Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 384: Dan Savage - The Savage Lovecast

Episode Date: October 30, 2017

Stories covered in episode:   Thanks to Dan Savage for joining us!   Please donate to It Gets Better: If you donate send the proof of donation to us at and we will match the first $2,000.   Check out Dan’s Work:   Dan Savage on Twitter: Dan’s articles in The Stranger: The Savage Lovecast: Donate   It Gets Better: ITMFA:

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Today's show is brought to you by HelloFresh. Visit hellofresh.com and use promo code COGDIS30, that's C-O-G-D-I-S 30, all one word, to save $30 off your first week of deliveries. Hey guys, this is Nellie. So I was listening to your podcast about that Morningstar guy. Well, you know, Morningstar is actually also a reference to Satan and Christianity.

It's one of the tick things they have for Lucifer. So I don't know about you guys, but I think that this guy might be worshiping the devil on the down low. I don't know about you guys, but I think that this guy might be worshipping the devil on the down low. I don't know. What do you think? Glory hole, motherfuckers. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended.

The explicit tag is there for a reason. recording live from glory hole studios in chicago this is cognitive dissonance every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way we bring critical thinking skepticism and irreverence to any topic that makes the news makes it big or makes us mad it's skeptical it's political and there is no welcome mat this is episode 384 of cognitive dissonance and we are joined at long last finally yeah by our very special guest dan savage dan welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. You know, it's funny because we kind of threw out teasers to our audience.

Like, we're going to have a guest. We're not telling you who. Just in case. And we're glad we did it because you had a little emergency last week. We're so grateful to have you on this week to come on. And welcome to the glory hole, my friend. I want to make a joke about it not being my first time at a glory hole. Wait, it actually is my first time.

Nobody ever admits their time at the glory hole. Right. But it is a very special time for everyone involved. Yeah, those things just don't work for me. I want to know what the dick is attached to. The dick is attached to is very, very important to some of us. You don't want to give a blowjob and stand up and walk

around the corner and find your uncle. That would never have occurred. Oh, man. Now Christmas is going to be weird. Weird. Or Bill O'Reilly or Ted Haggard. Yeah, but that's good. Then you get a quick picture Christmas is going to be weird or weird or Bill O'Reilly or Ted Haggard. You just.

Yeah, but that's good. Then you get a quick picture. You're like, oh, selfie time. Motherfucker. Yeah. Maybe a $32 million settlement for me to emotional distress. Exactly. Exactly.

Oh, my God. So thanks again so much for coming on the show. The first question I wanted to talk to you about, it's kind of good timing to have you on. Over the last couple of weeks, the Me Too campaign kind of started exploding all over social media. And as I was watching my Facebook and other media kind of fill up with all these heartbreaking stories of harassment and abuse and what have you, it occurred to me, hey, we're going to have Dan. And I wonder if these kind of awareness-raising projects have a kind of corollary between the importance of also coming out in other areas of not just sexual violence, but sexual

identity. And I thought I'd get your thoughts on that. Well, people need to tell their stories. And there's so much sex shame in the culture and so much victim blaming in the culture that people who have been victimized often don't share those stories for fear of the piling on, for fear of being attacked, really. And you see that when there's one accuser. There was a story written um the accusers came forward

about weinstein about the power of numbers and there certainly was power numbers there there was also you know it's kind of distressing to think that if just one actress had come forward as one did in new york it was a case where one wore a wire uh and actually got evidence and then the prosecutor didn't bring charges. One came forward and went to the authorities and got no, didn't get justice. And what it seems to take with powerful men is dozens and dozens of women coming forward at once, which means we have to wait until this powerful man has dozens and dozens of victims or a hundred victims. So there's dozens and dozens willing to come forward. And that's really depressing.

a hundred victims. So there's dozens and dozens willing to come forward. And that's really depressing. Um, you know, people were kind of looking at like all these women linking arms, coming forward, power, uh, the power in that and like how wonderful that was. And I was just sitting, you know, at my computer thinking, well, this is kind of a feel bad story. Masquerading as a feel good story, I guess, at least the power numbers angle of it. Because it shouldn't take 24 women or 36 women. It should take one. And there shouldn't be 24 women. There shouldn't be one. Right. I guess there shouldn't be one either.

I felt the same thing. My Facebook feed filled up. It just filled up. And I was like, this is everybody. And I think, I don't know if you guys have kids. Do you guys have kids? I have four.

We have a son, but we have really good friends who have a daughter our son's age. And it was just so depressing and shocking at what age the harassment started, at what age their daughter started to be harassed on the street, harassed on the bus by strangers and strange men. She's 12, 13 years old. Holy Jesus! Dudes were coming at her. And it's just, it is nonstop. And it is a dangerous world out there for women. And there is, you know, toxic masculinity, I really think, is a problem.

And male privilege is a problem. And you have slut shaming and sex phobia that shuts women down on both sides. Women are really trapped between those two sort of cultural forces, male entitlement, and then shifting onto the woman all responsibility for whatever it is that happens to her. However, she's persecuted or singled out. And God, it's intractable, but we've got to push back against it and fight it. We come from a community. The community that we belong to is the skeptic atheist community. And it's a, it's a, it's a pretty sex positive community. Uh, it's, and it's one of those,

it's one of those communities that, uh, that sort of, I think tries to accept people for, uh, any kind of, uh, sexual orientation that they have. Have you ever had any experience with anyone coming after you as a gay person or insulting you as a gay person or attacking you as a gay person that wasn't religious based? Oh, my God. No, no. I mean, sometimes sometimes you have people who are, you know, they'll come at you with some argument about, you know, the extinction of the human race if everybody turns gay tomorrow, because, you know, if everybody turns gay tomorrow, we're going to forget which shit, you know, if everyone turns gay tomorrow, we're suddenly going to forget which whole shit's babies. And we're all going to be standing there

like, well, I guess we could Google human reproduction and see if we can't work something out with a turkey baster. But no, no, no, let's just. Yeah, we're not going to lose all turkey basters. Yeah. How do they think that works? Everybody just wakes up and rubs their eyes like, Oh my God, I didn't like Dick, but now I do. The previous Pope, you know, the Dowager Pope said this, that the reason that the Dowager Pope gave for opposing marriage equality was that, you know, this would lead ultimately to the extinction of the human race because I don't know, because the only thing standing between straight guys and gay sex

is a piece of paper that if you give out marriage licenses to gay couples there's not going to be any straight guys in like 48 hours they're all going to be they're all going to be kneeling at glory holes with wedding rings on it's so funny though because it didn't work in the reverse

there were still plenty of gay men even though straight marriage was legal it wasn't like so funny though because like it didn't work in the reverse right there were still plenty of gay men even though straight marriage was legal it wasn't like gay men looked around wait a minute and there's still plenty of gay people out there when we were persecuted and lobotomized and thrown in jail and burnt at the stake yeah but but in answer to your question i've never had a conversation with somebody who tried to like advance a rational darwinian argument or survival of the species as if the planet's problem isn't there are too fucking many of us yeah and we could deal with a couple of generations of majority homo for a while but anybody who makes those arguments you like sit

with them for a second and start peeling them back and ultimately you know the chewy center at the heart of their argument or the heart of their opposition is my imaginary friends don't like it. Well, is there also the... Because I have heard, especially more when I was a younger man, but the sort of heterosexual ick factor as a part where people are just

uncomfortable. It's not religious-based. They're just sort of uncomfortable with imagining other people fucking. And we've talked about this before. And it's funny because like when you meet a heterosexual couple, you almost never imagine them fucking. The last thing I want to do when I meet like, oh, hey, Uncle Jim. Nobody's doing that.

And yet like people will cite like you hear it in the slurs that are leveled against the gay community all the time. The slurs are very sexualized slurs, which leads you to believe, like, you've spent some time thinking about this. You really pondered a lot of this. You've got some pen and ink drawings at home. But, you know, the corrective to that ick factor, and first of all, if we're going to base, you know, law and justice on ick factors, I think cunnilingus is kind of icky, so nobody should do it. Out of deference to me. But, you know, if I was the emperor of the world, and I think this is part of it, and I think a few generations of gay people being fully out and marrying and having their own families is going to correct this. But when I came out, my mother

was like, yeah, and my mother's Catholic, very religious. Okay, you're out. I love you. You can never bring a boyfriend into this house. I never want to meet anybody that you're dating. And meanwhile, my sister, her boyfriend could come over all the time. And I got into these knockdown drag out arguments with my mother and she was very Catholic and very proper. But when it was just us, we could, we would get very like explicit with each other, the language. And I was just like, why can Laura's boyfriend be here and my boyfriend can't you know laura and her boyfriend are having sex you know laura is sucking her boyfriend off what's the diff with my boyfriend and what came out of my mother's mouth was i shouldn't use that

expression but what came out of my mother's mouth was um well the thing with laura blowing her boyfriend is that that blow job could lead ultimately to marriage and family. And the blowjob that you're giving your boyfriend doesn't lead anywhere. And I looked at my mother and said, and whose fault is that? Right. Why is that the case? It's not gay people didn't decide we couldn't have families. Gay people decided we couldn't get married.

