A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - The 100-Year-Old Myth of Gays “Coming for Your Children”

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

I get called a “groomer” on Twitter every day — which is weird, because I want nothing to do with your kids. What is it with queers and kids that gets conservatives so livid? Today, we explore The Gay Agenda’s exhausting past — beginning with the present. First, UK drag queen Crystal tells us how she successfully sued a right-wing activist who defamed her as a “paed*phile.” Then, Chelsey Weber-Smith (of American Hysteria) takes us through the last century of American history, where myths about the Scary Queer Predator pop up again and again, and again. Support me on Patreon! Listen to Chelsey’s podcast, American Hysteria. Find more of Crystal. Huge thanks to Blueland for sponsoring this episode! Get 15% off a cuter, more sustainable way to clean at www.blueland.com/fruity Find more of A Bit Fruity. Find more of Matt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We have had a lot of diva down moments this year as gay people, from George Santos to the Senate Twinks, to the return of the 1980s, Satanic panic, but this time it's levied against drag queens and transgender 13-year-olds. But we are starting this year with a real diva-up moment. Because last week, Crystal, a drag queen from the first season of Rupal's Drag Race, UK, successfully sued a guy who baselessly called her a pedophile on Twitter. She sued him for defamation and she won. The queers are getting litigious. We will not take it anymore. Crystal, welcome to a bit fruity, diva.

Thank you so much. What an intro. Also, it's been a while since I heard the American pronunciation of pedophile, so that's refreshing. Oh, yeah, we might have to, one of us is going to have to meet the other on that one. I can say pedophile if you want me to. No, you know what? Potato potato.

Take me back to the beginning. How did this all start? And who is Lawrence Fox? Oh, God. How long you got? Lawrence Fox is a former actor turned alt-right troll, basically. He runs a political party here in the UK, which has no members, no elected politicians. And really no real purpose except to kind of shift the political dial to the right.

Using all of the tactics we all know and love, like denying racism exists and demonizing queer people and a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric. So he's a nasty piece of work. This all started because he said, he was criticizing a supermarket on Twitter for celebrating Black History Month. Okay. Yeah. Just. to call a supermarket reverse racist. Racist against white people.

This is a big issue with supermarkets these days. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. And yeah, he basically, exactly what you say, he called them reverse racist, and he said that they were promoting racial segregation. Why? Because they were providing safe spaces for their black employees to gather

to talk about issues they've experienced because of their race in relation to work. So I called him a racist. In return, he called me a paedophile. And it was, it was crazy. It was shocking. It was surprising. It was unexpected. It was the first time I think I've ever had that word used against me. Unfortunately, not the last. He had a really large following at the time. It's since doubled. But it was something like 200, 300,000 people on Twitter.

So I got a huge pile on as a result. So I quickly got in touch with a lawyer. We asked for an apology. retraction and he refused and said, in fact, if you sue me, I'm going to sue you for calling me a racist. Hasn't, hasn't this guy done blackface? Yes, he put his children into blackface. Oh. Yeah. Some people shouldn't reproduce. Yeah, so we ended up in this kind of standoff situation where, you know, we were both suing each other all of a sudden. And I was being sued for calling him a racist and I was suing him for calling me a pedophile. It took three years to get to court.

And just last week we had a judgment saying that he defamed me and I did not defame him. Well, congratulations, Diva. Thank you so much. Thank you. He's going to have to cover my legal costs, which is going to be in the million pound range. So that's already the most, an incredibly insane amount of money. And he also hasn't stopped what he's doing. Just last week he tweeted saying I was insinuating that I was a danger to children.

So there's a very good chance that his damages are going to be. aggravated because he's not, you know. He has a lot of balls for someone who doesn't really have the money to be able to behave the way he's behaving. The thing, though, that I'm wondering is like people like us, you know, queer people who are kind of public online, I guess, but also queer people who aren't even really public online. But like, I know I've been called a groomer and a pedophile and all of this stuff a million times, and I bet at this point you have too. Why did you decide to sue? Like, did you think that you

would win? Yes, I did think that I would win. Work. The UK, thankfully, has some pretty robust defamation laws. The principle of it was what was really important to me, which was clearing my name, you know, making sure that there was no question in anyone's mind that I was denying it robustly. And my life, my career, my, everything. everything that I do is based on the public perception of me. So my reputation is really important. And then beyond that, I knew it was symbolically really important because it's a word that has been used against queer people since time immemorial and has more recently become something that's used against anyone who's gender non-conforming and specifically the trans community. So

it felt like it was really important to take a stand, especially where I had, you know, the means to do so and a good case to do so and remind people that that language is completely unacceptable and that we're not going to take it anymore. We're not going to fucking take it anymore. No, I mean, I think this, this trial sets a really hopeful precedent after a really, you know, not hopeful couple of years where basically anyone, lives of TikTok, can get on the fucking internet, accuse any queer person of whatever they want, leading to, you know, bomb threats, threats on our lives. And, we're just supposed to sit here and take it and be like, well, being called a pedophile is integral to the gay experience, I guess. Like, no, the fuck it's not. And it hasn't stopped. You know,

winning this case has not put that genie back in the bottle. Like, the abuse continues and probably now is just part of something I have to accept who's going to continue. So, like, I did an interview on Sky News last week and, you know, the comments under that were just just as bad as they've ever been. So, but yeah, I've also been targeted by lips of TikTok. They accused me of using a, dildo on stage in front of children and simulating masturbation, which is not what I was doing and not what happened and there was no tildo. But, you know, they're happy to spread those lies and reinforce this idea that we're all trying to get the children. Well, why let the truth get in the way of a viral tweet, you know? Why let the truth get in the way of some good old rage baiting?

You are a professional working drag queen. Do you do drag story times? you know, or other family or kids, you know, events where kids are present. Yeah, I have done. And having done it now a few times, it is an incredibly rewarding experience. Like, you just sit with some children and read them stories about how they're good just the way that they are and they should love themselves. And there isn't even necessarily anything inherently queer in the books that you read. It's just like, accept each other for who you are.

How dare you? Yeah, I know, I know. But it resonates with kids and they love it and it's like great for the parents and, you know, it can be a really, really positive experience. Fundamentally, I don't see why taking your kids to a drag show is any different to taking them to see a musical or, you know, a clown at the circus. It's just all the same sort of thing. And yes, there might be double entendres and innuendo, but that's the same with like a Disney movie. There's jokes for the adults and there's jokes for the kids and that's okay. The same with SpongeBob.

I mean, family-friendly and, like, kid-friendly drag events have become this, like, culture war battleground. And it's led them, you know, as well as anyone, to being severely misunderstood as some, like, satanic pedophile ritual or something. What do you want people to know about drag queens and kids? We're all trying to trans your children. Stop, they're not going to understand the sarcasm. You're going to get me in trouble.

