It Could Happen Here - The War on Trans People: Part 4, The Legislative Onslaught

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

In part four the team gets into the recent uptick in bills and legislation that aim to attack trans/queer people, and supress the existence of LGBTQ+ people in schools. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Oh, Jesus. Dear God. When I logged into this call an hour late, Garrison was studiously reading a book by with the screen centered on the cover. We got to bleep this out and have it be the new thing that's bleeped out. I agree with that, actually. Yes. Really?

Good call. That way we can just do a whole series of jokes where we just like pill people on fascist esotericism what a what a fun joke that would be welcome to it could happen here the show where we talk about things that could happen um about just talking about the onslaught of uh of uh bills that have been introduced the past few months that attacking kind of trans rights and queer people in general yeah so we've we've we've heard about gay marriage we've heard about turfs a lot the past the past few episodes and now we're gonna be kind of focusing on the, yeah, like I said, the, the kind of current legislation that's happened specifically within the past six months, um, that have been targeting kind of LGBTQ people in, in schools, particularly that in a lot of it's been targeted towards, towards minors, teenage teens, adolescents, um, and restricting the visibility and, uh, and kind of what's allowed to be said and mentioned in schools.

So we're going to kind of actually talk about books first, because a lot of this stuff is kind of tied into the critical race theory, kind of like organizing that the right was doing in 2021. So, yeah. that the right was doing in 2021. So, yeah. The American Library Association says that between September and December of 2021 alone, they received more than 330 reports of book challenges,

which is the most in over two decades in terms of people trying to restrict what books are allowed to be in schools. Boy, I experienced a book challenge lately. Tell you what, trying to read through the new James Patterson book. Do either of you know who James Patterson is? No, vaguely. This was a bad idea on my part.

Please continue, Garrison. I was busy reading the before you logged on. I have a different interest in books. You know, actually, very similar books. Very similar. busy reading the before you logged on i have a different interest in books you know actually very similar books very similar in the pelican brief basically identical i have no idea how much that's going to get bleeped but it's going to be funny um so yeah a tennessee school's removal of a maz the holocaust graphic of biography became kind of the most famous example of this trend a few months ago um the book was allegedly banned due to due to nudity and because of curse words

uh but this is kind of you know it was they they claimed it had nothing to do with actual political content uh it was just because of the uh the inappropriate images for children, which is a little dubious since it's all starring mice. Yeah. Yeah. But the majority of challenged books have been kind of those focused on LGBTQ characters or themes. Back in November, nearly two dozen people a day were dying from COVID-19 in South Carolina.

Thank God that got better. Thank God we knocked that shit out. But rather than try to handle the public health crisis, Governor Henry McMaster seemed more interested in pressuring the state's Department of Education to crack down on queer-themed books. He directed the Department of Education and the State Board of Education to create, quote, statewide standards and directives to prevent pornography and other obscene content from entering our state's public schools and libraries, the governor said in a letter to the superintendent of education. Inside the letter, it was specifically targeted towards Maya Kobe's

book, Gender Queer, a memoir which is a gender queer graphic novel kind of detailing what it's like to be gender queer it's definitely popular among the adult, like a young adult kind of age range and is a good resource for kind of gender bending type stuff and it has

faced a large amount of the onslaught and the bashing of queer books have been focused on this specific book. It's an autobiographical book based on the Bay Area non-binary writer and illustrator. It's been challenged. It started being challenged at one of South Carolina's nearly 500 schools and then got banned from all of them just because people were mad at about it at one school. It was being recommended for those in the 10th grade or higher to learn about kind of queer issues. And it is now become one of the most banned books of this past year. It's been removed from schools in Virginia, New Jersey, Florida, North and South Carolina,

Texas, and a large amount of other states in the South. Speaking of Texas, the genderqueer graphic novel was just one part of a massive kind of horrifying purge led by Texas Republican State Representative Matt Krause. He led an effort to pressure and force schools and libraries to remove books based on a list of undesirable reads that he compiled himself. The list is a 16-page spreadsheet with over 850 books cataloged. On Krause's 850-strong list of titles that he once banned from Texas libraries, 62% of them concern LGBTQ issues. It's kind of clear that what he did to make this...

Oh, wow. Yeah. What he did to make this list is just, like, Googling the words, like, queer and LGBTQ and gay and trans, like, with book, and just found a list of books that have it, like, mentioned somewhere. So, like, a lot of...

So many books are just completely banned that aren't even really... The list is nearly 1,000 books long. So he was just Google searching to add as many books to this list as he could. Yeah, it's not actually about the content beyond the fact that the content acknowledges the existence of queer people.

Yeah. To the extent that he knows about the content, that's it. Like, you can't be reading all these books. No, because, like, one of the more interesting trends that you can find on this list is that it challenges

and tries to ban books that teach students, like, their legal rights. Like, not even counting books about, like, reproductive rights or rights as, like, LGBTQ people. It also, it includes in this list, like, titles like The Legal Atlas of the united states um teen legal rights uh identity rights kids to know about their

legal rights yeah equal rights um we the students supreme court cases for and about students um yeah i mean this is my my support for lgbtq people is is warring here with my belief that children should not know their rights because they're they're they're they're getting too uppity as it is. We got to we got to crack. Look, could we crack down on kids in a way that isn't bigoted? That's all I'm asking for. Nope. No, absolutely. We got to slow them down.