You fuckers did. You religious fuckers did. So the reason that blowjobs I'm giving my boyfriend are different than the blowjobs my sister gives her boyfriend is not my problem, not my fault. I didn't design that system. You assholes did. You talk about your husband and your child. Have you ever received any, I'm sure you have as a public figure, some outrage about a same-sex couple having a child? And what's their issue? That's the thing. I mean, like, I don't think like this.

So for me, and I don't ever interact with people like this. So I never really hear what the issue is that people have with a same-sex couple having a child. Well, the way that Wright frames it is that we are taking children away from opposite sex parents, from heterosexual families, which isn't fucking true. There are more kids waiting to be adopted than there are families to place them with. And in the case of our son, you know, he had three shots at heterosexual parents, his biological parents, his birth parents, who couldn't raise him and did absolutely the right thing in doing an adoption. And that was the most loving thing they could have done.

And they were responsible straight parents in that moment. But then, you know, before we adopted him, two other straight couples looked at our birth mom's history of drug and alcohol abuse and refused to adopt him. Oh, my gosh. And it was just like, okay, so we did. And he's great and he's an awesome kid and he's fine. So we did. And he's great and he's an awesome kid and he's fine. You know, the fears often of substance abuse early in pregnancy are a little overblown, partly to scare people who are responsible enough to listen to those messages off drugs and alcohol and people who won't be scared off and aren't going to do anything or to change their behavior. But he had, you know, he had those. So it's often like this false choice, like I could have had straight parents.

Every kid deserves a mother and a father. And I'm pro mom and dad. I had a mom and dad. They were awesome. And it's kind of an argument about sentimentality and a kind of courier and Ives version, Norman Rockwell version of what a family is supposed to be. And doesn't a kid deserve what a family is supposed to be. But if you're gay men, we adopted 20 years ago and a lot's happened in 20 years uh since we adopted um but if you're gay men and you're adopting 20 years ago and even sometimes i still hear this now is that we wanted to adopt a son and it wasn't up to us what would be a son we didn't open adoption so it's up to the birth mother who picked us you know the kid we were going to get you couldn't say we'd like a boy but often the argument that we got 20 years ago was we were adopting because we wanted to rape a child oh my fucking god what really hold on hold on would

people say that out loud to you yes who the fuck says that out loud asshole bigot holy shit anonymous asshole bigots on online say that okay so that's the thing though it's anonymous online assholery right nobody to your face said their. Nobody to our face, but religious hater preachers have said this. Yeah. And it's so ridiculous on its face. Yes, we're going to spend tens of thousand dollars if you did that.

Like, clean up, puke, and vomit. We're going to raise this child because all of that is so much easier than flying to Thailand twice a year. Who rape kids who should be fucking drawn and quartered are doing. Right. And it's so, it's so offensive. And, you know, just, you know, everything they're saying now about trans women, that they're just like, they're preying on children.

They're preying on children. Those are the lies I used to tell about gay men. That, you know, we were lurking in bathrooms is what they say about trans women now to like prey on children except they're now saying these trans men are trans women are preying on girls uh and you know gay men were preying on little boys the whole little boys argument everything they say about trans women now they said about us then and some people still believe it some people believe that we are uh predators and and it's especially galling as a Catholic to hear this shit come from out of religious people's mouths. And then to open the paper every day and read about the 40 youth pastors this week who raped kids. Right?

As a beam in your eye, you might want to. That's no fucking beam in your eye. That's the Olympic National Forest in your fucking eye. in your fucking head. Yeah. It's surprising to me that the Republicans, you know, they seem to be so family focused

and they seem to be like, you know, we want to make sure they try to save, you know, every sperm, let alone every single fetus. That's what I have in common with them.

You're a log cabin Republican. Saving every sperm. In a jar by the side of the bed. Except for later. That's mine. I don't know. But the, but the,

they would, they would much rather, at least from your story, have a child be in foster care or in a state home than they would in your family. Newt Gingrich said that about gay families. Better than kids should be in orphanages than be raised by same sex couples. Says somebody who didn't get raised in an orphanage, right?

Like these things are only ever said by people who'd never have to endure them. Yeah. And Newt Gingrich is the one we want speaking for family values. Yeah, exactly. The way things ought to be and how they ought to work. Newt. It is astonishing. Like you brought up the Catholic Church and then Newt Gingrich. It's astonishing how many of these people are so like horrifyingly unselfaware it's just like well let me expound my ideas upon the moral landscape of the family in america it's like your family's in tatters man yeah yeah your organization is a child rape factory you might want to lay low on this one and pick a different cause yeah this is not your cause. Yeah. If you want to talk about, you know, I've

said this like a number of times online and people blow up at me, but you know, when Catholic bishops during the marriage equality debate here, we're expounding on, uh, you know, this being child abuse every once in a while, I would jump in to say, well, they're the experts. Perhaps we should defer. So we're talking about politics a little. Let's move on to one of the people that we love to talk about on our show. Oh, God. Donald Drumpf. We did a live stream, actually, the night he was elected.

Dan, it was the most depressing live stream. I walked into the studio. I was lighter than air. I was like, this is going to be great. All this stuff. I brought all this stuff to make drinks. We got the live stream on. We're going to have a great... I was looking forward to it for weeks. Yeah. By like 9 o'clock Central Time,

I was shell-shocked like Patton was slapping me across the face like, get up, soldier. It was bad. It was terrible. It was a nightmare. I was hosting an election night party in Seattle in a club with 3,000 people in it. And a balloon drop on the ceiling ready to go when we got our first woman president. And I had to be the one that kept going up on stage to share returns with them.

And yeah, that was fucking hard. I usually don't get stoned in front of a crowd. But around 8 o'clock, I started smoking. And then around midnight, we had our most depressing balloon drop ever, where we all just stood there silently. You still did the balloon drop, though. We had to do it. We couldn't leave the balloons up on the ceiling. The clerk let us hang the balloon drop on the condition that it was all gone by tomorrow morning. It's like the end of The Shining, but instead of blood, it's just balloons falling on you.

Or the end of Carrie. Yeah, exactly. Right? Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's awesome. This is sad. I would just be able to bat him out of the air angrily.

Like, fuck you. You were a celebration balloon. You've let me down. Oh, man. So before Trump was was elected, I remember a lot of his supporters made a really, really big show about how he was going to be very gay friendly, very LGBT friendly. So we're almost I think it's nine months now into his presidency. What do you think about the Trump presidency towards the LGBT community so far? It's been horrible.

They've taken every opportunity they could take to roll back or harm the LGBT community, particularly targeted the trans community. But they've targeted gay people in scores of ways and other kinds of queer people. And it's horrifying. of ways and other kinds of queer people. And it's, it's horrifying. And anybody out there who was gay enough, but also stupid enough to vote for Trump should have their voting rights rescinded. It should be some sort of, you know, we don't want to have IQ tests or voting or poll taxes, but Jesus fucking Christ, I think anybody who fell for,

oh, look, Trump held up a pride flag. No nominee's ever done that before. Trump said LGBTQ off a teleprompter at the Republican National or the Republican Convention also said that he was going to protect the American LGBTQ community from foreign ideologies, which was a clear signal that he wasn't going to protect us from hateful foreign ideologies. That meant I'm not going to protect you from hateful domestic ideologies, from our homegrown anti-queer Christian bigots here, which they've absolutely empowered. And the only evidence you needed that this was not going to be a queer friendly administration was his pick of Pence as his running mate. Pence made his bones as a raving, ranting, foot stomping, anti-queer bigot in Indiana.

Yeah, absolutely. He signed the first quote unquote religious freedom restoration act at a state level in Indiana. It was a disaster for Indiana. It almost ended his career with someone popular in the business community in Indiana, let alone the gay community in Indiana. And that's Pence coming and going. He's a fundamentalist Christian fucking anti-queer bigot. And he's such a moralist, Pence is, that he crawled into bed with Donald fucking Trump. Yeah, can I ask, and I know you have no way to know this, right? So this is just wild speculation, but I love wild speculation

from time to time. How much of this shit do you think he believes? And how much of this do you think he's just saying whatever is expedient at the time? Trump? Yeah.

I mean, Pence believes. I think Pence is a true believer all day long. That's the impression I've always gotten. We covered these stories on the show from Indiana when they happened. I remember when Salesforce was going to pull their headquarters out of there. I remember when they closed down all those AIDS clinics back then.

Oh, God. Yeah, we covered that too. Because of the needle exchange. And then they saw a huge spike in HIV. Exactly. We have another story this week that we're going to cover about the exact same thing. Because it's Indiana. It's a garbage state. It smells like what it is so but how much of this shit do you think trump how much this is just expedience in order to win whatever he thinks is the prize which which at this point dan if you have any idea what he thinks the prize is i'd actually be curious about that question too i think because i'm unsure i think for trump the prize is knowing that he's always going to be on those paper placemats and diners.

