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It's hard even for this person it it constantly has that fear that could to come one day and help tell their family oh i'm gay, by the way I come from albania, we are a very conservative society, I don't believe that in one day i'll just, if I was gay I would just go and tell my family oh i'm gay regardless of how many aunts I can have, approving my acts but i know that most of the family doesn't approve me. So if I constantly see this family every day and constantly engage with them every day then, I'm very afraid and like uncomfortable of telling them who who I'm really I am coming out. That's why we don't necessarily believe that in your side of the house when a person just constantly engage with their family, they are more likely going to tell them who they really are and their true feelings when they know the beliefs that this family has. Let me move to my case because I'm running out of time. So Chris, to clear something, we don't, we not necessarily are. We don't believe in nuclear families.
We just don't like tightly integrated families and why why is that? Chris told you already about how those families Exist to be gatekeepers of all families of all family values. So think about of the cycle that is there.
<poi>
So look some families are super strict But this isn't the majority of families if the norm is tight integration, then cutting someone off because they're different isn't something that you want to do. Most families are likely to adapt to someone being different Rather on your side where people just never talk to each other again because they're so polarized.
</poi>
No, it's not like people don't talk to each other again. They're going to engage and they're going to continue talking to each other. But they know that they are not, they feel like they are, they no longer feel like they are owned by their family, but or family obligation. Cause when you have that idea of that blood is very important. You also have that idea that you are owned by this, by this, by these circumstances. When you, when you, as much as family gives you something in, you have to give them something in return. And what's that usual something is that you have to adhere to the values and the beliefs
that they have. So it's not like that you're going to go against their beliefs. But in our world, what you get in our world, you get an independent person who thinks of themselves first, who doesn't have this strong bonds with their family. They feel like they own this to their family. They own their life to their family. Or if I'm not going to do this because I will ashamed of, I will ashamed. Just only in the Middle East, think of all those conservative societies. Just take the gay people. How much are they going to,
How much are they ashamed to claim that they are gay and just say that, oh, I'm going to just make my family ashamed because I'm gay, like it's not something you do. So think of, we advocate for a world where people are more independent from their family, where people can have the right to choose, to choose themselves and to choose the path that they want, not the path that the family wants for them. But all we know, what do we want? This family is most likely gay people of all family. The transition that they pass those values to,
to their, it's very, because those kids are very bonded and they will be the family values regardless of they like them, they will just say, oh it's my family it's my family has done it like this, my grandfather did it like this, my uncle did it like this therefore, I have to do it I have to do it ike this.
</ow>
<pm>:
Three things in this speech, firstly, framing what the power of these religious figures and institutions actually are. Secondly, explaining why, in both cases, that is, in cases where the religion is not supported by the state and in cases where the religion does support the authoritarian regime, why in both of those cases, we're able to get these people onside; and then finally, listing off a bunch of impacts as to why getting these religious figures onside actually helps the movement in terms of buying, etc. So, before I get into that, just the mechanism. I think the way this works is that these protest movements are going to do things like encourage these religious figures to speak at their broader protests, etc. They're going to encourage them to give sermons and so on about the protests and about how bad the authoritarian regime is within that particular institution, so like within the church or within the mosque, for instance. And also, on their bigger protests, they're going to encourage the main imams or priests to come and speak at those areas. You're essentially going to tie themselves to some extent to this religious group, and that's kind of what we stand behind on our side.


Okay, on the first thing, what the power of these religious figures and institutions actually are. Being the power of these figures is really important. We think that these figures are seen as having epistemic access to God, particularly with priests, for instance. They're seen as having a direct connection with God, and therefore the thing they say is an interpretation for religious people of what God actually wants them to do. So we think that these figures have massive amounts of power over the people that actually subscribe to their religion in the first place, given that they're seen as having this unique access to God, which normal people lack. There's that sense of the divine actually supporting your protest movement against this authoritarian regime, which we think is really important.


