The War on Trans People: Part 4, The Legislative Onslaught

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Do you know what I love is decadent Western sexual mores. Well,
that actually does tie you into what we're talking about.
What you were reading, Jesus Dear God when I when
I logged into this call an hour late, Garrison was
studiously reading reading a book by with the screen centered

(00:26):
on the cover. We gotta bleep this out and have it,
have it be the new thing that's bleeped out. I
agree with that. Actually, yes, good call. That way, we
can just do a whole series of jokes where we
just like pill people on fascist esotericism. What a what
a fun joke that would be happen here show we

(00:51):
talk about things that could happen, of about just talking
about the onslaught of of bills that have been introduced
the past few months that attacking kind of trans rights
and queer people in general. Yeah, so we've we've we
we've heard about gay marriage, We've heard about turfs a
lot the past the past few episodes, and now we're

(01:14):
going to be kind of focusing on the Yeah, like
I said, the kind of current legislation that's happened specifically
within the past six months, um that I've been targeting
kind of LGBTQ people in in schools, particularly that, and
a lot of it's been targeted towards towards miners, teen teens, adolescents,
UM and restricting the visibility and uh and kind of

(01:37):
what's allowed to be said and mentioned in schools. So
we're gonna kind of actually talk about UM books first,
because a lot of this stuff is kind of tied
into the critical race theory UM kind of like organizing
that the right was doing. So. Yeah. The American Library

(01:59):
Association says that between September and December alone, they received
more than three thirty reports of book challenges, for which
is the most over two decades in terms of people
trying to restrict what books are allowed to be in schools. Boy,
I experienced a book challenge lately. Tell you what, trying

(02:21):
to read through the new James Patterson book. What do
either of you know who James Patterson is? No? Was
this was this was a bad idea on my back?
Please continue, Garrison, I was. I was busy reading the
before you logged on. I have a different interest in books.
You know, actually very similar books, very similar and the

(02:42):
Pelican brief basically identical. I have no idea how much.
That's gonna get bleeped, but it's gonna be funny. Um
so yeah. A Tennessee school's removal of Mars the Holocaust
graphic biography became kind of the most famous example of
this trend a few months ago. Um, the book was
allegedly banned due to due to nudity and because of

(03:05):
curse words. But this is kind of you know it was.
They claimed it had nothing to do with actual political content. Um,
it was just because of the the inappropriate images to children,
which is a little a little dubious since it's all
you know, starring mice. Um yeah, yeah. But the majority

(03:25):
of challenged books have been kind of those focused on
lgbt Q characters or themes. Back in November, nearly two
dozen people a day we're dying from COVID nineteen in
South Carolina. Thank god that god better. Thank god we
knocked that ship out. But rather than try to handle
the public health crisis, Governor Henry McMaster seemed more interested

(03:49):
in pressuring the state's Department of Education to crack down
on queer theme two books. He directed the Department of
Education and the State Board of Education to create quote,
statewide standards and directives prevent pornography and other obscene content
from entering our state's public schools and libraries of the
Governor said in a letter to the Superintendent of Education.

(04:10):
Inside the letter, it was specifically targeted towards uh Maya
Kobe's book Gender Queer, a Memoir UM, which is a
gender queer graphic novel kind of detailing what it's what
it's like to be gender queer. It's definitely popular among
kind of the adult like a young adult kind of
age range and and as and as a good resource
for kind of gender bending type stuff. Um and it

(04:32):
has faced a large amount of a large amount of
the onslaught and like the bashing of queer books have
been focused on this specific book. It's an autobiographical book
based on the Bay Area non binary writer and the
illustrator UM. It's been challenged and it started being challenged
at one of South Carolina's nearly five hundred schools and

(04:55):
then got banned from all of them just because people
were mad at about it. At one school, it was
being recommended for those in the tenth grade or higher
to learn about kind of queer issues UM and it
is now become one of the most banned books of
this past year. It's been removed from schools in Virginia,
New Jersey, Florida, North and South Carolina, Texas, and a

(05:17):
large amount of other states in the South. Um. Speaking
speaking of Texas, the Agenda Queer Graphic novel was just
one part of a massive kind of horrifying purge led
by Texas Republican state Representative Matt cross Uh. He he
led an effort to pressure and forced schools and libraries
to remove books based on a list of undesirable reads

(05:40):
that he compiled himself. Um. The list is a sixteen
page spreadsheet with over eight hundred and fifty books cataloged
on Crouse's eight hundred and fifty strong list of titles
that he wants spanned from Texas libraries, of them concerned
LGBTQ issues. Um, it's kind of clear that what he
did this, Yeah, well what what what? What? What he

(06:03):
did to make this list is just like googling the
words like queer and l g b t Q and
g and trans like with book and just found a
list of books that have it like mentioned to somewhere,
so like a lot of so many books are just
like completely a banned that aren't even really like yeah,
like the list is nearly one thousand books, like log
so like he was just like Google searching to like

(06:26):
add as many books to lists as that he could.
It's not actually about the content beyond the fact that
the content acknowledge the existence of queer people. Like yeah,
that's to the extent that he knows about the content.
That's it, Like, you can't be reading all these books no,
because like one of the more interesting trends that you
can find on this list is that it challenges and

(06:46):
tries to ban books that teach students like their legal rights,
um like not even counting books about like reproductive rights
or writes his like l g b t Q people.
It also it includes in this list like titles like
the Legal Atlas of the Unit in States, um Team
legal Rights, Uh, the legal Rights, Yeah, equal Rights, we

(07:08):
the students, Supreme Court cases for and about students. Uh yeah,
I mean this is my my support for LGBTQ people
is worring here with my belief that children should not
know their rights because they're they're they're they're they're getting
too upty. As it is, we gotta we gotta crack look,
could we crack down on kids in a way that

(07:28):
isn't bigoted, That's all I'm asking for. Nope, nope, absolutely no,
we gotta slow them down. Kids. You must know your rights.
And the very important thing here is that if you
keep WE in your locker, the school can just search it.
So don't put in your locker. If you put it
in your car, they it's it's way harder for them
to search it in the principles car store guns. They're wait, okay, sorry,

(07:52):
let's um. Yeah, I'm not sure if you can find
that in the legal acts less of the United States.
But to be fair, Texas kids can't read that book
either now, so who knows who knows what it sets? Yeah,
So to Virginia, school board members kind of called for
a sexual books quote unquote sexual books to be burned
at a meeting last year. Um, and a lot of these,

(08:13):
like a lot of the rhetoric around like book book
burnings and book bannings was specifically tied to the kind
of the effort to harass and gain support in school boards.
And we saw us last year with like proud boys
and extremists, and it's like other like random people who
got their brains kind of warped by propaganda kind of
leading these like incendiary charges against against the school board members.

(08:35):
Some you know, the school board members got fired, like
threatened with arrest just for allowing books that mentioned the
existence of being queer. It was, it was, it was
quite quite a problem that is now influencing this current
legislative cycle. UM. In almost every case, quote unquote, like
concerned parents have swarmed school board meetings and flooded kind

(08:56):
of mailboxes with outrage over what they call pornography UM
being distributed to their children. You know, people will will
plaster signs with you know, scenes from the gender queer
graphic novel that is like what they they they deem
as being like porno like pornographic UM when it just

(09:20):
depicts like how how like adults and young adults behave accurately,
just like you can find in any like fucking like
Batman comic. Like it's not like it's it's like it's
like not it's it's it's it's both in line with
other comic books and also like it's obviously dealing with
like issues around being queer as like that's the whole
point of it. So but yeah, just blasting this blasting

(09:42):
like queerness as innately pornographic, is you know, a big,
a big part of this type of propaganda push. It's it's, uh,
it's pretty upsetic because I mean a lot of these
adults and like quote unquote parents, you know, who knows
if they're actually parents. You know, it even goes and
stuff to being like, you know, they're accusing librarians and

(10:02):
teachers of being pedophiles for having this, for the having
these type of materials. In Wyoming, prosecutors considered charging library
staff with stalking books about sexuality, um, including like literary
classics under like the sex said banner, like sex is
a funny word and this book is gay. Um, but
I considered charging library staff, like with cribs, for for

(10:25):
stalking these books, which are like very typical sex said books.
It's it's incredible because when I was in a Texas
public school, I read all of the Wheel of Time
books from my school library, and those are horny in
a much much more unhealthy way than any of the
books that you're talking about could possibly be described as well.
You get that, you get this fun thing where it's

(10:45):
like they're basically running the clock back on the turf
arc like if you if you remember, we're talking about
church in Mexico. It was okay, So the ark that
they did was they were anti porn people, but then
they lost anti porn wars, so they became anti trafficking people.
And then when sort of turfishing came back, they went
from anti trafficking back to being turfs. And it's like this,

(11:05):
this is literally they're they're doing this whole thing in
reverse right there. Their starting position is that their anti
trans and they're just going back to like the anti
porn stuff, but like bringing in and sort of like
bringing in an anti trafficking angle, and it's it's great,
It's extremely fun. Yeah, this is I would describe this
is fun. This is what I consider a fun time. Yeah,
well I know what you consider a fun time here.