He's going to have all the presidents on them. Right, right, right. He's going to get his U.S. Mint commemorative gold coin. That's right. They didn't scrape Nixon off the placemats and diners. They're not going to scrape Trump off it either. I don't think he ever expected to be president. No, I don't think so either. I don't think he ever expected to be president. No, I don't think so either.

He's a grievance guy. And that's why he's still complaining about Hillary. That's why he's still complaining about the press. That's why he's attacking war widows. All he does is rack up grievances and settle scores and attack people. And he would have been much happier to lose and then complain about the rigged election for the rest of his life and claim that he was the rightful president. And I think he expected to lose. There's those reports from Trump HQ on election night that nobody in that room was more shocked that Trump won than Trump and everyone else in the room.

I heard an interesting comment. This was from a commentator. I was from, this was from a, a commentator. I think it was from somebody from NPR who said that they don't think he was, uh, he was planning on winning either. They was just going to use his Russia connections to leverage more business later and,

and use that during the campaign to try to convince them that he was somebody who was trustworthy. And that that's why all this stuff even felt even came about. That's where the speculation that the NPR reporter had, which makes sense, right? You know, like he's he's a bit he's not a good business guy, but a business guy who wants to make more deals. And he's had problems with Russia. And it's easy. He's a business guy. And he you know, you see this with the stiffing of his contractors everywhere, right? It's everywhere. And the refusal to pay his bills. He's a shady business guy and probably has broken the law on numerous occasions. And Yeah, right. go just about anywhere. And just like the, you know, investigation into whitewater can be

contained. And we ended up with the Paula Jones shit and the Monica Lewinsky shit and the impeachment of Bill Clinton for a blowjob shit. We didn't know where this is going to go, but Trump never wanted anybody digging around in his business practices or his financial history, or is looking at his tax returns. So he may, you know, be the perennial dog that caught the car. Then the car, like put it, whoever's driving that car, Robert Mueller shifted into reverse and ran that fucking dog over.

It's what I'm saying. Right. No shit. Does this, does this, this feels like, this feels like that alternative history fiction where it's like, what if Hitler had won?

You know, like we're all of a sudden we're living the alternative alternative history version of what should have happened yeah right like we're like we're at that crossroads moment we're like laugh no wait i meant right i meant to take it i mean the other way around but still yeah it's just because it feels so absolutely surreal to be in this place absolutely surreal absolutely all You know, every day you wake up and you grab your phone. I do next to the bed in the morning and we're three hours behind East Coast time here.

So I wake up at seven and it's 10 a.m. and I grab my phone, hoping one of two things has happened. Like indictments have come down. I sometimes tweet out hashtag team cholesterol without ever explaining what that means. But what that means is maybe an artery has saved the republic. H.D.L.

H.D.L. Exactly. Or Trump's like, there are nuclear missiles flying and there's tweets about it. Yeah, no, that's another real possibility, right? I have alerts set for my phone. So anytime Trump does anything, my phone goes off, right? I have alerts set for my phone. So anytime Trump does anything, my phone goes off, right? And every time it goes off, I'm like, please don't have the word missile anywhere in the title. And sometimes it does. And every time I'm like, oh, I gotta go out.

It really does. Trump at this point is really trying to fight against the media. What do you think about Trump's war on the media right now? I mean, he's really he's really pushing it. It's classic authoritarianism. And you have something like 54 or 46 percent of the public now believes that the media makes up stories about Trump. Yeah, of course they don't do. It's classic authoritarianism to undermine the media. He's you know, we always talk about him emulating Putin in this. He's emulating Erdogan in Turkey, another one of his favorite strongmen, authoritarian dictators. That's terrifying, by the way. That's literally actually terrifying.

It is terrifying. And, you know, people who say it can't happen here forget how close it came to happening here during McCarthyism in the 1950s and how dangerously close we came to, you know, authoritarianism. Yeah. And lives were destroyed. You know, I think for the people whose lives were destroyed during the witch hunts and Red Scare in the 50s, that they would say that authoritarianism did arrive and it just passed, hopefully, somewhat quickly. But I don't think that we'll survive at this time if it comes.

And we have to keep resisting and pushing back. And, you know, we keep looking at the, and the courts saved us on the travel ban three or four times. But Trump is also right now in the business of packing the courts with his knuckle-dragging appointees. blue sip process so that senators can't challenge Trump's appointments of unqualified fucking people who shouldn't be goddamn dog catchers, much less judges or federal judges for life. It's also scary. Oh, can we talk about blowjobs and glory holes again? Oh, but I had a depressing follow-up question. I don't want to ask my depressing follow-up question.

Then I want to ask you about ITMFA a little bit. So, because maybe there's a silver-ish lining. Maybe. I don't know. But I guess, you know, we're all kind of on the same page here. And the war on the media, it's classic authority. I'm right there with you. And I look at this Trump presidency, but more importantly, the Trump page here. And the war on the media, it's classic authority. I'm right there with you. And I look at this Trump presidency,

but more importantly, the Trump candidacy and the way that it was run. And I think like, is this just politics now? Is this what's next? How does this, what do you think?

Like, are we going to return to statesmanship? Or is this just- Or is it showmanship from now on? I don't know. Like it's either, you know, we're on our way to idiocracy.

That movie is just where we're headed. Is Oprah going to run? Is The Rock going to run? Or are people going to, after a few years in the circus celebrity politician tumbler, are going to come to their senses and recognize that we don't you know you can't run the country like a business because a government isn't a business you know government can't uh merge with another government the government can't um declare bankruptcy and

close up shop right governments aren't businesses uh and businessmen especially huckster businessmen like trump are politicians and there's a skill set that a good like hillary clinton uh that we need in the white house that we need in high office so maybe people are going to come to their goddamn senses you know you see a lot of uh rumblings that there's going to be a big democratic wave uh a year and a month from now fingers fucking crossed that actually yeah we'll see yeah right but like you know like right now for the most part old bitter white people run the government right and old bitter white people elect our government are young people going to be the change that we need like yeah but you've got old bitter white people right now in power who are rigging the system

uh to purge voter rolls, to raise obstacles to voting, to gerrymander, not just gerrymandering, but purging voter rolls, racist voter ID laws. You know, the analysis of what went on in Wisconsin where Trump won by, you know, I think 15, 20,000 votes is that 80,000 people were prevented from voting. Mostly people of color, most of whom would have voted for Hillary Clinton because of the license law. Right. So it was rigged. The election was rigged in Trump's favor. And Democrats don't talk enough about voter suppression and they need to. And we need to fix our our voting system. But we also have to play on the field that we found ourselves on, which means we have to have outreach to poor communities, community college, young people

to make sure that they're registered to vote and to make sure that they have all the assistance that they need to get registered to vote if they can't, you know, if there are obstacles being raised. And there are in North Carolina and there are in Pennsylvania and there are in Wisconsin and there are basically in every state in the old Confederacy. What we need is five million undocumented people just to join in the vote. We had five million of them, I think we could win next time. You do a lot of speaking on college campuses. Are young people energized? They are.

Although, you know, in all honesty, I do less speaking on college campuses now than I used to. Well, you should do some more on energizing young people. Dad, I'm really nervous right now. Tell us about your charity, ITMFA. Well, it's,'s you know it started as a joke it's a rip there's something i say in my column a lot if you write an advice column as i do um half the letters you get are oh my boyfriend is great and we love each other so much everything's awesome uh and then you get a butt you know he killed my he kicked my dog to death and he sets the house on fire once a week and you know he's never given me an orgasm and he wakes me up in the middle of the night

sometimes by blowing a load on my face without my consent. And they'll go out. Wait, wait, wait. Those are bad. I got the boyfriend of the year. Don't do that. You know, somebody will start by telling you how lovely everything is and then end with just like the worst.

He's great. He's lovely.'s bill o'reilly rather than you know to save space it's a column i have limited column inches instead of saying you know you really need to dump this person they're a terrible person i came up with dtmfa which stands for dump the motherfucker already and so sometimes i just give a one acronym abbreviation response to a letter like ETMFA, just like you need to break up with this asshole. And ITMFA was a reader suggestion for impeach the motherfucker already. And I did it during, in 2004, when Bush was running to raise money for the guy challenging Lieberman, the guy challenging Rick Santorum at the time in Pennsylvania, and ACLU in 2004, back when we thought George Bush was the worst president we were ever going to see in our lifetimes. And I raised 20 grand and gave

10 to ACLU and five each to the person running against Lieberman, Ed Lamont, who didn't win, and Bob Casey, who ran against Santorum and did win. And then I brought it back for Trump. And we have raised now enough money. Every cent of proceeds goes to these three charities, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and the International Refugee Assistance Project. We have raised, selling ITMFA t-shirts, hats, buttons, lapel pins, and mugs, $200,000. We raised enough money. I have enough sales to donate free and clear $200,000 to these organizations. That's awesome. And what the best part about ITMFA, if you go to like,

on Instagram, go to, uh, instagram.com slash ITMFA gram. And, you know, you see people in the hats and the t-shirts and the holding the mugs, wearing the buttons. And I wear them out all the time. And the best part is people come up to you and they say, what does that stand for? It's on your hat and they see it on the t-shirt. You get to look at them and say, impeach the motherfucker already. And they laugh, which is why we sell the buttons in 10 packs so you can have some in your pocket

and if somebody sees your button and asks and they love it, you can give them a button. If someone sees the button and they ask and they hate it, you can open the button and poke them. Not that I'm an advocate of political bias. No, of course not. Outrageous. Of course not. So do you, you, you clearly think since you brought it back that this is way more important now than it was during the Bush presidency. Like you said, the worst presidency all of us had

experienced up until very recently. It feels hopelessly naive, doesn't it? Like I, I want to return to that feeling and that was a feeling that upset me. Yeah. I don't, doesn't it? Like I want to return to that feeling. And that was a feeling that upset me. Yeah, I don't think we can, you know, look, because we survived the Bush presidency, we think it can't have been that bad or we weren't in that much danger. We really were. And they really were attacking our amendment rights. And they really were undermining the Constitution. Ari Fleischer from the podium in the White House from the briefing room saying Americans have to watch what they do and watch what they say, which was so Nazi Germany for my money.

