Speaker 1: Do you know what I love is decadent Western sexual mores. Well,
Speaker 1: that actually does tie you into what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: What you were reading, Jesus Dear God when I when
Speaker 1: I logged into this call an hour late, Garrison was
Speaker 1: studiously reading reading a book by with the screen centered
Speaker 1: on the cover. We gotta bleep this out and have it,
Speaker 1: have it be the new thing that's bleeped out. I
Speaker 1: agree with that. Actually, yes, good call. That way, we
Speaker 1: can just do a whole series of jokes where we
Speaker 1: just like pill people on fascist esotericism. What a what
Speaker 1: a fun joke that would be happen here show we
Speaker 1: talk about things that could happen, of about just talking
Speaker 1: about the onslaught of of bills that have been introduced
Speaker 1: the past few months that attacking kind of trans rights
Speaker 1: and queer people in general. Yeah, so we've we've we
Speaker 1: we've heard about gay marriage, We've heard about turfs a
Speaker 1: lot the past the past few episodes, and now we're
Speaker 1: going to be kind of focusing on the Yeah, like
Speaker 1: I said, the kind of current legislation that's happened specifically
Speaker 1: within the past six months, um that I've been targeting
Speaker 1: kind of LGBTQ people in in schools, particularly that, and
Speaker 1: a lot of it's been targeted towards towards miners, teen teens, adolescents,
Speaker 1: UM and restricting the visibility and uh and kind of
Speaker 1: what's allowed to be said and mentioned in schools. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna kind of actually talk about UM books first,
Speaker 1: because a lot of this stuff is kind of tied
Speaker 1: into the critical race theory UM kind of like organizing
Speaker 1: that the right was doing. So. Yeah. The American Library
Speaker 1: Association says that between September and December alone, they received
Speaker 1: more than three thirty reports of book challenges, for which
Speaker 1: is the most over two decades in terms of people
Speaker 1: trying to restrict what books are allowed to be in schools. Boy,
Speaker 1: I experienced a book challenge lately. Tell you what, trying
Speaker 1: to read through the new James Patterson book. What do
Speaker 1: either of you know who James Patterson is? No? Was
Speaker 1: this was this was a bad idea on my back?
Speaker 1: Please continue, Garrison, I was. I was busy reading the
Speaker 1: before you logged on. I have a different interest in books.
Speaker 1: You know, actually very similar books, very similar and the
Speaker 1: Pelican brief basically identical. I have no idea how much.
Speaker 1: That's gonna get bleeped, but it's gonna be funny. Um
Speaker 1: so yeah. A Tennessee school's removal of Mars the Holocaust
Speaker 1: graphic biography became kind of the most famous example of
Speaker 1: this trend a few months ago. Um, the book was
Speaker 1: allegedly banned due to due to nudity and because of
Speaker 1: curse words. But this is kind of you know it was.
Speaker 1: They claimed it had nothing to do with actual political content. Um,
Speaker 1: it was just because of the the inappropriate images to children,
Speaker 1: which is a little a little dubious since it's all
Speaker 1: you know, starring mice. Um yeah, yeah. But the majority
Speaker 1: of challenged books have been kind of those focused on
Speaker 1: lgbt Q characters or themes. Back in November, nearly two
Speaker 1: dozen people a day we're dying from COVID nineteen in
Speaker 1: South Carolina. Thank god that god better. Thank god we
Speaker 1: knocked that ship out. But rather than try to handle
Speaker 1: the public health crisis, Governor Henry McMaster seemed more interested
Speaker 1: in pressuring the state's Department of Education to crack down
Speaker 1: on queer theme two books. He directed the Department of
Speaker 1: Education and the State Board of Education to create quote,
Speaker 1: statewide standards and directives prevent pornography and other obscene content
Speaker 1: from entering our state's public schools and libraries of the
Speaker 1: Governor said in a letter to the Superintendent of Education.
Speaker 1: Inside the letter, it was specifically targeted towards uh Maya
Speaker 1: Kobe's book Gender Queer, a Memoir UM, which is a
Speaker 1: gender queer graphic novel kind of detailing what it's what
Speaker 1: it's like to be gender queer. It's definitely popular among
Speaker 1: kind of the adult like a young adult kind of
Speaker 1: age range and and as and as a good resource
Speaker 1: for kind of gender bending type stuff. Um and it
Speaker 1: has faced a large amount of a large amount of
Speaker 1: the onslaught and like the bashing of queer books have
Speaker 1: been focused on this specific book. It's an autobiographical book
Speaker 1: based on the Bay Area non binary writer and the
Speaker 1: illustrator UM. It's been challenged and it started being challenged
Speaker 1: at one of South Carolina's nearly five hundred schools and
Speaker 1: then got banned from all of them just because people
Speaker 1: were mad at about it. At one school, it was
Speaker 1: being recommended for those in the tenth grade or higher
Speaker 1: to learn about kind of queer issues UM and it
Speaker 1: is now become one of the most banned books of
Speaker 1: this past year. It's been removed from schools in Virginia,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, Florida, North and South Carolina, Texas, and a
Speaker 1: large amount of other states in the South. Um. Speaking
Speaker 1: speaking of Texas, the Agenda Queer Graphic novel was just
Speaker 1: one part of a massive kind of horrifying purge led
Speaker 1: by Texas Republican state Representative Matt cross Uh. He he
Speaker 1: led an effort to pressure and forced schools and libraries
Speaker 1: to remove books based on a list of undesirable reads
Speaker 1: that he compiled himself. Um. The list is a sixteen
Speaker 1: page spreadsheet with over eight hundred and fifty books cataloged
Speaker 1: on Crouse's eight hundred and fifty strong list of titles
Speaker 1: that he wants spanned from Texas libraries, of them concerned
Speaker 1: LGBTQ issues. Um, it's kind of clear that what he
Speaker 1: did this, Yeah, well what what what? What? What he
Speaker 1: did to make this list is just like googling the
Speaker 1: words like queer and l g b t Q and
Speaker 1: g and trans like with book and just found a
Speaker 1: list of books that have it like mentioned to somewhere,
Speaker 1: so like a lot of so many books are just
Speaker 1: like completely a banned that aren't even really like yeah,
Speaker 1: like the list is nearly one thousand books, like log
Speaker 1: so like he was just like Google searching to like
Speaker 1: add as many books to lists as that he could.
Speaker 1: It's not actually about the content beyond the fact that
Speaker 1: the content acknowledge the existence of queer people. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: that's to the extent that he knows about the content.
Speaker 1: That's it, Like, you can't be reading all these books no,
Speaker 1: because like one of the more interesting trends that you
Speaker 1: can find on this list is that it challenges and
Speaker 1: tries to ban books that teach students like their legal rights,
Speaker 1: um like not even counting books about like reproductive rights
Speaker 1: or writes his like l g b t Q people.
Speaker 1: It also it includes in this list like titles like
Speaker 1: the Legal Atlas of the Unit in States, um Team
Speaker 1: legal Rights, Uh, the legal Rights, Yeah, equal Rights, we
Speaker 1: the students, Supreme Court cases for and about students. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is my my support for LGBTQ people
Speaker 1: is worring here with my belief that children should not
Speaker 1: know their rights because they're they're they're they're they're getting
Speaker 1: too upty. As it is, we gotta we gotta crack look,
Speaker 1: could we crack down on kids in a way that
Speaker 1: isn't bigoted, That's all I'm asking for. Nope, nope, absolutely no,
Speaker 1: we gotta slow them down. Kids. You must know your rights.
Speaker 1: And the very important thing here is that if you
Speaker 1: keep WE in your locker, the school can just search it.
Speaker 1: So don't put in your locker. If you put it
Speaker 1: in your car, they it's it's way harder for them
Speaker 1: to search it in the principles car store guns. They're wait, okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: let's um. Yeah, I'm not sure if you can find
Speaker 1: that in the legal acts less of the United States.
Speaker 1: But to be fair, Texas kids can't read that book
Speaker 1: either now, so who knows who knows what it sets? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So to Virginia, school board members kind of called for
Speaker 1: a sexual books quote unquote sexual books to be burned
Speaker 1: at a meeting last year. Um, and a lot of these,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the rhetoric around like book book
Speaker 1: burnings and book bannings was specifically tied to the kind
Speaker 1: of the effort to harass and gain support in school boards.
Speaker 1: And we saw us last year with like proud boys
Speaker 1: and extremists, and it's like other like random people who
Speaker 1: got their brains kind of warped by propaganda kind of
Speaker 1: leading these like incendiary charges against against the school board members.
Speaker 1: Some you know, the school board members got fired, like
Speaker 1: threatened with arrest just for allowing books that mentioned the
Speaker 1: existence of being queer. It was, it was, it was
Speaker 1: quite quite a problem that is now influencing this current
Speaker 1: legislative cycle. UM. In almost every case, quote unquote, like
Speaker 1: concerned parents have swarmed school board meetings and flooded kind
Speaker 1: of mailboxes with outrage over what they call pornography UM
Speaker 1: being distributed to their children. You know, people will will
Speaker 1: plaster signs with you know, scenes from the gender queer
Speaker 1: graphic novel that is like what they they they deem
Speaker 1: as being like porno like pornographic UM when it just
Speaker 1: depicts like how how like adults and young adults behave accurately,
Speaker 1: just like you can find in any like fucking like
Speaker 1: Batman comic. Like it's not like it's it's like it's
Speaker 1: like not it's it's it's it's both in line with
Speaker 1: other comic books and also like it's obviously dealing with
Speaker 1: like issues around being queer as like that's the whole
Speaker 1: point of it. So but yeah, just blasting this blasting
Speaker 1: like queerness as innately pornographic, is you know, a big,
Speaker 1: a big part of this type of propaganda push. It's it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's pretty upsetic because I mean a lot of these
Speaker 1: adults and like quote unquote parents, you know, who knows
Speaker 1: if they're actually parents. You know, it even goes and
Speaker 1: stuff to being like, you know, they're accusing librarians and
Speaker 1: teachers of being pedophiles for having this, for the having
Speaker 1: these type of materials. In Wyoming, prosecutors considered charging library
Speaker 1: staff with stalking books about sexuality, um, including like literary
Speaker 1: classics under like the sex said banner, like sex is
Speaker 1: a funny word and this book is gay. Um, but
Speaker 1: I considered charging library staff, like with cribs, for for
Speaker 1: stalking these books, which are like very typical sex said books.
Speaker 1: It's it's incredible because when I was in a Texas
Speaker 1: public school, I read all of the Wheel of Time
Speaker 1: books from my school library, and those are horny in
Speaker 1: a much much more unhealthy way than any of the
Speaker 1: books that you're talking about could possibly be described as well.
Speaker 1: You get that, you get this fun thing where it's
Speaker 1: like they're basically running the clock back on the turf
Speaker 1: arc like if you if you remember, we're talking about
Speaker 1: church in Mexico. It was okay, So the ark that
Speaker 1: they did was they were anti porn people, but then
Speaker 1: they lost anti porn wars, so they became anti trafficking people.
