#204 - Matt Melvin - Author

Unknown Speaker (0:06): Welcome YouTube and Twitchers. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone. That's my Clarisse. Hello, everyone.

Unknown Speaker (0:13): Hello, Put the lotion in the basket.

Unknown Speaker (0:21): Put the lotion in the basket. That's demented. But everybody knows that scene.

Unknown Speaker (0:30): Damn right. They do.

Unknown Speaker (0:36): What if Jodie Foster did the same thing on that movie set that she did on stealing home? I don't know. That's an interesting question. Yeah. What's up there, boys and girls?

Unknown Speaker (0:57): Welcome to the Chris and Mike show. He's Mike. I'm Chris. And a portion of the show is brought to you by Riverside FM, the one and only choice for podcasting platforms. Remember, we are live on Twitch, YouTube, and chrisandmikeshow.com.

Chris (1:09): So just type in the chrisandmike not duh. Just type in chrisandmikeshow.com, and you can find us there live as well as the other two platforms. Today, we have an encore with Matt Melvin. He's not a musician, but it's still an encore because he's coming back for the second time. So that's what we call second timers, the encore version of Matt Melvin.

Chris (1:25): So, Matt, remind everybody what you were here the first time, what we were talking about and all those things, and then we can jump into the conversation we're gonna have today. Welcome back, Matt. Yes.

Matt Melvin (1:37): Thank you very much for having me back.

Unknown Speaker (1:40): Yeah. What did you

Matt Melvin (1:40): talk about the first time? Boy, I couldn't even tell you.

Mike (1:44): We started at where you were in two different prisons

Unknown Speaker (1:49): Mhmm. Mhmm.

Unknown Speaker (1:50): As a young man.

Unknown Speaker (1:51): Yep.

Mike (1:52): And I think what Chris had asked you at the end was to come back and tell us what led you up to this lifestyle, if our memory serves me correct.

Unknown Speaker (2:02): Okay. Yeah. So Like, what you happened in

Unknown Speaker (2:04): your childhood that led you to that?

Unknown Speaker (2:07): But didn't you write a book?

Unknown Speaker (2:09): I wrote a book, Believe Behind Talk. Gauge.

Unknown Speaker (2:11): Right. We were talking that's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I want to that's that's what that's what I wanted to to that's what I wanted to bring back to the forefront so people understand where we're going with the conversation.

Chris (2:21): Because if we just go to the conversation, childhood people are gonna sit and be like, what the fuck are you guys talking about? So touch on the book that you that you wrote and released, and that's gonna help us kinda, you know, segue to that, to the to the, you know, earlier parts in life, if you will.

Matt Melvin (2:36): Well, my book, as you can see, my T shirt, Fully Behind Bars, A Gay Christian Trump Supporter Goes to Prison. Right. Wrote it the second time I was in prison, 10 institutions, four states, sixteen months, and then a month and a half and a halfway out.

Unknown Speaker (2:49): So crazy. Damn, dude. That's so crazy. So many things. And then remind everybody what what what got you there?

Chris (2:56): What got you to that point? Was what kinda crimes that kind of you know?

Matt Melvin (3:02): The second time I was in prison, it's because I used other people's information to work because I couldn't pass a background check.

Unknown Speaker (3:09): Right. Identity theft. Correct. I remember that. That was interesting.

Chris (3:12): Yep.

Matt Melvin (3:13): They didn't pay me my commissions, and I impulsively tried to sell one of their cars.

Unknown Speaker (3:17): That's right. I remember that. That's yeah. That was that was awesome. That was a good story.

Chris (3:24): I mean, and not awesome because you went to jail, but it was still a good story. So we we talked about the whole the whole, like, struggles of being in prison as a gay man and Trump supporter, all that kind of jazz. So, like, Matt or Mike. I'm gonna have a problem with today. Matt and Mike.

Chris (3:39): Mike. Matt. So when we wrapped at the last show, we wanted you to come back on and kinda give us the background of what led you down the eventual path you were on. Was that

Unknown Speaker (3:47): correct? Yes.

Matt Melvin (3:50): Okay. Being bullied almost all my life. Struggling through high school, getting kicked out of the first high school I was at, going through three colleges, having issues with various people, disabled.

Unknown Speaker (4:10): When did you come out

Unknown Speaker (4:11): as a gay man, Matt? Oh, good question.

Matt Melvin (4:16): I've always known I was gay. I didn't have a parade. And

Unknown Speaker (4:20): So you you knew, like, what age? When did you know?

Matt Melvin (4:25): I've always known, Mike. It's just a question in my mind.

Mike (4:29): As soon you were a conscious human being, you knew you were gay. Yes. And by conscious, I'm not being flippant. I mean, you know, at six, seven, eight years old when you know you're a boy and you know you're different than every other boy. Right?

Mike (4:45): At that age, you knew that I was different than Johnny or whatever.

Matt Melvin (4:50): Yes. Absolutely. No question.

Mike (4:52): Wow. Wow. So then when did you come out to your family and the public as a whole?

Matt Melvin (5:03): Right now? Well, that's a good question. I never put a sign out for advertising it. Although I will say that when my book came out, that would be what my judgment would be.

Mike (5:24): So you never went to your parents and said, mom, dad, I'm a gay man?

Matt Melvin (5:29): Oh, I did. Yes. Very young, probably about seven, eight.

Unknown Speaker (5:35): Wow. That's crazy, man.

Chris (5:39): And how what was the reaction? Because, obviously, when you're seven, eight, that was a long time ago, the world was a different place. They're not as accepting as it is now.

Mike (5:47): Yeah. And that's totally what I'm getting at.

Matt Melvin (5:51): They have accepted it to a degree. I I was Okay. And and what I mean by that is there will always be animosity that I can't give them grandchildren.

Unknown Speaker (6:10): So and and and yeah.

Mike (6:16): So it definitely wasn't the unconditional love that should have been shown? Correct. Because I've said a million times on this podcast, that's one of my pet peeves is when parents disown their kids for any reason, not just for being gay. Right. But for a reason that they have no control over, I guess, is my point more than anything.

Mike (6:38): You know? That would be like if you had a Down syndrome child, and you're like, I just don't want anything to do with them. We're gonna put them in an institution. Mhmm. You know, if I had a child, which I'd never have, but if they came to me and told me they were gay, I'd be like, good for you.

Unknown Speaker (6:53): I hope you're happy. Yeah. You know?

Unknown Speaker (6:55): I'm I'm the same way.

Unknown Speaker (6:56): Yeah. I this is gonna sound

Matt Melvin (6:59): bad, but with authenticity, Mike, and being who they are rather than have be married and have kids and yet have have an affair with a

Mike (7:12): And I actually know two people who have gotten married. They were obviously gay men, and they had children. And then later on, you know, that like, you just described the two people that I know it didn't work out. And they not ruined the kids' lives, but they brought children into this world knowing who they were. You know?

Mike (7:31): That I don't care what anybody does or as long as you're happy and you're making someone else happy, that's all that should matter on this Earth. It really should. Right? As long as you're an adult and you're not hurting anybody else, who gives a shit what you're doing? Right.

Mike (7:52): Yeah. I agree with that.

Unknown Speaker (7:55): Okay. So so you come out to your parents. You're seven, eight years old. You know, what did that look like? What was that?

Chris (8:00): You know, were they pissed? Were they like, you know, questioning, yelling? You know, paint the picture for us.

Matt Melvin (8:07): Yelling. They've all said that they're okay with it.

Unknown Speaker (8:11): Okay. Okay.

Unknown Speaker (8:12): Opinion is actions speak louder than words.

Unknown Speaker (8:16): True.

Matt Melvin (8:18): If I were to find somebody, I would not bring them. I would not introduce them to my parents.

Unknown Speaker (8:25): Okay.

Matt Melvin (8:26): Would not introduce them to my brothers.

Chris (8:29): Wow. So no, no family support at all then? Like none?

Matt Melvin (8:35): I don't feel that there would be. No.

Unknown Speaker (8:39): Not at the level that

Matt Melvin (8:40): there And I should just feel like my business is not to be shared with them. It's just between my partner and I.

Chris (8:52): Right. Well, I get that, but you wouldn't like, I mean, if you were heterosexual, you'd obviously, you know, have no problem bringing your your soon to be wife home. But you're just your feelings are if you if being that you're a gay man, if you brought your your soon to be husband home, they would just like not be acceptable at all. And it would just create just a mountain of chaos.

Unknown Speaker (9:15): I believe so. Yes. Okay.

Chris (9:17): That's true. So are they just they just are they just slighted towards gay, the whole homosexual thing? Or is it just I mean, did they just are they just like, the entire family is just like that's goes against everything we believe in? I'm trying to understand. So that's why I'm asking the questions.

Matt Melvin (9:33): You're comfortable doing it. My mother's Okay. Asked a lot of questions that are none of her business, and I don't wanna have somebody interrogated.

Chris (9:42): Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. So talk about the, you know, the the childhood where, know, bullying and and how it led you to to to to the life of crime. There wasn't even a life of crime, but, you know.

Matt Melvin (10:07): Being angry, frustrated, feeling like the whole world that was against me, not dealing with my emotions and going from one therapist to another and then and and really not wanting to change. I think that was what it it ultimately boils down to. I think that if anybody wants help, they first do have to admit that they have a problem.

Unknown Speaker (10:32): Amen.

Unknown Speaker (10:35): So what were you going to therapy for? To

Matt Melvin (10:41): talk about being different, trying to fit in. I personally feel therapy is a complete and utter waste of time.

Unknown Speaker (10:52): It I've I've heard that.

Unknown Speaker (10:56): It depends it depends on what you wanna get out of it. Right? So it's the same concept. Any

Matt Melvin (11:04): goals? One. Two, I didn't wanna be there. I was forced to go there as a condition for.

Mike (11:10): Well, that makes a huge difference. I wouldn't get anything out of therapy if someone forced me into it either.

Unknown Speaker (11:16): Who who forced you into it?

Unknown Speaker (11:18): My parents constantly Okay. Me to go to one therapist after another after another.

Unknown Speaker (11:23): Okay. Now when you were going you.

Unknown Speaker (11:27): Yes. Trying to fix Okay. Trying to

Unknown Speaker (11:29): make up So when you

Mike (11:30): were in there, is that what the therapist's goal was? Was he trying to tell you how to be quote unquote normal?

Unknown Speaker (11:39): He and she, yes.

Unknown Speaker (11:41): See, that's not right.