We're trying to provide entertainment. The message is very simple. It's be yourself. If that is somehow objectionable in the year 2024, then I don't really know what to say to that. We're not going to be able to influence the gender or sexuality of your kids, but maybe we will make them a little bit less nasty to other kids who are growing up queer. It's very benign.

And mostly, you know what? It's quite boring. Stop sending your kids to drag shows, not because they're inappropriate, but because they're fucking boring. I mean, like, it's a children's storybook. Like, what's the worst it's going to happen? It resembles all of these right-wing anti-queer moral panics. I mean, I think about, like, the Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light scandal and, like, Tartner.

get selling, like, tucking underwear for adults and all of these things that, like, at their core are just not very exciting. These aren't actual scandals until someone on the right who oftentimes has a lot of money to potentially make by turning it into a scandal. We don't care about these things until they tell them, until these people on Fox News tell us that we should. We're all just like trying to live our lives and for the most part, our lives are pretty uninteresting. And every now and then, someone figures out a new way to manufacture some outrage at our expense. Mostly the gay agenda is like, get paid and, you know, get some good sleep. That's my gay agenda. That's as much as any of us can hope for. Crystal, congratulations,

my sincerest congratulations, on your win and really what feels like a community win, you know, we're not going to fucking take it. I hope it does. do something to change the dial a little bit. And it's been really special how much it has seemed to mean to people. So it's very gratifying. Thank you for being here, Crystal. Thank you. So as Crystal mentioned, this narrative of LGBTQ people being groomers or inherent dangers

to children is an age-old one. And I wanted today to explore that because what we're experiencing right now with this groomer panic nonsense is it's just that it's nonsense but it's nonsense that has bubbled up to the surface so many times over the last many decades in American culture and joining us to help go on that journey of time is Chelsea Weber Smith from the podcast American Hysteria is here today. Thank you so much for having me, I'm just thrilled to be here. How would you describe yourself?

I more and more, I feel like I want to be considered a folklorist, which I think is kind of fun, because even though the things we're talking about, especially the moral panic, you know, it's kind of what we would call what's happening with the fear of the, you know, child stealing queer person is still kind of a mechanism of. of folklore that's been told for centuries about different kinds of outgroups. So I've just been, you know, I study urban legends a lot and what they have to do with society and even conspiracy theories as well. But they all kind of fall under this blanket of like the stories that we tell that say something

more about the culture that we live in and kind of what it needs to be human in general. If you're watching the video of this episode, by the way, and you notice that my coffee cup just jump-cutted into a wine glass. We're now recording it's Friday evening. And I love that this is the way that I'm spending my Friday evening. I love that I get to make this show that I love. But, you know, the one thing I will say where you need to meet me in the middle here is that if I'm going to be spending my Friday evening talking about people who want Chelsea and I dead, then I can have a glass of wine while we do it. I think that you are more than allowed to have that glass of wine and more.

Oh yeah, you might see the, between jump cuts, you might see the levels of the glass. It's just going to fill again. You need one of those reality TV show goblets where it hides the level of the alcohol so they can cut it together however they want without people know to say that it's out of order. That's what you need. So in the timeline of the scary monster drag queen queer, person, gay teacher who can't be around your kid. Like, where does this story begin? This story, here's where I like to begin. It's not the earliest point, but I think it's a very,

like, kind of light, humorous entrance into a very frightening topic. And that is with the character named Tinky Winky Winky. Do you remember who Tinky Winky Winky was in the late 90s? Tinky Winky was, I'm going to say the purple Teletubby. Right. I know that Tinky Winky, like there was some sort of fear that like Tinky Winky was gay and was turning the kids gay. Yes. That's the, that's the basics.

And might I add, you know, I as many children, like I was a viewer of Teletubbies and I am gay. So I can't categorically say that they were wrong. Yeah. And I'm gay too, but not in the way that they. We're thinking it would happen, I guess. The tinky winky little mini moral panic was brought to us by Jerry Falwell, senior, who was the president of Liberty University and a very, very famous televangelist. What happened was, you know, we had tinky winky. He was purple, strike one. He had a upside down triangle on his head, strike two for gay imagery. And then he also. carried a patent red leather purse striped. Right?

So it's like it's a crime to serve cunt. Exactly. And it was in the late 90s. It was. What's funny about this is like Jerry Falwell first kind of brings this up in his magazine at Liberty University. And he said he is purple, the gay pride color and his antenna is shaped like a triangle, the gay pride symbol. pride symbol. Then he goes on to the Today Show with Katie Couric and he says to have little boys running around with purses and acting effeminate and leaving the idea that the masculine male, the feminine

female is out and gay is okay is something Christians do not agree with, right? Kind of typical stuff that we hear today even about cartoon characters or, you know, whatever is infiltrating the minds of children and doing this thing like called turning them queer. It's very like mini mouse in the pants suit, Candice Owens meltdown. Yeah, or the M&M's, right? Or the M&M. We literally do this every two weeks until we all die. What's interesting, I think, about this is that it was not Jerry Falwell's idea that Tinky Winky was this queer icon.

It was actually a gay gossip columnist named Michael Musto, who was talking about it in Entertainment Weekly. And he had these messages that Tinky Winky, you know, and it was all very tongue in cheek, right? So it was very much like not satire, but just like camp essentially, right? And he said that Tinky Winky was offering this great message, like not only that it's okay to be gay, but the importance of being well accessorized. And then the advocate picks up on this and calls Tinky Winky a big fabulous fag. and says that, you know, it helps it helps kids to know that it's okay to take an interest in the accoutrements of the opposite gender, right? So Jerry Falwell sees this. And I think this is really key throughout the history of the moral panics that we have is like straight people, like hyper straight people not getting the gay joke, right?

So it's like he took this joke really, really seriously and used it as proof that. there was this like concerted effort among gay people to like cultivate this character in order to like hypnotize children into wanting, you know, patent leather purses. And, you know, I think back to like my brother who loved Telitubbies. He's younger than me. And he did carry a purse, uh, based on Tinky Winky's bag. And it wasn't like, and he's not gay. I mean, he just like for like a few weeks, he was like, oh, that's. I'm like, that character has a bag and carried a bag. And then that was kind of all that came of that. But it was, of course, like such a funny moment. And even as a kid, I remember how funny it was. You know, I was probably like 11 when this happened. And I found it just like hysterical that that this was actually something that people were afraid of. And now here we are in the year of our lord, 24 and we're doing the exact same thing, like over and over and over again, because it's profitable for like right-wing media channels. And I mean, Bert and Ernie were two characters that caused