No, no, kids, you must know your rights and the very important thing here is that if you keep we in your locker the school can just search it so don't put it in your locker if you put it in your car they it's it's

way harder for them to search it even if the car is on school premises in the principal's car store guns that wait okay sorry let's um yeah I'm not sure if you can find that in the legal ads

less of the United States but to be fair Texas kids can't read that book either now so who knows who knows what it says yeah so two Virginia school board members kind of called for sexual books quote unquote sexual books to be burned at a meeting last year

and a lot of these a lot of the rhetoric around like book burnings and book bannings was specifically tied to the kind the effort to harass and gain support in school boards. We saw this last year with Proud Boys and extremists and other random people who got their brains warped by propaganda, leading these incendiary charges against school board members. charges against against school board members some you know school board members got fired like threatened with arrest uh just for allowing books that mentioned the existence of being queer it was it was a it was quite a quite a problem that is now influencing this current legislative

cycle um in almost every case quote unquote like concerned parents have swarmed school board meetings and flooded kind of mailboxes with outrage over what they call pornography deem as being like porno like pornographic um when it just depicts like how how like adults and young adults behave accurately just like you can find in any like fucking like batman comic like it's not like it's it's like it's like not it's it's it's it's both in line with other comic books and also like it's obviously dealing with like issues around being queer as like that's the whole point of it so but yeah just blasting this blasting like queerness as innately pornographic is you know a big a big part of this type of propaganda push it's it's uh it's pretty upsetting because i mean a lot of these adults and like quote unquote parents you know who knows if they're

actually parents you know it even goes and stuff unquote parents, you know, who knows if they're actually parents, you know, it, it even goes and stuff to being like, you know, they're accusing librarians and teachers of being pedophiles for having this, for the, having these types of materials, uh,

in Wyoming prosecutors considered charging library staff with stocking books about sexuality, um, including like literary classics under like the sex ed banner, like sex is a funny word and this book is gay. But yeah, considered charging library staff like with crimes for, for stalking these books,

which are like very typical sex ed books. It's, it's incredible because when I was in a Texas public school, I read all of the wheel of time books from my school library. And those are horny in a much, much more unhealthy way than any of the books that you're talking about could possibly be described as. Well, you get that you get this fun thing where it's like they're basically running

the clock back on the turf arc. Like if you remember, we're talking about the turfs in Mexico. It was OK. So the arc that they did was they were anti-porn people, but then they lost the anti-porn wars. So they became anti-porn people but then they lost the anti-porn wars so they they became anti-trafficking people and then when sort of turf isn't came back they went from anti-trafficking back to being turfs and it's like this this is literally they're doing this whole thing in reverse right they're starting position is that they're anti-trans and they're just going back

to like the anti-porn stuff but like bringing in like bringing in an anti-trafficking angle and it's it's great. It's extremely fun. Yeah, I would describe this as fun. This is what I consider a fun time. Yeah. Well, I know what you consider a fun time, Garrison. Okay. You do notice my carefully placed books on my bookshelf.

I'm extremely aware of that, Garrison. Garrison is reading books that will get them canceled by like five specific people. If we talk about them too much on this show. That is always the fear of Twitter. It's being canceled by five people. My favorite thing about doing a podcast for an audience of millions, Garrison,

is telling a joke that is precisely for you and me. And then making that like several minutes of content. Sorry. An Oklahoma bill was introduced to the state Senate that would prohibit school libraries from keeping books that focus on sexual activity, sexual identity, or gender identity. We're going to use the word gender identity a lot. That kind of just refers to anything that even... They hate that one. I mean, like, it refers to

even mentions of being cisgender, right? Because if you bring up the concept of cisgender, that infers that there is an alternative to that. So, like, if anything even mentions being cis, that means that there must be something other. So that already falls into the gender identity kind of framework. So it's just like anything that suggests that gender identity

is not something you are innately born with and are forever is banned and is seen as pornographic or obscene or is like grooming children or whatever kind of words that they use um and like all of this rhetoric is is much worse for lgbtq authors who are black or people of color there's books like all boys aren't blue by writer george m johnson whose whose book led one white school board member to call the police on her own district's librarian for keeping it in stock. The Central York School District in Pennsylvania banned an extensive list of books last year that was almost entirely written by authors of color. All this stuff's been happening

concurrently with the anti-critical race theory like organizing and protests which again obviously isn't about actual critical race theory it's just about the suggestion that maybe racism is something that is not just an individual problem but it's maybe kind of built into our entire culture and system of like governance um and education so it's it's not actual critical race theory it's that but i think everyone listening to this kind of already are already knows that texas governor greg abbott which is going to be just who's going to be a recurring character on this episode um kind of has taken this whole you know calling the police on librarians thing uh much further kind of uh demanding that the state's education agency quote investigate any criminal activity in our public schools involving the availability of pornography, a move that kind of librarians in the state fear could make them targets of criminal complaints.

Or again, stalking books about sex ed or, you know, stalking books that not even not even not even about like sex ed, just just like books that mention an alternative to the heteronormative like you are the gender that you are signed at birth like idea like anything other than that is now could get them in trouble so anything that doesn't kind of fall under the christian supremacist like worldview of sexuality and gender it's it's not great there's uh it's so yeah all boys aren't blue the book written by by George M. Johnson, has been similar to the genderqueer graphic novel is one of the most banned books of last year, targeted for removal in at least 15 states. It's a lot of the organizing of these efforts kind of start online. There's like telegram channels, Facebook groups, and they carry over into like school board protests. Telegram channels, Facebook groups, and they carry over into like school board protests. And then eventually, like, you know, maybe some school board members will catch on to this and start advocating for it.

Then, you know, the state governor does, you know, the city council. I mean, like all of this thing is this whole cycle of organizing that's really picked up alongside the anti-CRT stuff. And many, many parents have seen like Google Docs or spreadsheets like the 16-page one made by Matt Krause of contentious titles posted on Facebook by local chapters of organizations such as Moms for Liberty. So people will make these giant spreadsheets talking about books that they don't like, and then it'll get shared around on Facebook groups, Telegram channels. From there, librarians say that parents will ask their schools if these books are available inside libraries, and then we'll start rallying and organizing to get them banned from being available in any kind of public government setting,

whether that be school libraries, whether that be public libraries, whether that be online access access all this type of stuff so yeah it's uh I don't know organizing against these types of things is never the easiest thing

because a lot of times these people get really dedicated onto this because it is such a it's the whole save the children kind of idea which gave q anon such strength and q anon's kind of taking a dip down this stuff is taking a rise up it's kind of it's passing over the same type of organizing principles online as as mentioned before the governor of south carolina asked the state superintendent of

education but also its law enforcement division to investigate the presence of, quote, obscene and pornographic materials from its public schools. You know, citing the gendered queer graphic novel as an example. You've seen mayors in different cities withhold funding from county libraries, saying that he will not release money to these county library systems until books with LGBTQ themes are removed. It's pretty grim. So far, efforts to bring criminal charges against librarians and educators have largely faltered, as law enforcement officials in Florida and Wyoming and other states where this type of thing has been attempted have found really no basis for criminal investigations.