(11:31):
You do notice my my carefully place, carefully placed books
on on my Yes, I'm extremely aware of that. Garrison.
Harrison is reading books that will get them canceled by
like five specific people if we talk about them too
much on this show. That is always the fear of
that's always the fear of Twitter. It's being canceled by

(11:52):
five people. My favorite thing about doing a podcast for
an audience of millions, Garrison is telling a joke that
is that is precisely for you and me and making
that like several minutes of content. Sorry. Um, And Oklahoma
bill was introduced to the state Senate that would prohibit
school libraries from keeping books that focused on sexual activity,

(12:15):
sexual identity, or a gender identity. Um, you're gonna gonna
use the word gender identity a lot. That kind of
just refers to anything that even I mean, like it
refers to even mentions of being cinis gender, right, because
if you bring up the concept of cis gender, that
infers that there is an alternative to that. So so
like even any if anything even mentions being sis, it
means that there must be something other. So that already

(12:37):
falls into the gender identity kind of framework. So it's
just like anything that suggests that you are that you
that there's like, gender identity is not something you are
innately born with and are forever, is is gonna be
it's gonna be is banned and is seen as pornographic
what I'm seeing or is like grooming children or whatever

(12:57):
kind of words that they use. Um, And like all
of this rhetoric is much worse for l g B
two Q authors who are black or people of color.
There's books like All Boys Aren't Blue by writer George M. Johnson,
whose whose book led one white school board member to
call the police on her own district's librarian for keeping

(13:19):
it in stock. It's uh the the the Central York
School District in Pennsylvania, and an extensive list of books
last year that was almost entirely written by the authors
of color. This is all the stuff has been happening,
like concurrently with the anti critical race theory, like organizing
in protests, which again obviously isn't about actual critical race theory,

(13:41):
just about the suggestion that maybe racism is something that
is not just an individual problem, but it's maybe kind
of built into our entire culture and system of governance,
UM and education. So it's it's not actual critical race theory,
it's that. But I think everyone listening to this kind
of already are already knows that Texas Governor Greg Abbott,
which is gonna be just who's gonna be a recurring

(14:03):
character on this episode, UM, kind of has taken this
whole you know, calling the police on librarians thing, uh
much further kind of demanding that the state's education agency
quote investigate any criminal activity in our public schools involving
the availability of pornography, a move that kind of librarians

(14:24):
in the state fear could make them targets of criminal complaints.
For again, the stalking books about sex said, or you know,
stalking books that not even not not not even not
even not even but like sex head, just just like
books that mentioned an alternative to the heteronormative, like you
are the gender that you are signed at birth, like idea,
like anything other than that is now could get them

(14:44):
in trouble. So anything that doesn't kind of fall under
the Christian supremacist like worldview of sexuality and gender. It's
it's not great. There's a it's so yeah, all boys
aren't blue. The book written by by George M. Johnson,
has been similar to the gender queer graphic novel is
one of the most banned books of last year, targeted

(15:05):
for removal in at least a fifteen states. Um, it's
a lot of the organizing of these efforts kind of
start online. There's like Telegram channels, Facebook groups, and then
they carry over into like school board protests, and then
eventually like you know, maybe some school board members will
will will catch onto this and start advocating for it.
Then you know, the state governor, does you know it's

(15:25):
city city councilman. Like all of this thing is is
is his whole cycle of organizing that's really picked up
alongside the anti CRT stuff many many parents have seen,
like Google docs or spreadsheets like the sixteen page one
made by Matt Krausse of of contentious titles posted on
Facebook by local chapters of organizations such as Mom's for Liberty.

(15:47):
So people will make these giant, giant spend streets talking
about books that they don't like, and then they'll get
shared around on Facebook groups, Telegram channels from their librarians.
Uh say that parents will ask their schools if these
books are available inside libraries, and then we'll start rallying
and organizing to get them banned from being available in

(16:09):
any kind of public, public government setting, whether that be
school libraries, whether it be like public libraries, whether that
be like online access, all this type of stuff. So yeah,
it's a it's I don't know, it's Organizing against these
types of things is never the easiest thing, um, because

(16:29):
a lot of times they these people get really get
really dedicated onto this because it is such a it's
it's it's the whole save the children a kind of
idea which gave Q and On such strength, and Q
and On is kind of taking a dip down. This
stuff is taking a rise up. It's kind of it's
passing over the same type of organizing principles online. As

(16:51):
as mentioned before, the governor of South Carolina asked the
state's Superintendent of Education but also it's law enforcement division,
to investigate the presence of quote obscene in pornographic materials
from its public schools um you know, citing the Gender
and Queer graphic novel as an example that you've seen.
You've seen mayors in difference in different cities withhold funding

(17:11):
from county libraries saying that he will not release money
to these candy library systems until books with lgbt Q
themes are removed. It's it's pretty grim, uh, And so
far efforts to bring criminal charges against librarians and educators
have largely faltered, as as law enforcement officials in like

(17:32):
Florida and Wyoming and other sites for this type of
thing has been attempted. Have you know, found really no
basis for criminal investigations. But still it's like the same
thing for like, even even if this process gets started,
it's about building like fear that it could happen to you.
It's about you know, this fear that someone's always watching
and someone's always wanting to report you. Um, and it's

(17:55):
the thing that they happened with Texas and abortion. It's
like trying to have like the bound hundred idea of
be like parents are trying to find examples of this
to report it. So then so it's like this like
proactive kind of surveillance of anything that doesn't fall into
the Christian supremacist idea of gender and sexuality. It's you know, now,

(18:16):
of course that's like a specific interpretation of Christianity. I'm
not not saying all Christianities like that, but it is
the one of it's them in the South, it's it
is like one of the bigger strains of that type
of of that type of kind of religious and politic synthesis.
Let's let's see. So courts have generally taken the position

(18:36):
that libraries should not remove these books from circulation um,
but sometimes due to pressure via like loss of funding
or depending on how like the how much how much
like who is in charge of each state's kind of
education system? A lot of a lot of a lot
of these books have been banned and have have been
pulled from many school libraries and many public libraries. Even
if it doesn't like go all the way to being

(18:58):
like you know, court mandated all of it, sometimes it
doesn't need doesn't even need to get that far. So yeah,
because like even if it doesn't get to the court,
librarians kind of librarians have said that just the threat
of having to defend against charges and having to defend
against like accusations of pedophilia and grooming and all this
kind of nonsense is enough to get many educators to

(19:20):
censor themselves by just not talking these books to begin with,
to avoid that whole kind of debacle, because even just
the public spectacle of an accusation can be enough to
like ruin someone's life inside like a small like in
like a small community. Right, it's it's it's is if
you know parents, if you know kids, and this is
like part of your social group, it's part of like
wherever you're like situated in your community. If this type

(19:41):
of thing starts up, it can really be devastating to
someone's personal life. And of obviously this is very ironic
because all these same people who are trying to get
get these books banned also crying and scream about like
censorship and cancel culture um, while literally advocating the burning
of comic books um, and even like fucking like advocating
the burning of know your Rights books. So it's it's like, yes,

(20:03):
they will cry and scream about canceler culture um, but
they will do all of this stuff as well. It's
not it's not right. There is no ideological consistency. They're
they're they're they're not they're not trying to that's not
that's that's not part of the point. It's because it's
not even hypocrisy in their own eyes, because all of
this is for the greater good. It's it's about protecting
the innocence of children. Right. If you'll notice that a

(20:25):
lot of these bills and efforts try to not explicitly
attack books for being gay or queer. Instead, they will
label them as pornographic or obscene um. Obviously, many books
that conservatives will defend have just as graphic depictions of
intimacy or autonic like or um or anatomy um, but
usually heterosexual in nature, and alongside other kind of values

(20:49):
that the right wants to push. Um. You know, even
like the fucking Bible is more graphic than the gender
queer and graphic novel um. But when conservatives say pornography,
what they just mean that is any display of queerness, right,
anything outside the mold of the fundamentalist Christian supremacist worldview
that they're fighting for. Just like when they say banned

(21:10):
critical race theory, they don't they don't actually mean that.
What they mean is ban any discussion on racism that
kind of disrupts white comfort. It's it's it's it's they
they have their own framework to view this and they
can justify it within their own framework, so you know,
it's It should not surprise anyone that many of these
queer book bannings are being organized alongside bands on books

