elsewhere in that interview, Beckwith insisted the kids who saw his comments as trashing them personally were too stupid to understand what’s going on:

… [T]hey don’t know what they’re doing, and that’s what the demonic always does. They have no idea… They don’t know what they’re giving themselves over to.

Teenagers are much smarter than Republicans will ever give them credit for.

Beckwith also said he knew what he was talking about because “I was a band teacher for 15 years.” (No he wasn’t. Unless we’re talking about some kind of worship ministry, which isn’t at all comparable to what these students are doing.)

Maybe he’s just mad because the school allegedly “DISINVITED” him from meeting with agriculture students in 2024, a move that prompted Beckwith to threaten to defund the school. Or because, a month later, people protested his appearance there because they knew he was a Christian bigot about to enter public office.

Here’s the good news: It looks like everyone in the community is pushing back against this. They’re genuinely pissed off that Beckwith is targeting a source of local pride.

Westfield Mayor Scott Willis put out a statement celebrating the team’s achievements without directly addressing anything Beckwith said:

… Our students continue to represent Westfield at a high level, both on and off the field. The achievements highlighted by the district reflect not just talent, but a strong commitment to discipline, teamwork, and doing things the right way.

When you hear ‘from Westfield, Indiana’ announced on a national stage, it’s a point of pride for our entire community. These students have put in the work, and it shows. It’s a great example of what can happen when students are supported by their schools, their families, and their community.

The Indiana Percussion Association, which oversees some of these competitions, expressed its support for the band (without directly mentioning Beckwith either):

The Indiana Percussion Association stands in full support of the Westfield Indoor Percussion program, all performing arts in Westfield Washington Schools and the students, staff, and families who make it such a meaningful part of our community.

These performers dedicate countless hours to developing discipline, teamwork, creativity and resilience – qualities that extend far beyond the floor and into their everyday lives. Programs like this don’t just build musicians; they build confident, hardworking young people who represent our communities with pride.

Public criticism, especially when it targets students and their efforts, undermines the positive impact that arts education has on growth, expression, and belonging.

We encourage our community to continue uplifting and supporting these students. Their commitment, passion, and courage to perform deserve recognition, not ridicule. Westfield Indoor Percussion is something to be proud of, and we stand behind them.

There was also a personal reflection from Westfield’s Director of Bands Andrew Muth that’s well worth reading. He spends the bulk of it praising the students for being resilient even as their own lieutenant governor is publicly trashing the program they love:

I’ve learned that kids are incredibly brave. When things weren’t easy, our students chose courage. They carried themselves with grace and class, even as their images and performances were shared thousands of times online. They did it for one simple reason—they love band, and they believe in what they are a part of.

He also noted that he grew up as a Christian—but not the Beckwith kind that pretends hate is a virtue.

I grew up in a Christian household where I was taught a simple but powerful idea from Ezekiel 22:30—to “stand in the gap.”

To me, that means showing up for others when it matters most. It means doing what is right, even when it’s difficult. It means choosing to care, to lead with integrity, and to protect the people around you.

We all have moments where we are called to step forward—to support someone, to speak up, or to be the steady presence others need.

That was this moment.

I am proud to lead this program. I am proud of our kids. I am forever proud to be a rock. Stand in the gap when it matters even in the face of unimaginable adversity.

It’s truly incredible how easy it would have been for Beckwith to say absolutely nothing. Instead, he went out of his way to pick a fight with band kids. You never pick a fight with band kids. Everyone knows a band kid.

But weaponizing his own ignorance is Beckwith’s specialty. It’s all he has in his arsenal because he can’t point to any policies that actually help the people in his state. As the Trump administration teaches us, when you can’t govern effectively, you might as well manufacture outrage. When you can’t inspire people, you might as well scare them. Beckwith is using a talented group of students to launch a broader attack against public schools because he knows well-educated students and communities that rally against bullies aren’t good for his party’s long-term future.

Indiana residents should be furious that a guy like Beckwith is embarrassing their state when they have all these talented students and teachers who deserve far more attention. Their own state leaders are willing to sacrifice their kids’ achievements, their schools’ reputations, and their community’s pride to score cheap political points.

If everyone pushes back, though—without apology and by calling out Beckwith and his party directly—they can make it clear that kids shouldn’t be political props for desperate, talentless conservatives.

If you’d like to support Westfield’s music program, you can do so here.

Indiana Lt. Gov. faces backlash after calling high school band kids “demonic”

This newsletter is free and goes out to over 24,000 subscribers, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can subscribe via Patreon or the Subscribe button below! You can also make one-time donations through Venmo or PayPal.

Subscribe now

Christian Nationalist Micah Beckwith, the lieutenant governor of Indiana, is now picking a fight with a public high school band, calling their show “demonic,” claiming their school is giving the middle finger to conservative Christians, and urging families to ditch public schools entirely.