But still, it's like the same thing for even if this process gets started, it's about building fear that it could happen to you. It's about this fear that someone's always watching and someone's always wanting to report you. It's the thing that happened with Texas

and abortion. it's like trying to have like the bounty hunter idea be like parents are trying to find examples of this to report it so then so it's like this like proactive kind of surveillance of anything that doesn't fall into the christian supremacist idea of gender and sexuality it's you know the the now of course that's like a specific interpretation of Christianity. I'm not saying all Christianity is like that, but it is the one of, in the South, it is like one of the bigger strains of that type of kind of religious and politic synthesis. Let's see so courts have generally taken the position that libraries should not remove these books from circulation um but sometimes due to pressure via like loss of funding or depending

on how like the how much how much like who is in charge of each state's kind of education system a lot of a lot of these books have been banned and have have been pulled from many school libraries and many public libraries uh even if it doesn't like go all the way to being like you know court mandated all of it sometimes it doesn't it doesn't even need to get that far so yeah because like even if it doesn't get to the court librarians kind of librarians have said that just the threat of having to defend against charges and having to defend against like accusations of pedophilia and grooming and all this kind of nonsense is enough to get many educators to censor themselves by just not stocking these books to begin with to avoid that whole kind of debacle because even just the public

spectacle of an accusation can be enough to like ruin someone's life inside like a small like in like a small community right it's it's if you know parents if you know kids and this is like part of your social group it's part of like wherever you're situated in your community. If this type of thing starts up, it can really be devastating to someone's personal life. And obviously, this is very ironic because all these same people who are trying to get these books banned are also crying and screaming about like censorship and cancel culture while literally advocating the burning of comic books. And even like fucking like advocating the burning of know your rights books. So it's like, yes, they will cry and scream about cancel culture. But they will do all of this stuff as well.

It's not it's not. There is no ideological consistency. They're not they're not trying to. That's not that's that's not part of the point. It's because it's not even hypocrisy in their own eyes, because all of this is for the greater good. It's about protecting the innocence of children. You'll notice that a lot of these bills and efforts try to not explicitly attack books for being gay or queer. Instead, they will label them as pornographic or obscene.

or obscene. Obviously, many books that conservatives will defend have just as graphic depictions of intimacy or anatomy, but usually heterosexual in nature and alongside other kind of values that the right wants to push. Even like the fucking Bible is more graphic than the genderqueer graphic novel. But when conservatives say pornography, what they just mean is any display of queerness, right? Anything outside the mold of the fundamentalist Christian supremacist worldview that they're fighting for. Just like when they say ban critical race theory, they don't actually mean that. What they mean is ban any discussion on racism that kind of disrupts white comfort.

they mean is ban any discussion on racism that kind of disrupts white comfort. It's it's it's it's the they they have their own framework to view this and they can justify it within their own framework. So, you know, it should not surprise anyone that many of these queer book bannings are being organized alongside bans on books focusing on race and racism. books focusing on race and racism. Matt Cross's 16-page spreadsheet was made to accompany House Bill 3979, the so-called anti-CRT bill that bans teaching of any materials that could mean, quote, an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other psychological distress on account of the individual's race or sex. So just banning teaching of things that could make a theoretical person kind of uncomfortable, which seems like a great way to view education.

Yeah, let's just skip over the parts that are uncomfortable, and that'll make a great society. Wow. a great society. Wow. So I'm gonna quote from a great article by Samantha Rydell in them.com. Small wonder, then, that

much of the current fervor can be traced back to the conservative group No Left Turn, founded in 2020 to ban books about racial inequality from classrooms by Alina Fischbein. Elina Fischbein believes that Antifa children, quote, quote, unquote, Antifa children are going to assault her kids for being white.

The organization, No Left Turn, rocketed to prominence in the anti-education right wing after Fischbein was interviewed by Tucker Carlson on Fox News, a title which similarly lifted like-minded boats, such as Moms for Liberty. No Left Turn's website directs parents to a laundry list of books that they claim are used to, quote, indoctrinate kids into a dangerous ideology, including a robust selection on, quote,

comprehensive sexual education. Here, the pornography lie is laid bare with over 40 books whose only kind of through line is that they deal with LGBTQ themes. The picture book, I Am Jazz, Kate Bornstein's My Gender Workbook, and the YA novel, Two Boys Kissing. Also included is Margaret Atwood's The Handmaiden's Tale.

No Left Turn indiscriminately targets all these titles because they simply feature queer people having lives. Or in the case of Margaret Atwood, having their lives be ended. So after all, ideas like that might influence kids to think that they could be different. And for

conservative parents, there's no greater horror than the thought of not being able to control their children or the idea that their kids might not be straight. It should come as no surprise that the grassroots campaigns, quote-unquote grassroots campaigns, like No Left Turn, are in reality linked to

influential conservative donors and PACs, like the Cato Institute and the former Federalist Society... Cato. Pardon? Cato. Yes. Cato. Yes. Like the Cato Institute. It's named after Kato Kaelin, the guy who lived behind OJ's house. Is that true? No, it's named

after him. I was like, wait, what? I should have just let that... I should have just... God damn. You're just gonna like slightly expand my like red string like my red string born inside my head.