(21:33):
focusing on race and racism. UM. Matt Cross's sixteen page
spreadsheet was was was made to accompany House Bill three
nine seven nine, the so called anti CRT bill, that
band's teaching of any materials that could mean quote an
individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other psychological

(21:53):
distress on account of the individual's race or sex. So
just banning teaching of things that could make a medical
person kind of uncomfortable, which is it seems like a
great way to view education. Uh yeah, let's just skip
over the parts that are uncomfortable and that I'll make
a great society. Wow. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm

(22:18):
gonna quote from a great article by Samantha Rydell in
them dot Com quote small. Wonder then that much of
the current of fervor can be traced back to the
conservative group No Left Turn, founded in to ban books
about racial inequality from classrooms by Elena fish Being. An

(22:41):
a line of fish Being believes that Antifa children quote
quote quote Antiva children are going to assault her kids
for being white. Um. The organization No Left Turn rocketed
to prominence in the anti education right wing after fish
Being was interviewed by Tucker Carlson on Fox News. UM
a tie, which similarly lifted like minded boat such as
Moms for Liberty. No Left Turns website directs parents to

(23:05):
a laundry list of books that they claim are used
to quote indoctrinate kids into a dangerous ideology. Including a
robust section on quote comprehensive sexual education. UM here that
pornography lie is laid bare with over forty books whose
only kind of through line is that they deal with
lgbt Q themes. The picture book I Am Jazz, uh,

(23:26):
Kate Bornstein's My Gender Workbook, and the y A novel
Two Boys Kissing also included, as Margaret Atwood's The Hand
The Handmaiden's Tale. UH. No Left Turn discriminately targets all
these titles because they simply feature queer people having lives or,
in the case of like Margaret Atwood, having their lives
be ended. So after all, ideas, ideas like that might

(23:49):
influence kids to think that they could be different right
any and for conservative parents, there's no greater horror than
the thought of not being able to control their children
or the idea that their kids might not straight. It
should come as no surprise that the grassroots campaigns quote
unquote grassroots campaigns like No Left Turn are in reality
links to influential conservative donors and packs like the Cato

(24:12):
Institute and the former Federative Society Pardon Cato. Like the
Cato It's named after Kato Kalin, the guy who lived
behind o Ja's house. Is that true? No, it's yeah.
I should have just let that. I should have just

(24:33):
here's gonna slightly continently expand by like red string like
my red string board its head by head like yeah,
oh yeah. Cato Institute named after Kato Kalin, the guy
who o j Surper bro buddy. But it should come
as no surprise that the grass roots quote unquote grassroots
campaigns like No Left Turn and Reality link to influential

(24:54):
conservative donors and packs like the Cato Institute and former
Federalist Society Vice president Leonard Leo. But then again, lies
don't matter to the reactionary base that Republicans are hoping
to rally to the front of this culture war. What
matters to them is controlling the information that children have
access to to obsensively keep them safe and innocent, but

(25:16):
in truth, because they think that if kids don't know
but lgbt Q identities, they won't form one. It's conversion
therapy by ignorance end quote. But that that's an idea
I'm going to kind of come back through, come back
to a few times throughout the course of this episode.
Is the idea of conversion therapy by ignorance, which really
does kind of I think have introduced a really good

(25:38):
like mental framework to understand why these things are happening,
because they think if they can keep kids from learning
about these things, then they won't become gay or trance.
It is it's like trying to isolate them so that
so that their reality tunnel is so small so that
they won't hopefully will never like break out of it.
Um Now, obviously, if kids feel if kids start having

(25:59):
feel things that break that piannel, if they don't know
that there's an alternative to that, that really kind of
leads to things like depression and suicide, which is why
it's so high among among queer kids in that region
because it's like there's it's like they're fundamentally breaking realities.
So it's that's hard to cope with. We're I'm just
gonna it's gonna do. What's gonna do? Kind of one

(26:19):
more segment quickly before before we haven't had break it
is uh. It's it's interesting we have like a lot
of the parents that have been rallying for this, UH
have some interesting track records themselves. If we can even
you know, go back to um UH to the Family
Research Council, with Josh Dougger having the save the children
idea well you know himself being a child bleicster or

(26:41):
help bill like yeah so um. In a secondingly ironic case,
a Missouri parents named Ryan Utterback was charged in December
with multiple accounts of child molestation and giving and distributing
pornogu fee to miners, including a child as young as four. Um.

(27:04):
Upon his arrest, utter Back was heavily involved in the
book banning advocacy, including protests against the books All Boys
Aren't Blue and uh and other sex a books. Um.
He he said he gave a quote before he got
arrested and when he was still doing like the book
banning advocacy quote, only I have the intimate understanding of

(27:24):
what isn't isn't appropriate for my children, uh, which is
quite quite the sentence to say on someone who is
now arrested for a child molestation. So yeah, that's not yeah,
that's uh that sucks. But yeah, so like it's it's
the idea that erasing erasing documentation of queer lives and

(27:47):
making it so that so that people to their kids
only are exposed to a very kind of isolated worldview
will make it easier to control um and if they
don't hear about something, maybe they'll just you know, live
their life as a regular straight child. And that's that's
their hope. Now obviously that doesn't that doesn't really happen
in practice, but that's kind of what they're working towards,
and that that's why they save the children thing is

(28:09):
so important to them, because they really do think that
they can save the kid children, like they do think
that they can keep keep them from this stuff. So
I think there's one other reason that they're doing that
specifically they focus on books too, specifically the pornographic attack,
which is that these kind of like incredible hard right

(28:29):
evangelicals are not the entire Republican base, and so that
there are people who they have to convin like they
have to fully radicalize into into the extermination of where people,
specifically the exermination to trans people and the like. The
easiest way to do that is just by constantly associating
anything queer with pedophilia and with like specific tifically pedophilia

(28:52):
and specifically grooming. And you know, these kind of campaigns
like they have dual effect. They have the effect on
the one hand of the actual material harm to children,
and they're you know, like preventing them from having any
access to anything that shows them that they could be queer.
And then simultaneously it has this effect of creating this
association inside of conservatives that allows you to push for

(29:15):
even more genocidal stuff that without this they might not
have been able to swallow. Yeah. Well, speaking of genocidal actions,
I'm sure that one of our sponsors have contributed to
at least one attempt to genocide. I mean we we
are actually entirely sponsored this week by the former Indonesian
dictator Suharto, So you know, big, big thank you to him.

(29:38):
Uh Pancasila forever. And yeah, here's the matter. Ah, we're back.
Don't don't don't google what Cukarno did in uh in
West Popua. Hey, Hey, hey, hey, Sue hard too and

(30:01):
Sukarno different. Yes, yes, yeah, I am very clear on this,
and that's why you should not google what Zukarno did
in in Papua because dear God. But we will put
his patreon in the description. We will be backing his patreon.
Look at the show notes for that. Um hi, welcome back.

(30:21):
We're gonna we're gonna segue into other types of legislation now,
but still kind of focusing on the whole parents rights
to decide what scientific and medical knowledge children can have
access to UM in terms of like the conversion therapy
by ignorance category. So we're gonna talk about they don't
Say Gay bill. So Florida's House and Senate just passed

(30:43):
the so called Don't Say Gay Bill that bands mentioned
of anything other than the strict heteronormativity and the you
are the gender assigned that birth kind of idea UM.
For at least most of elementary school, it's banned and
possibly farther reaching than that UM, with teachers also opening
themselves up lawsuits if they fail to comply. It's formally

(31:03):
known as the Parental Rates in Education Bill, and the
text of the legislation states that quote classroom instruction by
school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender
identity may not occur in kindergarten through third grade, or
in any manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally
appropriate for students in accordance with state standards. So it

(31:26):
is it is very intentionally vague for how far reaching
this can be. For how much they will determine what
and what isn't appropriate for grades for an up who knows. Uh. Yeah,
but it's not just it's not just limited to early grades.
Classroom instruction on sexual orientation and general identity could be

(31:47):
prohibited or at least taken to court at all grade levels, Uh,
depending on what the parents find unacceptable. Right, it is,
it's it's it's based on what the parents want to
want to happen to to to the kids that are
under their care. So it's it's specifically following kind of
the framework that yeah, you can you can report something

(32:11):
if you don't like it. So it's it's it's very
much pandering to like a reactionary conservative all this stuff
that conservatives said was a nightmare about, like the Stazi
in East Germany and the KGB. They're like, but what
if we just decentralized that, you know, and and let
anyone who's a bigot report and ruin the lives of