a little moral panic in the 90s, the Dumbledore being gay the whole time, you know, SpongeBob even was considered like the secret homosexual agent at one point. So it's like, this has been around and permeating our culture, you know, since the 9th. 90s, but of course, way before that. So what was kind of happening at the same time that this kind of ridiculous panic is happening, you know, kind of like we see today, there were scarier forces and more serious troubles kind of happening under the surface. In the early 90s, for example, the first kind of real solid mention of what we now call the gay agenda was came out. It was, it was, was this video produced by this ministry in California that was like, and we'll see this again

and again, where this propaganda that's put out is like pretty pornographic. So it was like put out and spread among all of their different life spring ministries. And it like showed the truth about the gay lifestyle in like really explicit terms. Like it taught people who watch these videos like what's fisting? are golden showers? What's rimming? You know? And like, then it taught them all of these, like, really damaging false statistics about gay men, especially. And like, lest it just stay in, like, the creepy basements that these videos are shown in, it actually got all the way to, like, the highest government offices, including to the Supreme Court where, like, one justice claimed that the courts

were signing on to the homosexual agenda after he watched these things. videos. So like, that's a big deal. So was was the original claim that this church released with like, the gay agenda is a real thing? Like, was it like, oh, they're spreading, like there's a concrete list of things that they're out to, like, achieve or like convert children or something? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it depends, you know, it depends on kind of the piece of media, but that's kind of the refrain is that there is some secret, concert. effort to control the media. You know, I mean, we hear these conspiracies.

They're not unfamiliar to, you know, control public education and to, you know, basically slowly change culture in order for homosexuality to be not only accepted, but considered, like, supreme in some way, which, like, I don't know. there is an agenda, but it's a lot less like, it's not this thing where we're like, and then we'll get into media and then we'll control the telitubbies and then we'll use Tinky Winky to like blast out these gay rays across the nation and like hypnotize it. So it just takes this like really normal desire for progress and turns it into something far more sinister and well organized as if there is like this secret club.

I mean, I think about like, there is an agenda that I know that most queer adults have, which is it's more of just this idea that we want the kids of tomorrow to have it better than we had it. And so part of that is visibility. Part of that, you know, it's is, is existing in media. And, you know, but it's, it's so that the people who are going to be like us one way or another have this transition into finding themselves in a way that is. as painful as the one that we experienced. I'm not trying to turn your kids gay. I'm just saying your kids might already be gay.

And if that's the case, then I want them to not hate themselves. If I thought it was possible to turn all the kids gay, I might. But see, that's the exact kind of joke that these people would take out of context. And then they'd be like, they are trying to turn the kids gay. And you know what? You know what, Candice Owens? Yes, I am. At the same time that Jerry Falwell is like causing America to chuckle at.

gay tinky winky. He's also saying stuff like, this is a quote, these perverted homosexuals absolutely hate everything that you and I and most decent God-fearing citizens stand for. Make no mistake. These deviance seek no less than total control and influence in society, politics, our schools, and in our exercise of free speech and religious freedom. If we do not act now, homosexuals will own America. And this is in the 90s. I mean, this is, we hear like these exact statements today, I feel like. Yeah. And now they do it about trans people who are even more marginalized.

And it's like, yes, we are at serious, we are at serious risk of maybe in 50 years one trans person owning a Fortune 500 company. Like they're replacing us. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I mean, even then in the 90s, like they, there were all these big. big panics and this big controversy and anger and outrage over the curriculums that were being created in like especially New York City. Like they started to create these multicultural curriculums, which just that term, you know, made everybody furious. And that was really about,

you know, fostering understanding between students who come from different kinds of cultures. And like the only thing in this like multicultural curriculum that that caused this freak out was advice to educators and parents that they teach their students simply that gay people exist and deserve respect. Okay. And this was called like dangerously misleading lesbian homosexual propaganda. And one person, the chancellor of the school district, said it was as big a lie as any concocted by he. Hitler or Stalin. This is in the 90s? Yeah. And it's the same thing today. I mean, this is literally the don't take any law.

It's these things, they're cyclical, they're templates that people can use when they want to outrage voters into doing what they want is my personal belief. It's like you can find these topics that like mobilize people who otherwise, you know, perhaps wouldn't mobilized with this story about like saving the children, right? So a lot of people don't know this, but like before World War II, we had this moment during the Great Depression called the pansy craze where drag performers called female impersonators at that time were like some of the biggest stars in the country, like openly gay people had little like campy songs that they would sing at nightclubs and on like nighttime talk shows. and they were like some of, if not the most beloved and highest paid entertainers for like this

three-year period in the early 1930s. It was kind of one of those like, don't ask, don't tell, but everybody knew, but everyone spoke in innuendo. So it was this kind of like, people started to realize that there was this whole world and language that they weren't privy to that, you know, was full of this entertaining spirit as well as like. this, you know, the ways that queer people would be signaling to each other. Like that was kind of brought for the first time into American consciousness. And like kind of what prompted this, I think it's, it's kind of amazing because in the 1920s, we have everybody's coming back from World War I. There's like a bunch of, there's like a wartime economy. So now there's all this

money. And it's the first time we have this class of people called teenagers who aren't having to work at factories, right? And they have disposable income. They're going, like especially, you know, white young people are going to black jazz clubs. You know, this is all, this stuff's all really complicated, but it is for the first time. There's like mixing amongst groups of people that had never really been allowed in society to interact. And then from there, prohibition comes in and forces everybody into these certain spaces where they could just get drunk and party. And so that meant that all kinds of people were like, well, we're just going to have to go to these clubs with people that are different from us that like maybe we have these preconceived

notions about and just party together. And it did really create a different vibe for the country. And it was a vibe that was like focused on like fun and merriment and camp, really. I mean, it was just a very campy time. And, you know, unfortunately, it didn't last long because the Great Depression came. And with that, you know, came a big crisis of masculinity as often comes when we have economic crises in the country. And they became, you know, queer people became scapegoats. There were a lot of laws that came in that were called like sexual psychopath laws at that time,

which were a lot of like, you know, the kinds of horrible crimes that that actually, you know, says to us when we hear it. But then queer people were just sort of like grouped in with sexual psychopaths, even though the tabloids that were starting to publish these like very sensational, lurid stories like we hear today of these types of crimes, like weren't usually queer people like hardly ever. But because of the deviance, quote unquote, that was, you know, shown. through the differences of queer people. They kind of got grouped in.