Because there’s nothing Beckwith loves more than trashing his own state and the people in it if they don’t align with his right-wing conspiracy theories.

Here’s the situation: Westfield High School, just north of Indianapolis, has a very strong competitive marching band and a relatively new Indoor Percussion team. Last month, that percussion team wrapped up their season with a few big competitions performing a program called “The Red Line,” which included music from the opera “Carmen” and Ravel’s “Boléro.”

The band explained the theme in a February post on social media:

The Red Line follows a journey of knowing where boundaries exist, yet feeling an urge to cross them. From the restraint of Bolero to the fire of Carmen Fantasy and Capriccio Espagnol, restraint gives way to passion as precision collides with obsession, leaving us changed forever.

That’s a very elaborate description of where the music came from, but remember: We’re talking about percussion players. They weren’t acting out these scenes even if their amazing costumes fit the theme. They were simply interpreting the music. Hell, you can see their show right here: It’s fascinating!

The bottom line is they worked hard, performed at a high level, and the school community rallied behind those students, which is exactly what you hope to see from a high school activity.

Leave it to Micah Beckwith to ruin things for everyone. He saw public school students excited and enthusiastic and he immediately decided he would make their lives worse, as is the Republican way.

Sharing the reel seen above, with performers clad in red and black costumes, Beckwith chimed in to say that “schools like Westfield LOVE giving the [middle finger emoji] to Christian Conservative families of our community.” He then urged parents to use taxpayer-funded vouchers to get their kids out of public high schools.

It’s beyond appalling to see a high-ranking public official trash his own constituents for the crime of having fun while showing off their musical talent… for no reason whatsoever. Beckwith didn’t even elaborate in that post. The assumption is that something about this performance was anti-Christian, but he didn’t bother offering any evidence of that. So we’re all left to believe it’s the costumes and eye makeup.

A responsible, sane politician would congratulate the students for their hard work and the staff for their time and commitment. But Beckwith is a conservative Christian whose religion teaches him to be an asshole at every turn.

This is, after all, the guy who said the LGBTQ movement is operating out of a “demonic playbook,” that the infamous three-fifths compromise was “a good thing,” that his own election was a choice between “godly boldness” and “the Jezebel spirit,” that people who advocate for church/state separation are “the LGBTQ community trying to support Hamas,” that he would only allow exceptions to his state’s anti-abortion laws in the case of child rape victims as long as the rapist was murdered, and that Zohran Mamdani was wrongly trying to “force his values onto New York” by daring to be Muslim in a country that Beckwith falsely claims is founded on Christianity.

And now he’s making up ambiguous reasons to be mad about marching band costumes. As if the school is somehow promoting Satanism when what they’re actually doing is exposing students to classical music. (Some commenters online were quick to point out that their own children, or children they know, were part of that percussion program, and there was nothing anti-Christian about any of it.)

This is all happening, by the way, while Beckwith’s own church is mired in a child sex scandal. But sure. Get mad about red costumes.

On Friday, Beckwith appeared on a conservative talk radio show to talk about his post. As you would predict, he chose to double down on his stupidity instead of apologizing to the children, calling the show “demonic” when it’s clear he never saw the actual performance.

“I was made aware of this from Christian students who attend Westfield, and they said they felt uncomfortable but didn’t want to speak out because they were afraid to speak out. They were not being seen, they were not being heard, so I didn’t go looking for this — it was brought to my attention,” Beckwith told Blakeslee.

“When I looked at it, I said, ‘Yeah, this is demonic,’ and then, we looked into it even more, and their theme for the drum line — let me explain this — it’s the red line, and the red line follows the journey of knowing where boundaries exist, yet feeling an urge to cross them from the restraint of the fires of Carmen, the Carmen fantasy. Now if you don’t know who Carmen is, it’s a fantasy novel, it’s a character, and this is a woman, she’s a seductive witch, this is what self-identified. Her job in this opera that they are actually playing music from is to seduce a husband and a father out of his marriage into an affair, so the music they’re playing is from that opera, a seductive witch, her whole goal is to try to get a man to cheat on his wife to destroy their family, and Westfield tax dollars are promoting this, and we pay a lot of freaking money in property taxes in Westfield.”

It’s hard to believe Christian students complained about this when (1) Beckwith has a history of lying and (2) there’s nothing to complain about. But does anyone seriously believe that there are no Christians in that drumline? In Indiana? And if there were concerns about the show, then students should have gone to the administration about it, not complain to the lieutenant governor. There’s no indication they did that.

Also, he has no clue what the opera is about. Beckwith says Carmen’s “whole goal is to try to get a man to cheat on his wife to destroy their family.” That’s… not even close to true. The man in question, Don José, isn’t married and has no children. So there’s no “affair.” Beckwith couldn’t even bother himself to read the Wikipedia synopsis of the plot.