(32:31):
people around them for a variety of bullshit reasons. It's good. Yeah,
it's ah. And I mean, just like other states, like
in Texas, the enforcement of it is not initially done
by the government but is open to a concern to
fanatical public, saying that parents may bring action against the
school district to obtain a declaratory judgment UM, and a

(32:55):
court may award damages an attorney's fees if it finds
the school violated the measure. So there's like financial incentives
for parents for this UM. The bill will come into
effect on the first of July, with all school districts
UM required to update their policies by at least June.
There was there was also a proposed amendment that would

(33:17):
have required schools and educators to report if they knew
or suspected a child was lgbt Q to their parents
within six weeks of learning. That UM, so within six
weeks of learning, if they're not sis or straight, they
would have to be reported to the parents. UM. But
that that part was withdrawn before the bill reached the House.
But in terms of like this is the type of
thing that well, this is that like the legislators are

(33:39):
thinking of. When it became increasingly apparent that the bill
was going to be passed no matter what, UH, a Democrat,
Chevin Jones, the first openly gay Florida state senator, tried
to amend the bill to narrow the language to say
that in classroom instruction should not be intended to change
students sexual orientation or gender identity, and specifically not marginalized

(34:00):
queer people, and instead just limit the bill to itach
appropriate sex said, and that amendment obviously failed, with Dennis Backley,
the bill's main sponsor, saying that it would significantly gut
the bill's intent. So it's it's it's it's specifically to
suppress knowledge of being queer. That is, that is the
whole that's the whole point of the bill. Um, you know,

(34:20):
I mean the the governor claims that the bill addresses
quote sexual stuff and quote telling kids that they may
be able to pick genders and all that, uh, saying
that that has nothing to do like this is nothing
to do with sex at all, like literally nothing. It's
like but nothing, it's but they still do it, like

(34:42):
the pornographic obscene kind of category because like it's right,
it's the same thing like if you show gay people kissing,
that is sexual. If you show story people kissing, that
isn't right. It's it's being queer as innately more obscene.
It is it is, it is it is so much
more of an issue. Rana Santas governor also said, like
how many parents want their kindergarteners to have transjagenderism or

(35:06):
something injected into their school discussion? Um, but that's so
that type of stuff he says that like press conferences
and stuff. So yeah, it is. It is very clear
that the bill is targeted specifically towards gay people, um,
and being trans or being queer, being non sis, non straight,
that whole that that that whole category. Um. The governor's
press secretary called it the anti grooming bill. Um. You know,

(35:30):
reviving the type of like you know, whether that LGBT
attacks have had for years, suggesting that you know, being
gay means that you are a pedophile or being trans
means that you're a pedophile. It ties in with this
thing you'll see in like the far right and the
libertarian right, where people who have like kill your local
pedophile bumper stickers and stuff because you can't argue with like, yeah,

(35:51):
pedophiles are are the worst. That's horrible, But you don't
actually mean people who molest children. You mean people who
live in a way that you consider obscene, which are
equating with pedophilias that you can justify murdering those people
eventually yep, uh yeah, and when and when when confronted
with the the actual pedophiles, they literally don't do ship well.
They are off Like Andy No, for a great example,

(36:13):
has regularly hung out around a specific I think a
most lee is his name pedophile. The longest serving Republican
Speaker of the House was a pedophile and passive scale
dinn it Dennis Haster d hast that's what that? Um,
that's what that? What's that German band? This would have
been a decent joke if I remember their name right
away Romstein. Yeah, well I sucked it up, okay, so anyway,

(36:35):
please please continue. So yeah, but like they don't say
gay bill tries even less than some of the like
school book bands to hide behind the defense of prohibiting pornography.
Like it just says the quiet part out loud, you know,
saying that this bill is grounded in the belief the
loud part out loud. Yeah, yeah, I like the bills

(36:57):
just grounded in the belief that LGBTQ people simply by
exist thing are a threat to like children and must
be completely arrased. Like that's that's the whole that's the whole. Idea.
Following several hours of debate ahead of the vote in
the Senate, a bill sponsor Atlanta Garcia claimed that quote,
gay is not a permanent thing, and l g b

(37:17):
t Q is not a permanent thing. So yeah, it's
the type of like commercial therapy by ignorance thing. A
lot of these people have advocated for conversion therapy to
be legalized in the past or re legalized in the past.
So yeah, they just they just don't want gay people
to be around because they find the nikki. So it's

(37:38):
it's not it's not just Florida though, right the fears
with like hyper focusing on you know, just justin, justin,
don't say gay bill in Florida kind of like, you know,
it ignores a lot of the other stuff that's happening
across the entire country if you do when you're just
focusing on state because they are like fifteen similar bills
moving through state legislators that are strict how textbooks and
curriculums are allowed to teach lgbt Q topics and and

(38:00):
like who can be hired as teachers and what are
what are like what's allowed to be said when it
comes to genderal identity and sexual orientation. All like stuff
is happening all across the country. UM. A house bill
in Tennessee would ban textbook and instructural materials that promote
normalized support or address lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender lifestyles
quote unquote um in in in k three twelve schools.

(38:23):
So also also high school um in in UH. In Kansas,
there's a bill that seeks to amend the state's obsidity
laws to make using classroom materials depicting homosexuality a class
B misdemeanor. UH Legislators in Indiana are working to bar
educators from discussing any content about sexual orientation, quote, transgenderism,

(38:46):
or general identity without permission from parents. In Oklahoma, there's
a senate bill that would ban public schools from employing
anyone who quote promotes positions in the classroom or any
or any function of the public school that is the
opposition to the closely held religious beliefs of students. So
that's that's interesting framing there. Yeah, and again we need

(39:08):
to be very clear about this when like, when these
people say deeply have religious beliefs, they mean fundamentalist Christianity.
They're there, these people are very specifically attempting to turn
the state into a Christian at those state, and this
is the ship that they used to do it. And
it's yeah, it's it's it's grim. We can look at
like a recent report from the Trevor Project UM which

(39:31):
is an lgbt Q suicide prevention and crisis internation group,
and they did a recent report finding that l g
B t Q youth who learn about l g b
t Q people or l g b t Q issues
in the school have a tecent lower odds of reporting
a suicide attempt in the past year. So just that,

(39:52):
like the knowledge that there is an alternative is like
is life changing for people, right, the ability to to
read eyes that there are other reality tunnels is can
save people's lives, like it is Yeah, I mean I
like I I watched this happen like my my public school,
Like I was in a public school, but I was
in public school in a really conservative area. The only
time anyone even mentioned being gay was screaming about gay marriage.

(40:15):
And like we fucking saw some ship, Like a lot
of extremely bad things happened to the queer kids. They're
including me, like it yeah, like this this This stuff
kills people. It stilf hurts people. It is I think
that's that people in like more blue states don't quite understand,
is how how absolute this type of thing is, like

(40:38):
living in these communities, How how narrow your version of
reality is, Like how how everything you're exposed to is
so hyper focused that even knowledge of an alternative can
be so mind blowing that it really is important to
have at least this to be knowledgeable, because yeah, a
lot of people who you know, a lot of people
may not have access to the Internet in the same way.

(40:58):
It's like a lot of these groups, especially like especially
Christian groups specifically have like like you know, services that
you can buy to like suppress websites on your WiFi.
Writers is that only you're only available to access like
certain websites like like like, it is a whole effort
to restrict the reality that kids are exposed to two
kind of railroad them into this hyper specific, kind of

(41:22):
heteroonormative idea of existence. So yeah, any type of thing
that breaks these kids out of out of these reality
tunnels can can be life changing, which is why they're
trying to ban all these books of libraries because yeah,
even if you even if you block websites, even if
you were strict internet access, even if you were strict
what can be taught in schools? You know, there's the
fear of what if a kid goes to a library

(41:43):
and finds a book about being gay? Then oh wow,
that could that would you know, undo all of the
effort that undo the thousands of dollars we spend on
blocking internet access to two websites. So like, that's why
they're talking about like libraries and stuff is because yeah,
if they find out about this stuff anywhere, then they
gonna be in trouble. Like that's that's it's the whole
point of like isolating people, isolating what they view as possible. So, yeah,

(42:08):
we're not gonna talking about some Uh, we're gonna we're
gonna we're gonna talk money, money, money, money. Uh. The
other thing that they don't say. Gay Bill has highlighted
is the extent to which big businesses and corporate America
is financially funding many of these recent efforts to hack
away queer rights. Uh. This has kind of been like
a back and forth thing, though, especially if you look
back in the past few years under the Trump era.