Speaker 1: And then when sort of turfishing came back, they went
Speaker 1: from anti trafficking back to being turfs. And it's like this,
Speaker 1: this is literally they're they're doing this whole thing in
Speaker 1: reverse right there. Their starting position is that their anti
Speaker 1: trans and they're just going back to like the anti
Speaker 1: porn stuff, but like bringing in and sort of like
Speaker 1: bringing in an anti trafficking angle, and it's it's great,
Speaker 1: It's extremely fun. Yeah, this is I would describe this
Speaker 1: is fun. This is what I consider a fun time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I know what you consider a fun time here.
Speaker 1: You do notice my my carefully place, carefully placed books
Speaker 1: on on my Yes, I'm extremely aware of that. Garrison.
Speaker 1: Harrison is reading books that will get them canceled by
Speaker 1: like five specific people if we talk about them too
Speaker 1: much on this show. That is always the fear of
Speaker 1: that's always the fear of Twitter. It's being canceled by
Speaker 1: five people. My favorite thing about doing a podcast for
Speaker 1: an audience of millions, Garrison is telling a joke that
Speaker 1: is that is precisely for you and me and making
Speaker 1: that like several minutes of content. Sorry. Um, And Oklahoma
Speaker 1: bill was introduced to the state Senate that would prohibit
Speaker 1: school libraries from keeping books that focused on sexual activity,
Speaker 1: sexual identity, or a gender identity. Um, you're gonna gonna
Speaker 1: use the word gender identity a lot. That kind of
Speaker 1: just refers to anything that even I mean, like it
Speaker 1: refers to even mentions of being cinis gender, right, because
Speaker 1: if you bring up the concept of cis gender, that
Speaker 1: infers that there is an alternative to that. So so
Speaker 1: like even any if anything even mentions being sis, it
Speaker 1: means that there must be something other. So that already
Speaker 1: falls into the gender identity kind of framework. So it's
Speaker 1: just like anything that suggests that you are that you
Speaker 1: that there's like, gender identity is not something you are
Speaker 1: innately born with and are forever, is is gonna be
Speaker 1: it's gonna be is banned and is seen as pornographic
Speaker 1: what I'm seeing or is like grooming children or whatever
Speaker 1: kind of words that they use. Um, And like all
Speaker 1: of this rhetoric is much worse for l g B
Speaker 1: two Q authors who are black or people of color.
Speaker 1: There's books like All Boys Aren't Blue by writer George M. Johnson,
Speaker 1: whose whose book led one white school board member to
Speaker 1: call the police on her own district's librarian for keeping
Speaker 1: it in stock. It's uh the the the Central York
Speaker 1: School District in Pennsylvania, and an extensive list of books
Speaker 1: last year that was almost entirely written by the authors
Speaker 1: of color. This is all the stuff has been happening,
Speaker 1: like concurrently with the anti critical race theory, like organizing
Speaker 1: in protests, which again obviously isn't about actual critical race theory,
Speaker 1: just about the suggestion that maybe racism is something that
Speaker 1: is not just an individual problem, but it's maybe kind
Speaker 1: of built into our entire culture and system of governance,
Speaker 1: UM and education. So it's it's not actual critical race theory,
Speaker 1: it's that. But I think everyone listening to this kind
Speaker 1: of already are already knows that Texas Governor Greg Abbott,
Speaker 1: which is gonna be just who's gonna be a recurring
Speaker 1: character on this episode, UM, kind of has taken this
Speaker 1: whole you know, calling the police on librarians thing, uh
Speaker 1: much further kind of demanding that the state's education agency
Speaker 1: quote investigate any criminal activity in our public schools involving
Speaker 1: the availability of pornography, a move that kind of librarians
Speaker 1: in the state fear could make them targets of criminal complaints.
Speaker 1: For again, the stalking books about sex said, or you know,
Speaker 1: stalking books that not even not not not even not
Speaker 1: even not even but like sex head, just just like
Speaker 1: books that mentioned an alternative to the heteronormative, like you
Speaker 1: are the gender that you are signed at birth, like idea,
Speaker 1: like anything other than that is now could get them
Speaker 1: in trouble. So anything that doesn't kind of fall under
Speaker 1: the Christian supremacist like worldview of sexuality and gender. It's
Speaker 1: it's not great. There's a it's so yeah, all boys
Speaker 1: aren't blue. The book written by by George M. Johnson,
Speaker 1: has been similar to the gender queer graphic novel is
Speaker 1: one of the most banned books of last year, targeted
Speaker 1: for removal in at least a fifteen states. Um, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of the organizing of these efforts kind of
Speaker 1: start online. There's like Telegram channels, Facebook groups, and then
Speaker 1: they carry over into like school board protests, and then
Speaker 1: eventually like you know, maybe some school board members will
Speaker 1: will will catch onto this and start advocating for it.
Speaker 1: Then you know, the state governor, does you know it's
Speaker 1: city city councilman. Like all of this thing is is
Speaker 1: is his whole cycle of organizing that's really picked up
Speaker 1: alongside the anti CRT stuff many many parents have seen,
Speaker 1: like Google docs or spreadsheets like the sixteen page one
Speaker 1: made by Matt Krausse of of contentious titles posted on
Speaker 1: Facebook by local chapters of organizations such as Mom's for Liberty.
Speaker 1: So people will make these giant, giant spend streets talking
Speaker 1: about books that they don't like, and then they'll get
Speaker 1: shared around on Facebook groups, Telegram channels from their librarians.
Speaker 1: Uh say that parents will ask their schools if these
Speaker 1: books are available inside libraries, and then we'll start rallying
Speaker 1: and organizing to get them banned from being available in
Speaker 1: any kind of public, public government setting, whether that be
Speaker 1: school libraries, whether it be like public libraries, whether that
Speaker 1: be like online access, all this type of stuff. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's I don't know, it's Organizing against these
Speaker 1: types of things is never the easiest thing, um, because
Speaker 1: a lot of times they these people get really get
Speaker 1: really dedicated onto this because it is such a it's
Speaker 1: it's it's the whole save the children a kind of
Speaker 1: idea which gave Q and On such strength, and Q
Speaker 1: and On is kind of taking a dip down. This
Speaker 1: stuff is taking a rise up. It's kind of it's
Speaker 1: passing over the same type of organizing principles online. As
Speaker 1: as mentioned before, the governor of South Carolina asked the
Speaker 1: state's Superintendent of Education but also it's law enforcement division,
Speaker 1: to investigate the presence of quote obscene in pornographic materials
Speaker 1: from its public schools um you know, citing the Gender
Speaker 1: and Queer graphic novel as an example that you've seen.
Speaker 1: You've seen mayors in difference in different cities withhold funding
Speaker 1: from county libraries saying that he will not release money
Speaker 1: to these candy library systems until books with lgbt Q
Speaker 1: themes are removed. It's it's pretty grim, uh, And so
Speaker 1: far efforts to bring criminal charges against librarians and educators
Speaker 1: have largely faltered, as as law enforcement officials in like
Speaker 1: Florida and Wyoming and other sites for this type of
Speaker 1: thing has been attempted. Have you know, found really no
Speaker 1: basis for criminal investigations. But still it's like the same
Speaker 1: thing for like, even even if this process gets started,
Speaker 1: it's about building like fear that it could happen to you.
Speaker 1: It's about you know, this fear that someone's always watching
Speaker 1: and someone's always wanting to report you. Um, and it's
Speaker 1: the thing that they happened with Texas and abortion. It's
Speaker 1: like trying to have like the bound hundred idea of
Speaker 1: be like parents are trying to find examples of this
Speaker 1: to report it. So then so it's like this like
Speaker 1: proactive kind of surveillance of anything that doesn't fall into
Speaker 1: the Christian supremacist idea of gender and sexuality. It's you know, now,
Speaker 1: of course that's like a specific interpretation of Christianity. I'm
Speaker 1: not not saying all Christianities like that, but it is
Speaker 1: the one of it's them in the South, it's it
Speaker 1: is like one of the bigger strains of that type
Speaker 1: of of that type of kind of religious and politic synthesis.
Speaker 1: Let's let's see. So courts have generally taken the position
Speaker 1: that libraries should not remove these books from circulation um,
Speaker 1: but sometimes due to pressure via like loss of funding
Speaker 1: or depending on how like the how much how much
Speaker 1: like who is in charge of each state's kind of
Speaker 1: education system? A lot of a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of these books have been banned and have have been
Speaker 1: pulled from many school libraries and many public libraries. Even
Speaker 1: if it doesn't like go all the way to being
Speaker 1: like you know, court mandated all of it, sometimes it
Speaker 1: doesn't need doesn't even need to get that far. So yeah,
Speaker 1: because like even if it doesn't get to the court,
Speaker 1: librarians kind of librarians have said that just the threat
Speaker 1: of having to defend against charges and having to defend
Speaker 1: against like accusations of pedophilia and grooming and all this
Speaker 1: kind of nonsense is enough to get many educators to
Speaker 1: censor themselves by just not talking these books to begin with,
Speaker 1: to avoid that whole kind of debacle, because even just
Speaker 1: the public spectacle of an accusation can be enough to
Speaker 1: like ruin someone's life inside like a small like in
Speaker 1: like a small community. Right, it's it's it's is if
Speaker 1: you know parents, if you know kids, and this is
Speaker 1: like part of your social group, it's part of like
Speaker 1: wherever you're like situated in your community. If this type
Speaker 1: of thing starts up, it can really be devastating to
Speaker 1: someone's personal life. And of obviously this is very ironic
Speaker 1: because all these same people who are trying to get
Speaker 1: get these books banned also crying and scream about like
Speaker 1: censorship and cancel culture um, while literally advocating the burning
Speaker 1: of comic books um, and even like fucking like advocating
Speaker 1: the burning of know your Rights books. So it's it's like, yes,
Speaker 1: they will cry and scream about canceler culture um, but
Speaker 1: they will do all of this stuff as well. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not right. There is no ideological consistency. They're
Speaker 1: they're they're they're not they're not trying to that's not
Speaker 1: that's that's not part of the point. It's because it's
Speaker 1: not even hypocrisy in their own eyes, because all of
Speaker 1: this is for the greater good. It's it's about protecting
Speaker 1: the innocence of children. Right. If you'll notice that a
Speaker 1: lot of these bills and efforts try to not explicitly
Speaker 1: attack books for being gay or queer. Instead, they will
Speaker 1: label them as pornographic or obscene um. Obviously, many books
Speaker 1: that conservatives will defend have just as graphic depictions of
Speaker 1: intimacy or autonic like or um or anatomy um, but
Speaker 1: usually heterosexual in nature, and alongside other kind of values
Speaker 1: that the right wants to push. Um. You know, even
Speaker 1: like the fucking Bible is more graphic than the gender
Speaker 1: queer and graphic novel um. But when conservatives say pornography,
Speaker 1: what they just mean that is any display of queerness, right,
Speaker 1: anything outside the mold of the fundamentalist Christian supremacist worldview
Speaker 1: that they're fighting for. Just like when they say banned
Speaker 1: critical race theory, they don't they don't actually mean that.