And then we kind of start to see that notion creep in of the like dangerous predator. So is that kind of the earliest American example of like the stereotype of the groomer? It's hard because in every society, in every culture, you will find examples of the undesirable group, like whatever the group is that is the end. enemy of those in power, you will find that they are either sacrificing children, they're eating children, they're, you know, drinking the blood of children, you know, there's all these like high dramatic things because that is the most effective form of propaganda. I think we all, we all experience this and see it in all different forms as like, if the children are in danger,

that is the best mobilization tool that, you know, bad actors have to get kind of whatever legislation passed that they want. And I think this goes back to things like Jewish blood label where, you know, Jewish people were said to have been eating Christian children. Later, it was Christian children who were, you know, said to be eaten by pagans, you know, so it's like this is a story that is like traced through folklore since, I mean, we have like recorded history. So it is and it's pretty simple in that way. It's just like we are the most protective of children, not only because, you know, their innocence, because we love them so much, but because they represent the future. And they represent how the future will be shaped. And so a lot of times panicking about kids is like a

genuine thing, but it's also about like kind of how we view the future and our fear is about where society is going and whether society is going to look the way we want it to and whether I think most especially the people who we want to be in power and have all of the power, you know, will or will not continue to to command that kind of control. It's a, it's just a potent metaphor beyond like the obvious I think too. Yeah and I think about how if your goal is to make a group of people seem subhuman, then I think the fastest way to do that is to accuse them of being dangerous to children, being inherently dangerous to children because then that gives you and you and yours the permission to completely dehumanize them and to punish them in the worst way possible.

I mean, that's why I think about now you have these pastors, American pastors and megachurches giving sermons about how we need to, you know, eliminate the homosexuals. We need to eliminate transgenderism. And they're using genocidal language because that's what framing people as perverts gives you permission to do. It's a tool of outrage, you know, to like outrage your people enough that. they want to take some kind of action while also casting you into this role of a villain so that you can then not only do whatever you want, but feel justified because you have also created

them as someone who is going to attack you. So the language is always like one of victimhood. So like we are all, you know, people think that they are victims of this gay agenda. And so when you become a victim, you can tell yourself that you have the right to respond to your victimhood with whatever you believe to be an equal, if not greater defense, which often is actually an offense because the threat is not really there. I think about what you just said in the context of people like J.K. Rowling, like you can be the most unabashed bigot. And if you can find a... way to frame that bigotry through the lens of victimhood, then you can basically get away with

literally murder. I mean, I know J.K. Rowling. I mean, I don't know that. I don't know that J.K. Rowling has killed anyone. And I know that she is very up to date on her libel law. So I'm not going to accuse her of anything here. But, I mean, you know, she's always on Twitter saying, you know, the trans activists, which usually she's referring to like, I don't know, some like, 16-year-old British trans girl who, like, is being denied healthcare and whose parents are on the brink of disowning her. And she's like, I'm a victim of these trans Twitter activists. And she's typing this from her, like, 11th living room in her sixth castle. Right. Right. But, you know, it's like she can be the most grotesque and obvious bigot, but as long as she can be like, no, they're attacking me. You know,

it's, and she turns herself into like this hopeless victim, which I guess, a, lot of bigots do that. I mean, Anita Bryant did that. So I wanted to take a moment to thank the sponsor of today's episode, Blue Land. I am so extremely grateful that you chose to sponsor this podcast. Blue Land is on a mission to eliminate single-use plastic by reinventing cleaning essentials to be better for you and the planet. So personally, I am living on my own for the first time, and something you don't realize is how much the little things that stick out on your counter is just really start to annoy you throughout the day. So, like, for example, dish soap just looks ugly.

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When you run out, refill tablets start for as little as $2.25 or you can subscription bundle and save even more. So for the first time, your cleaning supplies is going to look cute and it's also really budget-friendly and eco-friendly. So from cleaning sprays to hand soap to toilet bowl cleaner to laundry tablets, all Blue Land products are made with clean ingredients you can feel good about. If you'd like to try out Blueland, just go to blu land.com slash fruity for 15% off your first order. Again, that is blueland.com slash fruity. So what's interesting is like after the pansy craze ends and we have kind of this backlash to the idea of the dangerous homosexual, we also have like this campiness come into the military when,

World War II soldiers as like a way to entertain themselves in eventually America because they traveled in shows and made this into a movie. We're like doing drag all the time. I think about that a lot. But that's, you think about that a lot. That's like my people talk about the Roman empires. My Roman empire is like how all of these United States. And I think actually they did this in a bunch of countries. I know Canadian soldiers in World War II did it too. Like they would dress up in drag for each other to like to ease tensions because everyone's so stressed all the time because it's war and they're like you know okay well it's not gay to do drag with your homies you know because drag is fun like drag is fun and whether you're a straight guy a gay guy whether you're

not a guy at all like performing gender and performing hyperfeminity and the wigs and the clothes and general like transformation into someone who you aren't it's fun to do if you're watching the youtube version i'll throw some photos up from that era it's very very It's fascinating. It's like they're like in drag and there's like a tank behind them. It's like the most sinister episode of RuPaul's Dragger as you've ever seen. So that was kind of like all well and fine. And it was considered like totally patriotic until, of course, the war ended.

And then it was like, well, now there's ladies around. So you can't do that anymore. And around the same time, psychologist Alfred Kinsey famously published the results of this big research project that he had done about human sexuality and especially like homosexual, bisexual, bisexual behavior. And these were like some really big statistics that were pretty shocking for kind of the Western world. Right. So it was like he said that his estimates were one in ten people were homosexual. Gay men did not have to appear effeminent and gay women did not have to appear masculine. and that actually most often, you couldn't tell that someone was queer, right?

And that was like, that was a big deal for people, especially considering that we have this kind of concurrent panic happening at the end of World War II about communists ever heard of them. And the idea that like communists were secret agents that were within the United States trying to exert control over the, you know, the young people of the country. You know, this is happening during a Cold War. And a time in which communists, quote unquote, people that were considered communists were being fired from their jobs, were being kicked out of government. were being blacklisted from films. You know, this, this was the red scare. And part of the red scare, the lavender scare, as it's called, was about gay people. What's so interesting about is it wasn't that like it was them being gay. It was the fear that communists upon finding out that these people are gay could blackmail them into pushing a communist agenda, right? So you get

this fear of these invisible agents that are influencing young minds. And they kind of meld together at this point. And, you know, hundreds of people are fired from their jobs. Gay people. Queer people are fired from their jobs are, you know, kicked out of public schools. You know, that it really, there was a focus on education at that point and making sure that, like, you know, there weren't gay teachers and that all those people were outed, fired often like publicly printed in the newspaper, like ruining people's lives. At the same time, like, we kind of get this like tinky winky thing going on again, where suddenly there's like, around the 50s, there's also this big panic about like comic books and the influences that,

or the influence that comic books have on the minds of the young. The 50s were very like back to family, right? Like it was very much traditional family values, suburbia. like that people had like a lot more time to kind of like obsess over their kids and their future. And one person who obsessed over the kids in their future was a psychologist named Frederick Wortham. And he published a book called Seduction of the Innocent. And it was about the dangers of comic books. There was a lot about like queer stuff in there. Like for example, he outed Batman and Robin.