Chris (11:42): I don't I just I don't understand the concept of that because you're you're who you are, and this is not just speaking to Matt. This is speaking should help him

Unknown Speaker (11:51): be who he is.

Chris (11:53): What that was my point. It's like, you you can't help who your your your your life that you live turns you into person you are. I fully believe that. No matter from from the time you're born to where you're at right now, all the experiences in life, good, bad, and different, they all had some part in shaping you as the human you are. A million percent.

Chris (12:15): Right. So to me going to a therapist, because I've gone there, you've gone there. Yeah. I can't imagine going to a therapist and then trying to fix me and and change me to fit the mold of society. That does that seems like a complete oxymoron of what

Mike (12:32): a therapist is supposed to do. The first question mine asked me was, what are we here for? Right? Because they're trying to establish a baseline. A good therapist wants to know why you're there.

Mike (12:45): They don't automatically just start saying, now if you were a drug addict, it would be a different scenario because they would be trying to save your life. Right? But you're Matt, the gay adult male who you know, while at the time you were a teenager or whatever, but by the time you hit 13, 14, 15, you know what you are. Right?

Chris (13:06): Well, he would know when was seven, eight years old. Right. Now how how old were you when you when they started you going to therapy? Were you seven, eight years old when you first came out to them?

Unknown Speaker (13:14): Yes. It was pretty immediate.

Unknown Speaker (13:16): Okay. That's that's fucking crazy, man.

Mike (13:20): So, yeah, they were definitely trying to fix him.

Unknown Speaker (13:23): Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (13:25): Which is so What

Unknown Speaker (13:25): kind of yeah. And how many siblings do you have?

Unknown Speaker (13:29): Two brothers.

Unknown Speaker (13:30): Okay. An older, younger?

Matt Melvin (13:32): I'm the oldest.

Chris (13:33): The oldest. Okay. And their perception is that that you're just you're you're you're the you're the black sheep of the family?

Unknown Speaker (13:45): My brothers are both narcissists. They Wow.

Unknown Speaker (13:50): I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (13:52): You ask- The hand you Oh no, no. Yeah.

Matt Melvin (13:54): World revolves around me. It's just amazing. So I don't really put too much time and effort engaging in them. You have alcoholics and they know that I love Jesus. My middle brother likes to always say when he's drinking, this is Jesus' wine or Jesus' water.

Matt Melvin (14:18): It's so absolutely ridiculous that I don't even engage with somebody that makes some ridiculous comment.

Unknown Speaker (14:27): Right.

Unknown Speaker (14:30): Because when you engage with a fool, you're a fool to

Unknown Speaker (14:34): That's a true statement.

Unknown Speaker (14:35): So I'm with Chris.

Mike (14:39): I'm just trying to understand. Is this a religious thing with your family? Are they religious

Matt Melvin (14:43): is not. They are not practicing.

Unknown Speaker (14:48): Okay.

Matt Melvin (14:49): I would say, you know, if you ask them, they would both say that they believe in God.

Unknown Speaker (14:55): Yeah. Well, they don't If

Unknown Speaker (14:57): you're not practicing They're not. Whatever.

Matt Melvin (15:01): Lot of people say that they believe in God, but actions speak louder than words. It's not Sure. Just

Unknown Speaker (15:07): That's one thing we have in common, and you have no idea, man.

Unknown Speaker (15:10): You have to do the homework. You have to Yes. Word every

Mike (15:13): Not only that. You have to walk the walk. Right. Exactly. Few Christians walk the walk because as soon as you start making fun of or criticizing someone else, you've already broken the golden rule.

Mike (15:28): Yours is not to judge. That is for the Lord. Right?

Unknown Speaker (15:32): Mhmm.

Unknown Speaker (15:32): People judge people every day.

Unknown Speaker (15:34): Absolutely.

Mike (15:36): So that's why I just chuckle on the inside all day long because I am not religious because I cannot walk that walk. It's impossible. You can't do that. Mm-mm.

Unknown Speaker (15:44): And it's stupid anyway. Can.

Chris (15:47): Yeah. No. And some of the most judgment judgmental people I've ever come across in my lifetime

Unknown Speaker (15:52): Amen. Are

Unknown Speaker (15:53): Christian are Christians. Churches. Our our right. Our bible thumping.

Unknown Speaker (15:57): I think it's

Chris (15:57): And I don't say bible thumping in a bad way. No. But just people that that just they're preaching they're they're they're, you know, sharing the testimonies and, you know, preaching the gospel, all that kind of stuff, but they are by far the most judgmental people that that I've ever come across personally.

Mike (16:11): Yeah. Those are the first people that have been saying when they're trying to ship everybody back across the border, yeah, get rid of those people who don't belong here. Right?

Unknown Speaker (16:19): Right.

Mike (16:20): Like, well, I thought the earth belonged to the lord. Right? We decided there was nations. We drew the borders.

Unknown Speaker (16:28): Yeah. Yeah. That's yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Chris (16:33): So you're bullied as a child, seven, eight years old. Your parents forced you into therapy, which, obviously, does nothing, obviously, because it just creates more of a wedge, I would assume, between your parents. Is that when the when all the bullying and stuff started at school? I mean, were you like, I mean, was was all the students around you, was it painfully obvious? Like, did they all know that you were gay?

Matt Melvin (16:56): I don't make to I don't wanna make that kind of conclusion. Would say a fair

Unknown Speaker (17:01): point. Okay. And it's just and just and it was just basically the way you, you, you carried yourself and, you know?

Matt Melvin (17:08): Weight. Was autistic. I was different.

Unknown Speaker (17:11): Okay.

Matt Melvin (17:12): And you know, schooling is very click. So if you don't fit the last click or that click, find who you are.

Unknown Speaker (17:23): Absolutely. People- Little kids are brutal, man.

Unknown Speaker (17:27): One another, unfortunately.

Unknown Speaker (17:30): Yeah. Oh yeah.

Matt Melvin (17:31): My my friend always tells me, says, when people are gossiping about you, that means you're doing a good thing because people aren't gossiping about somebody that's just sitting in the back, doing anything. I, as an individual and the, at the receiving end of a lot of gossip, I believe that I'm doing the world Lord a service, because that means I'm doing a job. As a Christian, our job is not to just sit in the back and wave. Our job is to stir up emotions, to get people thinking, to get people talking, to get people thinking, why do you do it this way? Yeah.

Matt Melvin (18:15): And it's amazing. You go, you know, as a salesperson, I used to go into accounts and you know, how, why are you using this vendor? Oh, we've been using it for forty years. Why? Oh, because that's the way we've done it.

Unknown Speaker (18:29): Well, what's your breakeven point? I don't know. How do you know you're making numbers? I don't know. Well, how are you still in business?

Matt Melvin (18:38): You have to your numbers. Everybody has to know their numbers. Otherwise, you might you're not you're not running a business. You're running a charity. True.

Unknown Speaker (18:47): Yeah. Yeah. This is true.

Matt Melvin (18:50): And if you're not a numbers guy, you're a guy that's a numbers guy, and that person is just go with you wherever you go.

Unknown Speaker (18:58): Mhmm.

Matt Melvin (19:00): And it's not a fake it till you make it. Not at all.

Mike (19:07): To me, the most fascinating part of your story, Matt, is you don't find too many gay Christians.

Unknown Speaker (19:14): Right. I yeah. Yeah. I haven't.

Matt Melvin (19:18): They are. Yes. I would agree with you about that. I will there's a fair amount that probably are, but are

Unknown Speaker (19:25): That are out.

Matt Melvin (19:26): With guilt, shame, fear, all of those, and aren't comfortable with who they are.

Mike (19:35): I'll agree I'll agree with that statement. I think that's the most fascinating part of your story to myself and probably the listeners as well. What drew I mean, have you always been a Christian? Did you find this after, you know, as an adult?

Matt Melvin (19:54): For most of my life, I was a lukewarm Christian. I would go to church on Sunday. Right. And then I would go and do whatever I wanted the other six day six and a half days a

Unknown Speaker (20:04): week. Right.

Matt Melvin (20:06): In order to be a real Christian, it is a twenty four seven, three sixty five day

Unknown Speaker (20:12): job. Yeah.

Matt Melvin (20:14): And when you're alone, got there's a camera in your room that's watching you.

Unknown Speaker (20:22): Used to terrify the shit out of you.

Unknown Speaker (20:27): The Computer. Santa Claus. He sees when you're sleeping. That that is creepy.

Unknown Speaker (20:30): Yeah. Somebody's always watching you.

Unknown Speaker (20:33): Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (20:38): I meant what I said. They used to terrify the shit out of me. I thought that was that was one of the parts of that whole my mom's listening to this. So Hi, mom. I gotta be careful how

Unknown Speaker (20:49): I say it.

Mike (20:52): I'll just go with that was terrifying to think that someone was always watching you but provided no benefit. And that's where she's gonna say, oh, well, he did this and did that. And well Well

Unknown Speaker (21:04): you should

Unknown Speaker (21:05): have left

Unknown Speaker (21:05): the business card. Yeah. No. I'm just

Mike (21:09): not a I'm not a believer in that whole thing, Matt. I think you get out of life what you put into it. There's 50 organized, recognized religions in this world. More. If well There's a

Unknown Speaker (21:22): lot more.

Mike (21:23): There's a lot more, but these are ones that I'm gonna say, you know, people buy into and that they're fully funded and they have believers. Right? We'll go with 50. Which one's right? All of them?

Unknown Speaker (21:37): None of them? One of them?

Unknown Speaker (21:38): Only one. Correct.

Unknown Speaker (21:41): Yeah. Well, that's right.

Chris (21:42): And and that's the thing. We we're not supposed what? Because you have you have Christians, Lutheran, Methodist, Catholics. They all claim to be the correct one.

Mike (21:49): Yeah. Now we've sub subdivided all the way Christianity into another 50 religions.

Unknown Speaker (21:54): Right. So guess what? None of us are gonna know who's real until we die. And then by then, we can't come back and tell anybody because we're dead. So how can the average person

Mike (22:03): not sit there and hear that and say, you know what? I never thought of it that way. Mhmm. I did a million times. I'm like, how can my little Jewish friend be right and I'd be right?

Mike (22:15): He doesn't even believe in Christ at all. Right? He believes he was a man. He doesn't believe he was the messiah. Right.

Mike (22:21): So now little Billy's wrong too, and little Jimmy's wrong because he's a Buddhist. And I'm getting so confused because I pride on even then, I prided myself on not being stupid. Right? I like to understand how things worked. And religion to me was so fucking confusing.

Mike (22:38): It's like, can't figure it out. Well, that's because it doesn't make sense.