Speaker 1: What they mean is ban any discussion on racism that
Speaker 1: kind of disrupts white comfort. It's it's it's it's they
Speaker 1: they have their own framework to view this and they
Speaker 1: can justify it within their own framework, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's It should not surprise anyone that many of these
Speaker 1: queer book bannings are being organized alongside bands on books
Speaker 1: focusing on race and racism. UM. Matt Cross's sixteen page
Speaker 1: spreadsheet was was was made to accompany House Bill three
Speaker 1: nine seven nine, the so called anti CRT bill, that
Speaker 1: band's teaching of any materials that could mean quote an
Speaker 1: individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other psychological
Speaker 1: distress on account of the individual's race or sex. So
Speaker 1: just banning teaching of things that could make a medical
Speaker 1: person kind of uncomfortable, which is it seems like a
Speaker 1: great way to view education. Uh yeah, let's just skip
Speaker 1: over the parts that are uncomfortable and that I'll make
Speaker 1: a great society. Wow. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from a great article by Samantha Rydell in
Speaker 1: them dot Com quote small. Wonder then that much of
Speaker 1: the current of fervor can be traced back to the
Speaker 1: conservative group No Left Turn, founded in to ban books
Speaker 1: about racial inequality from classrooms by Elena fish Being. An
Speaker 1: a line of fish Being believes that Antifa children quote
Speaker 1: quote quote Antiva children are going to assault her kids
Speaker 1: for being white. Um. The organization No Left Turn rocketed
Speaker 1: to prominence in the anti education right wing after fish
Speaker 1: Being was interviewed by Tucker Carlson on Fox News. UM
Speaker 1: a tie, which similarly lifted like minded boat such as
Speaker 1: Moms for Liberty. No Left Turns website directs parents to
Speaker 1: a laundry list of books that they claim are used
Speaker 1: to quote indoctrinate kids into a dangerous ideology. Including a
Speaker 1: robust section on quote comprehensive sexual education. UM here that
Speaker 1: pornography lie is laid bare with over forty books whose
Speaker 1: only kind of through line is that they deal with
Speaker 1: lgbt Q themes. The picture book I Am Jazz, uh,
Speaker 1: Kate Bornstein's My Gender Workbook, and the y A novel
Speaker 1: Two Boys Kissing also included, as Margaret Atwood's The Hand
Speaker 1: The Handmaiden's Tale. UH. No Left Turn discriminately targets all
Speaker 1: these titles because they simply feature queer people having lives or,
Speaker 1: in the case of like Margaret Atwood, having their lives
Speaker 1: be ended. So after all, ideas, ideas like that might
Speaker 1: influence kids to think that they could be different right
Speaker 1: any and for conservative parents, there's no greater horror than
Speaker 1: the thought of not being able to control their children
Speaker 1: or the idea that their kids might not straight. It
Speaker 1: should come as no surprise that the grassroots campaigns quote
Speaker 1: unquote grassroots campaigns like No Left Turn are in reality
Speaker 1: links to influential conservative donors and packs like the Cato
Speaker 1: Institute and the former Federative Society Pardon Cato. Like the
Speaker 1: Cato It's named after Kato Kalin, the guy who lived
Speaker 1: behind o Ja's house. Is that true? No, it's yeah.
Speaker 1: I should have just let that. I should have just
Speaker 1: here's gonna slightly continently expand by like red string like
Speaker 1: my red string board its head by head like yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah. Cato Institute named after Kato Kalin, the guy
Speaker 1: who o j Surper bro buddy. But it should come
Speaker 1: as no surprise that the grass roots quote unquote grassroots
Speaker 1: campaigns like No Left Turn and Reality link to influential
Speaker 1: conservative donors and packs like the Cato Institute and former
Speaker 1: Federalist Society Vice president Leonard Leo. But then again, lies
Speaker 1: don't matter to the reactionary base that Republicans are hoping
Speaker 1: to rally to the front of this culture war. What
Speaker 1: matters to them is controlling the information that children have
Speaker 1: access to to obsensively keep them safe and innocent, but
Speaker 1: in truth, because they think that if kids don't know
Speaker 1: but lgbt Q identities, they won't form one. It's conversion
Speaker 1: therapy by ignorance end quote. But that that's an idea
Speaker 1: I'm going to kind of come back through, come back
Speaker 1: to a few times throughout the course of this episode.
Speaker 1: Is the idea of conversion therapy by ignorance, which really
Speaker 1: does kind of I think have introduced a really good
Speaker 1: like mental framework to understand why these things are happening,
Speaker 1: because they think if they can keep kids from learning
Speaker 1: about these things, then they won't become gay or trance.
Speaker 1: It is it's like trying to isolate them so that
Speaker 1: so that their reality tunnel is so small so that
Speaker 1: they won't hopefully will never like break out of it.
Speaker 1: Um Now, obviously, if kids feel if kids start having
Speaker 1: feel things that break that piannel, if they don't know
Speaker 1: that there's an alternative to that, that really kind of
Speaker 1: leads to things like depression and suicide, which is why
Speaker 1: it's so high among among queer kids in that region
Speaker 1: because it's like there's it's like they're fundamentally breaking realities.
Speaker 1: So it's that's hard to cope with. We're I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna it's gonna do. What's gonna do? Kind of one
Speaker 1: more segment quickly before before we haven't had break it
Speaker 1: is uh. It's it's interesting we have like a lot
Speaker 1: of the parents that have been rallying for this, UH
Speaker 1: have some interesting track records themselves. If we can even
Speaker 1: you know, go back to um UH to the Family
Speaker 1: Research Council, with Josh Dougger having the save the children
Speaker 1: idea well you know himself being a child bleicster or
Speaker 1: help bill like yeah so um. In a secondingly ironic case,
Speaker 1: a Missouri parents named Ryan Utterback was charged in December
Speaker 1: with multiple accounts of child molestation and giving and distributing
Speaker 1: pornogu fee to miners, including a child as young as four. Um.
Speaker 1: Upon his arrest, utter Back was heavily involved in the
Speaker 1: book banning advocacy, including protests against the books All Boys
Speaker 1: Aren't Blue and uh and other sex a books. Um.
Speaker 1: He he said he gave a quote before he got
Speaker 1: arrested and when he was still doing like the book
Speaker 1: banning advocacy quote, only I have the intimate understanding of
Speaker 1: what isn't isn't appropriate for my children, uh, which is
Speaker 1: quite quite the sentence to say on someone who is
Speaker 1: now arrested for a child molestation. So yeah, that's not yeah,
Speaker 1: that's uh that sucks. But yeah, so like it's it's
Speaker 1: the idea that erasing erasing documentation of queer lives and
Speaker 1: making it so that so that people to their kids
Speaker 1: only are exposed to a very kind of isolated worldview
Speaker 1: will make it easier to control um and if they
Speaker 1: don't hear about something, maybe they'll just you know, live
Speaker 1: their life as a regular straight child. And that's that's
Speaker 1: their hope. Now obviously that doesn't that doesn't really happen
Speaker 1: in practice, but that's kind of what they're working towards,
Speaker 1: and that that's why they save the children thing is
Speaker 1: so important to them, because they really do think that
Speaker 1: they can save the kid children, like they do think
Speaker 1: that they can keep keep them from this stuff. So
Speaker 1: I think there's one other reason that they're doing that
Speaker 1: specifically they focus on books too, specifically the pornographic attack,
Speaker 1: which is that these kind of like incredible hard right
Speaker 1: evangelicals are not the entire Republican base, and so that
Speaker 1: there are people who they have to convin like they
Speaker 1: have to fully radicalize into into the extermination of where people,
Speaker 1: specifically the exermination to trans people and the like. The
Speaker 1: easiest way to do that is just by constantly associating
Speaker 1: anything queer with pedophilia and with like specific tifically pedophilia
Speaker 1: and specifically grooming. And you know, these kind of campaigns
Speaker 1: like they have dual effect. They have the effect on
Speaker 1: the one hand of the actual material harm to children,
Speaker 1: and they're you know, like preventing them from having any
Speaker 1: access to anything that shows them that they could be queer.
Speaker 1: And then simultaneously it has this effect of creating this
Speaker 1: association inside of conservatives that allows you to push for
Speaker 1: even more genocidal stuff that without this they might not
Speaker 1: have been able to swallow. Yeah. Well, speaking of genocidal actions,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that one of our sponsors have contributed to
Speaker 1: at least one attempt to genocide. I mean we we
Speaker 1: are actually entirely sponsored this week by the former Indonesian
Speaker 1: dictator Suharto, So you know, big, big thank you to him.
Speaker 1: Uh Pancasila forever. And yeah, here's the matter. Ah, we're back.
Speaker 1: Don't don't don't google what Cukarno did in uh in
Speaker 1: West Popua. Hey, Hey, hey, hey, Sue hard too and
Speaker 1: Sukarno different. Yes, yes, yeah, I am very clear on this,
Speaker 1: and that's why you should not google what Zukarno did
Speaker 1: in in Papua because dear God. But we will put
Speaker 1: his patreon in the description. We will be backing his patreon.
Speaker 1: Look at the show notes for that. Um hi, welcome back.
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna segue into other types of legislation now,
Speaker 1: but still kind of focusing on the whole parents rights
Speaker 1: to decide what scientific and medical knowledge children can have
Speaker 1: access to UM in terms of like the conversion therapy
Speaker 1: by ignorance category. So we're gonna talk about they don't
Speaker 1: Say Gay bill. So Florida's House and Senate just passed
Speaker 1: the so called Don't Say Gay Bill that bands mentioned
Speaker 1: of anything other than the strict heteronormativity and the you
Speaker 1: are the gender assigned that birth kind of idea UM.
Speaker 1: For at least most of elementary school, it's banned and
Speaker 1: possibly farther reaching than that UM, with teachers also opening
Speaker 1: themselves up lawsuits if they fail to comply. It's formally
Speaker 1: known as the Parental Rates in Education Bill, and the
Speaker 1: text of the legislation states that quote classroom instruction by
Speaker 1: school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender
Speaker 1: identity may not occur in kindergarten through third grade, or
Speaker 1: in any manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally
Speaker 1: appropriate for students in accordance with state standards. So it
Speaker 1: is it is very intentionally vague for how far reaching
Speaker 1: this can be. For how much they will determine what
Speaker 1: and what isn't appropriate for grades for an up who knows. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not just it's not just limited to early grades.