(42:31):
Let's take the North Carolina Bathroom Bill for example, arguably
the opening act for the current onslaught of socially conservative
legislation targeting and trans people. Remember this was like right
after the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. So this
is when the needle starts to shift towards trans people.
This is the bill that said that you have to
use the bathroom assigned at matching the gender you were

(42:54):
assigned at burg on your certificate. All types of stuff, um,
putting again unspoken bigotry, us oaken stuff. You know, you
could be you know, arrested or harassed for doing this previously.
But it's like putting this type of idea into concrete law. Right,
this is once once progress starts, there's this like back
pedaling so that they you know, they put they put that,

(43:14):
they put what was once like unspoken bigotry and just
like obvious bigotry into actual written law. Um, it's like
make making it concrete. So during the bathroom bill kind
of whole thing in North Carolina, um, we saw corporations
trying to stay conscious of culture shifts, attempting to stay
on the sympathetic side of the rising generations. Who would

(43:36):
you know, become their future employees and customers, trying to
appeal to them and keeping that in mind. So in
the aftermath of the passage of the bathroom Bill, multiple
companies like PayPal, Adidas, Doutche, Bank Um all rescinded plans
to invest in the state wild to Like, I mean,
if there's if there's evil going on, Deutsche Bank is

(43:58):
providing money to make it. Yeah, it's it's it's it's stunning,
Like how bad you have to be that Deutsche Bank
is Like no, I like like every every person who's
like Russia yet like like Deutsa Bank like before, like
I knew someone who worked there who two of his
coworkers like started like doing audits of their accounts and

(44:19):
both of them wound up dead in their hotel rooms.
Non extradition countries. Yeah that scans yeah, like even okay,
So yeah, Deutsche Bank initially said they weren't gonna pull
out of Russia, but like two days ago, as we
record this started pulling out. But they pulled out in
North Carolina. They pulled North Carolina. Jesus Christ, big, big, big.

(44:44):
You know. There's a degree to which is probably just
like that raytheon Energy where it's like Raytheon, We're great
with trans people. Exact, you're making missiles, then you're fine. Exactly. Yeah,
I mean big musical artists like Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam
and a former former R E M member Ringo star
kesled concerts there. Did you call Ringo star a member

(45:06):
of R E M. Garrison the the n C double
A announced it was that was championship durn Okay, okay, okay.
If you'd lived through the nineties, you would never make
fun of Michael Stipe again. At the National Basketball Association
pulled its All Star game from Charlotte. Almost seventy companies,

(45:27):
Joy did a lawsuit against the bill. UM and you know,
money talks. The pressure worked. The state repealed the law
in twenty's seventeen UH the same year I brought a
coalition of business leaders in Texas blocked a similar bill
pushed by these Tonchley conservative then Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan
Patrick UM And we've seen the same type of thing

(45:47):
happened in Georgia the past few years, UM with with
actions like Corporate Boycott's many large employeers pushing back on
the succession of socially conservative bills, including like racist voting restrictions,
six week abortion bands, and quote religious freedom bills that
would give businesses protection to refuse customers or higher employees

(46:08):
that are queer. UM. Prominent in that resistance was a Disney,
which cast a long shadow over Georgia's economy via its
filming of Marvel movies inside Atlanta. Yeah so yeah. Across
many states, big corporate brands were quick to condemn obviously
bigoted political moves. UM. Prominent Tennessee employeers like Nissan, del Amazon,

(46:33):
and Vandorbilt University sent a since sent a letter last
year opposing a suite of bills targeting LGBTQ rights, and
a similarly, a group of Texas businesses business leaders declared
opposition to Governor Greg Abbotts recent directive to investigate parents
and others who provide transition treatment for for transgender youth.

(46:54):
But after Trump got out of office, and particularly during
this recent round of a tax on queer rights, companies
have not really been backing up their words with any
equivalent actions. After Tennessee last year past all the bills
that targeted lgbt Q rights, including measures restricting classroom discussion,
um barring trans girls from any high school sports and

(47:18):
it's and its own version of like the bathroom bill,
it faced nothing like the North Carolina boycotts. There was,
there was, There was just nothing because this is when
Biden was president. Now, um so, whether it be the
anti c r T stuff, voting restrictions, or stepping away
lgbt Q rights the past year under Joe Biden, companies
are not really bothered to push back on these socially
conservative bills were taking many states. It's it's they don't

(47:42):
it's it's easier to push back. But it's easier to
push back on something when you know when you have
a big bad in office. I guess, uh well, and
I think also it's it's the companies can see which
way the wind is blowing, right, Yeah, Like it's a
sa standing with grifters when you when you when you
watch people like when you watch stream races, like suddenly
start to flip the political positions. When you when you
watch the love the live streamers in particularly do this.

(48:03):
When you watch them starting to flip that that's how
you can tell which way the wind is blowing. And
this is really fucking scary because you know the way
the wind is blowing right now that that these corporations
are are are you know, drifting towards is just you know,
refusing to oppose is just this exterminationism. Yeah, I mean
so thankfully Disney got you know, shouted to like we're

(48:28):
going to talk about so creators of the movie Song
of the South. UM. Was notable that in their refusal
to criticize the bill as it moved through the legislator
under um the kind of recent stuff inside Florida specifically so,
but this was part of an overall pattern, like the

(48:50):
corporate response was was much more muted to they go
to they don't say gay bill um in Florida compared
to other stuff across across the country even UM and
it shouldn't really surprise any uh many of the Republican
backers of the bill in Florida are actually bankrolled by
the varou same businesses that have done performative virtue signally
boycott's and protests under the TROUMP era. UH. Disney and

(49:13):
Disney World in Orlando is one of the state's biggest
employers and an enormous economic force inside Florida. And when
disney silence was met with pushback, Bob Chapeck, the CEO,
try to kind of do damage control at first, like
internally within the company and then for outside press. UM

(49:34):
last Monday, I think, which was the seventh UM in
a in a In a memo to Disney staff, Chapec
argued that the company can do more to promote tolerance
quote through the inspiring content we produce and the welcoming
culture we create and the diverse community of organizations we support. UM,

(49:57):
which is funny if you know anything about the history
of Disney, also saying that the messages in their movies
are more powerful than any law being effort, which is
uh yeah, which is also you know, great coming from
the company most famous for queer coding almost all of
their filings. Uh so sure, sure, bob Um. Two days later, UM,

(50:23):
at a shareholder meeting, was a little more open and
told told shareholders that the company had privately opposed to
the bill. UM, and we'll trying to explain why the
silence in the recent legislative efforts to attack lgbt P
LGBTQ people. He said that we chose not to take
a public position on the bill because we felt like

(50:44):
we could be more effective working behind the scenes. Engaging
directly with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. But
it uh, it later came out that Speck had only
reached out to Florida Governor Randa Centers just that morning
after the bill had already had already passed. Yeah, we
we need that cat from Saga that just yells lies. Yes,

(51:04):
lying cats my favorite. UM definitely appreciate lying cat lying. Uh. Yeah.
So of course none of this satisfied anybody, UM, and
there's been increasing pushback from both within the Disney Company
and outside UM. Pixar sent a letter to JPEC criticizing
his wishy washy stance on the on the on the

(51:25):
don't say gay bill, and even goes on even goes
on to goes on to criticize the corporation for capitalizing
on pride through like a through rainbow mickey merchandizing and stuff, uh, saying, quote,
it feels terrible to be part of a company that
makes money from pride merch when it when it chooses
to step back in times of our greatest need and
when our rights are at risk, says the Pixar letter.

(51:48):
So yeah, after after aw if you did after the
shareholder meeting, Jpeck said third times the charm and tried
again to save face, announcing the company would immediately be
and supporting efforts to combat similar legislation in other states,
and would pause all political donations in the state pending
a review of the company's political giving. UM conceding that

(52:11):
the company failed to be a stronger ally in the
fight for equal rights, and all that is well and
good if you ignore the fact that in the past
two years alone, Disney has given three thousand dollars to
politicians in Florida who voted for the Don't Say Gay Bill.
UM Disney Entities donated at least four thousand dollars in
the re election campaigns for the bill's chief sponsors, state

(52:35):
Representative Joe Harding and state Sponsor Dennis Baxley. UM and
Disney Entities also donated fifty dollars to political action committee
tied to the governor, Rhonda Santa's one so just last year.
So yeah, that's a that's a lot of money. Yeah,
And I think I think it's worth like noting for
people who like are somewhat younger, which is that like

(52:59):
there's a whole thing where corporations pretend that they like
queer people now and this is the thing that has
existed for maybe a decade, and the other several hundred
years of capitalism are them like ruthless lee crushing queer
people of all kinds. So yeah, this is this is
their normal state. Queer capitalism is like not a thing.