Chris (22:41): Yeah. So he see and here's here's the other flip side of that coin. Here's a true story. K? I was I was a young life leader for years.

Chris (22:48): And if you're not familiar with what young life is, Matt, it was a Christian youth group that was basically we go into high schools and get the high school kids that were kinda just cast cast their ways, you know, silhouettes of an outcast, I called them. And we'd come and we'd we'd have fun and we'd, you know, we'd, you know, be an outlet for them and we would talk about the Jesus. Right? So it was all Christian faith based. We had I had a fellow leader whose mother passed away, and he was very adamant from the day I met him to the day she died that she was not a Christian, like, flat out.

Chris (23:26): And because you're Christian, you understand the three elements of Christianity, accept, believe, and commit, accept that Jesus died for our sins, believe in him and the faith and then commit your life to him. K? Me being the rip it off like a band aid person I am. While the wound was still fresh, I approached this person and said, hey, man. And I and I wasn't being wasn't trying to come across as a dick.

Chris (23:47): I I had a legitimate question. Like, you're you're you're a god fearing human. Yep. You're walking the line with Christ. Yep.

Chris (23:55): Your mom wasn't. Nope. Is your mom in heaven or is she in hell? Couldn't answer the question because he was stuck in that crux was she never did the ABCs. So in his eyes, for right or wrong, she's not in heaven.

Chris (24:13): Now if if god is the the being that everybody wants to believe that he is, this woman did no wrong. She hurt nobody. She didn't kill anybody. She wasn't an alcoholic. She was she raised, you know, a beautiful family.

Chris (24:29): Was a loyal wife. My example,

Unknown Speaker (24:30): Chris. Right? That same example right

Chris (24:32): there. So is she cast in into the bowels of hell because she didn't do the ABCs?

Mike (24:38): And if you truly believe what you just said, Charles Manson on his deathbed could accept Christ as his savior, and he's going to heaven, and that woman's going to hell. Right. And for all you Christians that are listening to this, what he just said and what I just said, if you read the book and you really believe the doctrine, that's exactly what's gonna happen. Jeffrey be the best person on the planet. Mhmm.

Chris (25:01): Right? Jeffrey Dahmer. And you know where I'm going with this. Jeffrey Dahmer, when he when he got to prison, he was finally in prison and and purged his soul of all the stuff he did. Rumor has it that he joined a bible study, turned his life around, albeit in prison, and gave his life to God.

Chris (25:17): You know? Accept, believe, commit. I'm a walking Christian now, born again, and he was proud of that. Then he was, you know, violently killed in the bathroom, rightfully so. He's Jeffrey Dahmer.

Chris (25:27): But if he truly did the ABCs, he's up in heaven.

Mike (25:32): Okay.

Chris (25:32): And my my my friend anymore. I'm I'm an asshole to him. I've reached out a couple of times. He has nothing wants nothing to do with me. Sorry.

Chris (25:40): What's And I did apologize. Well, I know, it is what it is. I I was it was, you know, whatever. But so his mom's in hell, but Dahmer's in heaven. Manson's in heaven.

Mike (25:51): So what you just described about Right. Jeffrey Dahmer is what every Christian so that's their example every time. Right. So where my example is Chris' example, I always use the example of a man or woman lives a perfect life. I use my mother as an example.

Unknown Speaker (26:05): If she wasn't a Christian, she means no one any harm.

Unknown Speaker (26:09): Right.

Mike (26:09): Matt, if you walked through her door with me right now, she would say, hi, Matt. Nice to meet you. Are you hungry? I'll make you something to eat. You know?

Mike (26:14): Excuse the mess. Her house is immaculate. She's like, please, I haven't cleaned in a while. I'm like, where do you see any dirt? Right.

Mike (26:22): So if that woman was not a Christian, she's living that kind of life, and I'm out here being my hedonistic self, And at the eleventh hour, I say, okay. I accept Christ. She never meant anybody any harm, did so much good to the world, tried to save everybody she could, and I'm out here being a selfish prick. And at the eleventh hour, I accept Christ. Do you see where my disconnect in this whole story becomes?

Matt Melvin (26:51): Well, I understand what your disconnect is, but you have to believe in him in your heart, your soul.

Mike (26:56): And But people never look at the flip side of that example. And that is so important is the person who lived a perfect life but said, I don't believe in that nonsense. They're going to hell. There's no way around it.

Chris (27:08): According to the Bible, they're going to hell. And there's there's the there's the disconnect with religion versus faith. Like, I went through a point in time in my life where I had I I don't believe in faith, so it was agnostic. It wasn't alien. It wasn't it wasn't an atheist.

Chris (27:20): It was agnostic. I didn't believe in the origin organized

Mike (27:23): is just as stupid as the other side because now you believe in nothing.

Unknown Speaker (27:27): Right. But but you're believing in something, so you're believing in something by believing in nothing.

Unknown Speaker (27:31): I love when you say that.

Unknown Speaker (27:32): It's so true. But but agnostic, you just don't believe in organized religion. It doesn't mean you don't believe in a higher power. Doesn't like, alcohol is higher power. By higher power,

Unknown Speaker (27:40): they're self open to the possibility that there's an order to the universe.

Chris (27:44): Right. But that's that's the struggle. That's I don't know how we got down this path, but that's the struggle with with Because I said it was unique that he was a gay Christian, which it is. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (27:55): It is. Yeah. For sure. Because, again, in the Bible, it it I'm I don't know verses and stuff, but I've heard enough of it, and I've read the Bible many, many, many years ago. But there are passages strictly that, damn,

Unknown Speaker (28:09): gay That was in the Old Testament. That's why I didn't bring that up, and Jesus

Unknown Speaker (28:12): Well, no. I'm not yeah. I'm just saying it's

Mike (28:14): the New Testament. And people are gonna say that. They're gonna say, Matt, you know that God said that being gay is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. He did say that, and then Jesus rectified it saying, you can't be perfect. So Right.

Mike (28:26): We're going to say that the only way to the father is through me. Right? Mhmm. See, people? Right.

Mike (28:33): I understand it. I just think it's silly.

Unknown Speaker (28:36): Right. What what say you, Matt?

Matt Melvin (28:41): What I say is that be a good person, walk in faith, and be quick to repent when you do something wrong.

Unknown Speaker (28:58): Explain that. Explain that.

Chris (29:01): Well, for Catholics, you just go to confession, Mike.

Unknown Speaker (29:03): No. I wanna I wanna hear his version.

Chris (29:05): I'm saying. I'm newly I'm newly Catholic.

Unknown Speaker (29:09): Killing

Unknown Speaker (29:10): me. I converted to Catholicism on April 4.

Unknown Speaker (29:12): So now you set your box, and you tell some guy that supposedly talks directly to god your sins. Now come on. It gets even more silly.

Chris (29:20): Well, see, what's fun for me is because I did it when I was 56. So my entire by the baptism, you know, we blessed our marriage. My wife's Catholic, Matt, and we've been together thirty one years. So something that she's always wanted. So when I was baptized, man, everything was dissolved.

Chris (29:33): I clean slate right there. So, you know, now I have my sins are like I didn't go to church a couple of times, so I have to go confess. I didn't go to sin. I didn't go to church. So I had to, dude.

Chris (29:42): I've do five holy Marys. Okay. Yay. That's it. Gotcha.

Chris (29:48): Nice. Woo hoo. I kill somebody, hey, you know, father, I just you know, I killed this guy because, you know, he stole money from me. Okay. You know, 20 whole millionaires and, you know, go spend some one on one time with with yourself, you know, meditate, whatever.

Chris (30:01): Okay. Cool. Woo hoo. That's why you think mobsters are Catholics because they know.

Unknown Speaker (30:04): True. A guy dressed like a wizard.

Chris (30:09): Dressed a Catholic man. Sammy the Bull was Catholic. Sammy the Iceman. The Iceman. Okay?

Chris (30:15): He was Catholic. Richard Cook Clemson. So all the people he killed, as long as he went to confession, absolved according to Catholicism. Okay.

Mike (30:25): So here's a question for you because I I feel like you're a good Christian, man. I'm not being I'm totally serious when I ask you these questions. This is Matt, the god fearing Christian. How do you how do you explain the Jews and the Buddhists and the Hindus and every other supposedly accepted organized religion?

Matt Melvin (30:46): How do I explain to them?

Unknown Speaker (30:49): How how do you how do you explain their beliefs? Are they all going to hell?

Matt Melvin (30:53): It's not for me to judge anybody else.

Unknown Speaker (30:56): Right. But based on your knowledge of what god taught you, are they going to hell?

Unknown Speaker (31:01): Not going to I don't I don't do that. That's not my job to

Chris (31:05): That's a good answer. That I mean, it's you know, that's that's that's that's a true answer from somebody who has accepted, believes, and committed his life because he understands the dynamics of Christian

Mike (31:17): I couldn't agree with you more, Chris, and I'm actually gonna give you a compliment, Matt. That's the best answer to that question I've ever received, and I probably asked it over a 100 times in thirty years.

Unknown Speaker (31:28): Because most people are gonna answer yes, sir, in hell. Ever. Because they judge.

Matt Melvin (31:31): What's the worst answer in your opinion you've been given?

Mike (31:35): I don't think there's a worst answer. The second best answer I got was from who did who was the ex minister we had on here, Chris, for thirty years?

Unknown Speaker (31:47): Oh, I don't remember. This was 02/2004 people,

Mike (31:49): man. I know, but your buddy's with him. He's on the chamber or some shit with you as well. I think he used to be on or was on the chamber or sits on the chamber with you. Mark Young.

Unknown Speaker (32:01): Oh, yeah. Mark Young. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (32:03): Mark Young. Yeah. Oh, the rotary. Rotary. Mark Young.

Mike (32:05): Yeah. Was the second best answer if I remember right, for thirty years. Yep. And he said, if you asked me that question in my capacity as a minister, I would not he said, I would have given you the boilerplate answer, which is yes. They're all going to hell, but I would not have felt good about it.

Mike (32:26): Because even he didn't believe in his heart of hearts, there was just something not quite right about that story.

Chris (32:34): Well, well, to think about it, though, I mean, if if if there truly is a god, right, because every religion has a version of it. So let's all agree right now and for this moment, for this discussion, there's a god. K? A compassionate, loving god. Okay.

Chris (32:50): How could a compassionate, loving god send somebody to hell? Example, mama k. Relax, mama k.