Speaker 1: Classroom instruction on sexual orientation and general identity could be
Speaker 1: prohibited or at least taken to court at all grade levels, Uh,
Speaker 1: depending on what the parents find unacceptable. Right, it is,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's based on what the parents want to
Speaker 1: want to happen to to to the kids that are
Speaker 1: under their care. So it's it's specifically following kind of
Speaker 1: the framework that yeah, you can you can report something
Speaker 1: if you don't like it. So it's it's it's very
Speaker 1: much pandering to like a reactionary conservative all this stuff
Speaker 1: that conservatives said was a nightmare about, like the Stazi
Speaker 1: in East Germany and the KGB. They're like, but what
Speaker 1: if we just decentralized that, you know, and and let
Speaker 1: anyone who's a bigot report and ruin the lives of
Speaker 1: people around them for a variety of bullshit reasons. It's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's ah. And I mean, just like other states, like
Speaker 1: in Texas, the enforcement of it is not initially done
Speaker 1: by the government but is open to a concern to
Speaker 1: fanatical public, saying that parents may bring action against the
Speaker 1: school district to obtain a declaratory judgment UM, and a
Speaker 1: court may award damages an attorney's fees if it finds
Speaker 1: the school violated the measure. So there's like financial incentives
Speaker 1: for parents for this UM. The bill will come into
Speaker 1: effect on the first of July, with all school districts
Speaker 1: UM required to update their policies by at least June.
Speaker 1: There was there was also a proposed amendment that would
Speaker 1: have required schools and educators to report if they knew
Speaker 1: or suspected a child was lgbt Q to their parents
Speaker 1: within six weeks of learning. That UM, so within six
Speaker 1: weeks of learning, if they're not sis or straight, they
Speaker 1: would have to be reported to the parents. UM. But
Speaker 1: that that part was withdrawn before the bill reached the House.
Speaker 1: But in terms of like this is the type of
Speaker 1: thing that well, this is that like the legislators are
Speaker 1: thinking of. When it became increasingly apparent that the bill
Speaker 1: was going to be passed no matter what, UH, a Democrat,
Speaker 1: Chevin Jones, the first openly gay Florida state senator, tried
Speaker 1: to amend the bill to narrow the language to say
Speaker 1: that in classroom instruction should not be intended to change
Speaker 1: students sexual orientation or gender identity, and specifically not marginalized
Speaker 1: queer people, and instead just limit the bill to itach
Speaker 1: appropriate sex said, and that amendment obviously failed, with Dennis Backley,
Speaker 1: the bill's main sponsor, saying that it would significantly gut
Speaker 1: the bill's intent. So it's it's it's it's specifically to
Speaker 1: suppress knowledge of being queer. That is, that is the
Speaker 1: whole that's the whole point of the bill. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean the the governor claims that the bill addresses
Speaker 1: quote sexual stuff and quote telling kids that they may
Speaker 1: be able to pick genders and all that, uh, saying
Speaker 1: that that has nothing to do like this is nothing
Speaker 1: to do with sex at all, like literally nothing. It's
Speaker 1: like but nothing, it's but they still do it, like
Speaker 1: the pornographic obscene kind of category because like it's right,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing like if you show gay people kissing,
Speaker 1: that is sexual. If you show story people kissing, that
Speaker 1: isn't right. It's it's being queer as innately more obscene.
Speaker 1: It is it is, it is it is so much
Speaker 1: more of an issue. Rana Santas governor also said, like
Speaker 1: how many parents want their kindergarteners to have transjagenderism or
Speaker 1: something injected into their school discussion? Um, but that's so
Speaker 1: that type of stuff he says that like press conferences
Speaker 1: and stuff. So yeah, it is. It is very clear
Speaker 1: that the bill is targeted specifically towards gay people, um,
Speaker 1: and being trans or being queer, being non sis, non straight,
Speaker 1: that whole that that that whole category. Um. The governor's
Speaker 1: press secretary called it the anti grooming bill. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: reviving the type of like you know, whether that LGBT
Speaker 1: attacks have had for years, suggesting that you know, being
Speaker 1: gay means that you are a pedophile or being trans
Speaker 1: means that you're a pedophile. It ties in with this
Speaker 1: thing you'll see in like the far right and the
Speaker 1: libertarian right, where people who have like kill your local
Speaker 1: pedophile bumper stickers and stuff because you can't argue with like, yeah,
Speaker 1: pedophiles are are the worst. That's horrible, But you don't
Speaker 1: actually mean people who molest children. You mean people who
Speaker 1: live in a way that you consider obscene, which are
Speaker 1: equating with pedophilias that you can justify murdering those people
Speaker 1: eventually yep, uh yeah, and when and when when confronted
Speaker 1: with the the actual pedophiles, they literally don't do ship well.
Speaker 1: They are off Like Andy No, for a great example,
Speaker 1: has regularly hung out around a specific I think a
Speaker 1: most lee is his name pedophile. The longest serving Republican
Speaker 1: Speaker of the House was a pedophile and passive scale
Speaker 1: dinn it Dennis Haster d hast that's what that? Um,
Speaker 1: that's what that? What's that German band? This would have
Speaker 1: been a decent joke if I remember their name right
Speaker 1: away Romstein. Yeah, well I sucked it up, okay, so anyway,
Speaker 1: please please continue. So yeah, but like they don't say
Speaker 1: gay bill tries even less than some of the like
Speaker 1: school book bands to hide behind the defense of prohibiting pornography.
Speaker 1: Like it just says the quiet part out loud, you know,
Speaker 1: saying that this bill is grounded in the belief the
Speaker 1: loud part out loud. Yeah, yeah, I like the bills
Speaker 1: just grounded in the belief that LGBTQ people simply by
Speaker 1: exist thing are a threat to like children and must
Speaker 1: be completely arrased. Like that's that's the whole that's the whole. Idea.
Speaker 1: Following several hours of debate ahead of the vote in
Speaker 1: the Senate, a bill sponsor Atlanta Garcia claimed that quote,
Speaker 1: gay is not a permanent thing, and l g b
Speaker 1: t Q is not a permanent thing. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the type of like commercial therapy by ignorance thing. A
Speaker 1: lot of these people have advocated for conversion therapy to
Speaker 1: be legalized in the past or re legalized in the past.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they just they just don't want gay people
Speaker 1: to be around because they find the nikki. So it's
Speaker 1: it's not it's not just Florida though, right the fears
Speaker 1: with like hyper focusing on you know, just justin, justin,
Speaker 1: don't say gay bill in Florida kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: it ignores a lot of the other stuff that's happening
Speaker 1: across the entire country if you do when you're just
Speaker 1: focusing on state because they are like fifteen similar bills
Speaker 1: moving through state legislators that are strict how textbooks and
Speaker 1: curriculums are allowed to teach lgbt Q topics and and
Speaker 1: like who can be hired as teachers and what are
Speaker 1: what are like what's allowed to be said when it
Speaker 1: comes to genderal identity and sexual orientation. All like stuff
Speaker 1: is happening all across the country. UM. A house bill
Speaker 1: in Tennessee would ban textbook and instructural materials that promote
Speaker 1: normalized support or address lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender lifestyles
Speaker 1: quote unquote um in in in k three twelve schools.
Speaker 1: So also also high school um in in UH. In Kansas,
Speaker 1: there's a bill that seeks to amend the state's obsidity
Speaker 1: laws to make using classroom materials depicting homosexuality a class
Speaker 1: B misdemeanor. UH Legislators in Indiana are working to bar
Speaker 1: educators from discussing any content about sexual orientation, quote, transgenderism,
Speaker 1: or general identity without permission from parents. In Oklahoma, there's
Speaker 1: a senate bill that would ban public schools from employing
Speaker 1: anyone who quote promotes positions in the classroom or any
Speaker 1: or any function of the public school that is the
Speaker 1: opposition to the closely held religious beliefs of students. So
Speaker 1: that's that's interesting framing there. Yeah, and again we need
Speaker 1: to be very clear about this when like, when these
Speaker 1: people say deeply have religious beliefs, they mean fundamentalist Christianity.
Speaker 1: They're there, these people are very specifically attempting to turn
Speaker 1: the state into a Christian at those state, and this
Speaker 1: is the ship that they used to do it. And
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's it's it's grim. We can look at
Speaker 1: like a recent report from the Trevor Project UM which
Speaker 1: is an lgbt Q suicide prevention and crisis internation group,
Speaker 1: and they did a recent report finding that l g
Speaker 1: B t Q youth who learn about l g b
Speaker 1: t Q people or l g b t Q issues
Speaker 1: in the school have a tecent lower odds of reporting
Speaker 1: a suicide attempt in the past year. So just that,
Speaker 1: like the knowledge that there is an alternative is like
Speaker 1: is life changing for people, right, the ability to to
Speaker 1: read eyes that there are other reality tunnels is can
Speaker 1: save people's lives, like it is Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: like I I watched this happen like my my public school,
Speaker 1: Like I was in a public school, but I was
Speaker 1: in public school in a really conservative area. The only
Speaker 1: time anyone even mentioned being gay was screaming about gay marriage.
Speaker 1: And like we fucking saw some ship, Like a lot
Speaker 1: of extremely bad things happened to the queer kids. They're
Speaker 1: including me, like it yeah, like this this This stuff
Speaker 1: kills people. It stilf hurts people. It is I think
Speaker 1: that's that people in like more blue states don't quite understand,
Speaker 1: is how how absolute this type of thing is, like
Speaker 1: living in these communities, How how narrow your version of
Speaker 1: reality is, Like how how everything you're exposed to is
Speaker 1: so hyper focused that even knowledge of an alternative can
Speaker 1: be so mind blowing that it really is important to
Speaker 1: have at least this to be knowledgeable, because yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of people who you know, a lot of people
Speaker 1: may not have access to the Internet in the same way.
Speaker 1: It's like a lot of these groups, especially like especially
Speaker 1: Christian groups specifically have like like you know, services that
Speaker 1: you can buy to like suppress websites on your WiFi.
Speaker 1: Writers is that only you're only available to access like
Speaker 1: certain websites like like like, it is a whole effort
Speaker 1: to restrict the reality that kids are exposed to two
Speaker 1: kind of railroad them into this hyper specific, kind of
Speaker 1: heteroonormative idea of existence. So yeah, any type of thing
Speaker 1: that breaks these kids out of out of these reality
Speaker 1: tunnels can can be life changing, which is why they're
Speaker 1: trying to ban all these books of libraries because yeah,
Speaker 1: even if you even if you block websites, even if
Speaker 1: you were strict internet access, even if you were strict
Speaker 1: what can be taught in schools? You know, there's the
Speaker 1: fear of what if a kid goes to a library
Speaker 1: and finds a book about being gay? Then oh wow,
Speaker 1: that could that would you know, undo all of the
Speaker 1: effort that undo the thousands of dollars we spend on
Speaker 1: blocking internet access to two websites. So like, that's why
Speaker 1: they're talking about like libraries and stuff is because yeah,
Speaker 1: if they find out about this stuff anywhere, then they
Speaker 1: gonna be in trouble. Like that's that's it's the whole
Speaker 1: point of like isolating people, isolating what they view as possible. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna talking about some Uh, we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna talk money, money, money, money. Uh. The
Speaker 1: other thing that they don't say. Gay Bill has highlighted
Speaker 1: is the extent to which big businesses and corporate America
Speaker 1: is financially funding many of these recent efforts to hack
Speaker 1: away queer rights. Uh. This has kind of been like
Speaker 1: a back and forth thing, though, especially if you look
Speaker 1: back in the past few years under the Trump era.