I mean outed, you know, he believed that he outed Batman and Robin. in and like, you know, he would bring like his little, uh, examples of their gay relationship and, and print them in this book. He thought Wonder Woman was a militant feminist lesbian and that she just had scores of female concubines is something that he wrote. Good for her. I know. I know. Which's the problem? The whole thing was that like, he thought that seeing these examples would actually like, create homosexual desire in kids, which again is one of those situations where it's like,

babe, that's about you. Like, you're the one seeing all of these things and inventing all of these things and creating this desire, like, that you think exists. And it's really like, I think it's a good example of just that the creepiness that is part of this, this whole panic that we see repeated again and again. It grosses me out quite a bit. Yeah, I mean, I'm always very wary about the, like, homophobes are just secretly gay and they're always projecting because, like, I don't know. I just think that's, like, an exhausting narrative that always at the end of the day blames queer people for our own oppression.

It's like all, all bigotry that queer people face is a result of our own self-hatred. And, like, I think that's an exhausting and untrue narrative. I agree. However, there are definitely certain instances of people who are so fixated on seeing queerness and literally everything that it does make you ask like, babe, you know, it's okay. And you know what I think of too is like it doesn't have to be one or the other. It doesn't have to be like a closeted gay. It could be like, oh, I had a gay feeling once about my friend in high school. And that is so scary to me that I have to like run in the opposite direction and like, you know, make it my life's vendetta to basically cancel out that thought that I had because and which is sad. That's a sad thing too, you know, that we have this much baggage around, you know, a feeling that somebody has. But I do think that to me that makes a little bit more sense than the kind of all or nothing of like, oh, that's a closeted gay person. Because yeah, it does.

It does, like, throw the blame right back on us. And that's just not how things really are. In the 50s, you know, we're obviously, like, looking for evidence of this kind of queer agenda. We're looking for it in comic books. We're looking for it in the government. People are doing that thing where they dig into the past like we're doing now. And someone at some point who was part of an anti-gay group dug up this pamphlet or some kind of, like, relic from this group of queer art. artists from the 1930s. And we'll all recall that the 1930s, it's like a moment of kind of relative

acceptance. So what these anti-groups find and then kind of promote to the world is this secret gay society called the Homontern. What this actually was was a joke name that was inspired by the Common Turn, which was an actual organization that will wanted to spread communism in the West, right? But what it really was was just this like super cute gathering of artists and writers who identified as queer who wanted a community. Like, oh my God, what a terrifying thing. But because the name was reminiscent of this famous communist, like pro-communist group, it mixed in again and it became about this. what they called international homosexual conspiracy that was really modeled after the panic that was

happening around communism. So again, another example of straight people taking what is really a tongue in cheek joke and then using that as like evidence of some kind of sinister, organized agenda. So does this like go like viral, whatever viral meant in the 1950s? I would say it goes like anti-gay, viral. I don't know. Like if terminally online turfs were around back then, like this went viral amongst their crowd. Yes. So just like three years after this big lavender scare, we have President Eisenhower signing an executive order that bars any like known homosexuals

from working for the federal government. Five thousand gay people are fired from federal employment, including the military. Scores of public school teachers lose their jobs. Public. publicly outed and, you know, it does this thing where it forces everyone way back into the closet yet again. When I look at the arc of gay history, and, you know, one could argue all facets of history, it's just this like very clear push and pull and push and pull and ebb and flow and we get progress and then there's pushback and we get visibility and then there's pushback. Is it safe to say that it's, you know, we're in the period of pushback right now. Oh, I think so. I mean, if you think of like where we were at kind of during the Obama administration, it was kind of a golden time.

I mean, gay marriage was legalized. I mean, there's always issues. There's always pain. There's always like people who are working against your very existence. But, you know, it was, it was a time of, like, relative levity. You know, and I, it's like, gay marriage wasn't legal until I was. was like well into my 20s, you know, so it was like, it did feel like, okay, like we got there, right? Not that gay marriage is the end of the line, but, you know, it was like, okay, we, we are moving past this, but then the same sort of narratives and theories and spins were, you know, used against trans people and are still being used against trans people. So I think it's very safe to say that we are in the heart of a very frightening backlash that has far more power than it ever

did before because of the internet. Okay, so back to our timeline. So we have the 50s, we have thousands of people getting fired for homosexuality or perceived homosexuality. Then we move into the 60s and eventually by the end of the 60s, there's Stonewall, literally breaking down the doors of progress and gay people are coming out into the streets and we're finding each other and we're pushing back against homophobia. We're not just like fairies that hide in the shadows. We're people who are going to fight back for our rights. And then that brings you into the 70s, which is the whole gay liberation movement. It's when pride becomes an annual event. LGBT isn't a thing at this point, but it's really like the gay and lesbian liberation movement.

Beautiful things happening. Again, you look at it now and it's they were really only beautiful and they were really only progress for certain parts of the community. But then by the mid to late 70s, we have the Orange Juice Lady. You want to tell us about the Orange Juice Lady? In 1977, we have kind of the woman who is not the first, but is the major activist, as she liked to be called, who utilized the Save the Children narrative. So much so that she started an organization called Save the Children. What was going on in the 1970s was, as you mentioned, Stonewall happened.

Then we have this humming together, kind of, you know, that's an oversimplification, but coming together of the queer community, which we often forget also included kind of the earliest out folks that we would call trans today, who then referred to themselves as street queens, people like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. And there is this sort of like, it's very imperfect and there is a lot of like fucked up parts of it. But it was the first time there was kind of a concerted effort of these like very, very different types of people who fall under the queer umbrella attempting to move together in some way. But the people who really had their voices heard were middle and upper class white gay men. What was happening with their activism was really like localized to Dade County in Florida, where they had been working with like the local government to create an ordinance that would end housing and employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.

And that also included schools and churches, two keywords, schools and churches. that outraged, you know, quite a lot of conservative Christian activists all across the country. And one particular person was Anita Bryant. She was an orange juice saleswoman. She sang songs about Florida orange juice on commercials. I highly recommend you look them up. They're very odd. Yeah, they're amazing.

She was like a pageant queen. She had like a semi-successful career as a singer. She was beautiful and white. and my other Roman Empire is Anita Bryant, which is an awful Roman Empire. But whenever I explain Anita Bryant to people and what she did, like, you think about brand ambassadors today and it's like, okay, someone is the brand ambassador for like Tropicana or for Simply Orange or whatever. Like she was the brand ambassador for orange juice, the product.

She was the spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission, which is basically just like the government commission of Florida that is responsible for exporting oranges and orange juice. And so she just had to make sure people were drinking orange juice. She was big orange. She was big orange. You're absolutely right. She was big orange, which leads to these insane commercials. You do orange. My twins love 100% orange juice from Florida anytime within it. It comes many ways in many brands. So wholesome. concern all they want for just pennies of glass. She made.