They were dark and dangerous times and the nation was truly in peril and the Bush administration was insanely incompetent, as is the Trump administration. Being bad at governing is like the Republican specialty because they argue that government doesn't work and can't help. And the only way they can prove that is to seize control of government and show that government doesn't work and can't help by kneecapping everything government does. So then they could

say, see, and then a Democrat comes in like Clinton or Obama, gets the governments on its feet, improves the economy, gets agencies like the EPA and FEMA working properly by appointing not, what's his name? Rick Perry. Rick Perry, that's exactly it. Not Rick Perry to the Energy Department, but a Harvard Nobel Prize winning fucking physicist. Someone who knows about energy. They talk about energy. That's who Obama appointed appointed and so when they run things they run them into a ditch to say see government's terrible and americans are so gullible or enough are that americans don't make the connection go hey wait a minute that's like you telling me that my house is a fire trap and then walking in and dumping

gasoline everywhere and throwing matches house was fine until you burnt it the fuck down. Government is fine until you run it off a cliff. With W, I at least felt like they were evil and smart and dangerous. Now I feel like they're just evil and dangerous, though.

I don't get a sense. With W, you had Cheney, who's kind of the evil mastermind. And you had some guys that were undeniably brilliant men. They were terrible. But some of them were undeniably quite brilliant in his cabinet. I am hard pressed to find that level of even evil intellectualism. There's no intellectualism in our current administration.

That is itself part of Trump's genius. Frank Bruni wrote a great column on this in the New York Times. Everyone in the Trump administration knows that no other Republican president would have appointed them. This collection of yahoos and incumbents and dirtbags

and nutbags. Like, Perry wouldn't have gotten an appointment from Romney. No. No. That any other Republican president would have laughed Betsy DeVos out of the room, wouldn't have appointed Scott Pruitt because it was too obvious a direct assault on the EPA. There wasn't plausible deniability there. So all of these people Trump has gathered around him are fiercely loyal because he was their ticket. Yeah. And if he goes, they go. But let's rewind that to when he goes.

I go, we need a silver lining here in this conversation. Let's talk about another silver lining. Hashtag team cholesterol. Yeah. Let's talk about another one too, because many Democrats right now are pretty powerless. I know that we talked to a lot of Democrats right after the election and they felt pretty powerless. We came up with a list of things

to sort of energize people, maybe help people move forward. Do you have any advice on people looking, being positive in the face of a Trump presidency? Well, Trump has achieved no giant legislative wins, even with the House and the Senate in Republican hands. And the resistance has been really effective. And the resistance has been really effective. Unfortunately, you know, all up and down and through the government, through policy and regulation, the Trumpsters are fucking everything up. The EPA, I think, is the ultimate example of how much power heartening to the country's kind of political immune system response to the Trump administration. We haven't taken this lying down. limousine during his inaugural parade, that Americans just kind of let this happen? The guy who didn't win the popular vote and didn't win in Florida but managed to steal it in Florida with an assist from a Republican-dominated Supreme Court, I thought there would be more anger. I thought there'd be more people in the streets than there were. And so the fact that, you know, now we've had

somebody win the electoral college, even though lost popular vote by 3 million, and clearly was corrupt and clearly colluded with the Russians, that people have not taken that lying down. I was really worried going into this that there wouldn't be the kind of sustained, focused resistance to Trump, just as there really wasn't in the first Bush administration the kind of sustained resistance to Bush that I expected after the theft of the White House in 2000. The reason why is because everybody was in a huge line to give Nader a consolation hug,

so that's why we were just all real pipe-free occupied. Well, and 9-11. If Ruth Bader Ginsburg or one of the other liberal justices should retire or pass away, they're fucking old. We have Jill Stein to thank, not just for Gorsuch. Yeah, we do. But also for the next bomb-throwing right-wing Republican tool that Trump gets to appoint to the Supreme Court, or Pence, if it's Pence, if it's gone. Sure.

Or Paul Ryan, if Trump and Pence both get indicted. Oh, God. It doesn't get any better. How deep down do you have to go before you hit somebody you don't? Although my colleague Eli Sanders had a great riff on Blabbermouth, which is our political podcast on Stranger.

But here's what we need to have happen. riff on blabbermouth, which is our political podcast and stranger, but here's what we need to have happen. Um, we, 2018, the Democrats take back the house. They appoint, um, cause anybody can be speaker of the house. You don't have to be a member of the house to be speaker of the house. They appoint Hillary Clinton, speaker of the house, Trump and Pencher impeach. Hillary Clinton becomes president. The aristocrats. comes president. The aristocrats.

I love it. That's awesome. I love it. That's great. After Eli unpacked that, we all had to take a moment to like get out the box of tissues and get up before we went on with the rest of the show.

Oh my God. It's like, that's amazing. That's, now I'm more than slightly erect. That's a great idea. So, all right right let's let's let's switch back to blow jobs and glory holes tell us a little bit about the it gets better project um the it gets better project was this uh online video campaign that my husband and i

founded in 2010 uh in response to the suicides of actually just one uh queer kid out there named billy lucas who actually may not have been queer. He had never come out, but he was very brutally bullied for being perceived to be gay by his peers. And we had this reaction reading about him that I think so many adult queer people have when you read about a queer kid, a youth who kills himself, where you just sit there going, God, if I could only have talked to that kid for five minutes. But of course, we can't talk to those kids because they're not our kids. You're not allowed to talk to other people's kids. And the queer kids who most need to hear from queer adults are often the queer kids in parts of the country where there are no gay youth support groups and who

have parents who would never allow their queer kid to talk to a queer adult because they're also bullying their queer kid. That's one of the things people don't talk about when they talk about anti-gay bullying everybody dodges this issue that for many queer kids the worst bullies in their lives are their own parents um and really pushing them to suicide really uh you know because and so the project was this idea like you know we were reading about this kid and just devastated reading about billy lucas and then justin aberg um and just thinking i wish we could talk to these kids but we would never get permission from their parents we would never get an invitation to come speak at a high school or middle school um you know in the part of the country where these queer kids are really trapped

right it just occurred to me that oh there, there's internet, there's Twitter, there's Facebook, that we can record a video, speak directly to these kids, make an end run around bigoted preachers and teachers of parents and speak directly to them. And the whole kind of idea of the project was, you know, if you're a kid, you know, one of the criticisms we got was it's not just queer kids who are bullied that's absolutely true i had this really heartbreaking conversation with my brother billy my older brother after it gets better campaign like took off because i was constantly on tv i was constantly being asked uh if i was bullied in school and i was talking about saint jerome's where i was bullied pretty brutally but i called billy after doing i think it was cnn and i got him on

the phone i was just like i don't want you to think that i don't remember that you had it worse at jerome's than i did and my brother is straight and my brother was bullied um you know his nose broken a couple of times by this asshole bully oh my gosh um and still has breathing problems to this day from from those assaults right where then he was forced to shake hands with his bully and agree not to fight with him anymore by hitting his foot with his nose. And, but, but then Billy, and he was bullied for being smart and a weirdo and, you know, into science fiction and a nerd before that was cool. And he said that he got it. He just totally nailed it when he said, yeah, yeah, I had it worse at Jerome's, but at the end of the day, we would go home and I had mom and dad and you didn't.