You're like, what? Yeah. Oh, yeah. The Cato Institute named after Cato Kaelin, the guy who, OJ's surfer bro buddy. But it should come as no surprise that the grassroots, quote unquote, grassroots campaigns like No Left Turn are in reality linked to influential conservative donors and PACs like the Cato Institute and former Federalist Society Vice President Leonard Leo. But then again, lies don't matter to the reactionary base that Republicans are hoping to rally to the front

of this culture war. What matters to them is controlling the information that children have access to, to ostensibly keep them safe and innocent but in truth because they think that if kids don't know about lgbtq identities they won't form one it's conversion therapy by ignorance end quote but that's an idea i'm going to kind of come back through come back to a few times throughout the course of this episode is the idea of conversion therapy by ignorance uh which really does kind of i think have a introduce a really good like mental framework to understand why these things are happening because they think if they can keep kids from learning about these things then they won't become gay or trans it is it's like trying

to isolate them so that so that their reality tunnel is so small so that they won't hopefully will never like break out of it um now obviously if kids feel if kids start having feelings that break that channel if they don't know that there's an alternative to that that really kind of leads to things like depression and suicide which is why that's so high among among queer kids in that region because it's like there's it's like they're fundamentally breaking realities so it's that's hard to cope with um we're just gonna it's gonna do what's gonna do kind of one more segment quickly before before we have an ad break it is uh it's it's interesting we have like a lot of the parents that have been

rallying for this uh have some interesting track records themselves we can even you know go back to um uh to the family research council with joshuggar having the save the children idea while himself being a child molester. Or help Lily Cade. Serial rapist. Yeah. Yeah. So in a

sickeningly ironic case, a Missouri parent named Ryan Utterback was charged in December with multiple counts of child molestation and distributing pornography to minors, including a child as young as four. Upon his arrest, Utterback was heavily involved in the book banning advocacy, including protests against the books All Boys Aren't Blue and other sex ed books. He said, he gave a quote before he got arrested

when he was still doing the book banning advocacy, quote, only I have the intimate understanding of what isn't appropriate for my children. Which is quite the sentence to say on someone who is now arrested for child molestation.

So, yeah. That's not, yeah, that sucks. But yeah, so it's the idea that erasing documentation of queer lives and making it so that their kids

only are exposed to a very kind of isolated worldview will make it easier to control. And if they don't hear about something maybe they'll just you know live their life as a regular straight child and that's that's their hope now obviously that doesn't that doesn't really happen in practice but that's kind of what they're working towards that's why the save the children thing is so important to them because they really do think that they can save the children they like they they do think that they

can keep keep them from this stuff so i i think there's one other reason that they're doing that specifically they focus on books too, specifically the pornographic attack, which is that these kind of like incredible hard right evangelicals are not the entire Republican base. And so there are people who they have to fully radicalize into the extermination of queer people and specifically the extermination of trans people. And the easiest way to do that is just by constantly associating anything queer with pedophilia and with specifically pedophilia and specifically grooming. And these kind of campaigns, it's like they have dual effect. grooming and you know these kind of campaigns it's like they have dual effect they have the effect on the one hand of the actual material harm to children and they're you know like preventing them from having any access to anything that shows them that they could be queer and then simultaneously it has this effect of of creating this association inside of conservatives that allows you to push for even more genocidal stuff that without this, they might not have been able to swallow.

Yeah. Well, speaking of genocidal actions, I'm sure that one of our sponsors have contributed to at least one attempt at genocide. Oh, I mean, we are actually entirely sponsored this week by the former Indonesian dictator Suharto. So, you know, big, big thank yous to him. Pankasila forever.

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the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHot Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry,

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Sukarno, different guys. Totally different guys. I am very clear on this and that's why you should not Google what Sukarno did in Papua because, dear God. But we will put his Patreon in the description. Yeah, we will be backing his Patreon heavily. Look at the

show notes for that. Hi, welcome back.'re gonna we're gonna segue into other types of legislation now uh but still kind of focusing on the whole parents rights to decide what scientific and medical knowledge children can have access to um in terms of like the conversion therapy by ignorance category. So we're going to talk about the Don't Say Gay Bill. So Florida's House and Senate just passed the so-called Don't Say Gay Bill that Bantz mentioned of anything other than the strict heteronormativity and the you are the gender assigned at birth kind of idea. For at least most of elementary school, it's banned, and possibly farther reaching than that,

with teachers also opening themselves up to lawsuits if they fail to comply. It's formally known as the Parental Rights in Education Bill, and the text of the legislation states that, quote, classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through third grade or in any manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards so it it is it is very intentionally vague for how far-reaching this can be for how much they will determine what and what isn't appropriate for grades four and up. Who knows? Yeah, but it's not just limited to early

grades. Classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity could be prohibited or at least taken to court at all grade levels depending on what the parents find unacceptable, right? It's based on what the parents want to happen

to the kids that are under their care. So it's specifically following kind of the framework that, yeah, you can report something if you don't like it. So it's very much pandering to like a reactionary conservative. Yeah, all this stuff that conservatives said was a nightmare about like the Stasi in East Germany and the KGB they're like but what if we just decentralized

that you know and and let anyone who's a bigot report and ruin the lives of people around them for a variety of bullshit reasons it's good yeah it's just like other states

in Texas, the enforcement of it is not initially done by the government, but is open to a concerned fanatical public, saying that parents may bring action against a school district to obtain a declaratory judgment, and a court may award damages

and attorney's fees if it finds the school violated the measure. So there's like financial incentives for parents for this. The bill will come into effect on the 1st of July, with all school districts required to update their policies by at least