Sure. A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine. Orange juice, serve it generously from the Florida sunshine tree. She made so much money doing it. She was like, she's happy, spoiler. She's broke now. She's still alive. She's broke.

But she made so much money. She like moved her family into this like 20 room Spanish-style man. I know a lot about this woman, like a lot about this woman that's not really relevant, but I That's great, though, because I feel like you know way more than me, so I'm excited to get a little... Well, let this be the one thing that I know more than you about. Happily. Interestingly, considering the story of the gay agenda, Anita Bryant actually took secret conspiratorial meetings with other powerful Christian elites,

like her husband and like Jerry Falwell of Tinky Winky Fame. And they actually had these meetings to come up with a media strategy to sway the American public toward, oh, I don't know their agenda. So we have this real thing happening that you could consider a conspiratorial action to make queer people look like we're in conspiracy with each other's to, you know, get the children. So they were basing kind of their strategy on the fact that there was this poll taken in Dade County around the time when these debates were happening about trying to repeal this ordinance that had passed about, you know, protecting the employment and housing rights of gay people. So this poll happens. Basically, what they find out is that Dade County women just kind of had like a gay friend maybe and they just kind of found it all to be relatively harmless.

Right. So they were like, okay, we need to figure out a way to get these housewives freaked out enough to vote the way that we want. So they came up with the Save Our Children's strategy. Anita Bryant said publicly some of the stories I could tell you of child recruitment and child abuse by homosexuals would turn your stomach. So we start to see like a really like vile change in rhetoric. They start doing things like taking out full. page newspaper ads in like the Miami Herald. There would, and they would show all these headlines that were announcing that teachers were having sex with their students and that children were in prostitution rings and that homosexuals were infiltrating youth organizations and, you know, saying that there was no human right that gay people had to corrupt our children. So it became very much focused on the narratives that were art that we hear today. And they saw it start to work. And so they just continued to use that strategy and really just double down on things like the fact that since, since gay people couldn't have their own children, they had to recruit

children into the homosexual lifestyle or we'd just dry up. If we didn't recruit as if like, you know, it just, it makes no sense. They don't think that you can be born gay. And so the only way that you can become gay is if you're recruited by, you know, Mr. Smith in social studies. What's so interesting to me, homophobes and transphobes and bigots today, they know that, like, if you were to play a video of Benita Bryant, they know that you can't today say exactly word for word what she said, because these things are out of date. They're out of style. They're uncool. You can't say, you know, the homosexuals are, you know, posing a threat to the children because you would sound out of touch. They still think that. But, you know,

of course. And so what you hear today is like there's just certain substitutions of certain words over time. Like, you know, it's not homosexual anymore. It's gender ideology or it's woke or it's DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion. But the moral panic is exactly the same. It's a template that can be used whenever anything. And my opinion is that what it all really comes down to is, the power dynamics of gender and the fear that the gender that you are quote unquote born into will no longer guarantee you the kind of power that it once did. These types of movements shake up the power structures that exist and that, you know, means that they must be eliminated if we are to continue to, you know, keep the hierarchies in place that we have.

And so it makes sense that whenever anything threatens that power structure, we find a way to kind of neutralize that threat using inflammatory language that frightens someone who may not otherwise understand the nuances of what's behind those arguments. And that's why it's like, I tend to have empathy for people who get sucked into fear through. those who make money off of our outrage, like the people who are talking heads, who are politicians, who actually have some kind of financial material gain from outrage and by creating headlines that grab and, and like attack, like, humanity's most basic fears and their most basic, like, internal pain and their most basic anxieties. I have empathy because it's like, it takes a lot to like fight against our instincts of like, well, yeah, I do want to like protect children. Like that's not a bad impulse to have. But then it's the way that powerful people,

whether out of some genuine belief that this is, you know, a bad thing or out of, I think, just as often, if not more often, a financial opportunity to either financial opportunity or a power opportunity, like if we're talking about a politician who's like, ooh, here's a hot button issue that, you know, like, for example, crime. Like, that's forever going to be something that you can use. Like, here's the scary criminal that I'm going to be tough on and make sure they all go to jail so that you're safe. And it's like that same kind of rhetoric.

Like, these things are used by people against people who otherwise might not actually have like this fear and anxiety might be channeled into other types of threats that are more real to kids. You know, for example, the fact that most child abuse happens from your close family or close community. Like, we're not going to talk about that because that's like hard. And that's like something that makes people feel really uncomfortable and even more scared probably because that's a really hard thing to address. So instead, we're going to throw that throw that throw. onto this group of people so that not only can I get rid of what I consider to be an undesirable group of people who probably won't fucking vote for me, so I don't care about them, and at the

same time get these points of like, oh, you're keeping kids safe. I think that that's what leads me to have more empathy for people who I think are being manipulated by rhetoric. And I try as much as possible to keep like not punching across the aisle, but punching toward those people that I know are actively like benefiting from telling these stories. And, uh, you know, that doesn't mean that it's like excusable or okay, but I think that they for me are the, the people that we need to figure out how to to stop more so than than the people that are that maybe would just benefit from knowing a queer person. And that would be enough for them to like snap out of whatever's going on. In what I do for work beyond just the gay agenda, it's like, again,

and again, it's just like watching people fall, prey to sensational stories of fear and being, you know, and that's kind of all you need to mobilize a career is like to feed on the fear of a population. Those are the people that I find the most repulsive in our world. Yeah. Fuck you, Ben Shapiro. Benny, Benny, boy. Benny, little Benny. So, it's my favorite.

thing to do in my free time is like infantilize Ben Shapiro. Oh, little Benny boy. He doesn't really need it. Okay, so Anita Bryant is telling everyone that homosexuals are recruiting and that the stories that she could tell you of homosexuals recruiting children would turn your stomach. Well, at the same time, she's doing this thing that is so annoying where she is saying that the anti-gay movement is actually the real movement of love and that she always hate the sin, not the sinner. And, you know, she would just be like, no, I love homosexuals. But I also think that

maybe they should have a felony status, like she thought, you know, so it's like, maybe they should go to prison for 10 to 30 years, but I also really love them. I just know what's best. Which is crazy. I mean, she's kind of like, she kind of mothered. She's kind of like, she's kind of like, homophobic mother. You know, the people that we queer refer to as like, oh my God, she's so mother. Like homophobes are definitely at home being like, oh my God, Anita Bryant is so mother. And I don't know if you found this, but once in a while, she was funny. She said like some funny shit. And it was like she had like charisma. Like when she got famously pied by the gay activist, you know, she was like, I don't know what event she was at. But she was a speaker at some event and someone came up and pied her in the face. And she said, I believe at least.

this wasn't a fruit pie. Was that what it was? Yeah. Well, at least, because it was like a whipped cream pie that the gay guy threw in her face. And he goes, well, at least it wasn't a fruit pie. And I remember seeing that for the first time. And I was like, oh. I was like, oh, like you would do great on like snatch game or something.