Unknown Speaker (32:57): She's a good godfaring Christian. But that's

Chris (32:59): what I'm saying. But just you if if you're loving, compassionate, how do why why would you allow prime example, Out of the headlines yesterday, a woman in Glendale, which took shots at her husband at a bar, then killed her 18 old son and then her 10 year old son and then killed herself. Now Christians, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Matt, but I think I'm pretty accurate. And as Christians believe that we're hell on earth. This is hell on earth.

Chris (33:27): We are we are walking through the bowels of hell. A lot of Waiting for Christ to come back down to save us, you know, take us all, which Christ will not come back back to the earth until every single soul has had the opportunity to to accept or deny. Mike and I have talked about this, Matt, and the difficulty with that is what is the actual age of purely understanding what God is, what Jesus is, and what Jesus did? Because

Unknown Speaker (33:50): Every day more people are born.

Chris (33:52): Right. So you have this gap where so he's never coming back by that mathematical thing unless all of a sudden procreation stops. And in thirteen years, there's not a single child born across the entire globe. Then I'll get nervous. And everybody can be like, okay, they've had a chance to accept or believe or deny that.

Chris (34:10): And then boom, he can come back. Right? Because that's the thing. That's why you have all these churches and all these religions doing missions. That's all they do.

Chris (34:17): The mission missionaries are just out there to spread the word because they all believe in that, that you for him to come back, everybody has to be able to make that conscious decision. I believe it. I don't believe it. Because then the rapture happens, I this in my when I was a kid, I had this really cool picture where the souls were flying, you know, up in the air. And then you had you had the pagans, I think we called them, you know, standing on the ground looking up at everybody flying away.

Chris (34:43): You know? And then it's the what is it? Seven days? I forget. Seven days of chaos on Earth or something with fires and all the the things.

Chris (34:49): Something like that. Yeah. So, yeah, I I just to me, if if Not it's

Unknown Speaker (34:55): seven days.

Unknown Speaker (34:56): Seven okay. Seven years. Sorry. Seven years. Seven yeah.

Chris (34:58): Seven years. So, yeah, I, you know, I just if it's if it's a loving, compassionate, caring god, why does he allow a mother to pick up a gun and fucking shoot an 18 old child who's done absolutely nothing in

Mike (35:15): world to hospital forty five minutes from me where every one of those kids have some kind of weird rare disease that they can't figure out what's going on?

Chris (35:24): Because of the American diet.

Mike (35:26): I'll agree with that. But these are I ask the same kind of questions, man. And I know you do too, Matt, and I'm not my mom is one of the well, she is the best Christian I know. She walks the walk. You know?

Mike (35:38): She doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, doesn't cuss, doesn't, you know, get drunk. She's never done drugs. When she asks you not to do something, she's not a hypocrite. Right? She's not done those things herself, and she would prefer if you didn't do them either for one reason or another.

Mike (35:58): I don't begrudge her just like I don't begrudge you for being a Christian. And luckily for me, neither one of you have and Chris doesn't either. You know, nobody really looks at me as being bad for not believing in God because I explain myself so well. Right? Music is my religion.

Mike (36:17): That's where I found grace. My mom told me I would know when I found grace, and I looked for it for years. I was like, where is this? I realized I found it when I was nine years old sitting in my bedroom playing my guitar. That's where I was always the happiest.

Mike (36:31): Still to this day, that's where I'm always the happiest. So that's my religion. Right? That's what makes me not wanna do any harm to anybody else. I don't feel like I've ever been threatening towards anybody.

Mike (36:44): You know what? I would live I would count myself as a person who's basically lived that life where the only harm I've ever really done is to myself. I don't mean anybody else any harm. Chris played in a band with me for years. I mean, I wasn't a tyrant.

Mike (36:59): I just wanted to have a good time.

Unknown Speaker (37:00): I was a tyrant, Matt. Not

Unknown Speaker (37:05): really. No. Not at all.

Unknown Speaker (37:08): What was our I forgot our question. What was

Unknown Speaker (37:09): our question? My question, and he answered it was Oh, yeah. That's right. How does he explain the Jews and the Hindus and the Buddhists? And that was a great answer, man.

Unknown Speaker (37:18): It really was.

Chris (37:18): That was a great answer. But that and that's the only true answer. Right. But that's the only true answer because if you truly are a Christian Yours is not going to judge. Judge.

Chris (37:28): And and it's like you said earlier, Matt, you coined the phrase lukewarm because there is that reference that's referenced in the bible about being lukewarm, a lukewarm Christian. You know? Do as I say not as I do. I was raised that way. Do as I say not as I do.

Mike (37:38): I would say 98.87% of all Christians are lukewarm Christians.

Unknown Speaker (37:44): I completely agree with you.

Mike (37:46): It's so hard to walk that walk. It just is.

Unknown Speaker (37:49): It's impossible. Yeah. It really is impossible. You can't be perfect. It's impossible.

Mike (37:54): But that's where mama Kay's screaming, that's what Jesus is for. And that's what Matt's saying too. Right? Right. You have to believe.

Mike (38:00): You have to have faith. I get that part. I do. Yeah. But it's just problem is people don't realize that there were so many tens of thousands of years of humanity before Christianity was ever even thought of.

Mike (38:13): Right? What happened to those people?

Unknown Speaker (38:16): They're in the they're in they're what do they call it? Purgatory. Yes. Purgatory. There you go.

Unknown Speaker (38:20): I should have known that because I just learned that. They're in purgatory. They're hanging out. That's got an answer for everything. It's the ghosts, man.

Unknown Speaker (38:27): Not at all. You will not find purgatory at all in the Bible, folks.

Chris (38:33): Don't fucking think got a hamster for everything, dude. We went we went through the OCIA classes and they they were, you know, educating us and stuff. And that's some of the stuff I just couldn't wrap my head around. Like, they took out the word begotten. Like, in John three sixteen, God gave his only begotten son.

Unknown Speaker (38:48): Right? They took the word begotten out. I'm like, you can't take a word out of the Bible, man.

Unknown Speaker (38:52): So there's

Unknown Speaker (38:52): the other thing. That's the part we missed. New version? You can't you can't take that out.

Mike (38:57): Is that Hebrew does not translate to English. Right. Nice. So, basically, what you're reading in the king king James version is what those priests on that council decided they wanted you to read.

Unknown Speaker (39:11): Mhmm.

Unknown Speaker (39:12): How's that from that?

Matt Melvin (39:13): Big parchment paper.

Chris (39:14): Yes. Right. On the big parchment paper. The the Jesus had the board of directors. So Jesus dies, Mike, and then he he comes back to life and then bails.

Chris (39:22): He goes to heaven, sits next to his father. Right? Then how many years later, like four hundred years later, they decide they're gonna write the bible?

Unknown Speaker (39:29): It was over a thousand if

Chris (39:31): I remember. A thousand years later. So they got this board of directors together. Like, we have to put this together. We have to have some kind of structure in the world to keep people in check because I really think that's why religion was invented, to keep people check.

Unknown Speaker (39:42): You gotta commissioned have the New

Unknown Speaker (39:44): Testament. Right.

Chris (39:45): You gotta have something to fear. Right? If you don't have something if like, I grew up and you probably both you probably grew up the same way when when you're when the Christianity, then you grew up fearing God. Like you didn't wanna you you've you had that fear because you didn't wanna go to hell. So if you did something wrong, you knew you'd Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (39:58): Wasn't joking earlier. I thought

Unknown Speaker (39:59): that some of us were watching it all the time. Yeah. So but that's the thing. There was fear there. Right?

Chris (40:04): There's not fear anymore. No. If you think about it, and the world the world is so desensitized because of the worldwide web. I remember when my son was younger when ISIS was huge and the Internet wasn't what it is now. He googled a video, and there was a there was a clip of ISIS, like, violently, I mean, violently, disturbingly killing three or four people.

Chris (40:25): And I I'm like, what the hell are you watching?

Unknown Speaker (40:28): Used to be straight up beheading videos on YouTube. I think they've pretty much got rid of all those now.

Unknown Speaker (40:34): But, yeah,

Unknown Speaker (40:34): back in the day, they were all over YouTube.

Chris (40:36): Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what it was. And it that was the thing. It's like, once you see that stuff, you never come back from that.

Chris (40:42): So regardless of of what fear your religion is putting into you, when you when you watch somebody go up to another human being with a machete and just cut his head off and have absolutely zero emotion

Unknown Speaker (40:55): Mhmm.

Chris (40:56): You know? And there's no recourse to that person as he stands there because then he just walks away with his buddies and, you know, gets back in the SUV, whatever, humbly be at the driving and start trucking down the road. Now some are gonna claim it's war. Well, okay. So let's rationalize that.

Chris (41:11): You can you can you can kill if you're in war. But if I just walked across the street and killed my crazy cat lady, I'm going to jail for the rest of my life. You know? So there's that's that's the weird concept the weird perception of society. Right?

Chris (41:28): They make it legal if you're in the military. And if you're in war, you can legally kill the American sniper. What do have? Like, 27 confirmed kills? Nobody looked at him as a as a murderer.

Mike (41:38): Well, it goes one step further than that. They say that more people have been killed in the name of religion than all the wars combined. Absolutely. Now we can kill in the name of religion too. Right?

Chris (41:49): Right. And so there's the other thing. I don't you probably know this too, Matt. But there's other thing when it comes to to faith that if if I am killed, right, if somebody walks if the Amazon guy comes in and and just stabs me in my back and I wasn't watching. Right.

Chris (42:02): I automatically go to heaven because I was taken before my time. Oh, I forgot about that one. Dude, I forgot about that one. Right. Regardless of what my stance is, if I'm if I'm killed at somebody else's hands, I'm I'm going to heaven because you were struck down and everybody's Dahmer killed regardless if Dahmer's victims were Christians or not because Dahmer took them off this planet before they were supposed to go.

Chris (42:25): Same with Gacy, Same with Robert Ramirez, Richard Ramirez, all those serial killers that we talk about.

Unknown Speaker (42:31): Tim According

Unknown Speaker (42:32): to the right. According to faith, they're all they're all in heaven. Struck down before your time. About it, man.

Mike (42:42): Say it again, Mike? Struck down before your time.

Chris (42:45): Yes. Struck down before your time. But who knows your time?

Unknown Speaker (42:48): That's what I'm saying.

Unknown Speaker (42:49): Like, there's a

Mike (42:49): lady example that you just painted was I'm driving along on the freeway and bam, a truck's going the wrong way and hits me head on. I didn't see that coming. Right? So But I get a free pass.