June 2023. There was also a proposed amendment that would have required schools and educators to report if they knew or suspected a child was LGBTQ to their parents within six weeks of learning that. So within six weeks of learning, if they're not cis or straight,

they would have to be reported to the parents. But that part was withdrawn before the bill reached the House. But in terms of like, this is the type of thing that the legislators are thinking of. When it became increasingly apparent that the bill was going to be passed no matter what, Democrat Chevron Jones, the first openly gay Florida state senator, tried to amend the bill to narrow the language to say that in-classroom instruction

should not be intended to change a student's sexual orientation or gender identity, and specifically not marginalize queer people, and instead just limit the bill to age-appropriate sex ed. And that amendment obviously failed, with Dennis Backley, the bill's main sponsor, saying that it would significantly gut the bill's intent. So it's specifically to suppress knowledge of being queer. That's the whole point of the bill. The governor claims that the bill addresses, quote, sexual stuff, and, quote, telling kids that they may be able to pick genders and all that. Which, again,

that has nothing to do, like, this has nothing to do with sex at all. Like, literally nothing. Like, but nothing. Yeah, it's like but nothing yeah it's but you know they still view it unlike the pornographic obscene kind of category because like it's right it's the same thing like if you show gay people kissing that is sexual if you show straight people kissing that isn't right it's it's being queer is innately more obscene it is it is it is it is so much more of an issue. Ron DeSantis, governor, also said, like, how many parents want their kindergartners to have transgenderism or something injected into their school discussion?

But that's so that's the type of stuff he says at like press conferences and stuff. So, yeah, it is it is very clear that the bill is targeted specifically towards gay people um and being trans or being queer being non-cis non-straight that whole that that whole category um the governor's press secretary called it the anti-grooming bill um you know reviving the type of like you know rhetoric that lgbt attacks have had for years, you know, being gay means that you are a pedophile or being trans means that you're a pedophile. Yeah, it ties in with this thing you'll see in like the far right, the libertarian right, where people have like kill your local pedophile bumper stickers and stuff because you can't

argue with like, yeah, pedophiles are are the worst. That's horrible. But you don't actually mean people who molest children. You mean people who live in a way that you consider obscene, which you are equating with pedophilia so that you can justify murdering those people eventually. Yep. Yeah. And when confronted with actual pedophiles, they literally don't do shit. Well, they are like Andy Ngo, for a great example, has regularly hung out around a specific I think Amos Lee is his name, a pedophile.

The longest serving Republican speaker of the House was a pedophile on a massive scale. Dennis Haster, Die Hast, Du Hast. That's what that, what's that German band? This would have been a decent joke if I'd remembered their name right away. Rammstein. Yeah, well, I fucked it up.

Okay, so anyway, please continue. So yeah yeah but like the don't say gay bill tries even less than some of the like school book bans to hide behind the defense of prohibiting pornography like it just says the quiet part out loud you know saying that this bill is grounded

in the belief we're not going to say the loud part out loud yeah yeah I mean like the bill is just grounded in the belief that lgbtq people simply by existing are a threat to like children and must be completely erased like that's that's the whole that's the whole idea following several hours of debate ahead of the vote in the senate of a bill sponsor uh alana garcia claimed that quote gay is not a permanent thing and LGBTQ is not a permanent thing. So yeah, it's the type of like conversion therapy by ignorance thing. A lot of these people have

advocated for conversion therapy to be legalized in the past or re-legalized in the past. So yeah, they just don't want gay people to be around because they find the mickey. it's it's not it's not just florida though right the the fears with like hyper focusing on you know just just just don't say gay bill in florida kind of like you know it it ignores a lot of the other stuff that's happening across the entire country if you do when you're just focusing on one state because there are like 15 similar bills moving through state legislators that restrict how textbooks and curriculums are allowed to teach LGBTQ topics and even who can be hired as teachers and what's allowed to be said

when it comes to gender identity and sexual orientation. Stuff's happening all across the country. A house bill in Tennessee would ban textbook and instructional materials that promote, normalize, support, or address lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender lifestyles,

quote, unquote, in K-12 schools, so also high school. In Kansas, there's a bill that seeks to amend the state's obscenity laws to make using classroom materials depicting homosexuality a Class B misdemeanor. Legislators in Indiana are working to bar educators from discussing any content about sexual orientation, quote, transgenderism, or gender identity without permission from parents. In Oklahoma, there's a Senate bill

that would ban public schools from employing anyone who, quote, promotes positions in the classroom or at any function of the public school that is in opposition to the closely held religious beliefs of students. So that's interesting framing there. Yeah, and again, we need to be very clear about this.

When these people say deeply held religious beliefs, they mean fundamentalist Christianity. These people are very specifically attempting to turn the state into a Christian ethnostate state and this is the shit that they used to do it and it's yeah yep it's it's it's grim we can look at like a recent report from the trevor project um which is a an lgbtq suicide prevention and crisis intervention group and they did a recent report finding that lgbtq youth who learn about lgbtq people or lgbtq issues in the school have a 23 percent lower odds of reporting

a suicide attempt in the past year so just that like the the knowledge that there is an alternative is like is life-changing for people right. The ability to realize that there are other reality tunnels can save people's lives. I watched this happen. I was in a public school, but I was in public school in a really conservative area. The only time anyone even mentioned being gay was screaming about gay marriage. We fucking saw some shit. A lot of extremely bad things happened to the queer kids there including me like it yep like this this stuff kills people it's of hurts people it is i think that's something brutal that people in like more blue states don't quite understand is how how absolute this type of thing is. Like living in these communities,

how narrow your version of reality is, like how everything you're exposed to is so hyper-focused that even knowledge of an alternative can be so mind-blowing that it really is important to have at least this to be knowledgeable. Because yeah, a lot of people who, you know, a lot of people may not have access to the internet

in the same way. It's like a lot of people who you know a lot of people may not have access to the internet in the same way it's like a lot of these groups especially like especially like christian groups specifically have like like you know services that you can buy to like suppress websites on your wi-fi routers so that only you're only available to access like certain websites like like oh like it is a whole effort to restrict the reality that kids are exposed to, to kind of railroad them into this hyper-specific kind of heteronormative idea of existence. So yeah, any type of thing that breaks these kids out of these reality tunnels can be life-changing, which is why they're trying to ban all these books at libraries. Because yeah, even if you block websites, even if you restrict internet access, even if you restrict internet access,