(53:20):
It's a It's a thing that exists solely to sell
you sweatshirts. It's not a thing. Get that rainbow Mickey merchandise. Yeah,
they want they are actively okay with funding people who
want to kill you. So so as as I as
I was writing this, UM last week tonight the show
with Jonathan Oliver came out with a small piece that

(53:40):
was covering similar ground, uh to to my writing. That
also included some nice, nice, nice background on Disney sponsored
politician and lead sponsor. If they don't say gay bill
that Dennis Baxley. Um, so yeah, apparently Baxley has said
that quote abortion is causing Europeans to be replaced by
immigrant Disney's going back from its Nazi roots. Nice little

(54:04):
white replacement lie. Um. He worked on bills to repeal
protections for queer workers and worked to relegalize gay conversion therapy.
UM and at some kind of fundraising event he said
that quote. I know some districts where there's a big
infestation of homosexuals that were pushing their agenda under the

(54:25):
screen and then trying to get more people hired like
them instead up gay adoptions and all this stuff. It's
a continual fight for the values that we hold dear boy,
brought to you, brought to you by Disney and yeah,
take ticket infestation. Yeah, it's a yeah, take take take
none of the use of the infestation there. Um, that

(54:48):
kind of ties into my whole, my whole like a viewing,
you know, queerness as a contagion kind of idea well,
which I mean viewing the enemy is a contagion is
also older than just viewing queer people as a contagion,
because it's exactly how Hitler talked about the Jews, and
you know, it goes we can look at like some
of the things the Turks would say about Armenians. It's
this idea of you know, you there's no there's no

(55:10):
middle ground with a virus, and if you turn people
into a virus, then you don't have to consider a
middle ground. Um. So before we go and break I'm
gonna I'm gonna do one more. I'm gonna do A
quote from an article in The Atlantic UM titled want
to understand the Red State onslaught Look at Florida. Um,

(55:30):
it's a it's a it's a deccent article kind of
going through the financial stuff that Disney has kind of backed. Um.
But yeah, quote. Why have so many companies backed away
from these fights? The fights against the legislation? Some corporate
lobbyists I spoke with said that one reason is that
they believe the public opposition is counterproductive because more Republican

(55:52):
elected officials in the Donald Trump era find it politically
valuable to be seen as fighting big companies. Businesses also
frequently complained that the widening gulf between the parties leaves
them in a lose lose position of alienating an important
block of potential customers wherever they come down on policy debates.
UM activists will point out that business is often try

(56:14):
to have both ways by rhetorically identifying with causes such
as inclusion and diversity without taking any tangible steps to
defend them. Another factor probably looms larger than any of
these considerations, however much they want to publicly align with
the values of younger customers and consumers and workers. Big
companies want to only want to go only so far

(56:37):
and fighting these proposals because they still mostly prefer Republicans
and control of state governments to deliver the low tax
like regulation policies that they favor. State Republicans have, in turn,
have grown more overt about threatening those beliefs when business
leaders raise objections to the cultural war components of their agenda.
When American Airlines criticize the restrictive voting bill in Texas

(57:00):
past last year, Lieutenant Governor Patrick openly threatened to kill
other legislation the company had cared about. So yeah, like, obviously,
companies want Republicans to be in charge because it will
make it easier to run their big giant corporate businesses
that basically are as powerful a lot of a lot
of other like government entities. Uh so, yeah, they're gonna

(57:22):
spend supporting Rhonda Santis. They're gonna spend dollars in the
past the past two years supporting all these Republican candidates
that voted for for they don't say, gay bill, because
that makes them more profit in the long run. And
that's you know, if you're if you're running a business.
That's what they want. So yep, that is uh, I'm

(57:44):
gonna we're We're gonna take another ad break and then
we will we will come back to talk about Texas
and and and bathroom bills and healthcare and all of
the other kind of stuff that's happened in recent weeks. Yeah, hello,

(58:08):
we are back. Sorry, I was, I was taking some
time to listen to my favorite Ringo Star RM album
in the break in between reading books by It's a
really good combo of the media. How how dare you
not the not properly appreciating Michael Stipe, the voice of
several generations, Michael Stiper Michael Stipe, Yeah, so he was.

(58:35):
I mean, yeah, I I really like the Black Keys.
So anyway, um, I'm gonna make more bad music jokes
or I could continue my script. Yeah, please continue. We
don't have to talk about all of the wonderful contributions
your generation is made to music like uh like you
two with hit Like You two, Fame Zoomer Bands, you

(58:58):
two with hit Man. George Harrison, m Yep, you gonna
make a lot of people happy, Garrison, a lot of
people real happy. At least everyone states have introduced bills
that would ban trans athletes from competing in sports that
correspond to their gender identities UM. Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee have
already signed such bills into law. At the start of

(59:19):
this year, new restructions were put into place for for
in in Texas to also restrict UM what K through
twelve school sports people can be on now, making them
specifically match they're sex listed on their birth certificate at
a your time of birth UM and even when the
states who don't just have blanket bands. There's other horrifying

(59:40):
things happening, like in the beginning of last February, it
came out that the Utah Republicans are making UH have
proposed a commission to analyze the bodies of trans kids
that would determine student athletes eligibility on a case by
case basis, with having the authority to establish a explain
range for fiscal characteristics affected by puberty, banning schools school

(01:00:05):
school athletes who do not fall within these established limits
from participating in generate sports UM. Also a non fun
fun side side but about the bill is that in
their efforts to analyze the bodies of trans kids, the
bill would also remember the commission immune from any lawsuit
with respect to all acts done and actions taken in
good faith and carrying out their purposes. Um. Yeah, And

(01:00:28):
this is this is something that I think is really
common specifically with transphobia, which is that like all of
the rhetoric about transphobia is about sort of like like
a huge amount of it's about molestation. Here's about amount
amount of it's about pedophilia, and then a specifically with
the most station part, it's like yeah, okay, so we're
gonna have this council, right, we're gonna have we're gonna

(01:00:49):
have this commission that these people are gonna they're they're
going to just like they're going to molest these kids, right.
But like this this is just something that happened to
the transpeople constant, like the t s A like constantly.
It's just an enormal engine for just like like socially
abusing every single trans person who goes who goes into
an airport, Like I've definitely had not fun experiences at
the airport the past few times. Like this is this

(01:01:11):
is the thing is It's like it's it's they they
impose as a sanction on trans people, the things that
they claim trans people are doing yes, and it's it is.
And it's also interesting you'll find how many of these
kind of bill sponsors politicians, um, eventually have it come
out that like they watch a lot of like trans

(01:01:33):
pornography and stuff. It's like it's it's all it's all fake,
like all like everything, like everything they say they don't
actually mean. It's all about the culture war. It's all
about all the fucking like save the children's stuff. It's
all in opposite that they can get elected into politics. Right. Well,
we'll talk about this with like that with like the
with the Texas thing, how all of the big New
Texas stuff happened like days before the primary election because

(01:01:55):
they were being challenged by by by other politicians that
were farther to the right of them. So it's all
like a political ploy. But the problem is is that
at certain points, because of how long the culture war
kind of idea has been going, there's people who you know,
sincerely bought into the idea of the of the cultural
war now themselves running for office. Um. So like it

(01:02:18):
is like they do actually genuinely believe the things now
it is it is like it is like a full
circle thing of things that were just you know, just
to get votes initially, like things that weren't really believe sincerely,
just just to hold votes. But now people who were
brought up in that whole political idea are starting to
run for office who do actually believe those in those
things that sincerely So now it's it's leading, its leading

(01:02:41):
to a whole new kind of onslade of rights because
these people have just escalated and accelerated the whole culture
war idea. Yeah. Well, and and the other thing is
like they've linked up with people who, like people whose
politics at the church or people whose politics have specifically
been about eliminating trans people for like half a century.
Right Like there there's there's the linkages that are being

(01:03:01):
formed between people who have sort of like you know,
between these militantly anti trans organizations in between sort of
these people who buy into this, like either who are
very who who are cynically deploying the sort of the
sort of Christian supremacist rhetoric, or the people who are
just actual like Christian fascists. Right like, these people like

(01:03:26):
these people are goying together to the point where it
doesn't it doesn't really matter why they're doing it, Okay,
at certain points, like the reason why specifically they're doing
it becomes immaterial and you're just sort of left with
the things that they are doing. Yeah, it's I mean,
and there's just been so much of it the past

(01:03:47):
the past year, specifically like over like overall, more than
one hundred bills designed to restrict the rights of transgender
of transgender people have been introduced in at least thirty
three states. It justin just one, which is like, it's
become a record breaking here for any kind of anti
trans legislation. It's just it is accelerated to such a
extreme degree. UM and now continuing in two legislative cycle UM.