Speaker 1: Let's take the North Carolina Bathroom Bill for example, arguably
Speaker 1: the opening act for the current onslaught of socially conservative
Speaker 1: legislation targeting and trans people. Remember this was like right
Speaker 1: after the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. So this
Speaker 1: is when the needle starts to shift towards trans people.
Speaker 1: This is the bill that said that you have to
Speaker 1: use the bathroom assigned at matching the gender you were
Speaker 1: assigned at burg on your certificate. All types of stuff, um,
Speaker 1: putting again unspoken bigotry, us oaken stuff. You know, you
Speaker 1: could be you know, arrested or harassed for doing this previously.
Speaker 1: But it's like putting this type of idea into concrete law. Right,
Speaker 1: this is once once progress starts, there's this like back
Speaker 1: pedaling so that they you know, they put they put that,
Speaker 1: they put what was once like unspoken bigotry and just
Speaker 1: like obvious bigotry into actual written law. Um, it's like
Speaker 1: make making it concrete. So during the bathroom bill kind
Speaker 1: of whole thing in North Carolina, um, we saw corporations
Speaker 1: trying to stay conscious of culture shifts, attempting to stay
Speaker 1: on the sympathetic side of the rising generations. Who would
Speaker 1: you know, become their future employees and customers, trying to
Speaker 1: appeal to them and keeping that in mind. So in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of the passage of the bathroom Bill, multiple
Speaker 1: companies like PayPal, Adidas, Doutche, Bank Um all rescinded plans
Speaker 1: to invest in the state wild to Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: if there's if there's evil going on, Deutsche Bank is
Speaker 1: providing money to make it. Yeah, it's it's it's it's stunning,
Speaker 1: Like how bad you have to be that Deutsche Bank
Speaker 1: is Like no, I like like every every person who's
Speaker 1: like Russia yet like like Deutsa Bank like before, like
Speaker 1: I knew someone who worked there who two of his
Speaker 1: coworkers like started like doing audits of their accounts and
Speaker 1: both of them wound up dead in their hotel rooms.
Speaker 1: Non extradition countries. Yeah that scans yeah, like even okay,
Speaker 1: So yeah, Deutsche Bank initially said they weren't gonna pull
Speaker 1: out of Russia, but like two days ago, as we
Speaker 1: record this started pulling out. But they pulled out in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. They pulled North Carolina. Jesus Christ, big, big, big.
Speaker 1: You know. There's a degree to which is probably just
Speaker 1: like that raytheon Energy where it's like Raytheon, We're great
Speaker 1: with trans people. Exact, you're making missiles, then you're fine. Exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean big musical artists like Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam
Speaker 1: and a former former R E M member Ringo star
Speaker 1: kesled concerts there. Did you call Ringo star a member
Speaker 1: of R E M. Garrison the the n C double
Speaker 1: A announced it was that was championship durn Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: If you'd lived through the nineties, you would never make
Speaker 1: fun of Michael Stipe again. At the National Basketball Association
Speaker 1: pulled its All Star game from Charlotte. Almost seventy companies,
Speaker 1: Joy did a lawsuit against the bill. UM and you know,
Speaker 1: money talks. The pressure worked. The state repealed the law
Speaker 1: in twenty's seventeen UH the same year I brought a
Speaker 1: coalition of business leaders in Texas blocked a similar bill
Speaker 1: pushed by these Tonchley conservative then Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan
Speaker 1: Patrick UM And we've seen the same type of thing
Speaker 1: happened in Georgia the past few years, UM with with
Speaker 1: actions like Corporate Boycott's many large employeers pushing back on
Speaker 1: the succession of socially conservative bills, including like racist voting restrictions,
Speaker 1: six week abortion bands, and quote religious freedom bills that
Speaker 1: would give businesses protection to refuse customers or higher employees
Speaker 1: that are queer. UM. Prominent in that resistance was a Disney,
Speaker 1: which cast a long shadow over Georgia's economy via its
Speaker 1: filming of Marvel movies inside Atlanta. Yeah so yeah. Across
Speaker 1: many states, big corporate brands were quick to condemn obviously
Speaker 1: bigoted political moves. UM. Prominent Tennessee employeers like Nissan, del Amazon,
Speaker 1: and Vandorbilt University sent a since sent a letter last
Speaker 1: year opposing a suite of bills targeting LGBTQ rights, and
Speaker 1: a similarly, a group of Texas businesses business leaders declared
Speaker 1: opposition to Governor Greg Abbotts recent directive to investigate parents
Speaker 1: and others who provide transition treatment for for transgender youth.
Speaker 1: But after Trump got out of office, and particularly during
Speaker 1: this recent round of a tax on queer rights, companies
Speaker 1: have not really been backing up their words with any
Speaker 1: equivalent actions. After Tennessee last year past all the bills
Speaker 1: that targeted lgbt Q rights, including measures restricting classroom discussion,
Speaker 1: um barring trans girls from any high school sports and
Speaker 1: it's and its own version of like the bathroom bill,
Speaker 1: it faced nothing like the North Carolina boycotts. There was,
Speaker 1: there was, There was just nothing because this is when
Speaker 1: Biden was president. Now, um so, whether it be the
Speaker 1: anti c r T stuff, voting restrictions, or stepping away
Speaker 1: lgbt Q rights the past year under Joe Biden, companies
Speaker 1: are not really bothered to push back on these socially
Speaker 1: conservative bills were taking many states. It's it's they don't
Speaker 1: it's it's easier to push back. But it's easier to
Speaker 1: push back on something when you know when you have
Speaker 1: a big bad in office. I guess, uh well, and
Speaker 1: I think also it's it's the companies can see which
Speaker 1: way the wind is blowing, right, Yeah, Like it's a
Speaker 1: sa standing with grifters when you when you when you
Speaker 1: watch people like when you watch stream races, like suddenly
Speaker 1: start to flip the political positions. When you when you
Speaker 1: watch the love the live streamers in particularly do this.
Speaker 1: When you watch them starting to flip that that's how
Speaker 1: you can tell which way the wind is blowing. And
Speaker 1: this is really fucking scary because you know the way
Speaker 1: the wind is blowing right now that that these corporations
Speaker 1: are are are you know, drifting towards is just you know,
Speaker 1: refusing to oppose is just this exterminationism. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: so thankfully Disney got you know, shouted to like we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about so creators of the movie Song
Speaker 1: of the South. UM. Was notable that in their refusal
Speaker 1: to criticize the bill as it moved through the legislator
Speaker 1: under um the kind of recent stuff inside Florida specifically so,
Speaker 1: but this was part of an overall pattern, like the
Speaker 1: corporate response was was much more muted to they go
Speaker 1: to they don't say gay bill um in Florida compared
Speaker 1: to other stuff across across the country even UM and
Speaker 1: it shouldn't really surprise any uh many of the Republican
Speaker 1: backers of the bill in Florida are actually bankrolled by
Speaker 1: the varou same businesses that have done performative virtue signally
Speaker 1: boycott's and protests under the TROUMP era. UH. Disney and
Speaker 1: Disney World in Orlando is one of the state's biggest
Speaker 1: employers and an enormous economic force inside Florida. And when
Speaker 1: disney silence was met with pushback, Bob Chapeck, the CEO,
Speaker 1: try to kind of do damage control at first, like
Speaker 1: internally within the company and then for outside press. UM
Speaker 1: last Monday, I think, which was the seventh UM in
Speaker 1: a in a In a memo to Disney staff, Chapec
Speaker 1: argued that the company can do more to promote tolerance
Speaker 1: quote through the inspiring content we produce and the welcoming
Speaker 1: culture we create and the diverse community of organizations we support. UM,
Speaker 1: which is funny if you know anything about the history
Speaker 1: of Disney, also saying that the messages in their movies
Speaker 1: are more powerful than any law being effort, which is
Speaker 1: uh yeah, which is also you know, great coming from
Speaker 1: the company most famous for queer coding almost all of
Speaker 1: their filings. Uh so sure, sure, bob Um. Two days later, UM,
Speaker 1: at a shareholder meeting, was a little more open and
Speaker 1: told told shareholders that the company had privately opposed to
Speaker 1: the bill. UM, and we'll trying to explain why the
Speaker 1: silence in the recent legislative efforts to attack lgbt P
Speaker 1: LGBTQ people. He said that we chose not to take
Speaker 1: a public position on the bill because we felt like
Speaker 1: we could be more effective working behind the scenes. Engaging
Speaker 1: directly with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. But
Speaker 1: it uh, it later came out that Speck had only
Speaker 1: reached out to Florida Governor Randa Centers just that morning
Speaker 1: after the bill had already had already passed. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we need that cat from Saga that just yells lies. Yes,
Speaker 1: lying cats my favorite. UM definitely appreciate lying cat lying. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So of course none of this satisfied anybody, UM, and
Speaker 1: there's been increasing pushback from both within the Disney Company
Speaker 1: and outside UM. Pixar sent a letter to JPEC criticizing
Speaker 1: his wishy washy stance on the on the on the
Speaker 1: don't say gay bill, and even goes on even goes
Speaker 1: on to goes on to criticize the corporation for capitalizing
Speaker 1: on pride through like a through rainbow mickey merchandizing and stuff, uh, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: it feels terrible to be part of a company that
Speaker 1: makes money from pride merch when it when it chooses
Speaker 1: to step back in times of our greatest need and
Speaker 1: when our rights are at risk, says the Pixar letter.
Speaker 1: So yeah, after after aw if you did after the
Speaker 1: shareholder meeting, Jpeck said third times the charm and tried
Speaker 1: again to save face, announcing the company would immediately be
Speaker 1: and supporting efforts to combat similar legislation in other states,
Speaker 1: and would pause all political donations in the state pending
Speaker 1: a review of the company's political giving. UM conceding that
Speaker 1: the company failed to be a stronger ally in the
Speaker 1: fight for equal rights, and all that is well and
Speaker 1: good if you ignore the fact that in the past
Speaker 1: two years alone, Disney has given three thousand dollars to
Speaker 1: politicians in Florida who voted for the Don't Say Gay Bill.
Speaker 1: UM Disney Entities donated at least four thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: the re election campaigns for the bill's chief sponsors, state
Speaker 1: Representative Joe Harding and state Sponsor Dennis Baxley. UM and
Speaker 1: Disney Entities also donated fifty dollars to political action committee
Speaker 1: tied to the governor, Rhonda Santa's one so just last year.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's a that's a lot of money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think I think it's worth like noting for
Speaker 1: people who like are somewhat younger, which is that like
Speaker 1: there's a whole thing where corporations pretend that they like
Speaker 1: queer people now and this is the thing that has
Speaker 1: existed for maybe a decade, and the other several hundred
Speaker 1: years of capitalism are them like ruthless lee crushing queer
Speaker 1: people of all kinds. So yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: their normal state. Queer capitalism is like not a thing.