But the second thing is the fact that religion itself is really important and is really open to interpretation. The Bible or the Quran has loads of different interpretations to it, and these religious figures are really important in doing that, which means that they have unique knowledge which they can then transmit down. So if they say this is the correct interpretation, and the interpretation of our religious text means that we should take down this leader because he goes against our values, then people will follow. Thirdly, it's just the importance that religion has in people's lives. It's one of their most deeply held beliefs; it's the most personal thing to them. It forms how they make their decisions and so on. So at the point at which we gain these figures onside, these figures who control how this religion is interpreted and how this is seen as having this link to God, we think that then you're better able to convince those people to come to our side. That's the power that these groups have.


Yeah, so as I said in my setup, there are two possible cases, one, where the religion is kind of repressed or at least not supported by the government, and secondly, where the authoritarian regime is supported by religion itself. I think in both those cases we have the ability to get these religious leaders onside. How is that the case? We think, firstly, obviously in the case where the religion is to some degree being repressed, or at least the government isn't actively supporting the religion, then it's really obviously easy to get them onside, right? Because if you're a protest movement and you're protesting against this communist government that doesn't like religion anyway, it's very easy for you to get these priests and church members onside. This is what happened with Lech Wałęsa in Poland, where he managed to get the Catholic Church to massively support him to overthrow the communist regime, right? Because they had a direct interest in seeing that regime overthrown so they were then able to practice more openly in public. And crucially, even if the state tries to repress the religion, the religion can never fully be repressed because the whole point of religion is, that it's a set of beliefs that people have internally. No matter how repressive a state is, those beliefs are still held internally by those people. You can't brainwash enough people out of it, which means that these figures still have power even in the case where the authoritarian regime isn't actively supported by them.


But secondly, in the cases where the religion does actually work with the state, we still think you're quite likely to get some elements of that religion onside. Firstly, because you can target specific members, like specific religious leaders within that group. Even if the overall religion supports the state, you can get a particular cardinal or whatever onside. And crucially, this links back to what I was saying before about there being different interpretations of religion, right. Which means that even if some elements of that religion support the state, you can get other different elements within that religion to actually support you. You can appeal to these religious leaders and these institutions on the basis of their values. You can say this authoritarian regime doesn't support egalitarianism, which is a key value in the Quran, and actually that's what our protest movement is all about. So you can get them onside by appealing to their values, but also, crucially, I think you can get these religious leaders onside by just appealing to their self-interest. You can say, like, if we get you on our side, and in the instances where we're actually successful, you're going to have this even greater power and you're actually going to be able to preach to these people. And given that some of these figures might be self-interested, you can appeal to them on those grounds.
Okay, why does getting these people on your side actually massively help the movement? Before that, I’ll take a closing if they have one.


<poi>
Yeah, what sort of resources or influence do you think these movements have to genuinely recruit powerful religious leaders?
</poi>


Look, I think part of this debate is acknowledging that the movement has to be able to, in order to have the debate. But also, I think they can easily do this. They can easily go to send stuff to these members or whatever, appeal to them, like, attend their sermons and so on, and ask them to help out or just meet them in person. These can be quite big movements and have a lot of traction. So for instance, the Muslim Brotherhood is an example of that.
Okay, so why is getting these people onside really good for the movement? Firstly, and most obviously, it's buy-in. You get people coming in from the religious group, and who are being led by the religious leader. Remember the analysis I gave right at the start about the power that these religious leaders have to actually influence people? This is the mechanism through which protest movements in Mexico and Uruguay were able to successfully overthrow their autocratic regimes. But secondly, we think that the protest movement is now done in terms that people understand. So for instance, you're no longer doing your protest movement in Western terms of rights, human rights, whatever, but you're doing it, if you're in Iran for instance, in terms of the Quran itself. And that's something that more people, if it's a religious country, actually understand compared to the more Western terms. So the point where you have some religious leaders giving these sermons even in the first instance means that people are more broadly able to understand it.


Thirdly, it means that in instances where the state is supported by some elements of the religion, the state no longer has a monopoly over religious understanding. That's what Zoya Ulhaq had in Pakistan, which enabled him to have massive power. We think that now these religious movements are able to challenge that narrative to some extent, once they get some elements of these religious leaders onside. And finally, we think it's much harder to repress once you have religious members onside. This is also what I was saying before about how it's impossible to completely eradicate religion even if it's repressed, because it goes down to the deeply held beliefs that someone internally has. That's impossible to get rid of.