Chris (43:01): Right. But so so but it's free will. Right? There's there's a 25 year old mother who was just killed because she was on a motorcycle, and she was turning she turned on the arrow, and the car coming across from her thought the green arrow was for him, and it wasn't. So he ran the red light and killed her.

Chris (43:18): Like, just I mean, she died at the hospital. So was she supposed to die there? Was she supposed to be there? That's the whole circumstance of time. Right?

Chris (43:26): Like, if she left a minute earlier or a minute later, would she still be here? That's the

Mike (43:30): whole final destination. That's how this movie

Chris (43:32): It is. Movies. Like, this chick the other day I saw, read an article. She was at a at a picnic outside at a park outside, right, eating lunch, and it was Wendy. And one of those umbrellas lifted off and impaled her, killed her.

Unknown Speaker (43:46): And I told Nikki, final destination moment.

Mike (43:49): That's it. So let me tell you this, and this will blow your mind. This is how one eighty my mind works versus anybody else's. I never get upset when I get held up somewhere anymore because I always think to myself, there's a reason that I'm stuck here. Right?

Unknown Speaker (44:03): True.

Unknown Speaker (44:05): I'll just go with that. Yeah. That's that's how I let it not bother me.

Matt Melvin (44:08): You were impatient. That's what you're saying. Yes.

Unknown Speaker (44:12): Yeah. Yeah. Horribly.

Unknown Speaker (44:14): So Mhmm. What would you do? Like, would you honk your horn? Would you get out and start yelling at people? What would you do?

Mike (44:21): I'm too small to start shit with people, so I would just, like, get violently angry unto myself.

Unknown Speaker (44:30): Yeah. He'd ruin his own day.

Mike (44:31): I'd ruin my own day. Yeah. That's a great way of putting it, Chris. Bam.

Unknown Speaker (44:34): Yeah. Yeah. You're welcome. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (44:37): You'd ruin your own day. I see, I was I've I'm I've I've historically, I've been a very reactive person. So I've been trying this year not to be so reactive. So I I'm I'm I've probably only been reactive, like, three or four times, maybe five at the most, which is, you know, for someone who's always reactive is good. But so I I'm in line with the patience thing because it does frustrate me, especially when I'm coming home on a Wednesday night after I've at the office all day.

Chris (45:00): And I I, you know, I just have no no patience for drivers that are sitting at lights on their phones while it's turning green and and nobody's moving. It's like, we all wanna get home, dude. Come on. Be courteous. Be aware of your surroundings.

Chris (45:12): So I'm guilty of honking their horns still. I'm just guilty of that stuff, you know, but I've toned it down very much to where I don't I don't and I like it because I don't I don't walk around with distress. And there's just, you know, not not the anger so much, but just you you're on edge, you know, when you let that kind of shit get to you. So you just you you kinda learn how to maintain it and not be so high strung, if you will.

Mike (45:39): And it's hard when you're on the inside. I'll give him a huge compliment right now. It's noticeable to me how hard he's worked on it this year. Yeah. A 100%.

Mike (45:48): And he just described it very If he was having a good week, a good day, a good month, he was the Chris I've always known. But if he would have any kind of stress in his life, whether I knew about it or not, I could always tell because he be he became a different person, and I had the same problem for a long time. I would make my problems everybody else's. Right? And that's a that's a human quality that everybody needs to work on for sure is when you're having a bad day, that's nobody else's problem.

Mike (46:16): Mm-mm. And when your life is stressed out, that's also nobody else's problem. Right. And especially your friends. Right?

Mike (46:22): I rely on this guy. I love this guy. If I'm having a problem, instead of shutting him out, I'm supposed to say, hey, dude. Here's what's going on. You know?

Mike (46:30): And that's what I do. But a lot of people, they just if they're like Chris and I, where they were very reactive and we pride ourselves on being intelligent, I know you do as well. And when people are not using their brain and not using common sense, that drives you fucking nuts. And I still have a problem with that. It's like, you know, you got a brain in your head.

Mike (46:53): Use it. These are simple things, driving. The light's green. They only offer one shade.

Chris (47:00): Yeah. Right? It's red, yellow, green. It's not rocket science.

Mike (47:05): I bring that example up because I had a guy in front of me when I was going to get dinner tonight, and he waited a good forty seconds before he went on the green light.

Unknown Speaker (47:12): And Right.

Mike (47:13): I was so happy that I'm myself now because I just, you know, I'm listening to my podcast and whatever. I mean, it's green, dude. He was like 90 years old when I passed him. You know?

Matt Melvin (47:25): So you offered grace because he was 90 years old.

Unknown Speaker (47:28): I didn't know that at the time.

Unknown Speaker (47:29): He didn't know it at the time. You didn't know it until I passed him.

Matt Melvin (47:31): You would have offered grace either way if he was 90 Mhmm. Or feet.

Mike (47:35): I did. He could have been a six he could have been a a 26 year old kid sitting in there for all I knew. I just happened to pass him, and I looked over, and the poor guy was hunched over the steering wheel doing the best he could. You know? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (47:47): Right there.

Unknown Speaker (47:47): Mhmm.

Mike (47:49): So I just smiled. I'm like, that's why you don't like Chris said, you don't be a reactive human being. Right. And I think that's very important. We're gonna roll this all the way back to Matt being a gay man.

Mike (48:00): Right? Why would it still fascinates me, and I'm glad that we hit that because in 2026, for your family to be that way, for anybody to be that way towards you, to treat you any way other than Matt the human being Right. Is so wrong.

Chris (48:18): It's naive. It's just it's it's it's blatantly naive. It's just

Mike (48:23): I've enjoyed both these conversations with him. I don't care if he likes to dress up like a gorilla when we get off here. Right? That's Well, I got a I got a

Chris (48:30): gorilla suit, man. Of course, you do.

Mike (48:34): Why would I use an example of something that he owns?

Chris (48:39): Halloween's right around the corner, brother.

Mike (48:42): You know what I'm saying, though? There there's some people that go to these furry conventions, and they like to make love as dogs and cats and whatever. Nothing touches. Nothing touches because

Chris (48:52): of these costumes, man. I understand that. Like, there's no penetration. You're just rubbing up against each other in furry costumes.

Unknown Speaker (48:58): My point is

Unknown Speaker (48:59): But to each his own.

Mike (49:01): And I know you're being funny, and you and I would be funny together about that, but the average person would be having a serious conversation with you going, oh, man. Why do they gotta do that? That's so sick. You know? I just don't understand some people.

Mike (49:14): It's like, you don't need to understand them because you're not gonna go do it. Right? But that's what they enjoy. And I guess maybe that's why I was put on this planet is to explain to other people that that's really none of your fucking business.

Chris (49:26): It's not. It goes back to what you said before. As long as you're not hurting yourself and hurting others, who you are is who you are.

Mike (49:32): Yeah. Otherwise, if I'm an opinionated asshole and I say, you know what? Matt's gay, and I don't wanna talk to him. Right? Because I know what's right, and he's wrong.

Mike (49:41): I would have never had two wonderful conversations about an interesting guy who wrote a cool book with a great title, brought himself out of the depths of what could have been hell for anybody else. Right. We would have never had this conversation if we had been too opinionated assholes.

Unknown Speaker (49:59): This is true. Absolutely. I agree. That's important

Unknown Speaker (50:03): for people to hear, though.

Unknown Speaker (50:06): Oh, agreed. I think

Unknown Speaker (50:07): they're way more judgmental than they give themselves credit for is what I'm

Chris (50:10): thinking. Everything. Everybody. Well well, kinda what Matt was alluding to there because I kinda felt where he's going with that with the conversation about the stoplight. Right?

Chris (50:17): So so reactionary can also be considered judgment. Right? Because you're sitting behind, you don't see the guy. And when you go behind him, his first question was you gave him grace because you're a nine year old man. So if you would have said yes to that, then then I think Matt's follow-up question would be, okay.

Chris (50:31): What if you're a six year old kid? So that in itself is gonna be considered a judgment from the from the eye of of not the eye of the beholder but you know from the from this guy looking back at you and you're giving him that snarky little look you just judged him for being an old man who's driving like this Whereas if it's a punk ass 16 year old kid who's, you know, you know, then you're still judging the kid. So regardless of what we do as humans, judging is part of our nature whether we like it or not. It's just a matter of it's just a matter of how we're judging, I think. Right?

Mike (51:07): And actually actively thinking about that. You know? It's the same thing as when people ask me, you know, how do you save money? Well, I simply, I asked myself before I spend any money, do I want this or do I need it?

Unknown Speaker (51:22): Do I need it? Yeah. Because I was

Mike (51:24): in a horrible financial situation at one time, and I had to dig myself out of it. So how am I gonna do this? Okay. We're going back to the basics. Do I want it, or do I need it?

Mike (51:34): Have to have food, have to have clothes, have to have a way to get to work, gas. Right. All those things are have to haves. Right. Don't need this podcast studio setup.

Mike (51:44): Didn't need a new car. Didn't you know, blah blah blah. So if you live your life that way long enough, eventually, you're gonna get to where you wanna be. I'm living proof. Right.

Mike (51:54): Agreed. That's the same well, that's the same concept as judgment. Right? If you work at it every day, you're going to continue to get better at deciding what matters and what doesn't matter. And very few things matter to you as a human being.

Mike (52:13): True. When it comes to other people and what they do is my point. Mhmm. That's their business.

Chris (52:20): Yeah. Agreed. So back to Matt. You're bullied as a kid. You took we got off on this whole tangent for, twenty minutes.

Chris (52:29): Your bullied as a kid as young as seven, eight years old, as as you as you continue getting older, you're continuously going to therapy forced by your parents. Right? That doesn't stop. I'm assuming.

Matt Melvin (52:43): No, it didn't stop.

Chris (52:44): Okay. So it's like, you go to this one that didn't work. Okay. Now try this one. Kind of like the, I forget what it's called, but I'm sure we've all three have seen, you know, the gay conversion stuff like, oh, I'm gonna send him to gay conversion camp because Yeah.

Chris (52:57): That's fix Okay. Yeah. That's gonna fix him. You know, he's gonna

Matt Melvin (53:01): An individual that called himself a gay cure pastor.

Unknown Speaker (53:06): Oh my I heard about that.

Unknown Speaker (53:07): Yes. Yes. Well, now it's Right?

Chris (53:13): It's kinda like the dude that did the Dateline NBC's, the Chris guy. What was his name, Mike? Remember he would do the to catch a predator? Hansen. Right.