And what did Beckwith look at? A couple of pictures of the band? Or the actual performance? Because the performance has nothing in it that’s controversial. Saying that music from an opera shouldn’t be used because the full show (which they aren’t performing) has some adult themes in it would also mean you can’t read excerpts from damn near any classical novel. Or the Bible, which is full of rape and genocide and slavery.

To pretend that this percussion performance was advocating for family destruction by way of seduction is such a wild distortion that even Christian pseudo-historian David Barton would say, “I think you’re taking this a bit too far…”

And we know Beckwith doesn’t actually give a shit about people having affairs given that he fully supports thrice-married, affair-having, Epstein-loving Donald Trump.

Elsewhere in that interview, Beckwith insisted the kids who saw his comments as trashing them personally were too stupid to understand what’s going on:

… [T]hey don’t know what they’re doing, and that’s what the demonic always does. They have no idea… They don’t know what they’re giving themselves over to.

Teenagers are much smarter than Republicans will ever give them credit for.

Beckwith also said he knew what he was talking about because “I was a band teacher for 15 years.” (No he wasn’t. Unless we’re talking about some kind of worship ministry, which isn’t at all comparable to what these students are doing.)

Maybe he’s just mad because the school allegedly “DISINVITED” him from meeting with agriculture students in 2024, a move that prompted Beckwith to threaten to defund the school. Or because, a month later, people protested his appearance there because they knew he was a Christian bigot about to enter public office.

Here’s the good news: It looks like everyone in the community is pushing back against this. They’re genuinely pissed off that Beckwith is targeting a source of local pride.

Westfield Mayor Scott Willis put out a statement celebrating the team’s achievements without directly addressing anything Beckwith said:

… Our students continue to represent Westfield at a high level, both on and off the field. The achievements highlighted by the district reflect not just talent, but a strong commitment to discipline, teamwork, and doing things the right way.

When you hear ‘from Westfield, Indiana’ announced on a national stage, it’s a point of pride for our entire community. These students have put in the work, and it shows. It’s a great example of what can happen when students are supported by their schools, their families, and their community.

The Indiana Percussion Association, which oversees some of these competitions, expressed its support for the band (without directly mentioning Beckwith either):

The Indiana Percussion Association stands in full support of the Westfield Indoor Percussion program, all performing arts in Westfield Washington Schools and the students, staff, and families who make it such a meaningful part of our community.

These performers dedicate countless hours to developing discipline, teamwork, creativity and resilience – qualities that extend far beyond the floor and into their everyday lives. Programs like this don’t just build musicians; they build confident, hardworking young people who represent our communities with pride.

Public criticism, especially when it targets students and their efforts, undermines the positive impact that arts education has on growth, expression, and belonging.

We encourage our community to continue uplifting and supporting these students. Their commitment, passion, and courage to perform deserve recognition, not ridicule. Westfield Indoor Percussion is something to be proud of, and we stand behind them.

There was also a personal reflection from Westfield’s Director of Bands Andrew Muth that’s well worth reading. He spends the bulk of it praising the students for being resilient even as their own lieutenant governor is publicly trashing the program they love:

I’ve learned that kids are incredibly brave. When things weren’t easy, our students chose courage. They carried themselves with grace and class, even as their images and performances were shared thousands of times online. They did it for one simple reason—they love band, and they believe in what they are a part of.

He also noted that he grew up as a Christian—but not the Beckwith kind that pretends hate is a virtue.

I grew up in a Christian household where I was taught a simple but powerful idea from Ezekiel 22:30—to “stand in the gap.”

To me, that means showing up for others when it matters most. It means doing what is right, even when it’s difficult. It means choosing to care, to lead with integrity, and to protect the people around you.

We all have moments where we are called to step forward—to support someone, to speak up, or to be the steady presence others need.

That was this moment.

I am proud to lead this program. I am proud of our kids. I am forever proud to be a rock. Stand in the gap when it matters even in the face of unimaginable adversity.

It’s truly incredible how easy it would have been for Beckwith to say absolutely nothing. Instead, he went out of his way to pick a fight with band kids. You never pick a fight with band kids. Everyone knows a band kid.

But weaponizing his own ignorance is Beckwith’s specialty. It’s all he has in his arsenal because he can’t point to any policies that actually help the people in his state. As the Trump administration teaches us, when you can’t govern effectively, you might as well manufacture outrage. When you can’t inspire people, you might as well scare them. Beckwith is using a talented group of students to launch a broader attack against public schools because he knows well-educated students and communities that rally against bullies aren’t good for his party’s long-term future.

Indiana residents should be furious that a guy like Beckwith is embarrassing their state when they have all these talented students and teachers who deserve far more attention. Their own state leaders are willing to sacrifice their kids’ achievements, their schools’ reputations, and their community’s pride to score cheap political points.

If everyone pushes back, though—without apology and by calling out Beckwith and his party directly—they can make it clear that kids shouldn’t be political props for desperate, talentless conservatives.

If you’d like to support Westfield’s music program, you can do so here.

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