Crucially, though, this religious group of people who you get onside now is a group you lacked access to beforehand because you couldn't go to them in their own terms. On the other hand, the secular group of people who the opposition might talk about as being alienated probably won't be, because they want to overthrow the regime on both sides of the house. Now you're just getting an additional group of people, namely religious people, onside. And that greater buy-in enables you to have bigger protests, enables you to more effectively resist the police, and so on, which enables you to overthrow the regime for all those reasons.
So, proud to propose.
</pm>


<lo>
We want to be absolutely clear, this debate is about protest movements and exactly what benefits are most possible and greatest for them. What are the interests of the protest movement? First, we think it's about staying true, obviously. Look, firstly, it's obviously about overthrowing the authoritarian regime. Secondly, it's obviously also about protecting their own values and what they stand for. And third, it's about installing a good, sustainable regime that is in line with their values after the authoritarian regime is overthrown. This is very important to keep in mind because I feel that the government hasn't been keeping to this very much. They can't just say that, oh, you know, we won in Poland, we won in Uruguay because of the religious figures, without, A, giving us any explanation as to the specific circumstances in which these people won, and I think it's incredibly reductionist to claim that they only won because of the religious figures and institutions, and if it weren't for them, they wouldn't have been able to win. I think it's demeaning to the other factors and the other forces that enabled these protests to be successful in the first place. And we are going to contend on opposition that it wasn't because of religious groups and figures and institutions that existed within it. Also, we're going to suggest how this creates more harms later on.


Let me just move on to some quick points of rebuttals and then integrate the rest of them into my arguments. First, they say we get larger and stronger support because people are more emotional and they can support it more. Actually, I'm going to rebut this in my arguments later. But I want to revert this one thing that they say, which is that they have lots of power given to them by God and there's unique access to God and some kind of divine support which lends greater support to the protest movement. Hang on. The fact that these people have a lot of power given to them by God in some kind of divine authority sounds eerily similar to authoritarian regimes. This means authoritarian regimes are most often propped up with the idea that, oh, you know, I'm sent here by God, and that's why I'm holier than you. And we think that's a harmful mentality to have. But we don't think it's something that protests should be standing for in the first place. And that is why we think supporting religious figures and institutions is so antithetical to the very system of divine birthright that they're seeking to overthrow in the form of the authoritarian government. Rather, we think they should be supporting a more democratic form of election and that not one person is divinely ordained, but multiple people get to decide what is the best governor for them in terms of a political process. We think it's extremely empathetic and disingenuous for them to suggest that they want to support the divine right to authority while trying to overthrow authoritarian regimes.


Now, I'm going to move on to my arguments and weave in my rebuttals in here. First, I'm going to say how it's bad that religious figures and institutions get involved because we think religious practices are rarely homogeneous. This means that you risk alienating a large source of people. So they say people are very, very emotional, you want to get into their hearts and minds? Yeah, that's true. But also, if you get into their hearts and minds and you get on the wrong side of their hearts and minds, and let's say you're promoting the Dalai Lama comes and endorses your regime in Thailand or Myanmar, for instance, but you're like a Christian living in Myanmar. Myanmar is very diverse, by the way, so there are tons of almost equal numbers of Muslims as there are Buddhists and Christians as well. So that's terrible precisely because it's so personal, these important support bases that otherwise would have supported your regime in the first place get alienated. This means that what was once political support turns into religious souring and bitter feelings and infighting within the protest itself. That's terrible.


Secondly, we think that we lose mechanisms to protest. Often, religious groups have their own laws and doctrines that prevent them from doing things like violent protests. We think this means that they're severely inhibited. For instance, if Buddhism is anti-violence and if the protest groups need to employ civil disobedience or things like that, a Christian group might oppose. And that's why we think you lose a lot of important mechanisms to protest. And that's terrible, just because it limits your practical ability to protest the authoritarian regime because of all these laws and additional restrictions that are imposed on you.


Third argument, though, we think that the religion as a whole might be in line with the government. We think religious institutions and figures often are the ones that propped up the government in the first place. We see this in the case of how the Catholic Church, for instance, supports the Filipino government and its authoritarian regime, or in other countries as well. So we think you risk reneging on their own values or where the religious groups tend to be conservative and align with the government. You risk compromising the movement with concessions to them, and it's really terrible because you're basically supporting the authoritarian regime while at the same time seeking to overthrow it, simply because these religious groups already operate covertly with these authoritarian regimes in the first place. Just look at how the Buddhist Sangha is very tight with the military regime in Thailand.