Chris (53:21): And then he caught him and then he got busted going after an underage I I forget if it's male or female, but then he got busted in a similar sting where he was the predator. Yep. It's like it's like, dude. Like but that goes back to your thing, man. You're lukewarm.

Chris (53:35): You're walk you're not walking the walk. You're you're you're putting this out there like, hey. You know? It's kinda like the guy who put it invented the the the little potty seats for the little kids, you know, little baby potty seats. He turned up being an Asian pedophile.

Chris (53:49): Of course he did. It's crazy, man. It's absolutely crazy. But you're right, Matt. That that that minister of guy, I saw that too.

Chris (53:58): I was like, yep. There you go. It's always those. Right? It's always the ones that you think are you know, I mean, I didn't know that.

Chris (54:05): I never heard of the guy before that came out, but it's it's just one of those things like, yeah. Okay. Well, there you go.

Unknown Speaker (54:10): The reality Those

Unknown Speaker (54:11): that I think

Unknown Speaker (54:12): You never Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (54:12): Go ahead.

Matt Melvin (54:13): What a human being is capable of. Agreed. I see Agreed. Crocodile, and I've never seen a crocodile, but that crocodile will stutter you for three days. And if have this habit all three days, you will no longer be alive.

Unknown Speaker (54:29): Correct. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (54:30): That's how smart that crocodile is. Right. It's not an animal. It's very, very smart.

Unknown Speaker (54:37): Yeah. We are predators.

Chris (54:39): We are. Every one of us. It's just that we choose to be prey or be the predator. That's it. Was did the bullying let up or was it just more intensified because you were in high school with older kids around you?

Matt Melvin (55:04): I would say it was better because I was at a Catholic.

Unknown Speaker (55:08): Okay.

Unknown Speaker (55:08): Well, rather than a public school.

Chris (55:11): Okay. How how so how was the perception of being Catholic being a gay Catholic in a Catholic school? Should have been fine because they got a lot of gay priests. This but they're but they're but they're closeted, man. You didn't know father Dan was dealing with the altar boys until father Dan got

Unknown Speaker (55:27): in trouble. And they like him a lot younger than Matt is

Chris (55:29): right now. And then and then they move him, you know, 6,000 miles away because the problem's gonna be solved.

Unknown Speaker (55:34): Sorry, Matt. Sorry. Sorry. No.

Chris (55:37): Yeah. Yeah. But but okay. So you're in now you're going to Catholic high school. You're a gay you're a gay teenager in a Catholic high school.

Chris (55:43): How was that? I mean, were you were you was it was the struggle still real in that environment?

Matt Melvin (55:49): I would say yes. It's always been

Unknown Speaker (55:50): Okay.

Unknown Speaker (55:51): To fit

Unknown Speaker (55:52): in Okay.

Matt Melvin (55:52): To find my tribe.

Unknown Speaker (55:55): Yeah.

Matt Melvin (56:01): And because I didn't love myself and I allowed other people to take advantage of me.

Chris (56:07): See, now that's that that right there, you didn't love yourself. So what was it that made you not love yourself? Was it was it the the parental aspect? Was it the siblings aspect? Because it it obviously there was no real love at home because they were trying to change you.

Chris (56:20): And to me, if somebody loves you, they're not gonna try to change you. They're accepting you for who you are. Good to

Unknown Speaker (56:25): have cause you a conflict in your mind, Matt Yeah. What he just described?

Matt Melvin (56:30): I would say there was definitely a conflict. Yes.

Mike (56:33): I don't know how they're couldn't have been. Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm putting myself in your shoes as I do a lot with our guests while he's talking. And I'm like, man, if I was I'm I'm a pretty strong willed person, but when you're a little boy and they start trying to condition you, it's real hard to fight against that yet.

Mike (56:53): How do you fight against that at seven years old? You can't. Chris knows he got kicked out of his own house when he was eight, so he can No.

Unknown Speaker (57:00): I was

Unknown Speaker (57:00): yeah. Yeah. He he can attest to he understands.

Chris (57:03): I'm see That's what I'm saying. So so the mindset I can remember my mindset then. So I I just don't I can't wrap my head around that. I mean, you you can because that that to me when you're that that age and young, like my grandson, little man now is six, so he's, like, getting to that point. Right?

Chris (57:20): There when you're that young, your entire world is your family. Like, that's it. You know nothing else. So to have them just automatically in in in that way, whether they said it or not, they're telling you you're not accepted. You're going to this therapist and they're going to fix you because you're broken.

Unknown Speaker (57:42): Yep.

Chris (57:42): So you're seven years old and and everybody around you and your family is telling you you're broken. So I don't know how you're you really didn't have more of a dark life than you've had. I mean, you kudos to you for turning around. But here in this side of your life, I I mean, you were that's that's insane, man. I tried I've tried to forever write this song called broken feelings, and just I can't pin it.

Chris (58:03): I can't get it together in my head to put it together. It would be an epic, like a strange song if I could ever put it down on paper. You know that, Mike. I've worked on that for years in Nemesis. Keep going.

Chris (58:13): But it but it's one of those things that when you're broken, it's the hardest thing to to fix yourself because nobody around you is supporting you. They're all telling you you're you're broken. That's why I asked

Mike (58:24): that question because now you're on your own. Yeah. And you're deep. You're on your own you're on your own with only half your mind. Because half of you is Matt Melvin, and the other half is what my mom and dad and the therapists and the church and everybody else want, my brothers and my friends and

Unknown Speaker (58:42): And the bullies.

Unknown Speaker (58:43): That's what they all want me to be. They want me to be something different, but I'm not that person. Right? That oh my god.

Chris (58:50): I never looked at it like that with the the struggle of being that young and being gay and then having an entire family ostracize you because you don't align with their beliefs and then force feeding you into therapy

Matt Melvin (59:04): year after year. Right. They were fixers. They, they, you know, they were trying to And I I have some people in my life today that that's what they try to do, not necessarily in the aspect, but they'll try to fix my problems. And it's always a red flag when somebody's trying to fix you because there's something in their life that's going on that's causing Bingo.

Unknown Speaker (59:26): Wanna fix you.

Chris (59:27): Bingo. Does does the preacher, the minister that got busted for diddling a 14 year old who was Shaft. Yeah. Exactly. He's hiding his demons behind the door Is that her and telling right.

Unknown Speaker (59:39): And then living a double up. Yep.

Chris (59:42): Telling the world I'm here to fix. I'm here to help. I'm here to help. By the way, you know, well, Johnny's tied up in my basement. You know?

Chris (59:49): I'll see him later. Fucking assholes. I have no I have no tolerance for pedophiles.

Matt Melvin (59:54): No. Me either. Zero. And they they caught

Unknown Speaker (59:56): a zero.

Matt Melvin (59:56): There's a new choke. I'm Creditor hunters, and they caught an officer. Oh.

Unknown Speaker (1:00:01): Oh. I've heard about that. I have to watch that. He's like Were you were you so

Matt Melvin (1:00:05): The same people that investigate are gonna investigate him.

Unknown Speaker (1:00:08): Mhmm.

Matt Melvin (1:00:09): Yeah. Same thing he's like, oh, well, I know how the process works, but it's amazing to me how differently they treated him than a typical suspect. Sure. Knew he knew the whole process.

Chris (1:00:23): Sure. Now were you were you the one because we've had we had another guest on the show that spent some time in prison. So I'm I'm I'm I don't remember who made the statement, whether it was you or him, but pedophiles in prison are kinda left alone? No. Both of them.

Unknown Speaker (1:00:38): Absolutely.

Mike (1:00:41): We must not have asked him. We must not have asked him. That was Don that told us that.

Chris (1:00:46): Yeah. Yeah. So in Don's and our and our friend Don's experience in the world that he was in, he was in a different I I forget. He was somewhere I forget where he was, but they were treated differently because it was general population thing. So I think it was more of a fear, like, leave them alone type because they're whack a moles.

Chris (1:01:06): But I don't know. It'd be, you know, what the he's coming back on the show. We can ask him out again. So in your experience, though, when you were in prison, pedophiles, they were treated like pieces of shit like they should be.

Matt Melvin (1:01:17): Not as bad as they should have been in my ex so what happened with me was I would be placed in this so called mental health unit. Right. And it would turn into be a sex offender protection unit. What would happen is that I'll be labeled as a sex offender and I'm like,

Unknown Speaker (1:01:35): right. You're not a sex offender. Right. You're just gay. There's a difference, boys and girls.

Unknown Speaker (1:01:39): Gay does not mean you're a sex offender. Gay does not mean you're going out there and diddling little boys and girls. Okay. Gay just means you're gay.

Matt Melvin (1:01:45): Most sex offenders are male, white, and straight.

Mike (1:01:51): Correct. Yep. Yep. You're not gonna find too many gay pedophiles.

Chris (1:01:55): Well, John Wayne Gacy said he was bi. So, you know, he was white. Gay. And, yeah, the rights. He was straight goodbye.

Unknown Speaker (1:02:05): At James.

Unknown Speaker (1:02:05): Right. It's confusing.

Matt Melvin (1:02:06): The exception, Jeffrey Dahmer was an exception. I mean, there's

Chris (1:02:09): Well, no. But Jeffrey but Jeffrey Dahmer Jeffrey Dahmer was gay. Like, he he he he openly admitted that he was gay. Right. And he just I mean, Jeffrey Dahmer's thing, if you if you know anything about Mike and I have a stupid knowledge about this shit.

Chris (1:02:21): Dahmer just needed that. He had that void. So when he got the mannequin, when he stole the mannequin, I think that would've I think that would've caused I think that would've solved his problem. But the grandmother saw it and she freaked out, and that was the thing. That was a flip.

Chris (1:02:34): That was a switch. Like, if you ever watch criminal alliance, they used to say, oh, the trigger. You know? What not just the trigger, but what whatever it was that flipped him. That to me and watching everything I've had about Dom and and Red, He could cuddle with the mannequin.

Chris (1:02:59): Right. But he had somebody to hold. Right? He had somebody to to just hug and shit. He just needed a hug.

Chris (1:03:05): But I think that that had grandmother not done that, I don't and I don't know this is true or not, but I don't think that Dahmer would have been Dahmer had the mannequin been there because that, you know, that he just that filled that void.

Unknown Speaker (1:03:19): He was sadistic. Tortured.

Unknown Speaker (1:03:21): Well, I

Unknown Speaker (1:03:22): know, but I

Unknown Speaker (1:03:22): don't know, but we don't know, but he wasn't sadistic yet. He killed a couple animals, you know, cats and rabbits.

Unknown Speaker (1:03:27): Charge.