Oh, man. And that was just it. You know, the queer kid who's bullied or the kid who's bullied because there's race, faith, class, goes home to parents of the same race, same faith, same class, or a kid like my brother Billy who's bullied for being smart, goes home and they can open up with their parents about what they're facing, what's being done to them. The queer kid who goes home doesn't go home to parents who are queer, doesn't go home to parents that they can often, they don't feel safe opening up to. They don't say anything like I did. I never said to my parents what was going on at school with me because that would have meant

having a conversation with them about my sexual orientation or how I was being perceived that I wasn't ready to have. And my parents, this is how long ago it was. My parents were kind of Anita Bryant fans or my dad was, um, and you know, conservative to an extent Catholics. So I couldn't tell them and Billy could, Billy could go home and say, this kid, I'm not going to say his name, uh, you know, kicked me in the face again today and broke my nose. Right. And you know, I would get fucked with at school or knocked around at school and I would go home and say nothing. Oh, that isolation extends to the home. Couldn't even confide. Wow. Because I couldn't trust my, I didn't have my parents react. And, you know, I was even then,

you know, 40% of homeless youth are queer kids, even though they're only less than 5% of the population, but 40% of homeless youth are queer kids who were they're only less than five percent of the population but 40 percent of homeless youth are queer kids who were thrown out after they came out or outed to their families and so i knew i was aware of that even then when i came out finally came out to my mother when i was 18 and i wanted to come out at 16 but then my dad left my mother and brings in my brother billy again it's like really ready to come out to my mom ready to tell her and then my dad walks out and my brother, Billy looks at me and goes, no, you can't, it'll kill her. And so I had to wait two more years. But when I came out to my mother,

I had my friend, Michael, uh, you know, this big, uh, bartender friend of mine from the gay bar that I'd gotten to know who was not a couple of years older than me, but working in a gay bar, he came over to my house and this is pre cell phones, pre smartphones. And he came over to my house when the day I was going to come out to my mother and waited on the porch in case I needed to go with him in case I needed a place to go. Cause you really didn't know how it was going to go. It was, it was that close. And then if, if, if I remember the story, right, you know, your, your mom, once you came out, your mom was ultimately very supportive of you. Right. And then if I remember the story right, once you came out, your mom was ultimately very supportive of you, right? And she told other family members that she would disown them if

they gave them shit. Yeah, she came around pretty quick. But getting back to the Get Better Project, the whole idea was we can take all the gay people, lesbian, bi people, trans people who are adults and are happy and healthy and reasonably secure know, reasonably secure. We walked that difficult path. You know, we figured out how to make it better for ourselves, like the right thing to say to our family, you know, the right strategies and, you know, how to survive. And what the project did was it took those stories that used to kind of die with us and it created a conduit with which we could then, through which we could then share those stories with queer kids who are just starting out on that path to illuminate it for them in the same way that you know a black parent would speak to his son look at tanahasi coates book um between me

and the world which is like a long letter to his son about being a black man in this culture and on this planet in this society uh you know we were able like queer people are now able to the gets better project you know not everyone's going to be as eloquent, of course, and the queer story isn't the same as the African-American story, but can do that same thing, can share their hard-earned wisdom and perspective and the steps they took and what they said and how they did it with queer kids who are, you know, 14, 15 years old, growing up in a Mormon family in Utah and knowing they're gay and not knowing what the fuck to do or how this can even be possible for them. You know, and how their parents will never come around. And they can go to the It Gets Better Project and see a video where there's this Mormon kid, Mormon adult, like in his 30s,

sitting on a couch next to his Mormon parents, who not only now love and accept him, but on the video apologized to him for how they reacted when he was 18. Oh, wow. That's got to be... So is the culture of bullying changing? Do you think that it feels different than when I was a young person? Because bullying when I was a young person is more of the shake hands with whoever bullied you, and you're're to blame too and bullying that the responses in school seems very different now it does seem different but i think trump has really unleashed demons we have a bully in chief now we have a bully in the bully pulpit that we haven't seen and it's empowering a lot of kids to be very deeply shitty to other kids you're seeing stories now about you know kids who kids who are Hispanic or Latino who,

you know, are second or third generation American being picked on and bullied by their classmates, or even kids who are immigrants being picked on and bullied by their classmates and people, high school kids chanting Trump, Trump, Trump at a visiting team from a school that's mostly Hispanic. And so the example, and then the sexism of Trump, the example that the president is setting for kids is fucking toxic. And the repercussions are gonna play out for a decade. Well, we really do think your charity is really amazing.

So we're gonna encourage all of our listeners to donate to your project. It gets better. They'll find a link on this week's show notes for it. And we're gonna match $2 to donate to your project. It gets better. They'll find a link on this week's show notes for it. And we're going to match $2,000 to your project and hopefully people will donate and we can turn that into $4,000 for your project because we

think it's such a worthwhile cause. God damn it. We'll create a silver lining if we can. We can't figure it out. I'm trying to end on a high note. Do you think the culture of bullying? No, it's gotten worse. Fuck. All right. Here's some money. Can we throw money at the problem? I don't know what else gotten worse. Fuck. All right. Here's some money. Can we throw money at the problem? I don't know what else to do. Well, thanks. I really, really, really appreciate that.

And thanks in advance to your listeners who chip in for the It Gets Better project. It does good work and it has helped people. And it has. And, you know, when I first started it, I would get on TV and I would say, we're going to talk to your queer kids, whether you like like it or not to straight parents who are bullying their queer kids and we got a letter at the project from this girl whose parents were horrible to her she tried to come out as a lesbian they put her into reparative therapy in a christian school they threatened to throw her out if she didn't you know change and so she lied you know she under duress told them what they had to hear for her to survive, which she wasn't a lesbian. And, uh, she wrote us to say, uh, that she was watching the videos in her parents' house, in her bedroom, in the middle of the night,

under her covers on her phone. Wow. And that is what the power of the project does. It's like, we marched the, the, the gay and lesbian youth support group is meeting in that girl's head under the covers yeah with her and she said the most beautiful thing at the end of her letter which um was that you know she'd seen at the project she'd seen kids whose parents had the same reaction that her parents are having now whose parents now love and accept and whose parents have again apologized to their kids on video for how they reacted. And she said, every day I get up and I go downstairs and I look at my mother and my father who are being so horrible to her.

And I love them for who they're going to be in 10 years. She's a way better person than I'll ever be. Wow. A way better person. She's capable of loving her parents right now when her parents are incapable of loving her. And it's because she has this image in her head of what's possible in the future for her parents and

she has that image because of the it gets better project that's amazing that's amazing and so now her instead of saying we're going to talk to your queer kids whether you like it or not fuck you fuck you fuck you big appearance i say we're going to talk to your queer kids whether you realize right now that you want us to you do do want us to, you just don't realize it yet. One day you will find us. So Dan, on the off chance that someone has never heard of you or your show, where would people find you on the internet? On Twitter, I'm at fake Dan Savage and I'm verified. So I'm the real fake Dan Savage. And you can find me in my home paper, thestranger.com, where you'll find my column, which is syndicated in 70 or 80 papers all over the world.

And I have a podcast of my own, The Savage Lovecast, which is now in its eighth or ninth year and very popular. It's a sex and relationship chat show. I have guests. I have calls. I give advice. And that's at savagelovecast.com. so I can give advice. And that's at savagelovecast.com.

Dan, it has been an absolute honor to talk to the person who helped popularize the term Santorum as we know and love it. Dan, thanks so much for joining us. It was really an honor. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it.

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And this is a great way not to waste food. I mean, it's just Sarah and I. It's just a meal that's our size. It's made for us. Some of the meals they have are just, they're cleverly put together. They're easy to cook. Yeah. They come with everything that you need.

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on the other side of the glory hole? It's Jesus. So the story comes from Right Wing Watch It wouldn't be a show without Jim Baker I feel like, I don't know if he gets a percentage Or what his deal is at this point So Jim Baker Unsaved people are going insane

Because of Trump's love of God Okay Alright, well let's just listen I feel like you got a lot of things to prove here in that one sentence Right? Jim has to say about it. Unsaved people are going insane. Yes.

They can't take it. They can't believe that a person was elected to presidency that honored God. What of the people that have been elected? He seems like the least religious. He seems like the least, and you know, you can't tell, you can never tell whether or not he's religious or not. You don't know.

You have to trust people, right? You have to trust people when they say, but he certainly doesn't know fuck all about the Bible. Yeah, he's not really well versed. He doesn't have like a long, rich, personal history of spending lots of time in churches. Right? So he doesn't seem to have a publicly available or

publicly consumable religious life that you can look back on. And like, let's just be really honest, the guy is disingenuous. He's just a constantly disingenuous guy. You can't believe anything he says because you think, no matter what, he's always just trying to say the thing you want to hear. Right. right i mean we've got 500 hours of us railing on this shit and i could just come out

and be like yeah i've changed i love that's the whole that's a problem but like that's a feature right not a defect of religion yeah is you can just wake up one day and be like i saw the light yeah like you can ace a base that shit, right? You can see the side. You just open up your eyes. Yeah. You have to say it a little, a little weird. Like you,

like you learned it fanatically rather than the meaning of it. But yeah, that song didn't die. That song took fucking 20 years before it stopped being played in department stores. You know, you have fucked your shit up and like with a base. Yeah. We're playing at TJ Maxx. Are you fucking kidding me?

You're just annoying all the fucking... They're in the clearance section. Thank you, clearance section! Remember, no more than five garments in the changing room at any time. We are Ace of Base. That wants to keep the cross on top of your church.

Let's take a church. Your cross, bro. Yeah. Who would be in charge of it? Like what, what branch of the government controlled by Trump would be like, Oh,

and then Trump is like stopping that. Like, no guys, guys stop. I know you're a cross collection. I know you're an Obama, Obama appointee, but we're going to slow this down a little. We need to put somebody underqualified in that position right now. Let's hurry up.