even if you restrict what can be taught in schools, there's the fear of what if a kid goes to a library and finds a book about being gay? Then, oh, wow, that would undo all of the effort, undo the thousands of dollars we spend on blocking internet access to websites. So that's why they're talking about libraries and stuff. Because yeah, if they find out about this stuff anywhere then they're gonna be in trouble like that's

that's it's a whole point of like isolating people isolating what they view as possible so yeah uh we're not gonna talk about some uh we're not we're gonna we're gonna talk money money money money uh the other thing that the don't say gay bill has highlighted is the extent to which big businesses and corporate america is financially funding many of these recent efforts to hack away at queer rights yep uh this has kind of been like a back and forth thing though especially if you look back at the past few years under the trump era let's take the 2016 north carolina bathroom bill for example um arguably the opening act for the current onslaught of socially conservative legislation targeting trans

people. Remember, this was right after the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, so this is when the needle starts to shift towards trans people. This is the bill that said that you have to use the bathroom assigned at matching the gender you were assigned at birth on your birth certificate, all this kind of stuff.

Putting, again, unspoken bigotry, unspoken stuff. You know, you could be arrested or harassed for doing this previously, but it's like putting this type of idea into concrete law, right? Once progress starts, there is this backpedaling. So they put what was once unspoken bigotry and just obvious bigotry into actual written law. It's like making it concrete. So during the 2016 bathroom bill kind of whole thing in North Carolina, we saw corporations trying to stay conscious of culture shifts, attempting to stay on the sympathetic side of the rising generations who would become their future employees and customers, trying to appeal to them and keeping that in mind.

So in the aftermath of the passage of the Baskin-Bell, multiple companies like PayPal, Adidas, Deutsche Bank, all rescinded plans to invest in the state. Deutsche Bank's wild, too. I mean, if there's evil going on, Deutsche Bank is providing money to make it possible. Yeah, it's stunning how bad you have to be that Deutsche Bank is like, no, I will like like every person who's like Deutsche Bank. I don't think they've pulled out of Russia yet. No, like Deutsche Bank, like I've heard of them before. Like I knew someone who worked there who two of his co-workers like started like doing

audits of their accounts and both of them wound up dead in their hotel rooms, non-extradition countries. Yeah, that's Gantz. Yeah, like even so. Okay, so yeah, Deutsche Bank initially said they weren't going to pull out of Russia, but like two days ago as we record this started pulling out. Okay.

But they pulled out of North Carolina. They pulled out of North Carolina? Jesus Christ. Big, big, big. You know, there's a degree to which it's probably just like that Raytheon energy where it's like Raytheon. We're great with trans people. If you're making missiles, then you're fine. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, big musical artists like Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam and a former former R.E.M. member Ringo Starr canceled concerts there.

Did you call Ringo Starr a member of R.E.M. Garrison? The NCAA announced that it would not host championship tournaments. OK, OK, OK. If you'd lived through the 90s, would never make fun of michael stipe again and the national basketball association pulled its all-star game from charlotte almost 70 companies joined in a lawsuit against the bill um and you know money talks the pressure worked the state repealed the law in 2017 uh The same year, a broad coalition of business leaders in Texas blocked a similar bill pushed by the staunch socially conservative bills, including like racist voting restrictions, six week abortion bans and, quote, religious freedom bills that would give businesses protection to refuse customers or hire employees that are queer. Prominent in that resistance was Disney, which cast a long shadow over Georgia's economy its uh filming of marvel movies inside atlanta yeah so

yeah across many states big corporate brands were quick to condemn obviously bigoted political moves um prominent tennessee employers like nissan dell amazon and vanderbilt university sent a sent a letter uh last year opposing a suite of bills targeting LGBTQ rights. And similarly, a group of Texas business leaders declared opposition to Governor Greg Abbott's recent directive to investigate parents and others who provide transition treatment for transgender youth. But after Trump got out of office, and particularly during this recent round of attacks on queer rights, companies have not really been backing up their words with any equivalent actions.

After Tennessee last year passed all the bills that targeted LGBTQ rights, including measures restricting classroom discussion, barring trans girls from any high school sports, and its own version of the bathroom bill, it faced nothing like the North Carolina boycotts. There was just nothing because this is when Biden was president now. So whether it be the anti-CRT stuff, voting restrictions,

or stripping away LGBTQ rights, the past year under Joe Biden, companies have not really bothered to push back on the socially conservative bills overtaking many states. It's it's they don't it's it's easier to push back, but it's easier to push back on something when, you know, when you have a big bad in office, I guess. Well, and I think also it's it's the companies can see which way the wind is blowing. Right. Yeah. Like it's the same thing with grifters. When you when you when you watch people like when you watch watch streamers just like suddenly starting to flip their political positions

when you when you watch the live streamers in particular do this when you watch them starting to flip that that's how you can tell which way the wind is blowing and this is really fucking scary because you know the the way the wind is blowing right now that that these corporations are are you know drifting towards is just you know and refusing to oppose is just this exterminationism. Yeah. I mean, yeah, thankfully Disney got shouted to- We're going to talk about it. Yeah, okay, we're getting into that.

So creators of the hit movie Song of the South was notable that in their refusal to criticize the bill as it moved through the legislator under um the kind of recent stuff inside florida specifically so but this was part of an overall pattern like the the corporate response was was much more muted to the go to the don't say gay bill um in florida compared to other stuff across the country even. And this shouldn't really surprise anybody. Many of the Republican backers of the bill in Florida are actually bankrolled by the very same businesses that have done performative virtue signally boycotts and protests under

the Trump era. Disney and Disney World in Orlando is one of the state's biggest employers and an enormous economic force inside Florida. And when Disney Silence was met with pushback, Bob Chapek, the CEO, tried to kind of do damage control

at first internally within the company and then for outside press. Last Monday, I think, which was the 7th, in a memo to disney staff uh chapek argued that the company can do more to promote tolerance quote through the inspiring content we produce and the welcoming culture we create and the diverse community of organizations we support um which is funny if you know anything about the history of Disney.