Speaker 1: It's a It's a thing that exists solely to sell
Speaker 1: you sweatshirts. It's not a thing. Get that rainbow Mickey merchandise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they want they are actively okay with funding people who
Speaker 1: want to kill you. So so as as I as
Speaker 1: I was writing this, UM last week tonight the show
Speaker 1: with Jonathan Oliver came out with a small piece that
Speaker 1: was covering similar ground, uh to to my writing. That
Speaker 1: also included some nice, nice, nice background on Disney sponsored
Speaker 1: politician and lead sponsor. If they don't say gay bill
Speaker 1: that Dennis Baxley. Um, so yeah, apparently Baxley has said
Speaker 1: that quote abortion is causing Europeans to be replaced by
Speaker 1: immigrant Disney's going back from its Nazi roots. Nice little
Speaker 1: white replacement lie. Um. He worked on bills to repeal
Speaker 1: protections for queer workers and worked to relegalize gay conversion therapy.
Speaker 1: UM and at some kind of fundraising event he said
Speaker 1: that quote. I know some districts where there's a big
Speaker 1: infestation of homosexuals that were pushing their agenda under the
Speaker 1: screen and then trying to get more people hired like
Speaker 1: them instead up gay adoptions and all this stuff. It's
Speaker 1: a continual fight for the values that we hold dear boy,
Speaker 1: brought to you, brought to you by Disney and yeah,
Speaker 1: take ticket infestation. Yeah, it's a yeah, take take take
Speaker 1: none of the use of the infestation there. Um, that
Speaker 1: kind of ties into my whole, my whole like a viewing,
Speaker 1: you know, queerness as a contagion kind of idea well,
Speaker 1: which I mean viewing the enemy is a contagion is
Speaker 1: also older than just viewing queer people as a contagion,
Speaker 1: because it's exactly how Hitler talked about the Jews, and
Speaker 1: you know, it goes we can look at like some
Speaker 1: of the things the Turks would say about Armenians. It's
Speaker 1: this idea of you know, you there's no there's no
Speaker 1: middle ground with a virus, and if you turn people
Speaker 1: into a virus, then you don't have to consider a
Speaker 1: middle ground. Um. So before we go and break I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna do one more. I'm gonna do A
Speaker 1: quote from an article in The Atlantic UM titled want
Speaker 1: to understand the Red State onslaught Look at Florida. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a deccent article kind of
Speaker 1: going through the financial stuff that Disney has kind of backed. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, quote. Why have so many companies backed away
Speaker 1: from these fights? The fights against the legislation? Some corporate
Speaker 1: lobbyists I spoke with said that one reason is that
Speaker 1: they believe the public opposition is counterproductive because more Republican
Speaker 1: elected officials in the Donald Trump era find it politically
Speaker 1: valuable to be seen as fighting big companies. Businesses also
Speaker 1: frequently complained that the widening gulf between the parties leaves
Speaker 1: them in a lose lose position of alienating an important
Speaker 1: block of potential customers wherever they come down on policy debates.
Speaker 1: UM activists will point out that business is often try
Speaker 1: to have both ways by rhetorically identifying with causes such
Speaker 1: as inclusion and diversity without taking any tangible steps to
Speaker 1: defend them. Another factor probably looms larger than any of
Speaker 1: these considerations, however much they want to publicly align with
Speaker 1: the values of younger customers and consumers and workers. Big
Speaker 1: companies want to only want to go only so far
Speaker 1: and fighting these proposals because they still mostly prefer Republicans
Speaker 1: and control of state governments to deliver the low tax
Speaker 1: like regulation policies that they favor. State Republicans have, in turn,
Speaker 1: have grown more overt about threatening those beliefs when business
Speaker 1: leaders raise objections to the cultural war components of their agenda.
Speaker 1: When American Airlines criticize the restrictive voting bill in Texas
Speaker 1: past last year, Lieutenant Governor Patrick openly threatened to kill
Speaker 1: other legislation the company had cared about. So yeah, like, obviously,
Speaker 1: companies want Republicans to be in charge because it will
Speaker 1: make it easier to run their big giant corporate businesses
Speaker 1: that basically are as powerful a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of other like government entities. Uh so, yeah, they're gonna
Speaker 1: spend supporting Rhonda Santis. They're gonna spend dollars in the
Speaker 1: past the past two years supporting all these Republican candidates
Speaker 1: that voted for for they don't say, gay bill, because
Speaker 1: that makes them more profit in the long run. And
Speaker 1: that's you know, if you're if you're running a business.
Speaker 1: That's what they want. So yep, that is uh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna we're We're gonna take another ad break and then
Speaker 1: we will we will come back to talk about Texas
Speaker 1: and and and bathroom bills and healthcare and all of
Speaker 1: the other kind of stuff that's happened in recent weeks. Yeah, hello,
Speaker 1: we are back. Sorry, I was, I was taking some
Speaker 1: time to listen to my favorite Ringo Star RM album
Speaker 1: in the break in between reading books by It's a
Speaker 1: really good combo of the media. How how dare you
Speaker 1: not the not properly appreciating Michael Stipe, the voice of
Speaker 1: several generations, Michael Stiper Michael Stipe, Yeah, so he was.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I I really like the Black Keys.
Speaker 1: So anyway, um, I'm gonna make more bad music jokes
Speaker 1: or I could continue my script. Yeah, please continue. We
Speaker 1: don't have to talk about all of the wonderful contributions
Speaker 1: your generation is made to music like uh like you
Speaker 1: two with hit Like You two, Fame Zoomer Bands, you
Speaker 1: two with hit Man. George Harrison, m Yep, you gonna
Speaker 1: make a lot of people happy, Garrison, a lot of
Speaker 1: people real happy. At least everyone states have introduced bills
Speaker 1: that would ban trans athletes from competing in sports that
Speaker 1: correspond to their gender identities UM. Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee have
Speaker 1: already signed such bills into law. At the start of
Speaker 1: this year, new restructions were put into place for for
Speaker 1: in in Texas to also restrict UM what K through
Speaker 1: twelve school sports people can be on now, making them
Speaker 1: specifically match they're sex listed on their birth certificate at
Speaker 1: a your time of birth UM and even when the
Speaker 1: states who don't just have blanket bands. There's other horrifying
Speaker 1: things happening, like in the beginning of last February, it
Speaker 1: came out that the Utah Republicans are making UH have
Speaker 1: proposed a commission to analyze the bodies of trans kids
Speaker 1: that would determine student athletes eligibility on a case by
Speaker 1: case basis, with having the authority to establish a explain
Speaker 1: range for fiscal characteristics affected by puberty, banning schools school
Speaker 1: school athletes who do not fall within these established limits
Speaker 1: from participating in generate sports UM. Also a non fun
Speaker 1: fun side side but about the bill is that in
Speaker 1: their efforts to analyze the bodies of trans kids, the
Speaker 1: bill would also remember the commission immune from any lawsuit
Speaker 1: with respect to all acts done and actions taken in
Speaker 1: good faith and carrying out their purposes. Um. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: this is this is something that I think is really
Speaker 1: common specifically with transphobia, which is that like all of
Speaker 1: the rhetoric about transphobia is about sort of like like
Speaker 1: a huge amount of it's about molestation. Here's about amount
Speaker 1: amount of it's about pedophilia, and then a specifically with
Speaker 1: the most station part, it's like yeah, okay, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna have this council, right, we're gonna have we're gonna
Speaker 1: have this commission that these people are gonna they're they're
Speaker 1: going to just like they're going to molest these kids, right.
Speaker 1: But like this this is just something that happened to
Speaker 1: the transpeople constant, like the t s A like constantly.
Speaker 1: It's just an enormal engine for just like like socially
Speaker 1: abusing every single trans person who goes who goes into
Speaker 1: an airport, Like I've definitely had not fun experiences at
Speaker 1: the airport the past few times. Like this is this
Speaker 1: is the thing is It's like it's it's they they
Speaker 1: impose as a sanction on trans people, the things that
Speaker 1: they claim trans people are doing yes, and it's it is.
Speaker 1: And it's also interesting you'll find how many of these
Speaker 1: kind of bill sponsors politicians, um, eventually have it come
Speaker 1: out that like they watch a lot of like trans
Speaker 1: pornography and stuff. It's like it's it's all it's all fake,
Speaker 1: like all like everything, like everything they say they don't
Speaker 1: actually mean. It's all about the culture war. It's all
Speaker 1: about all the fucking like save the children's stuff. It's
Speaker 1: all in opposite that they can get elected into politics. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this with like that with like the
Speaker 1: with the Texas thing, how all of the big New
Speaker 1: Texas stuff happened like days before the primary election because
Speaker 1: they were being challenged by by by other politicians that
Speaker 1: were farther to the right of them. So it's all
Speaker 1: like a political ploy. But the problem is is that
Speaker 1: at certain points, because of how long the culture war
Speaker 1: kind of idea has been going, there's people who you know,
Speaker 1: sincerely bought into the idea of the of the cultural
Speaker 1: war now themselves running for office. Um. So like it
Speaker 1: is like they do actually genuinely believe the things now
Speaker 1: it is it is like it is like a full
Speaker 1: circle thing of things that were just you know, just
Speaker 1: to get votes initially, like things that weren't really believe sincerely,
Speaker 1: just just to hold votes. But now people who were
Speaker 1: brought up in that whole political idea are starting to
Speaker 1: run for office who do actually believe those in those
Speaker 1: things that sincerely So now it's it's leading, its leading
Speaker 1: to a whole new kind of onslade of rights because
Speaker 1: these people have just escalated and accelerated the whole culture
Speaker 1: war idea. Yeah. Well, and and the other thing is
Speaker 1: like they've linked up with people who, like people whose
Speaker 1: politics at the church or people whose politics have specifically
Speaker 1: been about eliminating trans people for like half a century.
Speaker 1: Right Like there there's there's the linkages that are being
Speaker 1: formed between people who have sort of like you know,
Speaker 1: between these militantly anti trans organizations in between sort of
Speaker 1: these people who buy into this, like either who are
Speaker 1: very who who are cynically deploying the sort of the
Speaker 1: sort of Christian supremacist rhetoric, or the people who are
Speaker 1: just actual like Christian fascists. Right like, these people like
Speaker 1: these people are goying together to the point where it
Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't really matter why they're doing it, Okay,
Speaker 1: at certain points, like the reason why specifically they're doing
Speaker 1: it becomes immaterial and you're just sort of left with
Speaker 1: the things that they are doing. Yeah, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: and there's just been so much of it the past
Speaker 1: the past year, specifically like over like overall, more than
Speaker 1: one hundred bills designed to restrict the rights of transgender
Speaker 1: of transgender people have been introduced in at least thirty
Speaker 1: three states. It justin just one, which is like, it's
Speaker 1: become a record breaking here for any kind of anti
Speaker 1: trans legislation. It's just it is accelerated to such a
Speaker 1: extreme degree. UM and now continuing in two legislative cycle UM.