And Jesus in your heart. And he wants to stop killing the babies. Wait, hold on a second. They want to take Jesus out of your heart? No, I think they want to keep the crosses on your church and Jesus in your heart. Oh, okay. And stop killing the babies. Oh, killing the babies. Won't somebody think of the babies? Oh, it's the babies. It's always the babies.

And like we mentioned earlier with Dan, it's, you know, they're fine. We're totally not they are not, they are 100% caring and want to make sure that these little fetuses turn into babies, but they won't take care of them once they're born. What is interesting is that they have, in every other arena, when you look at environment, when you look at the way they treat the economy,

they want to try to make sure that, especially with the EPA regulations, that everybody's making as much money as possible. We don't really care. They're very short-sighted when you look at all their other policies, except for this one. This is the only one where they're like, Hey man, there's a lot of potential there. They don't pay attention at all to,

you know, uh, any of the, you know, there could be a potential to ruin the planet when you're talking about, you know, any of this shit that's going on with the EPA. And you put a guy who's fucking anti-EPA in charge of the EPA

and they don't even fucking pay attention. Right. But when it comes to fucking, you know, the potentiality of a baby, they're like, oh my God, we've got to, you can't do anything. You can't even take the day after pill. But they, you know, they clearly,

once that baby's born, they don't give a fuck about it. Well, again, I don't think this has anything to do with babies. I really don't. I think for most of these people, it has to do with women. I think it has to do with just controlling women's choices by controlling their reproductive health, right? If women

are controlled, if their sexuality gets to be controlled by men, and if their presence in the workplace gets to be reduced or eliminated by pushing them out of the workplace to make them baby factories, then they win, right? It's less of them pesky women folks that the men are going to have to answer to. But we're so perverted, it's so wicked that we think it's normal birth control to kill

the baby. That's not, nobody thinks that. Nobody thinks that. You know, it's funny because like there's this narrative by these guys that, you know, women who get abortions regret it and they have these, you know, big weepies afterwards. And like, you know, the number one reported emotion after the fact, I was told this recently, number one reported emotion after the fact is relief. Yeah. That's because the devil comes into their body though. That's true. That's not birth control. That's right. It's murder. I'm sorry. I know you don't like it.

I'm sorry. Wait, no, these people love this. They'll laugh this shit up like your fucking garbage food you're trying to sell. They're on your show. When it's your wife, just to your right. What are you talking about? I hate to even have to get people so upset. You know, it's interesting because his wife had like five abortions, right? Did she?

It was something like that. She talks about, and that's why she has Lori's house or whatever, because she had five or 25 abortions or whatever she had. Wouldn't you think if having an abortion is murder, isn't his wife a mass murderer to him? Yeah, but that's okay if she, none of that matters. That's the forgiveness problem. None of that matters none of that matters. That's the forgiveness problem. None of that matters if you repent deeply.

That's the problem I have with forgiveness. It's the forgiveness problem. It only works with these assholes, right? Because if I believed that somebody was a murderer, right? I have a pretty significant list of unforgivable things people can do. Sure. There are things people can do in their lives that I'm just like, yeah, we're done. We're done here.

Yeah. Completely. These guys don't have that. They so don't have that that he thinks his wife is a mass murderer or a serial murderer. And he's still willing to say,

that's a forgivable thing. They do, but they're just weird, laughable things, like being gay. Right, okay, sure. You know what I mean? They do have that. But these guys, laughable things like being gay. Right. Okay. Sure. You know what I mean? Like they do have that.

But these guys don't think that gay is a, they think gay is a choice that you could choose the other thing and then repent. Yeah. And so it still fits their model. It's a very, very brightly colored rainbow ballot that you get. But I'm telling you, this is one of the main reason I believe judgment finally came to America. It did.

It only took, what, 1973 was when they, was it 73? Yeah, according to their narrative, isn't it like 55 million babies or something? 60 million, I think. I don't know. Like, where is that turning point? Right? The first dead baby and God's just like, well, he was ugly. He was an ugly little fella.

Look at that. He wasn't going to grow up to be shit anyway. But then you get to a certain point, like, all right, now you guys ain't bowling. Really? Imagine if it really was murder and you could do something to stop it or to judge it or to condemn it. Sure. And it took you 60 million iterations before you were like, all right, hold on. Now Trump's president.

Now you see what we've done. Now do you see what you've done? Or it takes you 40 years to get it done. You're just like, I'll get off the couch when I'm good and ready. I will take out the garbage. Will you stop nagging? I will do the dishes when I pull it out of the hat. And it's not a practice.

We've killed 60 million unborn babies. 60 million ewes. No, I'm fine. I'm literally right here. That's the other narrative. They think that this

clump of cells is a fully graduated from college voting person. They're like, it's you. No, it's not me. No, it's a clump of cells that gets taken out of the woman well before it ever turns into anything that can be considered a baby. Right. And there's a massive difference between me, the person, and me, the be considered a baby. Right. And it's, there's a massive difference between me,

the person and me, the potential for a person. Confusing the potential for life with an actualized life is just, it's a continuum problem. Yeah. You know, it just, it just straight is a continuum problem.

And it's a, it's a way for them to, to, to make it seem like, oh, but I don't want to be killed. Well, all right.

Yeah. I don't want, and I wasn't. And it seem like, oh, but I don't want to be killed. All right. Yeah, I don't want. And I wasn't. Yeah. And you know what? You know, and fucking John Wayne Gacy wasn't either. We're not all good people. Yeah.

You know, so nobody likes that argument either. Right. If it's the potential. Oh, what if it had been your mother? Well, what have been fucking John Wayne Gacy's mom? Yeah. You know, like it wasn't. And so we don't need to go down that path because the what if game doesn't actually matter.

Sure. All that matters is that the point that the action is taken. What is the status at that moment? Yeah. You can't. We have no guarantee. It's what is it? Monday?

We have no guarantee there will be a Wednesday. Yeah. Right. Trump's in charge. Actually, that percentage goes down every day. Every day. Every single day. But I'm being pretty serious.

Like you have this idea that we have some, you know, we should act on the hope for future events. Yeah. Come the fuck on. That's not how we decide in the moment, you know, whether or not somebody's a person. I know a lot of morality has to do with predicted events. Sure. I get that. But come the fuck on with that shit.

And you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you. Right. Everybody's in your house. And the baby's in your house. And in your womb. you and you and you and you. Right. Everybody's in your house and the baby's in your house. The baby's in your uterus. Every time you hear a vacuum hose, a baby gets its way. For abortion that's still alive. That's right. I don't know what that means, but. I don't know what that means, but... Neither do we, Jim! Neither do we!

Oh, God. You know, do we need 60 million more people, too? I don't know. Like, do we really need the population of the U.S. right now to be 380? 380. It's a big, yeah. Like, that's close to what I always kept saying it was. Well, that's how many people that were illegal that voted in the election.

That would have swung it the other way. That would have swung it. You are watching the beginning and the birth of the new world order and you want to call me crazy go to hell call me crazy all you want all right this story is from right wing watch wayne allen root says says Las Vegas shooter was laundering money for some major crime syndicate, possibly ISIS or Antifa. The crime syndicate of Antifa. Yeah. Hey, Cecil.

What? The crime syndicate. What? They're laundering Antifa's big demonstration dollars. Antifa comes over to the Nats and be like, it's an awful nice demonstration you got here. It'd be a real fucking shame if somebody were to protest it. They got to launder all that George Soros money, I guess. No, you don't.

It's fucking clean already, right? You just claim yourself as a political organization and he could donate half his fortune to you, right? Or just put a cross somewhere and call yourself a church. You don't have to pay any taxes on it. It's fine. It's perfect. All right. So here we go. This is Wayne Allen Root from his show, whatever it is called. I don't know.

I ask real questions and good questions, but the mainstream media is so liberal. They want to put me in the same article they write about the nutcases who have crazy conspiracy theories. I've never had a crazy conspiracy theory in my life. As a matter of fact, every theory I've ever had, all of my conspiracy theories are still perfectly sane. Hey buddy, if they're conspiracy theories, they're still wrong. And every question I've ever asked has turned out to be correct. So I'm not, wait, wait, how is a question correct? The question is correct. The answer may or may not be correct. The question is correct. Every question I've may not be correct. Every question I've ever asked has been right. You don't understand how questions work. You're right about the answer to,

okay, backwards. Go on Wayne. Crazy conspiracy theorist. I'm the only honest person in the media asking real questions. They want to destroy my reputation by putting me in an article. Do you know all over the country, there were articles about Wayne Root and the terror attack in Vegas. GQ magazine, Washington Post, Slate, Time magazine. They all tried to say that Wayne Root incorrectly reported the terror attack as a Muslim terrorist attack, Islamic terrorist attack. Because you did. And it's not. And that's what he did.

I know. And it's not. So, yes, that is 100% that you incorrectly reported that. Yeah. We still don't know why that guy did it. These are the tweets that he put out. Right. So let's not mischaracterize his statements. This is real thing.