But the fourth most important argument that we want to make is that it exposes the protest to more harm. That means it's more easily shut down by the authoritarian government. Why? Because we think, as they say, you pin all your hopes on one guy, like the Dalai Lama or the pope or whatever, which is great. But look, if it makes it easier to moralize people by one figurehead, it also makes it easier to demoralize and defeat you by torturing these people, by putting their heads on sticks and parading them around the city. The same thing that moralizes everyone is also their greatest vulnerability and weakness. We think it's terrible to peg your entire regime or your entire protest to one guy or one religious institution because once that collapses and is held under extreme scrutiny, it increases the vulnerability of the whole protest in general.


My fifth argument is how it's terrible in terms of succession in the future. We argue that protest groups generally tend to be very interested in increasing the amount of stability and democracy of that regime after the authoritarian regime is overthrown. However, if successful, you risk replacing the authoritarian regime with a theocratic one. They already suggested that these people have a divine right to authority and power, so what’s not to suggest that they're going to want to promote their own ideals? In fact, this is even more likely given that religious groups only agree to join hands with the movement if they're given certain concessions or certain promises, like a seat in parliament, which could lead to 10 seats in parliament and eventually an overthrow of it. Because religious groups always want to promote their own ideals and spread their sphere of influence by definition because they feel they are God-ordained and that their way of being in the world is correct, and that is why it's harmful to a more sustainable, stable regime later on. My sixth argument is that it's incredibly bad simply because of their reluctance of the religious figures to participate and also might create more friction in terms of undermining confidence in the regime as well. Now, we know that on the point about transitioning to a less stable government, modern Poland has a lot of issues with religious extremism as well. So their very own example shows how one authoritarian regime, overthrown by the Catholic Church, could cause massive protests because of the overturning of abortion and currently threatening to slide Poland back into authoritarianism. We think religious groups only create more propensity for these authoritarian regimes arising again in the future because of their very nature.
So not only is it harmful to the protest, it's harmful to the values of the protest, it's harmful to the goals of the protest to install a long-term stable regime. And that's why in both the short and long run, in the small scale and the large scale, we win on the side of the opening opposition.
All right, I'd like to thank you very much for the speech, and I'd like to call upon the second speaker for the government.
</lo>


<dpm>
Here's why opening opposition has already lost this debate. Every single argument that they've made is talking about the harms of what they conceptually and we'll talk, I’ll talk about that in a second, but the harms of religious movements and religious figures without actually drawing an actual comparative picture. They don't actually provide you a mechanism of how these protest movements can succeed in the first place. Right? I mean the first thing, the first challenge they show us, which we think is a mischaracterization of our cases, apparently how, you know, Aniket came up and talked about how the only reason that protest movements succeeded was because of religion. The main point we're saying is protest movements are more likely to succeed in places than we have precedent for that, like in South America. It's not so much that we're talking about a necessary condition, we think that's an unfair burden for them to place on us, but we're talking about the degree to which religion actually played a huge part in that.


And I'm going to talk about it in a second, but really all opposition talks about is like three things, right. The first, and by their own standards, right. They first talk about this idea about how one of the main interests of protest movement is overthrown, and we think we've already won that. Opposition didn't provide any systematic mechanism through which overthrowing will happen in their case, whereas we did.


First of all, we said that we're actually having mass appeal under our case. The only thing that did that is that they misconstrued that, oh, you know, they played around with Aniket's description of his epistemic access to God and how that's important. I'll get to that in a second. But really, why is mass appeal important? Because that's what a movement is all about. It's about getting mass appeal; it's about the ability for people to mobilize in a meaningful way to get through.
The biggest problem with movements is numbers, is strength, which is why stuff like “strength in numbers” is a thing when it comes to movements, which is why stuff like the Arab Spring is huge, because you have a lot of people out on the streets, which is why the same protests that happened in Latin America in the 70s and 80s against right-wing dictators because of slight inspiration from religious people was also important.
So we think on their side of the house, the fact that they acknowledged that there are significant religious groups that will be, you know, and that they’re not catering to means that you lose the most important aspect of protest movement, which is numbers.