Also saying that the messages in their movies are more powerful than any lobbying effort, which is... Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a good line. Which is also, you know, great. Coming from the company most famous for queer coding almost all of their villains. That's great.

So sure, sure, Bob. Two days later, at a shareholder meeting, Chaythack was a little more open and told shareholders that the company had privately opposed the bill. And while trying to explain why the silence

and the recent legislative efforts to attack LGBTQ people, he said that we chose not to take a public position on the bill because we felt like we could be more effective working behind the scenes, engaging directly with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. But it later came out that Chapek had only reached out to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just that morning after the bill had already passed. Yeah, we need that cat from Saga that just yells lies.

Yes, lying cat. My favorite. Definitely appreciate lying cat. Lying. Yeah, so of course none of this satisfied anybody and there's been increasing pushback from both within the Disney company and outside

um a pixar sent a letter to jpeg criticizing his wishy-washy stance on the on the on the don't say gay bill and even goes on even goes on to goes on to criticize the corporation for capitalizing on pride through like a through rainbow mickey merchandising and stuff uh saying quote it feels terrible to be part of a company that makes money from Pride merch when it chooses to step back in times of our greatest need and when our rights are at risk, says the Pixar letter.

So, yeah. After a few days after the shareholder meeting, JPEG said a third time's the charm and tried again to save face, announcing the company would immediately begin supporting efforts to combat similar legislation in other states and would pause

all political donations in the state pending a review of the company's political giving, conceding that the company failed to be a stronger ally in the fight for equal rights. And all that is well and good if you ignore the fact that in the past two years alone, Disney has given $300,000 to politicians in Florida who voted

for the Don't Say Gay Bill. Disney entities donated at least $4,000 in the 2022 re-election campaigns for the bill's chief sponsors, representative, Joe Harding and state sponsor, Dennis Baxley. And Disney entities also donated $50,000 to political action committee tied to the governor, Rhonda Santos in 2021. So just last year. So yeah, that's a,

that's a lot of money. Yeah. And I think, I think it's worth like noting for people who like are somewhat younger which is that like there's a whole thing where corporations pretend that they like queer people now and this is a thing that has existed for maybe a decade and the other several hundred years of capitalism are them like ruthlessly crushing queer people of all kinds so yeah this is this is their normal state queer capitalism is like not a thing.

It's a thing that exists solely to sell you sweatshirts. It's not a thing. Get that rainbow Mickey merchandise. Yeah, they are actively okay with funding people who want to kill you. So yeah. As I was writing this last week tonight, the show with Jonathan Oliver came out with a small piece that was covering similar ground to my writing. That also included some nice background on Disney-sponsored politician and lead sponsor of the Don't Say Gay Bill, Dennis Baxley. So yeah, apparently Baxley has said that, quote, abortion is causing Europeans to be replaced by immigrants.

Disney's going back to its Nazi roots. Great. Nice little white replacement lie. In 2020, he worked on bills to repeal protections for queer workers and worked to re-legalize gay conversion therapy. And in 2018, at some kind of fundraising event, he said that, that quote I know some districts where there's a big infestation of homosexuals that are pushing their agenda under the screen

and then trying to get more people hired like them and set up gay adoptions and all this stuff it's a continual fight for the values that we hold dear oh boy brought to you by Disney wow infestation huh deer. Oh boy. Brought to you by Disney. Wow. And yeah, take

take it. Infestation, huh? Yeah. It's, yeah, take note of the use of the word infestation there. That kind of ties into my whole, my whole like viewing, you know, queerness as a contagion kind of idea. Yeah.

Well, which I mean, viewing the enemy as a contagion is also older than just viewing queer people as a contagion, because it's exactly how Hitler talked about the Jews. And it goes, we can look at like some of the things the Turks would say about Armenians. It's this idea of, you know, there's no there's no middle ground with a virus. And if you turn people into a virus, then you don't have to consider a middle ground. Yep. So before we go on break, I'm going to do one more. I'm going to do a quote from an article in The Atlantic titled, Want to Understand the Red State Onslaught? Look at Florida. It's a decent article kind of going through the financial stuff that Disney has kind of backed. But yeah, quote, Why have so many companies backed away from these fights,

the fights against the queer legislation? Some corporate lobbyists I spoke with said that one reason is that they believe the public opposition is counterproductive because more Republican elected officials in the Donald Trump era find it politically valuable to be seen as fighting big companies. Businesses also frequently complain that the widening gulf between the parties leaves them in a lose-lose position of alienating an important block of potential customers wherever they come down on policy debates.

Activists, though, point out that businesses often try to have it both ways by rhetorically identifying with causes such as inclusion and diversity without taking any tangible steps to defend them. Another factor probably looms larger than any of these considerations. However much they want to publicly align with the values of younger customers and consumers and workers, big companies want to go only so far in fighting these proposals because they still mostly prefer republicans in control of state governments to deliver the low tax light regulation policies that they favor state republicans have in turn have grown more overt about threatening

those beliefs when business leaders raise objections to the culture war components of their agenda when american airlines criticized the restrictive voting bill in Texas passed last year, Lieutenant Governor Patrick openly threatened to kill other legislation the company had cared about. So yeah, obviously companies want Republicans to be in charge

because it will make it easier to run their big, giant corporate businesses that basically are as powerful as a lot of other government entities. So yeah, they're going to spend $50,000 supporting Ron DeSantis. They're going to spend $300,000

in the past two years supporting all these Republican candidates that voted for the Don't Say Gay bill because that makes them more profit in the long run. And that's, you know, if you're running a business, that's what they want. So, yep, that is, we're going to take another ad break

and then we will come back to talk about Texas and bathroom bills and healthcare and all of the other kind of stuff that's happened in recent weeks. Hot. Yeah. and all of the other kind of stuff that's happened in recent weeks. Hot.