Clearly coordinated Muslim terror attack. Pray for our Vegas police. Pray for victims. Very bad. Awful. He went to the Trump school of tweeting this dude loves trump yeah shooting victims everywhere shots fired at mandalay trot bellagio new york new york luxor hooters stratosphere this is real thing muslim terror what that's not jesus just he's just spreading misinformation and my sources report multiple

shooters searches at multiple casinos, automatic weapons. My sources say many dead, not two. My sources are on scene. Terrible day. Liberal fools criticizing me for reporting what I hear direct from police and credible news sources. I hear it. I report it as I hear it.

Okay, so that's what he said. So him saying that, when he's like, that's what they said, that that's cause they just reported what you tweeted. Yeah. Well, what they conveniently forgot, you know,

or just happened to leave out is the newspapers report on it the next day. I was reporting on Twitter and Facebook live as it happened with policemen and police sources calling me minute by minute telling me what incorrect information yeah so you were spreading disinformation like it comes out afterwards that you were wrong so you just because you had the scoop on wrong information doesn't give you a fucking get out of jail free card no let's talk about that for a second like that's bad journalism yeah that's the new that's the new thing where, that's bad journalism. Yeah. That's the new thing where it's just like, hey, look, it's not

my fault I got it wrong. Yeah, it is. It's like literally the only thing you're supposed to do right. Just get it right. That's why we don't do journalism that way. Yeah. Minute by minute unsubstantiated guessing because some fucking jamoke called you on the phone. Unbelievable.

And you're just like well i gotta look i was talking to a guy who was near it i know a guy who knows a guy who's got a buddy whose brother-in-law works the state police just irresponsible i know it's just irresponsible and then and it's so funny because like they think that they have that not only are they supposed to be doing this is this is some kind of a good action for them to be taking. But then when it blows up, they fucking backpedal on that shit. Like, well, I don't,

being right doesn't matter about stuff. It really matters. Because people act on this. Totally matters. Exactly. They knew as they knew it. And just as an example, last night I happened to eat at Gallagher's

at New York, New York. I had dinner there and I asked the waiter, how are you? How's everything? Is business recovering? And the waiter just spends 20 minutes telling me a story of what happened the night of the attack.

The entire New York, New York was running for their lives. Why? There wasn't a shooter there. But okay, but I can understand that there's being generalized panic. Do you know what doesn't help generalized panic? Unsubstantiated rumor mongering. Like his own

rumors where he reported on Twitter that there were shots in New York, New York. And those hotels are massive. And so I guess I could see Cecil. Absolutely. Those hotels are huge. Yeah. They're like convention centers. And I was like, oh, fuck. They're shots fired. Yeah. Wayne Allen Root says. Yeah. And those had hundreds, a hundred

plus retweets. Right. Everybody thought they wereot says. Get the fuck out. Right. Yeah. And those had hundreds, a hundred plus retweets. Everybody thought they were under attack. They were told they were under terror attack. They were told. By you. By you. You're the one that said these words. It was a citywide terror attack and shooters were in the lobby.

And him, the chef, the owner, the restaurant owner, all of them. He said, there's room in the back office for 10 people. We had the entire staff. We had to pick. We had to draw straws. Of 25 jammed into the room with the door locked, praying we wouldn't be murdered. I was reporting.

But if they find you, you're just so much easier to murder. Like, hello, let's put all the fish in this barrel, please. What's this mumbling behind this door? As it happened, everybody thought it was a citywide terror attack. Because you said it was, you fucking fool. The media was trying to lump me in with people who have conspiracy theories and say crazy things. You said crazy things. It was a conspiracy theory because it's not the true thing that happened.

You said crazy things. Will you stop? It's been proven correct. At the Bellagio, they thought it was a conspiracy theory because it's not the true thing that happened. You said crazy things. Will you stop? It's been proven correct. At the Bellagio, they thought it was a terror attack. They locked down the hotel. Thought is not the same thing as was. Thought is not the same thing as was. There's a difference.

It's why you wait until you have the facts. Trump does this shit all the time. And then he tries to say, well, I was just, I was reacting in the moment to the information I had. Well, don't react in the moment. Stop doing that. You shouldn't do that the moment. Stop doing that. Stop doing that. Unbelievable. Be thoughtful. People were bleeding in the lobby. They thought they had been shot there, but they had actually run down the strip after being at the concert. Right? So I reported what the police knew, which is gunshots at the Bellagio gunshots in New York,

New York gunshots at Luxor gunshots at MGM gunshots at T York, New York, gunshots at Luxor, gunshots at MGM, gunshots at Tropicana. We have a citywide terror attack. Who in their right mind would hear that and not think Islamic terror attack? You can't. First of all, maybe I would think that. You know what? I got to tell you, I would think I would.

I know myself. I would. It would be the first thing that would leap to mind. But you know what I wouldn't do? I wouldn't say it as a true factual thing. I wouldn't even say it, first of all, except for publicly. I might say that at home and be like,

oh my gosh, this sounds terrible. Maybe this is another... Yeah, because it sounds like what happened in Paris. If that's the case. If what he was saying was true, well, maybe it sounds like something that happened in Paris. But it's not. It was one shooter.

But we keep our wild speculation to ourselves. And off Twitter. Right. That's to ourselves. You don't put that out in the public. Allow me to wildly speculate without even prefacing it with, is it? Or question mark it to get nothing. Or at least say wild speculation.

Right. Being that they've done it in Paris. They've done it in Brussels. They've done it in Nice. How many places do I need to name? I didn't spread misinformation. I was doing me. Yes, you did.

You fucking liar. Wrong about things that you said publicly to a lot of people. Minute by minute updates direct from the police as it happened. Of course. No, you shouldn't do that. The police have a PR. The police have ways to get information out that's been vetted. Yeah.

So it's not just the thing is the police force is no different than anybody else. Right. So many people just want their fucking name out there. They just want to be important in the middle of an event. They just want some fucking hearts and likes on their fucking Facebook page or whatever. People just want validation. Yeah. When you've got a massive force of people,

just because you talk to a cop doesn't mean the cop isn't just telling you shit. So you'll tweet it and he'll feel like his dick got bigger. You know, here's the thing. A lot of that stuff, even on police scanners until it's actually, you know,

what's going on. Right. They're just saying things, you know, there might, there might be chatter there. That's also wild speculation. They may get a report that somebody heard a gunshot.

But what they heard was somebody dropped their MacBook. You know what I mean? Like, because if you say, hey, there's gunshots in the area and somebody hears a loud bang, that might be a door closing or something falling. And then they suddenly they're like, oh, I thought I heard a gunshot. And then they call the cops because now they're afraid because they're on hyper alert. Anyway. Yeah.

Well, and it's a good question. There's they're covering something up on this. Oh my God. Who's covering it up. Are they reporting? Are they, is there,

is there a coverup where their shots fight? Is he saying there were shots fired at all those places or were they all in all those places that you listed, but they just never reported it in the media. Where are all the bodies? Right. Where are all the people that live through it? Yeah. Cause it would be like, Oh yeah, I was there and they just never reported it in the media. Where are all the bodies? Right. Where are all the people that live through it? Yeah.

Cause it would be like, Oh yeah, I was there and they were shooting on it. It would be more people than Wayne Allen route. Investigation. None of it makes sense. The timeline. Of course they are.

Look, I saw an article yesterday. One thing I've never covered cause I don't want to look like in that case. I really have never discussed on my show that I fit, you know, whether I think there are multiple shooters because the police swear there's only one shooter on the internet. There are hundreds of videos proving there are multiple shooters.

Oh, see internet videos started. He started out with, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. Yeah. And now he's going to talk about, you know, the strobe light that they, that everybody keeps on pointing to. That's the extra shooter. Well, I like to that. He's like, you know, that I think, whether I think, he corrects himself. He thinks this, right?

He doesn't, he's not, he's trying to hedge his terminology. But he thinks this is true. According to those videos, I won't say they prove anything because it's the calculations of the math and science whizzes on those videos that claim they're proving there's multiple shooters. Yeah, their math and science whizzes on those, on those videos that claim they're proving there's multiple shooters, but yeah, they're, they're math and science whizzes are watching these things. Not just guys that watch things on the internet with no qualifications. I'll tell you what,

the internet's gotten a lot of these things really, really, really wrong. Like really wrong. Yeah. The internet is not good at this. Yeah. The internet's good at porn.

Yeah. The internet's really good. It's good at porn yeah the internet's really good it's good at porn internet internet is probably good at uh no it's porn i think i was going to say something else well i was going to say shopping but then i i pulled it back and said porn porn and metric conversion tables that's i haven't even gotten into that because i don't want the media to have a chance to say wayneot is promulgating this theory. But what's interesting is that my friend who's the SWAT, a retired SWAT commander from Los Angeles, 20 years head of SWAT, his nephew, I told you, was shot and killed at this event.

Does he have some credibility? I think he has tremendous credibility. What does he have credibility? Hold on. Talk about that. Because he used to be a cop in a different place. He used to be a cop in a different place and somebody knows died and he's fucking emotionally invested in this.