But the second thing is, that we tell you, they sort of say is that, you know, we have to protect values, because at the end, religious people will tend to be conservative and so on. First of all, the first goal of a protest movement, which they admit to, is sort of the idea of getting rid of the authoritarian regime, right? So we don't think that they actually apply a fair comparative, but we think they actually mischaracterize what protest movements are like. They pick the worst-case scenarios, right? On the whole, if a religious group is actually siding with other secular forces in a specific group, its religious figures are being incorporated.
We think the main movement is egalitarianism, right? And that's one of the reasons why Mexico and Europe are prime examples of that, is that you have an anti-authoritarian sentiment in a lot of these religious groups, and the reason we win that is not just because we're sort of fighting, well, here, look at our example versus their example, but because we provide you with another mechanism, which is about how religion is itself open to interpretation.


Something that Aniket said. Why is that crucial here? Well, because we think that there are specific versions of religious readings that specifically become salient in these instances that allow for an anti-authoritarian regime. So, yeah, so generally speaking, we think that when religious figures incorporate these movements, they are, and for the vast majority of cases, doing that; But even if we take them at their best, we think that in an effort to have this notion of sustained values and a sustainable quasi-regime without massive appeal, by the way, we think you just don't end up getting rid of the authoritarian regime in the first place, right. Because you lose the initial goal that you set out to set for yourself.


But okay, here are some other things that we're going to develop in the rest of my speech. The first thing is, that one of the other things that we're clashing on here is this notion of alienating other religious groups. First of all, we think we're talking about countries that are, we're appealing to the majority religion, right? So the reason places like South America are examples, or places like Pakistan, is because in the vast majority of cases, you have clear ideas of a majority religion.
But secondly, we think that for people who want to overthrow the regime, it's on both sides of the house. The crucial feature that the opposition’s missing out on that we're bringing in is that it's not so much that religious people will come in and now you have a singular manifesto, but you're broadening the coalition, right?
And this is crucial because broadening the coalition means you're expanding the range for appeal. And we think this happens all the time. I mean, think about, I mean, I can name a few of my head, but think about all the countries where you have national movements, where parties ally with each other to get rid of a single authoritarian regime. The idea is you set a set of goals, which means that you have a consensus on those, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you have a consensus on everything else.
Why does that matter here? Because we think that insofar as protest movements are concerned with overthrowing authoritarian regimes, broadening a coalition doesn't mean that even in the worst-case scenario, if you have, let's say, an anti-abortion church that's kind of involved in this thing, we think that still helps because at the end of the day, you're broadening the main goal that you're trying to take, and yeah, that you're trying to have.
Here's the last thing that’s really crucial here, right? That, this idea about parliament and stability. So basically, the opposition's case rests on this notion that, for, you know, once you get these people, they're going to actually take places in parliament and because, you know, at the end of the day, we have the authoritarian regime, then we get rid of that.


Here's the problem with that. Aside from the fact that you don't have a mechanism for how you get rid of the authoritarian regime, we just think that the opposition is living in a wonderland where people aren't religious, right? The key feature of the countries that we're talking about, the vast majority of them, is that religion does play a part, and that in the comparative, people are religious. So at the end of the day, if people demand a certain kind of policy, and if the vast majority of people feel a specific way, we think it's kind of bizarre for the opposition to have their normative conceptions or, you know, like some sort of constitution that they have in mind that they want at the end of the day.
But here's the last and most important, I think, one of the most important features of our case that they totally missed, which is the comparative. One of the key features that Aniket kept telling you about is that, even when you don't use these religious figures, what happens? We think exactly, we get instances like, you know, Zia in Pakistan in the 80s, where religious figures, or sorry, politicians or state leaders, specifically authoritarian ones, can co-opt a religious narrative, right?
And when we think that happens, that's what we think leads to more extremist politics. That's when we think that religion gets smeared and is used in a negative sense, right? Because it's always authoritarian leaders' interest to actually have religion in their backbone or the idea of a religious narrative, because it makes a case for a certain kind of religious authority and legitimacy.

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