Speaker 1: Last spring in in in in Arkansas, the state legislator
Speaker 1: banned gender of her main care for minors UM, including
Speaker 1: you know, puberty blockers HRT, all the stuff you know
Speaker 1: UM and the House Bill one five seven oh prevents
Speaker 1: transpeople from receiving hormotherapy, puberty blockers, similar treatments UM. It
Speaker 1: was called the Save Adolescence from Experimentation Act UM, you know,
Speaker 1: referring to medical treatment as experimentation UM. And shortly after
Speaker 1: the bill was signed into law, UM, the doctors who
Speaker 1: run the largest or who ran the largest provider of
Speaker 1: of hormone therapy, and the state reported an increase in
Speaker 1: suicide attempts in their patients during like just that same month. UM.
Speaker 1: It was it was the first of its kind of
Speaker 1: bill sign into law, and it was it was initially
Speaker 1: vetoed by the governor, but then that veto was overturned
Speaker 1: by the state legislator. So and that kind of similar
Speaker 1: laws have been have been happening in states ever since then.
Speaker 1: We're not going to talk about Texas, UM, because that's
Speaker 1: one of the one of the biggest, one of the
Speaker 1: biggest kind of things in this whole fight is the
Speaker 1: stuff around Texas. So, Texas officials have begun investigating parents
Speaker 1: of transgender adolescence for a possible child abuse, according to
Speaker 1: a lawsuit filed on a few a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: after Governor Greg Abbott directed uh the the Child Protective
Speaker 1: Services Agency in Texas, to handle certain medical treatments, including
Speaker 1: puberty blockers and h RT as possible crimes. The directive
Speaker 1: from Governor Abbott was following a non binding opinion by
Speaker 1: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton UM saying that parents who
Speaker 1: provide their transgender to natures with doctor prescribed a care
Speaker 1: could be investigated for a child abuse. So the moves
Speaker 1: by both Abbott and Paxixton try to Republican UH incumbents
Speaker 1: came just days before the primary election UM in which
Speaker 1: each of them faced significant challenges from farther right opponents. UM.
Speaker 1: So they've both they've faced criticism from not being staunch
Speaker 1: staunchly anti trans enough in the past, like in the
Speaker 1: months prior to this, and they did this to hopefully,
Speaker 1: you know, gain support from the more radical, UH, more
Speaker 1: radical voters in Texas. That's like, that is that is
Speaker 1: undoubtedly a big, a big, big part of why this
Speaker 1: happened at the time that it did. They did the
Speaker 1: same thing both Paxiston, well, let's Paxton, but Abbott did
Speaker 1: basically the same thing with like masks in the last
Speaker 1: year two where it's like, yeah, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's great because the people are just they will
Speaker 1: literally kill thousands of people or just hold onto their
Speaker 1: power and it's among to be. The first people investigated
Speaker 1: for child abuse was actually an employee by the States
Speaker 1: Protective Services Agency who had a sixteen year old transgender child.
Speaker 1: On March one, the a c l U of Texas
Speaker 1: and Lambda Lambda Legal great great name went to state
Speaker 1: court in Austin to try to stop this inquiry into
Speaker 1: this family. Who again, who who worked for? Who? Worked
Speaker 1: for the Child Protective Services Agency UM. The employee, who
Speaker 1: was not named in the court filing, works on reviews
Speaker 1: of reports of abuse and neglect. She was paced on
Speaker 1: administrative leave a few weeks ago. According to the filing,
Speaker 1: the friday after Governor Abbott made the initial kind of
Speaker 1: letter UM, she was visited by an investigator from the
Speaker 1: agency UM, who was also seeking medical records related to
Speaker 1: her child. UH. The family of the child, identified in
Speaker 1: court documents only as Mary Doe has as as refused
Speaker 1: to voluntarily at turnable records and as taking the case
Speaker 1: to court. According to the lawsuit, the state investigator told
Speaker 1: parents that the only allegation against them was that their
Speaker 1: transgender daughter may have been provided with gender affirming healthcare
Speaker 1: and was currently transitioning. And that was that was the claims,
Speaker 1: that was the that was the basis for the claims
Speaker 1: of of of of of child abuse. It's a so like. Initially,
Speaker 1: it wasn't clear if Abbot's order would survive kind of
Speaker 1: judicial scrutinty because the order does not any The order
Speaker 1: doesn't change any Texas law. Um, it's just it's just
Speaker 1: an opinion piece. And several county attorneys and district attorneys
Speaker 1: of Dallas and Houston have publicly condemned Abbots and Pakiston's
Speaker 1: directives UM, clarifying that they would not prosecute families for
Speaker 1: child abuse under the new definition, and they would not
Speaker 1: irrationally um and unjusfiably interfere with medical decisions. The mayor
Speaker 1: of Austin announced that Austin should be considered a safe place,
Speaker 1: a sanctuary for transgender children and their families, and they
Speaker 1: would not be enforcing the governor's mandate. So it's quite
Speaker 1: a time to be alive to have sanctuary cities for
Speaker 1: being trans YEA. And of course all of these things,
Speaker 1: whether it be from like the d A S or
Speaker 1: the mayor, that doesn't stop trying to protective services from
Speaker 1: not investigating you like that, doesn't like that doesn't like
Speaker 1: They can still investigate and harass you. They can still
Speaker 1: send agents to your door. They can still try to
Speaker 1: see his medical records, right, They can still investigate claims
Speaker 1: even if even if the DA won't prosecute. There's still
Speaker 1: that massive like looming threat of and like that like
Speaker 1: terror like holding over you know, people's heads. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a it is like a mass it's
Speaker 1: a massive scare tactic, right, it is. It is too
Speaker 1: terrorize people like they will be too scared to transition
Speaker 1: because they don't want their family to get in trouble.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty grim. It's pretty. It's pretty. It's pretty evil.
Speaker 1: Um so on the for the for the a c
Speaker 1: l U and the Lambda Legal Court failing. Uh, they
Speaker 1: they're they're seeking to block the request for medical records
Speaker 1: from the employees case and more broadly kind of challenged
Speaker 1: the legitimacy of the entire investigation and the power that
Speaker 1: the government has to change this definition of child abuse.
Speaker 1: It's a because it's it's it's it's it's also important
Speaker 1: important to mention that the mandatory as the mandatory reporting
Speaker 1: aspect of the bill, which was well not not bill
Speaker 1: of the of the legal opinion that was really emphasized
Speaker 1: in Governor Abbot's directive. Um Abbott described his letter that
Speaker 1: the order would mean that all licensed professionals who have
Speaker 1: direct contact with children, including doctors, nurses, therapists, and even
Speaker 1: school teachers would be required to report to state authorities
Speaker 1: um if if if they believe that there is a
Speaker 1: minor who's trans or could be receiving any kind of
Speaker 1: gender affirming treatment. Um and if they don't report this,
Speaker 1: they could themselves faced criminal penalties. So the whole, the
Speaker 1: whole mandatory warning aspects in other like insanely insanely bad
Speaker 1: thing that we could talk about it for a long time.
Speaker 1: This episode is getting long enough, so we're just gonna
Speaker 1: continue through and we can we can ponder at how
Speaker 1: at how bad that is. Um. One parent of a
Speaker 1: transgender a teenager in Houston to the family's health clinic,
Speaker 1: Legacy Community Health has suspended all refills and new prescriptions
Speaker 1: for a transgender youth in light of Abbot's new order.
Speaker 1: So it's it's happening, Like, yeah, it's there, it's the
Speaker 1: stuff has happened, the stuff has started. It's it's already
Speaker 1: scaring people into not doing stuff like it's it's that
Speaker 1: is what it was designed to do. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: I and I know we keep making this episode longer,
Speaker 1: but like it is worth mentioning that, like it actually
Speaker 1: like having someone even temporarily like being off of the
Speaker 1: hormones that they've been taking for for HRT, like that
Speaker 1: fucking sucks. Yeah, it's like it has really bad negative effects.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, like people will be surprised how fast
Speaker 1: hormones start working and how fast going off of them
Speaker 1: they stop working. Like it is it is, It is
Speaker 1: pretty it is pretty surprising. And like I didn't want
Speaker 1: to get tons into like the science of being trans
Speaker 1: in this because that's because that's not the focus of
Speaker 1: this week. We're talking with the legislation and the onslaught
Speaker 1: of queer rights of people trying to hurt them. But
Speaker 1: like you know, it's it's obvious that like there is
Speaker 1: not many cases at all where there's being you know,
Speaker 1: like genital surgery done on minors. Like if that does
Speaker 1: that does not happen. It can happen for like medical
Speaker 1: like that can happen for medically necessary reasons, like if
Speaker 1: there's like accidents and stuff, But that doesn't happen for
Speaker 1: gender affirming care. What happens is you get on you
Speaker 1: you you go on puberty blockers, which are already prescribed
Speaker 1: to assist gender kids all the time. Um, if they
Speaker 1: have early on puberty, they have no lasting side effects,
Speaker 1: they're completely safe. Um And in some cases, depending on
Speaker 1: the kids therapists and their doctors, they may be prescribed
Speaker 1: HRT or they will be prescribed that a bit later.
Speaker 1: But that is that even still, that is that is
Speaker 1: the only things that happened. Um, And what they're trying
Speaker 1: to suppress is both but both of those things. But
Speaker 1: also like the ability for like therapists to even talk
Speaker 1: about gender with kids, Like kids are having problems with
Speaker 1: with like with gender dysphoria, they don't feel comfortable to
Speaker 1: even have to not even be able to talk to
Speaker 1: that to talk talking about those feelings with therapists is
Speaker 1: like part is part of the goal because that can
Speaker 1: be considered gender affirming care. Um. I think that there's
Speaker 1: one other thing we really should mention, which is that
Speaker 1: so there there is one kind like one that is
Speaker 1: the few, but that there's there there's a very important
Speaker 1: kind of like quote unquote like gender surgery that is
Speaker 1: done on children, which is the stuff that's one to
Speaker 1: intersect kids, Yes, I mean sex kids. Yeah. Also like
Speaker 1: circumcisions are already like yeah, but I mean with with
Speaker 1: specific with intersext kids. This stuff matters because all of
Speaker 1: these bills that you're talking about, where's like, oh, you
Speaker 1: can't have gender affirming surgery. You can't have like surgery
Speaker 1: and kids. Like every single one of these bills like that,
Speaker 1: they all have They all specifically have card carve outs
Speaker 1: to allow doctors to funk up the generals of inter
Speaker 1: sex kids. Yeah. That's it's it's all carved out there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well let's see. We we are. We are
Speaker 1: near the last we are. We're near near, near the
Speaker 1: last little stretch here. Um. On March eleventh, a Texas
Speaker 1: State court halted the new Department of Family Protective Services
Speaker 1: policy of investigating the parents of transgender children. UM District
Speaker 1: District Judge Amy Mention concluded on concluded the hearing on
Speaker 1: the requested statewide injunction by saying, quote, the Governor's directive
Speaker 1: was given the effect of new law or new agency
Speaker 1: rule despite there being no new legislation, regulation, or even
Speaker 1: agency policy. Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Department of Family
Speaker 1: Protective Services Commissioner Baby Masters of their actions violate the
Speaker 1: separation of powers by impermissibly approaching into the legislative domain.