Unknown Speaker (1:03:28): But that doesn't necessarily mean

Matt Melvin (1:03:30): That's those are telltale signs that some

Unknown Speaker (1:03:34): Oh, I know. Know. I know.

Unknown Speaker (1:03:36): But he On this one do with telltale signs.

Mike (1:03:39): On this one, Matt, I tend to agree with Chris because in most sociopaths' lives, there is that one and he's right. There's a term for it that

Unknown Speaker (1:03:50): they use. Term.

Mike (1:03:51): But it's for lack of a better term, it's a trigger moment. Like, there's a trauma in their life that happens, whether it's they got diddled by their grandmother while she was babysitting them, so they gained a fetish for whatever she did to them. Because what happens between zero and six is imprinted into your mind more than anything at any time in your life.

Unknown Speaker (1:04:15): Yeah.

Mike (1:04:16): As a matter of fact, the reason you think your life goes faster as you get older is because you don't have as many new experiences. When I tell people that, they're like, wow. That's scientifically proven. There's people way smarter than me figured this out. I just regurgitate shit that I read or hear.

Mike (1:04:31): But when I heard that, I was like, no shit. When you're 50 years old, you're you're doing the same thing every day. You're getting up. You're making coffee. You're going to work.

Mike (1:04:39): You're coming home. You're eating. You're watching TV. You're going to bed. You're getting up.

Mike (1:04:43): You're making coffee. You're going to work. You don't have as many new experiences. When you're a kid, life is wonderful.

Unknown Speaker (1:04:49): New.

Mike (1:04:49): Every day. Described it. Your whole family is your whole world, and what they do is what you do. And then you get friends and you do new things, and then you do the same things with you know, every day is a new experience until a certain point.

Chris (1:05:02): Right. And then yeah. And you and then you're broken because your parents say you're broken. And yeah. So you so you get through high school, you graduate.

Unknown Speaker (1:05:13): Do you go to college?

Matt Melvin (1:05:15): Yes. Three different colleges.

Chris (1:05:17): Okay. Did you ever, did, did you ever graduate a degree or anything?

Unknown Speaker (1:05:20): Finally graduated. Yes.

Chris (1:05:22): Okay. What did get in?

Unknown Speaker (1:05:24): Hotel restaurant tourism management.

Unknown Speaker (1:05:26): Right on.

Unknown Speaker (1:05:27): Very

Chris (1:05:27): nice. That's cool. Cool. Go see the world, man. That's fun.

Chris (1:05:32): So after high school, you go to college, you get that done. When do you start going down the dark path?

Matt Melvin (1:05:38): Right. Right about then.

Unknown Speaker (1:05:40): Right. Right then. And okay. And what was the was there was there a reason why? Was there a trigger?

Matt Melvin (1:05:47): I always believe this is my personal belief looking at it

Unknown Speaker (1:05:52): Yeah.

Matt Melvin (1:05:52): The two years later that when I stole the car, I was getting up to a bully. I was saying, and I did it in the wrong way, I'm not gonna be bullied by anybody anymore.

Unknown Speaker (1:06:08): Okay.

Matt Melvin (1:06:10): I was tired of being taken advantage of. Mhmm. I was just sick and tired of being sick and tired of feeling Yeah. Oh.

Unknown Speaker (1:06:17): As as Ozzy Ozzy quoted that. Sick and tired of being sick and tired. Used to go to bed so high and wired. Yeah. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (1:06:24): Yeah. Yeah. But it's true, though. I've had that point in my life where you could just get you I woke up when I stopped drinking, you woke up and said, something's gotta change. You know?

Chris (1:06:32): I I don't know if I was necessarily looking at the moment saying I'm sick and tired of of who I am, but it's just I knew something had to change because of what happened the day before. So same concept. If you if if somebody's bullied from basically the age of seven until how old were you when you stole the car?

Unknown Speaker (1:06:47): 23.

Chris (1:06:48): Yeah. So there you go. Is that twenty what? Seventeen years? Is that right?

Unknown Speaker (1:06:54): Sixteen.

Chris (1:06:55): Sixteen years? Yeah. I I don't I I I don't I don't blame you for that.

Mike (1:07:01): That's a relatively short number of years in a very formative time in your life.

Chris (1:07:07): Very much so Formative time. And it could have went the other way. Right? It could have went Columbine because, you know, there's all that now. I mean, thank God, knock on wood.

Chris (1:07:15): We haven't had a lot of those incidences anymore. But, you know, those strategies that happened fifteen, twenty, thirty years ago, all of them were were kind of the kids involved in that that were behind the weapons, what were they? They were outcasts. They were bullies. They were not they were shunned by fellow students and teachers.

Chris (1:07:35): And, you know, my wife's a teacher, so I hear the stories of of kids and how they're bullied, and it's just it's mind boggling.

Mike (1:07:43): And the other thing that they have in common, and this is coming from people again, way smarter than me when I'm talking on this podcast, it's I've heard from doctors that most of them were on some kind of medication, an SSRI drug Yep. Or antianxiety Yep. Antipsychotic. I've been on those medications myself, and I can tell you from experience that what they do better than anything is cause you not to feel anything. You have no highs.

Mike (1:08:12): You have no lows. So what are you?

Unknown Speaker (1:08:15): You're a

Mike (1:08:16): You're indifferent. You're a zombie. Yeah. You're indifferent to almost everything around you, and that's why I had to get off it. I finally like Chris said, I finally woke up one day even being on those thinking and they did help me.

Mike (1:08:29): They got me through a very, you know, kind of rocky time where I was newly sober, and I could have easily went the other way. So I credit them with helping me through a certain point, but there was a a day I woke up. I'm like, I don't feel anything anymore. Right? I'm not happy.

Mike (1:08:47): I'm not sad. I'm just indifferent. So if you're indifferent and being bullied, now what are you? Yeah. Dangerous.

Unknown Speaker (1:08:58): Dangerous. Yeah. Yep.

Chris (1:09:00): Well, that's what I'm that's what I'm going back at with is with you, Matt. You just stole a car. I mean, you stole a car, granted, but you just stole a car. So it wasn't like you you you had you didn't have a kill list. You know, you handled being bullied, and I would say, I mean, the most safest way possible because you just stole a car.

Chris (1:09:22): It's a good point. You didn't you didn't didn't drive the car through the dealership or drive the car through the guy's house with the intent to harm You know, like that one chick that just got in trouble for running her car into a 100 miles an hour brick wall killing her boyfriend. Right? Like, you you dealt with how you dealt with it good or bad. It it helps define you who you are as a human being, and you wouldn't have been able to write the book and be where you are in life right now without those experiences.

Chris (1:09:45): So and I do see that when I was Googling you, I do see you're out there now doing speaking and teaching, you know, speaking engagements of teaching kids how to cope as opposed to, you know, so that's good. You know? That's awesome, in the world. You know?

Unknown Speaker (1:10:00): How often are you doing that, man?

Matt Melvin (1:10:02): Oh, I wanna speak all the time on autism. Talk to parents.

Unknown Speaker (1:10:06): Right on.

Matt Melvin (1:10:07): Yeah. You know, get kids off of video games, TV. Anything that is isolating is not healthy.

Unknown Speaker (1:10:16): Yeah. Agreed. You eat. I agree.

Matt Melvin (1:10:20): Yeah. You know, absolutely. An activity like swimming, dancing, gardening, cooking.

Unknown Speaker (1:10:27): To play an instrument.

Chris (1:10:28): Playing an instrument. Playing an instrument. Instrument. Running.

Mike (1:10:34): Yeah. Start preaching that. We need more Drawing. We need more drummers and bass players in the world. Yeah.

Chris (1:10:40): Art. Art. Welding. Use your hands, man. Use your hands.

Unknown Speaker (1:10:45): Yeah. Which then you have to use your mind when you use your hands because they go together. What's on the horizon for Matt Malvin? Completely.

Matt Melvin (1:10:56): Yeah. I mean, one of those communication networks that you can't really track, although you can re always leave a footprint wherever you go, folks.

Unknown Speaker (1:11:14): Sure. Absolutely.

Matt Melvin (1:11:15): Being anonymous.

Chris (1:11:18): Not anymore. There's no I wanna say that word fast. An anonymity. An anonymity. An anonymity.

Unknown Speaker (1:11:26): Anonymity.

Unknown Speaker (1:11:27): Anonymity. There's

Unknown Speaker (1:11:29): There's none of that. You got you got cameras everywhere. Everywhere.

Unknown Speaker (1:11:32): So? Yeah. Minimum of 10 times a day.

Chris (1:11:37): Yeah. Everywhere. It's insanity. Was Big brother.

Matt Melvin (1:11:42): Watching a show, and it was a cold case file on in Montana. And I was shocked, guys, by how many cameras were in Montana. I was Really? Really perplexed.

Mike (1:11:54): They got trail cameras everywhere in Montana.

Chris (1:11:56): Yeah. Well, I saw this thing today on Instagram. Up to 2021, there was thousand satellites orbiting. Right? And then Elon Musk, Starlink happened.

Chris (1:12:10): There's almost 14,000 satellites just in the last five years.

Mike (1:12:14): We've talked about this. We're nearing the point where we can't leave the Earth. They're so much shit orbiting the Earth.

Unknown Speaker (1:12:21): We're gonna have to press the button and just let them all fall down and start

Mike (1:12:24): with the problem with that is, yeah, then they rain down on the Earth. Or worse yet, if we blow them into a million pieces, those million pieces start orbiting the Earth.

Chris (1:12:32): Well but if they rain down on earth, it's called selective annihilation. And if you're standing there watching a satellite come down, oh, mommy, what's that? And it it crashes you onto you. Well, that's just you were dumb enough to stand there and point us

Mike (1:12:44): out in your home and it comes through your roof?

Chris (1:12:48): And Then you shoulda had a better roof. You shoulda had your roof inspected prior to things. Because they're gonna tell us they're gonna shoot down the satellites. Gonna be a worldwide thing. Trump's gonna do it.

Unknown Speaker (1:12:57): Trump's gonna do it. He's gonna be like, I'm gonna shoot down the satellites. It's better for the world. It's gonna be better. Trust me.

Unknown Speaker (1:13:02): It's gonna be huge. It's gonna be huge. Huge. Trust me. Trust me.

Chris (1:13:08): What's on the horizon for Matt Melvin? What do you got going on in the future?

Matt Melvin (1:13:11): Well, this weekend, I'm going to Philadelphia. We're gonna try to beat the Guinness World Records for the most authors signing at one time.