(01:04:12):
Last spring in in in in Arkansas, the state legislator
banned gender of her main care for minors UM, including
you know, puberty blockers HRT, all the stuff you know
UM and the House Bill one five seven oh prevents
transpeople from receiving hormotherapy, puberty blockers, similar treatments UM. It

(01:04:34):
was called the Save Adolescence from Experimentation Act UM, you know,
referring to medical treatment as experimentation UM. And shortly after
the bill was signed into law, UM, the doctors who
run the largest or who ran the largest provider of
of hormone therapy, and the state reported an increase in

(01:04:56):
suicide attempts in their patients during like just that same month. UM.
It was it was the first of its kind of
bill sign into law, and it was it was initially
vetoed by the governor, but then that veto was overturned
by the state legislator. So and that kind of similar
laws have been have been happening in states ever since then.

(01:05:16):
We're not going to talk about Texas, UM, because that's
one of the one of the biggest, one of the
biggest kind of things in this whole fight is the
stuff around Texas. So, Texas officials have begun investigating parents
of transgender adolescence for a possible child abuse, according to
a lawsuit filed on a few a few weeks ago,

(01:05:37):
after Governor Greg Abbott directed uh the the Child Protective
Services Agency in Texas, to handle certain medical treatments, including
puberty blockers and h RT as possible crimes. The directive
from Governor Abbott was following a non binding opinion by
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton UM saying that parents who

(01:05:58):
provide their transgender to natures with doctor prescribed a care
could be investigated for a child abuse. So the moves
by both Abbott and Paxixton try to Republican UH incumbents
came just days before the primary election UM in which
each of them faced significant challenges from farther right opponents. UM.

(01:06:22):
So they've both they've faced criticism from not being staunch
staunchly anti trans enough in the past, like in the
months prior to this, and they did this to hopefully,
you know, gain support from the more radical, UH, more
radical voters in Texas. That's like, that is that is

(01:06:42):
undoubtedly a big, a big, big part of why this
happened at the time that it did. They did the
same thing both Paxiston, well, let's Paxton, but Abbott did
basically the same thing with like masks in the last
year two where it's like, yeah, you know, I mean
it's it's great because the people are just they will
literally kill thousands of people or just hold onto their

(01:07:04):
power and it's among to be. The first people investigated
for child abuse was actually an employee by the States
Protective Services Agency who had a sixteen year old transgender child.
On March one, the a c l U of Texas
and Lambda Lambda Legal great great name went to state

(01:07:26):
court in Austin to try to stop this inquiry into
this family. Who again, who who worked for? Who? Worked
for the Child Protective Services Agency UM. The employee, who
was not named in the court filing, works on reviews
of reports of abuse and neglect. She was paced on
administrative leave a few weeks ago. According to the filing,

(01:07:48):
the friday after Governor Abbott made the initial kind of
letter UM, she was visited by an investigator from the
agency UM, who was also seeking medical records related to
her child. UH. The family of the child, identified in
court documents only as Mary Doe has as as refused
to voluntarily at turnable records and as taking the case

(01:08:09):
to court. According to the lawsuit, the state investigator told
parents that the only allegation against them was that their
transgender daughter may have been provided with gender affirming healthcare
and was currently transitioning. And that was that was the claims,
that was the that was the basis for the claims
of of of of of child abuse. It's a so like. Initially,

(01:08:31):
it wasn't clear if Abbot's order would survive kind of
judicial scrutinty because the order does not any The order
doesn't change any Texas law. Um, it's just it's just
an opinion piece. And several county attorneys and district attorneys
of Dallas and Houston have publicly condemned Abbots and Pakiston's
directives UM, clarifying that they would not prosecute families for

(01:08:53):
child abuse under the new definition, and they would not
irrationally um and unjusfiably interfere with medical decisions. The mayor
of Austin announced that Austin should be considered a safe place,
a sanctuary for transgender children and their families, and they
would not be enforcing the governor's mandate. So it's quite
a time to be alive to have sanctuary cities for

(01:09:13):
being trans YEA. And of course all of these things,
whether it be from like the d A S or
the mayor, that doesn't stop trying to protective services from
not investigating you like that, doesn't like that doesn't like
They can still investigate and harass you. They can still
send agents to your door. They can still try to
see his medical records, right, They can still investigate claims
even if even if the DA won't prosecute. There's still

(01:09:35):
that massive like looming threat of and like that like
terror like holding over you know, people's heads. Um, you know,
it's it's it's a it is like a mass it's
a massive scare tactic, right, it is. It is too
terrorize people like they will be too scared to transition
because they don't want their family to get in trouble.
It's it's pretty grim. It's pretty. It's pretty. It's pretty evil.

(01:09:57):
Um so on the for the for the a c
l U and the Lambda Legal Court failing. Uh, they
they're they're seeking to block the request for medical records
from the employees case and more broadly kind of challenged
the legitimacy of the entire investigation and the power that
the government has to change this definition of child abuse.

(01:10:19):
It's a because it's it's it's it's it's also important
important to mention that the mandatory as the mandatory reporting
aspect of the bill, which was well not not bill
of the of the legal opinion that was really emphasized
in Governor Abbot's directive. Um Abbott described his letter that
the order would mean that all licensed professionals who have
direct contact with children, including doctors, nurses, therapists, and even

(01:10:42):
school teachers would be required to report to state authorities
um if if if they believe that there is a
minor who's trans or could be receiving any kind of
gender affirming treatment. Um and if they don't report this,
they could themselves faced criminal penalties. So the whole, the
whole mandatory warning aspects in other like insanely insanely bad

(01:11:02):
thing that we could talk about it for a long time.
This episode is getting long enough, so we're just gonna
continue through and we can we can ponder at how
at how bad that is. Um. One parent of a
transgender a teenager in Houston to the family's health clinic,
Legacy Community Health has suspended all refills and new prescriptions

(01:11:23):
for a transgender youth in light of Abbot's new order.
So it's it's happening, Like, yeah, it's there, it's the
stuff has happened, the stuff has started. It's it's already
scaring people into not doing stuff like it's it's that
is what it was designed to do. Yeah, and and
I and I know we keep making this episode longer,
but like it is worth mentioning that, like it actually

(01:11:47):
like having someone even temporarily like being off of the
hormones that they've been taking for for HRT, like that
fucking sucks. Yeah, it's like it has really bad negative effects.
I mean yeah, like people will be surprised how fast
hormones start working and how fast going off of them
they stop working. Like it is it is, It is

(01:12:07):
pretty it is pretty surprising. And like I didn't want
to get tons into like the science of being trans
in this because that's because that's not the focus of
this week. We're talking with the legislation and the onslaught
of queer rights of people trying to hurt them. But
like you know, it's it's obvious that like there is
not many cases at all where there's being you know,
like genital surgery done on minors. Like if that does

(01:12:29):
that does not happen. It can happen for like medical
like that can happen for medically necessary reasons, like if
there's like accidents and stuff, But that doesn't happen for
gender affirming care. What happens is you get on you
you you go on puberty blockers, which are already prescribed
to assist gender kids all the time. Um, if they
have early on puberty, they have no lasting side effects,
they're completely safe. Um And in some cases, depending on

(01:12:51):
the kids therapists and their doctors, they may be prescribed
HRT or they will be prescribed that a bit later.
But that is that even still, that is that is
the only things that happened. Um, And what they're trying
to suppress is both but both of those things. But
also like the ability for like therapists to even talk
about gender with kids, Like kids are having problems with
with like with gender dysphoria, they don't feel comfortable to

(01:13:14):
even have to not even be able to talk to
that to talk talking about those feelings with therapists is
like part is part of the goal because that can
be considered gender affirming care. Um. I think that there's
one other thing we really should mention, which is that
so there there is one kind like one that is
the few, but that there's there there's a very important
kind of like quote unquote like gender surgery that is

(01:13:35):
done on children, which is the stuff that's one to
intersect kids, Yes, I mean sex kids. Yeah. Also like
circumcisions are already like yeah, but I mean with with
specific with intersext kids. This stuff matters because all of
these bills that you're talking about, where's like, oh, you
can't have gender affirming surgery. You can't have like surgery
and kids. Like every single one of these bills like that,
they all have They all specifically have card carve outs

(01:13:57):
to allow doctors to funk up the generals of inter
sex kids. Yeah. That's it's it's all carved out there.
So yeah, well let's see. We we are. We are
near the last we are. We're near near, near the
last little stretch here. Um. On March eleventh, a Texas
State court halted the new Department of Family Protective Services
policy of investigating the parents of transgender children. UM District

(01:14:22):
District Judge Amy Mention concluded on concluded the hearing on
the requested statewide injunction by saying, quote, the Governor's directive
was given the effect of new law or new agency
rule despite there being no new legislation, regulation, or even
agency policy. Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Department of Family

(01:14:42):
Protective Services Commissioner Baby Masters of their actions violate the
separation of powers by impermissibly approaching into the legislative domain.
UM Judge Mentiontion also granted a temporary restraining order blocking
the state from investigating the family that that that prompted
this lawsuit happening from the from the person who already
worked at the Department of a Family Protective Services UM.