Speaker 1: UM Judge Mentiontion also granted a temporary restraining order blocking
Speaker 1: the state from investigating the family that that that prompted
Speaker 1: this lawsuit happening from the from the person who already
Speaker 1: worked at the Department of a Family Protective Services UM.
Speaker 1: Texas Attorney General Kent Pactonum appealed this decision. Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, he appealed the restraining order and lost that appeal. UM.
Speaker 1: And and the the s o U is trying to
Speaker 1: make this temporaries training order against the state permanent and
Speaker 1: extend to all parents of all transgender kids in Texas.
Speaker 1: And there's there's gonna be a whole trial scheduled for
Speaker 1: this topic on July eleven, two. So this is gonna
Speaker 1: this is gonna get this is gonna happen, like where
Speaker 1: where we will figure out what is gonna happen with
Speaker 1: this later on this year. UM. And after the judges
Speaker 1: ruling halting the investigations due to lack of legal binding,
Speaker 1: Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an appeal for for for
Speaker 1: the ruling. So and that's so, so that's that's gonna
Speaker 1: get appealed. UM. And he he tweeted out that the
Speaker 1: quote Democrat judges order permitting child abuse is frozen. Much
Speaker 1: needed investigations will proceed as they should. The fight will
Speaker 1: continue up to the Supreme Court. I'm ready for it, um.
Speaker 1: But it's unclear how much legal backing this actually has,
Speaker 1: So we don't know if if the if the if
Speaker 1: the Protective Services actually has permission to keep investigating or not.
Speaker 1: It is kind of unclear. Paxton says that they can this,
Speaker 1: this state judge says they can't, and that's kind of
Speaker 1: legally up in the air right now, so we don't
Speaker 1: totally know. But there's gonna be a whole trial on
Speaker 1: the topic in July. UM. Kind of one of the
Speaker 1: last things I want to mention is, uh, this this
Speaker 1: Idaho bill that was passed by the House of Representatives
Speaker 1: that would that would criminalize gender affirming medical procedures, including
Speaker 1: property blocker, sorry, including puberty blockers an HRT for any
Speaker 1: kind of trans transgend gender youth. And it was also
Speaker 1: reported that the bill would make it a felony punishable
Speaker 1: by life imprisonment to anyone who helps a kid travel
Speaker 1: across state lines to get gender affirming healthcare. But this
Speaker 1: actually maybe isn't actually true, Like this actually probably wasn't
Speaker 1: a part of that bill. Um. The bill just amend's
Speaker 1: current laws regarding female genital mutilation, of course of carving
Speaker 1: out a specific section to allow the mutilation of intersext
Speaker 1: kits um. But uh, but yeah, it added a section
Speaker 1: also criminalizing gender firm and care. Um. But the section
Speaker 1: of the bill making it a felony to travel out
Speaker 1: of state only refers to the general mutilation section. Um.
Speaker 1: It doesn't refer to the gender firm in care section.
Speaker 1: And it's unclear if that was an oversight um or
Speaker 1: if the limitation was intentional, who knows. Um, But it
Speaker 1: still did attempt to criminalize gender firm and care within
Speaker 1: the state. The bill was I believe, I think earlier
Speaker 1: this morning as of time time of recording, the bill
Speaker 1: was not passed by the Senate. UM. So that's good. Uh.
Speaker 1: They said the Senate that it was too vague in
Speaker 1: scope and it was unclear how it was to be enforced.
Speaker 1: So that bill was halted and it did not did
Speaker 1: not continue. Um. Yeah, but you know that's yeah. There
Speaker 1: is a lot of the reason why all stuff has
Speaker 1: kind of started is that, like there has been so
Speaker 1: much progress happening in queer rights in the past like
Speaker 1: ten years, right, Um, so, now because the progress is
Speaker 1: more visible, what was once like obvious but like low
Speaker 1: key bigotry is trying to be put into law. Right.
Speaker 1: There's there's there used to be so many medical hoops
Speaker 1: to jump through to get any type of gender affirming treatment,
Speaker 1: but now almost every like legit medical organization recognizes the
Speaker 1: importance of gender firm and care. So that plus the
Speaker 1: visibility and the cultural acceptance of queerness is making some
Speaker 1: you know, mostly good old white Christian conservative populations a
Speaker 1: little bit uncomfortable. Right, There's there's this increasing fear that
Speaker 1: what if your kid thinks they're trans, well, what if
Speaker 1: what if they become an unholy degenerate? What if? And
Speaker 1: what if there are people trying to make that happen
Speaker 1: on purpose. Right, all of the brutal reality, all of like,
Speaker 1: all of the brutality in these bills, the kind of
Speaker 1: the not like the total nonchalance at the possibility of
Speaker 1: you know, kids killing themselves because of this bill and
Speaker 1: because of all these legislations. So all of like the
Speaker 1: transphobia negatively contributing to mental health, all of that brutality
Speaker 1: is just justified in the minds of these anti trans
Speaker 1: like people, because it's to save that, it's to save
Speaker 1: their kids from experiencing that in the first place. Right,
Speaker 1: it's the idea that queerness is an infection, that it
Speaker 1: can spread from person to person. It's like it's a
Speaker 1: it's it's like a contagion. If you hear about it,
Speaker 1: you could yourself become gay. So they don't hear about it,
Speaker 1: then that's not going to be a possibility. So all
Speaker 1: all of the brutality, it's like, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: both the point, but it's also justified because this thing
Speaker 1: is seen as such like an it's seen as such
Speaker 1: an ontological threat to their whole idea of like the world.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's uh, and it's I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: not gonna stop right every you know, one, we saw
Speaker 1: a massive increase in le legislation on this topic. Twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, we're seeing an even bigger increased in legislation
Speaker 1: on this topic, and you know, attempts to physically oppose it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's our can can kind of be done.
Speaker 1: I mean, like you can you can see all there
Speaker 1: was some some successful kind of protests to the whole
Speaker 1: school board thing. You can also like you can sneak
Speaker 1: queer books into libraries, so you can just put you
Speaker 1: can just put them in there. Um, you can request
Speaker 1: queer books in your library systems. Um, you can you know,
Speaker 1: attend school board meetings. And again it's sure that the
Speaker 1: institution of the institution of schooling is problematic um in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, but it's we shouldn't make it
Speaker 1: worse for queer kids. So maybe it's still is worth
Speaker 1: actually focusing on. And there's there's a lot, like you know,
Speaker 1: you can, like like in the case of the still
Speaker 1: U suit, there is legal challenges being taken up against
Speaker 1: all of these things. We'll see how that goes. The
Speaker 1: there's always been a there's always been a shaky record
Speaker 1: of the legal you know of like the court's ability
Speaker 1: to protect these rights. But every once in a while
Speaker 1: it does happen, like with like with gay marriage. Um.
Speaker 1: The last thing I'll mention with like specifically with like
Speaker 1: HRT being made illegal in a lot of these places
Speaker 1: at least like prescribed vida doctor. Um, I will kind
Speaker 1: of talk. I will mention um d I y HRT
Speaker 1: as the thing that that that is the thing, it
Speaker 1: exists You can go to d I y h RT
Speaker 1: dot get hub dot io to get information on this.
Speaker 1: It's been It requires a lot of research, but you
Speaker 1: can find like you can get h you can get
Speaker 1: like estrogen and stuff from like like made by the
Speaker 1: companies that that supply pharmacies. You can buy that legally. UM.
Speaker 1: Testosterones a little bit more iffy because that is I
Speaker 1: think that it is like a schedule tour scheduled three
Speaker 1: drug UM. But estrogen is much more available UM to
Speaker 1: buy legally online. To just make sure you get it
Speaker 1: from a good place and make sure that you you know,
Speaker 1: know how it affects you and all that stuff, like
Speaker 1: do lots of reading. But that is a possibility. So
Speaker 1: I will probably plan an episode on d A y
Speaker 1: h r T in the near future just it's like
Speaker 1: a whole episode the topic. But I just wanted to
Speaker 1: kind of mention that as one of the last things
Speaker 1: that being like, yeah, if they're restricting all these stuff,
Speaker 1: we should probably you know, learn to provided ourselves because
Speaker 1: there's no guarantee that the government's or any kind of
Speaker 1: even like pharmacies will be able to do that forever. Right,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's good to have alternative methods of figuring
Speaker 1: out how to get the drugs that make you feel nice.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was that is my episode on the
Speaker 1: on the legislation that has been happening in the past,
Speaker 1: in the past really like six months. Um yeah, that's fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but by the time there there there might there might
Speaker 1: be new stuff that has happened. Oh, most certainly. Yeah. Good,
Speaker 1: that's why when you know, when all this stuff gets
Speaker 1: very depressing, I just like listening to my favorite Wayne
Speaker 1: Cohen's song by Pink Floyd and it really just really
Speaker 1: does held me down and make you feel much better. Wow. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go listen to the new uh double them
Speaker 1: that A hundred Gecks did with Billy Joel I Do
Speaker 1: I Do love Me someone hundred gus mhm yeah, the
Speaker 1: Gus Joel concert. It's even I hear that that Elton
Speaker 1: John is going to get into and they're gonna they're
Speaker 1: gonna do. That would be quite the show. Honestly, that
Speaker 1: would would be a fascinating experience. That would be a
Speaker 1: very mix of like horny women in their sixties and
Speaker 1: horny seventeen year olds. What would happen? Well, yeah, that
Speaker 1: is Ah, there are plenty of organizations that are you know,
Speaker 1: fighting inst and stuff in Texas. UM. I could list them,
Speaker 1: but honestly, if you if you if you're not there,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's if you mean you should, you should.
Speaker 1: You should look into what's happening in your area, Learn
Speaker 1: what legislation is being passed in your area, learn what
Speaker 1: your you know, representatives are doing, and look into helping
Speaker 1: people get the way Turkey. That's really that's really. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: if there's a way that bodybuilders can get testosterone, there's
Speaker 1: a way that you can get testosterone for transguise, if
Speaker 1: estrogen is much easier to get, um, so look into that.
Speaker 1: Don't don't. Don't be stupid. Um. But yeah, that is
Speaker 1: a that's that is. That is that is my piece.
Speaker 1: Find joy, find violence, and find the correct application of
Speaker 1: the two that allows people to stay alive. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah and uh listen to listen to music
Speaker 1: that makes you happy. That is that is that is
Speaker 1: all you can do. All you can all all you
Speaker 1: can do, yeah is find your favorite YouTube album, uh
Speaker 1: featuring Roger Waters. All right, good bye,