You're quick. I feel like if you just like twisted something a little bit, she could have had a lot of gay friends and had a really good time. Because she was like she was quick. She was witty. She, you know, was an orange juice. salesman, which feel, or not salesman. She was like an orange juice superstar, which feels, yeah, there's, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a people to have in their life. There's a definite camp quality to Anita Bryant. She just channeled it all in the wrong

direction. I know that she, she, she wins in Miami Dade County. She's successful in her anti-gay propaganda that they end up overturning the anti-discrimination ordinance that would protect gay people in housing and schools and churches and all those things. And then I, I'm, I know that she takes the Save Our Children campaign on tour around the country where she basically, that's kind of like the last time she's very successful with it. Anita Bryant, one of the many ways in which she's significant is that she unites so much of the gay movement against her. It was like she became this very enticing target. Like the gay bars around the country started serving Anita Bryant cocktails, which instead of screwdriver, So basically they would boycott orange juice.

The gay bars would boycott orange juice. And so it would be instead of a screwdriver, which is vodka and OJ, they would do the Anita Bryant cocktail, which was vodka and apple juice. There were pins that were like Anita Bryant sucks oranges that people would wear to all the gay marches. Like people were really into shitting all over Anita Bryant. She was very the JK rolling of the time. Yeah, I also always will covet.

I don't know if they're out there, but there were also. shirts that said squeeze of fruit for Anita and all the proceeds want to gay rights groups, which is very cute. Again, nobody knows how to fight discrimination with comedy, like queer people. Yeah, Anita Bryant has success, obviously, in Dade County. She has success across the country where other places change their laws. And then in 1978, her success leads to the Briggs initiative in California, which was, something that would have made any pro-gay statements by a public school employee

cause for total dismissal. You would get fired if you said any nice thing about gay people. But this kind of backfired because shockingly, well, among people who it would be more obvious that they would be against this, like Jimmy Carter was like completely opposed this. So did former president Gerald Ford. But so did Governor Ronald Reagan at the time. time. And so ultimately, it suffered a big defeat because Ronald Reagan was not always the conservative he would become. That's a whole other topic for another time. But, you know, at this

point, in this moment, Ronald Reagan actually, you know, helped shut this down. And I have a feeling it had a little more to do with free speech than anything else. Then, I mean, to your point, like this J.K. Rowling kind of vibe, she started to lose things because of what she had, because she had made this choice to become the face of the anti-gay movement. So she lost this gig hosting a craft show for singer sewing machines, because that was her other big thing was sewing machines. She was orange shoes. She was sewing machines. And what a, what a, what a resume. What a woman. And so she got, yeah, she glossed that. And she considered this proof that instead of it being anything to do with the fact that she had like, I don't know, launched herself into like a very hot button topic and decided to be like something that a company would consider maybe a liability.

She said that instead she was blacklisted by a homosexual conspiracy in the media, right? Oh, that sounds familiar. We hear. We know this. Yeah, we know this. I'm, you know, as a homosexual and a Jew, I've controlled the media in many avenues for a very long time. I wish you had. It would be a little bit more fun.

But yes, similar conspiracies, different. Our same template, really, you know, it's the same template. And so I think it's important to like take from the 70s, even though, you know, Anita's campaign ultimately fell. we go into the 80s. That's another really complicated time. But she really helped create this image of, again, the homosexual, which is what we're talking about, as like rich, powerful, militant, well organized and sexually deviant, as well as the unhappy, like, that was a big thing is like all homosexuals are miserable, the unhappy, like, immoral recruiter of children, the person who would be. molest those children and who had this vested interest in controlling the American media, the American political landscape, basically this secret society that had all of these immoral, unforgivable aims that ultimately would affect everyone in the nation when they collapsed, you know, the entire system of everything that, you know, American families held dear.

Which is literally QAnon. You just described Q&ON. And it makes me wonder, like, how much of Q&ONM the way that we know it today would be what it is without Anita Bryant and without Save the Children. I mean, it's, she's kind of the blueprint. I mean, she's literally, she's literally bigotry mother. She is. She's so mother for that. Anita's out. Anita fades basically into irrelevance where she remains. And that leads us into, well, the 80s and 90s, which as far as gay issues were concerned, was obviously focused around HIV-AIDS, which frankly, like, you know, that became the issue

and the central core of that issue had little to do with the relationship between gay adults and children. However, there was, as I spoke about, well, as Peter Staley told me about in the episode I did with him about the HIV AIDS epidemic, there was a lot of paranoia around AIDS and kids and schools. You know, the public discourse around HIV AIDS during the 80s and 90s, which was riddled with the most grotesque homophobia, I think, that we've ever experienced. Certainly didn't lend itself to fight. the image of gays as predators. That's kind of evidently it's another episode that we did. And then we get to the 2000s.

We get to the 2000s. We do. And I think that I would like to show some love to our lesbian community right now with a little bit of Bill O'Reilly's shit that he started saying in 2007, for anyone who doesn't know, Bill O'Reilly was a conservative, radio and TV host for a long time, now disgraced for sexual allegations, of course. He put out a show that was called Violent Lesbian Gangs, a Growing Problem. I didn't know about this.

Oh, yeah, this is good. That's good. So he said that a National Underground Network of Pink Pistol Packing Lesbians is terrorizing America. Oh, that's everything. He said all across the country. He said that these lesbians were raping young girls and attacking heterosexual males at random and then forcibly indoctrinating children as young as 10 into the lesbian lifestyle, which is like, I've never heard of anything like this. It was just like out of the ether. It seemed like, you know, his show came up with this. He said that in 10,

see authorities say that a gang called GTO or gays taking over were like inundating the city. And there was another one called DTO, which was Dykes taking over that were also just apparently, you know, running around the city, packing these pink pistols and, you know, assaulting men. Because it was a gang run by women that the pistols have to be pink. I know. Like they're really spending that extra dollar to really brand. Yeah. And chief among them, Ellen, it's like AI generated lesbian gang information. I mean, he said that there were like well over 150 of these crews, you know, and he just said each one of them is attempting to recruit more young girls into the. their gang. This was in 2007. This is right as like Obama is really poised to become the president, which of course comes with the assumption that gay rights will be on the table, that like gay

marriage is a possibility and that these things, you know, so it makes sense that around this time that kind of propaganda ticks up again. Right. It's this theme of yeah. We start gaining a little momentum, we start gaining some rights, you start getting some visibility. And they're like, nope, we have to remind everyone that they're perverts so we can't grant them these rights and we must push back and we must push them back into the shadows. And it didn't work this time, which was nice. We did go into this kind of like relatively decent time for queer people up until, you know, kind of the end of the Obama administration and the massive pushback that we still kind of find ourselves in today. Because obviously gay marriage was legalized. And then we also, I mean, we have,