(01:15:07):
Texas Attorney General Kent Pactonum appealed this decision. Well, first
of all, he appealed the restraining order and lost that appeal. UM.
And and the the s o U is trying to
make this temporaries training order against the state permanent and
extend to all parents of all transgender kids in Texas.

(01:15:28):
And there's there's gonna be a whole trial scheduled for
this topic on July eleven, two. So this is gonna
this is gonna get this is gonna happen, like where
where we will figure out what is gonna happen with
this later on this year. UM. And after the judges
ruling halting the investigations due to lack of legal binding,
Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an appeal for for for

(01:15:51):
the ruling. So and that's so, so that's that's gonna
get appealed. UM. And he he tweeted out that the
quote Democrat judges order permitting child abuse is frozen. Much
needed investigations will proceed as they should. The fight will
continue up to the Supreme Court. I'm ready for it, um.
But it's unclear how much legal backing this actually has,

(01:16:11):
So we don't know if if the if the if
the Protective Services actually has permission to keep investigating or not.
It is kind of unclear. Paxton says that they can this,
this state judge says they can't, and that's kind of
legally up in the air right now, so we don't
totally know. But there's gonna be a whole trial on
the topic in July. UM. Kind of one of the

(01:16:34):
last things I want to mention is, uh, this this
Idaho bill that was passed by the House of Representatives
that would that would criminalize gender affirming medical procedures, including
property blocker, sorry, including puberty blockers an HRT for any
kind of trans transgend gender youth. And it was also
reported that the bill would make it a felony punishable

(01:16:54):
by life imprisonment to anyone who helps a kid travel
across state lines to get gender affirming healthcare. But this
actually maybe isn't actually true, Like this actually probably wasn't
a part of that bill. Um. The bill just amend's
current laws regarding female genital mutilation, of course of carving
out a specific section to allow the mutilation of intersext

(01:17:15):
kits um. But uh, but yeah, it added a section
also criminalizing gender firm and care. Um. But the section
of the bill making it a felony to travel out
of state only refers to the general mutilation section. Um.
It doesn't refer to the gender firm in care section.
And it's unclear if that was an oversight um or

(01:17:36):
if the limitation was intentional, who knows. Um, But it
still did attempt to criminalize gender firm and care within
the state. The bill was I believe, I think earlier
this morning as of time time of recording, the bill
was not passed by the Senate. UM. So that's good. Uh.
They said the Senate that it was too vague in

(01:17:58):
scope and it was unclear how it was to be enforced.
So that bill was halted and it did not did
not continue. Um. Yeah, but you know that's yeah. There
is a lot of the reason why all stuff has
kind of started is that, like there has been so
much progress happening in queer rights in the past like
ten years, right, Um, so, now because the progress is

(01:18:20):
more visible, what was once like obvious but like low
key bigotry is trying to be put into law. Right.
There's there's there used to be so many medical hoops
to jump through to get any type of gender affirming treatment,
but now almost every like legit medical organization recognizes the
importance of gender firm and care. So that plus the
visibility and the cultural acceptance of queerness is making some

(01:18:42):
you know, mostly good old white Christian conservative populations a
little bit uncomfortable. Right, There's there's this increasing fear that
what if your kid thinks they're trans, well, what if
what if they become an unholy degenerate? What if? And
what if there are people trying to make that happen
on purpose. Right, all of the brutal reality, all of like,
all of the brutality in these bills, the kind of

(01:19:04):
the not like the total nonchalance at the possibility of
you know, kids killing themselves because of this bill and
because of all these legislations. So all of like the
transphobia negatively contributing to mental health, all of that brutality
is just justified in the minds of these anti trans
like people, because it's to save that, it's to save
their kids from experiencing that in the first place. Right,
it's the idea that queerness is an infection, that it

(01:19:26):
can spread from person to person. It's like it's a
it's it's like a contagion. If you hear about it,
you could yourself become gay. So they don't hear about it,
then that's not going to be a possibility. So all
all of the brutality, it's like, it's it's it's it's
both the point, but it's also justified because this thing
is seen as such like an it's seen as such
an ontological threat to their whole idea of like the world.

(01:19:49):
So yeah, that's uh, and it's I mean, it's it's
not gonna stop right every you know, one, we saw
a massive increase in le legislation on this topic. Twenty
twenty two, we're seeing an even bigger increased in legislation
on this topic, and you know, attempts to physically oppose it.
You know, it's our can can kind of be done.

(01:20:10):
I mean, like you can you can see all there
was some some successful kind of protests to the whole
school board thing. You can also like you can sneak
queer books into libraries, so you can just put you
can just put them in there. Um, you can request
queer books in your library systems. Um, you can you know,
attend school board meetings. And again it's sure that the

(01:20:30):
institution of the institution of schooling is problematic um in
a lot of ways, but it's we shouldn't make it
worse for queer kids. So maybe it's still is worth
actually focusing on. And there's there's a lot, like you know,
you can, like like in the case of the still
U suit, there is legal challenges being taken up against
all of these things. We'll see how that goes. The

(01:20:50):
there's always been a there's always been a shaky record
of the legal you know of like the court's ability
to protect these rights. But every once in a while
it does happen, like with like with gay marriage. Um.
The last thing I'll mention with like specifically with like
HRT being made illegal in a lot of these places
at least like prescribed vida doctor. Um, I will kind

(01:21:10):
of talk. I will mention um d I y HRT
as the thing that that that is the thing, it
exists You can go to d I y h RT
dot get hub dot io to get information on this.
It's been It requires a lot of research, but you
can find like you can get h you can get
like estrogen and stuff from like like made by the

(01:21:32):
companies that that supply pharmacies. You can buy that legally. UM.
Testosterones a little bit more iffy because that is I
think that it is like a schedule tour scheduled three
drug UM. But estrogen is much more available UM to
buy legally online. To just make sure you get it
from a good place and make sure that you you know,
know how it affects you and all that stuff, like
do lots of reading. But that is a possibility. So

(01:21:54):
I will probably plan an episode on d A y
h r T in the near future just it's like
a whole episode the topic. But I just wanted to
kind of mention that as one of the last things
that being like, yeah, if they're restricting all these stuff,
we should probably you know, learn to provided ourselves because
there's no guarantee that the government's or any kind of
even like pharmacies will be able to do that forever. Right,
Like it's it's good to have alternative methods of figuring

(01:22:17):
out how to get the drugs that make you feel nice.
So yeah, that was that is my episode on the
on the legislation that has been happening in the past,
in the past really like six months. Um yeah, that's fun. Yeah,
but by the time there there there might there might
be new stuff that has happened. Oh, most certainly. Yeah. Good,

(01:22:42):
that's why when you know, when all this stuff gets
very depressing, I just like listening to my favorite Wayne
Cohen's song by Pink Floyd and it really just really
does held me down and make you feel much better. Wow. Well,
I'm gonna go listen to the new uh double them
that A hundred Gecks did with Billy Joel I Do

(01:23:04):
I Do love Me someone hundred gus mhm yeah, the
Gus Joel concert. It's even I hear that that Elton
John is going to get into and they're gonna they're
gonna do. That would be quite the show. Honestly, that
would would be a fascinating experience. That would be a
very mix of like horny women in their sixties and

(01:23:26):
horny seventeen year olds. What would happen? Well, yeah, that
is Ah, there are plenty of organizations that are you know,
fighting inst and stuff in Texas. UM. I could list them,
but honestly, if you if you if you're not there,
it's it's it's if you mean you should, you should.

(01:23:46):
You should look into what's happening in your area, Learn
what legislation is being passed in your area, learn what
your you know, representatives are doing, and look into helping
people get the way Turkey. That's really that's really. I mean, like,
if there's a way that bodybuilders can get testosterone, there's
a way that you can get testosterone for transguise, if
estrogen is much easier to get, um, so look into that.

(01:24:09):
Don't don't. Don't be stupid. Um. But yeah, that is
a that's that is. That is that is my piece.
Find joy, find violence, and find the correct application of
the two that allows people to stay alive. Yeah. Yeah,
and uh yeah and uh listen to listen to music

(01:24:30):
that makes you happy. That is that is that is
all you can do. All you can all all you
can do, yeah is find your favorite YouTube album, uh
featuring Roger Waters. All right, good bye,

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The War on Trans People: Part 4, The Legislative Onslaught