Yeah. Maybe he does have some, uh, some things to say about it, but I don't know that any of it's going to be true. Right. I don't know that any of that lends him credibility. It lends him the exact opposite of credibility. Right. He's probably, he's got a, he's got a, he's got a dog in this.

Yeah. Does he have a horse in the race? I would say being that his nephew was murdered at the event, he has very much interest in this. And his belief now is that there were multiple shooters. I sat, I was the keynote speaker at a huge Republican women's event Saturday night in Vegas. It was a national event. I was the keynote speaker of the night. And I sat next to a woman whose husband sat next to me. The husband is a retired detective. Wait a minute. I sat next to a woman whose husband sat next to me. Why would you say I sat next to this guy? No, I think what happened is that they each sat on either side of him. Wayne put himself right in the middle. In the middle?

I think so. What? Let's have a Wayne Allen Root sandwich. You're like, hey, honey, let's spice things up a little bit. Let's bring in Wayne Allen Root. Let's bring in Gary Busey's dad.

Vegas. And he said, the story stinks. The story makes no sense. I don't believe a word they're saying. He's just a random detective who has no idea and probably doesn't even read about it. So it's not Wayne Root. It's retired cops. It's everybody. It's not everybody. It's fucking armchair people who aren't involved read about it. So it's not Wayne Root, it's retired cops. It's everybody. It's not everybody. It's fucking armchair

people who aren't involved in the investigation. I remember when we were going to invade Afghanistan and I went to visit my mother. The last time I ever saw my mother. I went to visit my mother and her husband had on his dining room table, he had a map of the Middle East and

he had all these pins and shit in it. And he was plotting out where they were going to like launch the invasion to. And like, he was like playing. That's a weird hobby. He was a weird dude, man. Yeah, he had this whole like,

he had this whole like risk board, basically. He was playing against himself. And he wanted to show it to me. It's like some weird guy playing chess against himself. And I was like, I don't think we should have made half-games. That didn't go well. That was not the best visit, actually. I imagine.

You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers! I want the truth! You can't handle the truth! This story is from Vox. An Indiana county just halted a life-saving needle exchange program citing the Bible. And I love the subheading. The subheading kind of says it all. The program had overwhelming evidence behind it, but it wasn't enough to save it.

That's true. This has happened several times in Indiana. We talked a little bit about it with Dan earlier. But really, that's one of those things that they do really well there is stop programs that can help people. That's true. Yeah. It's true. And they said in this, one of the people that votes for us, I have massive moral reservations.

I'm paraphrasing. Yeah. Like massive moral reservations about this. Yeah. But I totally thought about, how do you have moral reservations about something that was successful? Yeah. You know, like these guys, I want to talk a little bit about this in terms of like, what don't we like about drugs?

Sure. Right. I, you know, I think what they don't like about drugs is that drugs are fun. That's what I think they don't like. What I think that they say they don't like is that drugs

are dangerous and addictive and destroy lives and are unhealthy and all the other rest of it. Right. And I think that's all bullshit. I really do. I think that's all a massive smokescreen for them to just moralize about people becoming inebriated, people altering their conscious state. I think they have a fucking boner about that for some reason I don't understand. Because if it was about the other

thing, if it was about addiction, if it was about health consequences, if it was about any of that stuff, they would look at this needle exchange program. They'd be like, yeah, 100%. That's what we need to do. All the evidence is, but you would have no moral because your morals would side with it because it dovetails into what you don't like about drugs. The reasons they think drugs are immoral, this ameliorates that. But that's not what lives behind all that. What lives behind all that is they don't want people getting fucked up.

They don't like people that are high. They just don't like it. Yeah. There's an interesting part of this article I want to read. It says, before he cast his vote, Fish quoted the Bible,

specifically 2 Chronicles 7. It says, quote, if I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or I send pestilence among my people, if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and it will heal their land.

And I thought to myself, I'm like, you should have picked something that made more sense in the situation. You could have read, I mean, at least, you know, what he could have read was like a verse from say green eggs and ham,

at least in there, somebody's trying something that they don't like, you know, it's like, can I give out syringes on a box? If I give out syringes, will box if i give out syringes will it cure this pox you know what i mean like like what the fuck will you give them out in the glades will they get rid of the aids you know what i mean like like you can at least you can you could at

least at least connect those two dots right but in this case it's just like it's like yeah i just read this random passage from the bible that talked about sin, and that is why I'm choosing this vote. Right. Might as well throw a dart in a fucking Bible. I mean, that did not help. That thing that you read, in no way, after you read that, I thought, yeah, okay, you don't like people getting high. I think I'm still right. First point stands.

You don't like people getting high. And they said, quote, yes, it is a problem. Yes, it needs to be resolved. I could not give them the tools to do it. Why? Because doing nothing is fucking knocking it the fuck out of park. Right. You know what I mean?

Like, look at what happened when they took away that clinic down there. Down in fucking in the southern part. I know. When Pence fucking, the guy who of when fucking when Pence fucking the, the, the guy who looks, he looks, you know,

somebody had said he looks, looks like a bond villain. That is absolutely perfect. He looks just like a bond. You know what I mean? He looks, you know, you put a tuxedo on him.

You put a guy that has like a fucking gold plated teeth next to him. He's a fucking bond villain. Yeah. But you know what? Like, like he fucking close shit down in that state and it fucking fell to shit gold-plated teeth next to him. He's a fucking Bond villain. But you know what? He fucking closed shit down in that state and it fucking fell to shit because all that stuff was helping people. And they closed it down because they're so fucking tight religiously that they can't bear to get the

idea that somebody's going to use the plan B or that somebody's going to use drugs or that somebody's going to do something that isn't controlled by their church. Well, it's funny because every time these guys do the same thing, like you're saying, they do the same thing with birth control. They do the same thing with drugs. You do the same thing with anything where people try to have any kind of bodily autonomy, right? Bodily autonomy, but fucks these people up. What they want you to have, what the Republicans seem to want to have is a kind of economic autonomy. Yeah. But bodily autonomy.

They're really not pro. They are the most aggressively restrictive political party in terms of. And there's no way to say it's my body. I will. I will ruin this the way I want to wreck the fuck. I have done shit to this machine that it is not going to recover from. And I mean, if that was the case, shouldn't they fucking slap the fucking fries out of Christie's hand then,

if that's the case, you know, they tackle that guy to the ground and get the big Mac out of his back pocket. Come on. I mean, they would, if they really gave a shit about that stuff, if they really gave a shit about health,

right. They would give, they would, we would have healthcare. Yeah. For example, I don't know. We would incentivize a healthy habits, right. We would incentivize healthy habits, right?

We'd incentivize gyms and things along those lines through tax incentives, things along, you know, we would, we would make, we just, we just straight up make cigarettes and alcohol illegal. Sure. Right. We just would. Cause those things cause more problems than, than anything, than the rest of it. I mean, by, by massive margins, but we don't care.

Yeah. We don't care because we just, we chose our inebriant. Yeah. Right. I mean, by massive margins. But we don't care. We don't care because we chose our inebriant. Yeah. Right? And we said it's alcohol. We said decided on that one. Even though alcohol is, by any objective measure I've ever seen,

an incredibly destructive. Way worse than pot. Way worse than Coke. Way worse than a lot of other drugs. But that's the inebriant that we've chosen. Sure. Right? We've decided that that one's okay. Cigarettes, some people still smoke. So they just, that's the inebriant that we've chosen. Sure. Right? We've decided that that one's okay.

Cigarettes are just, some people still smoke. So they just, they just, that's it. Yeah. That's it. We don't give a shit about health in this country. We tax the shit out of those things. Yeah. We tax the hell out of them.

They're encouraged. Yeah. Well, I think too, because we can tax the shit out of them and they're not mind altering. Yeah. Right. We can tax the shit out of them and the people who are addicted to them will keep buying them regardless of what they cost. Doesn't matter. Right. Doesn. Right. We can tax the shit out of them and the people who are addicted to them, we'll keep buying them regardless of what they cost. Doesn't matter. Right. Doesn't matter.

So we want to thank Dan Savage for joining us. Dan Savage does a show called the Savage Lovecast. If you haven't checked it out, it's a, it's a great sex advice column show, a little bit of politics mixed in. Excellent show. Um, can't recommend it. Can't recommend it highly enough. politics mixed in excellent show. Um, can't recommend it. Can't recommend it highly enough. Um,

he's also, he also writes for the stranger, uh, in Seattle. Uh, and, uh, and if you are interested in donating to the, it gets better project,

go to it gets better.org. Donate, take a picture of the amount you donate, send it to us at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. And we will match your donation up to $2,000. So please, if you have a little bit extra money, it's a great project. You heard Dan talk about it and I mean,

gosh, what an amazing project that is. It's well worth your donation. So that's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter mommy issue hypno babylon bullshit couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative

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Doubt even this. Opinions are solely that of Glory Hole Studios, LLC. Cognitive dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information and will not be liable for any errors, damages, or butthurt arising from consumption. All information is provided on an as-is basis. No refunds. Produced in association with the local dairy council and viewers like you.