and during the 2010s, we have this real proliferation of transvisibility, which is new. I think a lot about the significance of the cover of Time magazine with Laverne Cox, which was called the transgender tipping point. And I remember I was like a freshman in high school and that came out. And it was my parents subscribed to Time. And we had that issue of the magazine with Laverne Cox on a cover in these big letters that just said the transgender tipping point. We had that on our kitchen table. And I just remember being like, wow, this is huge. Like, this is big. And Laverne Cox was playing her character on Orange is the New Black and kind of the advent of like mainstream discourse around non-binary identities. And then in the later 20-tenths, it's like people

are really starting to talk about pronouns. Especially young people on social media are talking about pronouns and they them pronouns and this distribution of information about gender and about LGBT identities more kids now than ever are identifying as queer. Of course it's possible that there are just accidentally genetically, miraculously more queer people in the upcoming generation that there have been in previous ever. You know, I obviously don't believe that. I'm of the belief that when young queer kids, when they see themselves represent and especially represented in a light where they're not, you know, miserable or a pedophile or dead, then, you know, you're more inclined to come out. And that's just, that's just what's

happening. Come 2021-ish, we start getting this real uptick and, you know, this groomer rhetoric, right? Like, you know, we have like the don't say gay bills with Ron DeSantis and then they start spreading all around the country and you have people like Marjorie Taylor. green, you know, pushing the groomer rhetoric really far. And like you said earlier, Chelsea, I mean, it's like this wave of pushback to visibility that we're experiencing right now, you could argue is so much worse and so much more dangerous than any of the previous ones because the megaphones into which it's spoken into are so much louder with social media. At the same time, though, loud are we, you know? And we're as out and as out. And as

in the streets as we've ever been, you know, on the other side of things, which gives me a lot of hope, this wave of pushback that we're experiencing and this recycled garbage around pedophilia and we're grooming the children and gender ideology in schools, like whatever the fuck, this will go away. Like, this won't last. And then it'll come back. If history can tell us anything, it'll come back. And so keep fighting, I guess. The last thing I'll say is that, you know, you kind of brought me on to talk about the gay agenda conspiracy. And, you know, we've talked about lots of things. But I think that it's important to really ask the question who has an agenda that they are conspiring to have implemented, right?

because obviously we've seen some conspiracies, meaning just the involvement of multiple people who working together in secret to do something out in the world that has an actual material change. And this is exactly kind of what happened from the very beginning of American colonization. So this is a topic that I think is really simply. a lot of times, but I think that it's true that once Puritans and pilgrims got over here from Europe, one, we talk about people coming over here for religious freedom, sure, but it was the freedom to be more oppressive than they were able to be in England because they felt like England was too gay. So they were like, well, we've got to go somewhere else. This place is too gay. One of the things that

they felt. And so once they got over here, started to meet, you know, different tribal communities. They started to see a very different picture of sexuality and gender. It's frequently talked about that certain tribes had like a third gender. Some tribes had more than that. Every tribe is very different, and that's really important. There's no sweeping generalization that you can make about the many, many, many tribes on the land that would be called America eventually. But what was true is, that there was not the strict, intense, gender-specific roles that were unbreakable. There were queer marriages, you know, what we could call queer marriages. There was just a complete sense

of openness around things that for white people from Europe were very, very closed, right? And so they got over here and almost right away there was a concerted effort to like stand. out these qualities in the indigenous communities that they came into contact with. Like, you can find it in writing. Like, for example, one, like, Puritan in his journal wrote about the Crow tribe. He wrote, quote, men who dressed as women and specialized in women's work were accepted and sometimes honored. A woman who led men in battle had four wives and was a respected chief. So they're starting to note these changes. And they also saw that, that, you know, kids who showed early signs of, you know, gender atypical behavior were actually, like, encouraged in, in some tribes to dress and perform the duties

of that, the gender that they felt more aligned to. To the Puritans, they found this extremely threatening. Like, here's a quote from a 1775 diary from a Puritan who was writing about a tribe that he had encountered in what's now California. It says the sins of sodomy prevails more among them than in any other nation. There will be much to do when the holy faith and the Christian religion are established among them. So you see these examples of rhetoric already saying, like, we will stamp this out. We will end this behavior by any means necessary, which of course they did. Because, you know, many of the murders, the like genocidal acts were also directed at indigenous people who they found committing acts of sodomy or who they found to be cross-dressing or, you know, they were harmed in these really big ways.

They were exiled. They were beaten and killed. And I think that looking at that as the earliest example of a concerted effort to stop a kind of. behavior with violence. Like that is at the root of, you know, the colonized American culture that has continued. Like, these are not new things. In fact, they are at the very beginnings of like what would become our society eventually. And so I think that we have hopefully seen that throughout this episode, the agenda, the concerted effort to have a certain type of America is much more implemented by, I don't even want to say straight people because I have lots of straight friends, but you know, I mean, like, the people who will find a greater amount of power as long as queer people stay oppressed and stay lower on the totem pole and stay as these

convenient villains for us to use, to bolster the powers that be and to, continue to like to keep america in the way that those with the most power want it to be chelsea weber smith thank you so so much for being here today and taking all of us on this journey of history that i only knew bits and pieces of it that you have really filled the gaps and i don't know it just feels like we are going to be having a new version of the gay tinky-winky panic several times a year until we're all dead and we just have to weather the storm. And I guess do it with our patented gay humor as much as we can, which will then, of course, be misunderstood intentionally and then used against us. So yeah,

it's, uh, it ain't easy being gay. Chelsea, where can people find you, support your work, hear more of your very soothing voice. Oh, that's nice. I'll take that. If you like podcasts, which I feel that you might, you might like my podcast, American Hysteria. We cover things like The Gay Agenda. We also cover all kinds of urban legends.

We cover like very serious topics, very light topics. We try to do it with like humor and heart and just continue to try to use history to illuminate the present. And yeah, thank you so much for having me, Matt. Like, this was a really special episode to do with you, who I respect so much. So, yeah, just thank you so much for having me on. Oh, my gosh. You have no reason to respect me. I'm just, I'm just a twink online. If you, the listener, want a little more, a bit fruity and or want to support the show, we are, we, I always have a tendency to do, like, just like, we are on Patreon. We are not anywhere. I am on Patreon doing some extra work over there. By the time this episode goes up,

I think there will be a new bonus episode about Zionist influencers and a sort of media critique about the role of influencers and propaganda in, you know, current events today. If you're interested in that or have five extra dollars that you don't know what to do with, feel free. The link will be in the episode description. I love you. Thank you for joining me today. Go watch some Telitabies. And until next time, stay booty.