Unknown Speaker (1:13:20): Sweet. How many authors?

Matt Melvin (1:13:22): I don't know. That's

Unknown Speaker (1:13:23): Okay.

Unknown Speaker (1:13:24): That's sort of how do I put it? Not information that I would know.

Chris (1:13:30): Okay. Gotcha. Oh, I see. Yeah. Okay.

Chris (1:13:32): That makes sense. You gotta wait till you, yeah. So how, how, how long has your book been out now?

Unknown Speaker (1:13:38): Three, a little over three years.

Chris (1:13:41): Okay. And how is it? Are sales going well?

Unknown Speaker (1:13:44): Sales are very slow.

Unknown Speaker (1:13:46): Okay. Well, maybe the book science is gonna help you.

Unknown Speaker (1:13:48): Yes.

Chris (1:13:49): Yeah. And maybe the being back on an encore edition of the Crystal Mike show will help you. We'll put the link up everything. Let's pull you up right now while we wrap everything up here. Let's get the it's on website yet, Matt?

Unknown Speaker (1:13:59): Yeah. Did you have website yet?

Matt Melvin (1:14:03): Bullybehindbars.com.

Mike (1:14:05): Okay. I'll Okay. I'll tag that in this episode as well.

Chris (1:14:10): Bullied. Yeah. There it is. We must have looked up before. Oh, no.

Chris (1:14:13): I was on there before. Yep. There it is. Okay. I'm gonna share the screen.

Unknown Speaker (1:14:17): Screen share. So there it is, boys and girls. There's his book. You can click the button to purchase it. You can read an expert.

Chris (1:14:27): You can find them on the socials right there, all the socials. This is Instagram. In case you've been living under a box, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, which is now x, and Amazon. And this is how you connect with him. Right?

Chris (1:14:43): You can email him. There it is, bulliedbehindbarsgmail dot com. Have him come talk to your class, Have him come there's lots like in Arizona, there's a couple of schools that are dedicated to autism. So I don't know if that's like that in in where you live. Here's some other stuff he's done.

Chris (1:15:00): Are these speaking engagement stuff? Oh, look. The Chris and the Mike show. Hey. Look at those clowns.

Unknown Speaker (1:15:05): Right? There you go. I like it.

Mike (1:15:10): Yeah. I like your website. That's cool. Yeah.

Chris (1:15:15): Yeah. Very nice website, man. Good job. Lot of our guys to come on, man. They don't have they don't have websites.

Chris (1:15:20): It's like, come on. You need you need to have something to promote yourself.

Unknown Speaker (1:15:23): Yeah. Because I like to link those to the actual episode.

Unknown Speaker (1:15:26): Riley is? Say again?

Unknown Speaker (1:15:29): Doctor Forbes Riley.

Unknown Speaker (1:15:31): I do not.

Matt Melvin (1:15:32): She doesn't have a website, and she's done 2,500,000,000 in sales.

Unknown Speaker (1:15:36): Holy shit.

Unknown Speaker (1:15:37): Need a website then, Matt.

Unknown Speaker (1:15:39): Yeah. It's it's word-of-mouth.

Mike (1:15:41): Need a website. You need a website. She does not need a website. Right.

Chris (1:15:45): Once we have 2,500,000,000 followers, we don't need a website anymore either. Now we'll ditch it. We'll ditch it. We'll we'll we'll move along. So that's whoops.

Chris (1:15:54): Where'd I go? They're back up? Okay. You still see the email? Okay.

Unknown Speaker (1:16:03): Do we just where is in the gallery? So there's your gallery. There's all the things he's done. All the yeah. All the things he's done.

Chris (1:16:09): All the people he's met. Again, this is behind I'm sorry. It's not behind. It's bulliedbehindbars.com. By all means, go check it out.

Chris (1:16:19): These are all the links up top. This is the author about the author. This is way back in COVID day, Matt.

Unknown Speaker (1:16:25): It was.

Chris (1:16:26): Yeah. COVID day. How was prison during COVID? But that sucked. Even more so.

Matt Melvin (1:16:32): Prison during COVID. I'm sure it was

Unknown Speaker (1:16:33): Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Good. Yeah.

Chris (1:16:37): So there you go, boys and girls. Go purchase Matt's book, bulliedbehindbars.com. A gay Christian Trump supporter goes to prison. It's fascinating. If you didn't listen to us when we was was on the show the first time, episode one sixty five, as we just saw graciously by him showing us on his page, which is

Unknown Speaker (1:16:53): Go back and listen to that one. Right.

Chris (1:16:56): So, again, just click purchase right here. You can purchase his book. You can help support him as he goes and does all his things, and he's trying to make a difference in the world for people that are not only autistic but happen to be gay, that don't need to be broken because they're not broken. They're who they are. And if the world had a better understanding of that mindset, I think we'd have a lot less hate and violence and chaos and

Unknown Speaker (1:17:20): Yeah. Love people for who

Chris (1:17:22): they are. Exactly. You keep people are people, man. Dipesh Mode said it best. People are people.

Chris (1:17:28): Why can't why do we have to get along so I don't know. Food is leaving. That people are people, man. But it's true, though. You know?

Chris (1:17:38): We're all god's creatures, boys and girls, whether you believe in him or not. I was pointing at Mike. Mama Kay's gonna love that. Yeah. Hey.

Chris (1:17:48): So, again, bully behind bars. Go get his book, Matt Melvin. Go follow him on all his socials. I'm sure he's gonna have some other cool things he can he can share with you as as he proceeds down his path of enlightening other human beings. This was a cool conversation, man.

Chris (1:18:04): I'm I'm it it did shed some more light on on you as a human and what you've overcome. I'm so proud of you for being able to not do what you could have done on a grander scale for being bullied as long as you're bullied and being, know, broken for as long as you were broken. Agreed. I'm glad we went Yeah. I'm glad we

Mike (1:18:23): went down that road too, Matt, because it opened my eyes. I agree with Chris. Your life could have went so much further south. And kudos to you for turning it around turning it around and more kudos for going out and trying to help other kids not have to go through that. That's awesome.

Chris (1:18:43): Yeah. That and just being who you are because being a gay Trump supporter is rare. And the fact that you own that, that's that's that's that's pretty that's pretty outstanding, man. Absolutely. You know?

Chris (1:18:55): Because you're how were individuals. Right. Absolutely. Because, you know yeah. The world's a weird place right now, man.

Chris (1:19:04): So kudos. Definitely kudos to you. And, you know, if you came out to Mike and I, we wouldn't we wouldn't hate on you. We'd be like, okay. Cool.

Unknown Speaker (1:19:09): Yeah. We'd be like, that's Matt, our friend.

Chris (1:19:11): Yeah. He's gay. Because That's cool. You know? But we're we're learning we're kinda rare in that aspect.

Chris (1:19:16): You know? I don't know why. I don't know why people can't be more like that. Just be open. It's just it's just life, man.

Mike (1:19:22): It's like Lemmy from Motorhead said a hundred years ago. I do not understand racism. How can you judge a person simply based on the color of their skin? Can you not, with your own brain, determine who's an asshole and who's not? That's all you gotta do.

Mike (1:19:39): It's the same thing with sexuality. Doesn't matter if you like having sex with snails. I don't care. I think you're a cool dude. I'd go have a beer with you any day, man.

Chris (1:19:49): Now aside from the high school teacher who just or maybe it was a senator who's got in trouble because his wife picked up the the security cameras and having sex with a family dog. That that that's got another place. You gotta go away from that. Don't have sex with animals.

Mike (1:20:03): When you're someone's mother. Don't if you wanna have sex with animals, don't be someone's mother. Right. What's that, Matt?

Unknown Speaker (1:20:11): Not with kids either.

Chris (1:20:13): Right. No kids, no animals.

Unknown Speaker (1:20:15): Yeah. Strictly said no one's mother. Right.

Unknown Speaker (1:20:17): I mean,

Unknown Speaker (1:20:17): if you think

Unknown Speaker (1:20:18): No one's mother. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Melvin (1:20:19): Not, you know, watching these shows in 02/2014, there were so many chat And what happened

Unknown Speaker (1:20:28): Right? It

Unknown Speaker (1:20:30): opened itself

Unknown Speaker (1:20:30): I forgot about

Unknown Speaker (1:20:31): that. Child molesters.

Unknown Speaker (1:20:35): Yeah. I forgot about those.

Matt Melvin (1:20:37): Like hard to meet people. So it's like a Yeah. Word because Craigslist is pretty much gone.

Unknown Speaker (1:20:46): I That's because of all the human trafficking that was going on with it.

Unknown Speaker (1:20:48): That as well. Yes.

Unknown Speaker (1:20:51): Yeah. That's crazy. I never thought about it. I mean, I remember the chat rooms. I was never big in chat rooms.

Chris (1:20:55): I would go into chat rooms for writers and poets and things like that, but I never I never thought about the dark side of that. Oh, yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Boys and girls just don't don't hate on people, man.

Chris (1:21:08): Love everybody. Even if you don't like them, be nice to them because they're humans just like you. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (1:21:13): You don't have to be friends with everyone. Just be nice to them.

Chris (1:21:15): Yeah. We all start the same in in the same.

Matt Melvin (1:21:18): And if you move the the letters around in silent, it means listen.

Chris (1:21:24): Oh, that's brilliant. Gonna hit on that because that's brilliant. Chris, he's Mike. That's Matt Melvin. Bullybehindbars.com.

Chris (1:21:33): Go check out his book, support the man. He's doing good things. Until next time. If you're feeling suicidal, depressed, anxious, whatever it is, if mind's not right and you feel like you're gonna take your own life, don't do it. Go find somebody to talk to.

Chris (1:21:45): If you can't, go go for a run, go workout, go journal, go scream in a pillow, go outside and just scream, drop your lungs. It's very cathartic. I've done it before. Me too. If none of that works, text 988.

Chris (1:21:55): Somebody's there standing by to help talk you off that ledge. Do not leave a hole in somebody else's heart because you choose not to wake up tomorrow because you will impact them in ways that you can't even fathom. Be here. Tomorrow's a better day with you in it. For the Christian Mike Show, again, I'm Chris Heesemike.

Chris (1:22:10): Love you, brother. Matt Melvin, thank you so much for your time again. Appreciate you. Love you. Love your story, man.

Chris (1:22:14): Love your journey. You you've you've come a long way since being a seven years old boy who was broken. So be proud of that, man. Be proud of who you are. We are.

Unknown Speaker (1:22:24): Love you to you, brother. Thanks again, Matt. Appreciate your time. Bye, everybody.