Yeah. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to the leading

journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Wherever else you get your podcasts, check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. El will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez.

At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRad Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.

Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. in the break in between reading books by it's a really good combo of media how how dare you not the not properly appreciating michael stipe the the voice of several generations michael stiper michael stipe yeah so he was uh i mean yeah i, I really like the Black Keys. So anyway, I'm going to make more bad music jokes or I could continue my script. Yeah, please continue. We don't have to talk about all of the wonderful contributions your generation has made to music.

Like U2 with Hitman. Yeah, like U2, famed Zoomer band U2. With Hitman man George Harrison. Yep. Going to make a lot of people happy, Garrison. A lot of people real happy. At least 31 states have introduced bills that would ban trans athletes from competing in sports that correspond to their gender identities. Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee have already signed such bills into law. At the start of this year, new restrictions were put into place in Texas to also restrict what K-12 school sports people can be on,

now making them specifically match their sex listed on their birth certificate at or near time of birth. And even when there are states who don't just have blanket bans, there's other horrifying things happening. Like in the beginning of last February, it came out that the Utah Republicans are making and have proposed a commission to analyze the bodies of trans kids that would determine student-athlete eligibility

on a case-by-case basis with having the authority to establish a baseline range for physical characteristics affected by puberty, banning school athletes who do not fall within these established limits from participating in gendered sports.

Also, a fun side bit about the bill is that in their efforts to analyze the bodies of trans kids uh the bill would also remember the commission immune from any lawsuit with respect to all acts done and actions taken in good faith in carrying out their purposes um yeah and this this is something that i think is really common specifically with transphobia which is that like all of the rhetoric about transphobia is about sort of

like, like a huge amount of it's about molestation. He was about amount, amount of it's about pedophilia. And then, I mean, specifically with the molestation part, it's like,

yeah, okay. So we're going to have this council, right. We're going to have, we're going to have this fucking commission. These people are going to, they're,

they're going to just like, they're going to molest these kids. Right. But like, this, this is just something that happens to trans people constantly. Like the TSA, like constantly, it's just an enormous engine for just like like sexually abusing every single

trans person who goes into an airport yeah i've definitely had not fun experiences at the airport the past few times like this this is the thing it's it's like it's it's they they impose as a sanction on trans people the things that they claim trans people are doing yes and it's it is and it's also interesting you'll find how many of these kind of bill sponsors or politicians um eventually have it come out that like they watch a lot of like trans pornography and stuff it's like it's it's all it's all fake like all like everything like everything they say they don't actually mean it's all about's like, it's all fake. Like, everything they say, they don't actually mean. It's all about the culture war.

It's all about all the fucking, like, Save the Children stuff. It's all an op so that they can get elected into politics, right? We'll talk about this with, like, the Texas thing. How all of the big new Texas stuff happened, like, days before the primary election

because they were being challenged by other politicians that were farther to the right of them. So it's all like a political ploy. But the problem is, is that at certain points, because of how long the culture war kind of idea has been going, there's people who, you know,

sincerely bought into the idea of the culture war now themselves running for office. So like it is like they do actually genuinely believe the things now like it is it is like it is like a full circle thing of things that were just you know just to get votes initially like things that weren't really believed sincerely just just to hold votes but now people who were brought up in that whole political idea are starting to run for office who do actually believe those in those things sincerely so now it's it's leading leading to a whole new kind of onslaught of rights because

these people have just escalated and accelerated the whole culture war idea yeah well and the other thing is like they've linked up with people who like people whose politics is the church or people whose politics have specifically been about eliminating trans people for like half a century right like there's there's the the linkages that are being formed between people who have sort of like you know between these like militantly anti-trans organizations in between sort of these people who buy into this like uh either who are very who are cynically deploying the sort of Christian supremacist rhetoric or the people who are just actual Christian fascists, right? These people are joining together

to the point where it doesn't really matter why they're doing it. At a certain point, the reason why specifically they're doing it becomes immaterial and you're just sort of left with the things that they are doing yeah it's i mean and there's just been so much of it the past the past year specifically like yeah over like overall more than 100 bills uh designed to

restrict the rights of transgender of transgender people have been introduced in at least 33 states in just in just in 2021, which is like, it's become a record-breaking year for any kind of anti-trans legislation. It's just, it has accelerated to such an extreme degree and now continuing in the 2022 legislative cycle.

Last spring in Arkansas, the state legislator banned gender-affirming care for minors, including, you know, puberty blockers, HRT, all this stuff, you know. And House Bill 1570 prevents trans people from receiving hormone therapy, puberty blockers, similar treatments. It was called the Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act,

you know, referring to medical treatment as experimentation. And shortly after the bill was signed into law, the doctors who run the largest or who ran the largest provider of hormone therapy in the state reported an increase in suicide attempts in their patients during like just that same month um it was it was the first of its kind bill signed into law and it was initially vetoed by the governor but then that veto was overturned by the state legislator so and that kind of similar laws have been have been happening in states ever since then. We're now going to talk about Texas, because that's one of the biggest kind of things in this whole fight is the stuff around Texas. So Texas officials have begun investigating parents of transgender adolescents for possible child abuse, according to a lawsuit filed a few weeks ago

after Governor Greg Abbott directed the Child Protective Services Agency in Texas to handle certain medical treatments, including puberty blockers and HRT, as possible crimes. The directive from Governor Abbott was following a non-binding opinion by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, saying that parents who provide their transgender teenagers with doctor-prescribed care could be investigated for child abuse. So the moves by both Abbott and Paxton, which are two Republican incumbents, came just days before the primary election, in which each of them faced significant challenges from farther right opponents.

Um, so they've both, they've faced criticism from not being staunch, staunchly anti-trans enough in the past, like in the months prior to this. And they did this to hopefully, you know, gain support from the more radical,

uh, more radical voters in Texas. That is undoubtedly a big part of why this happened at the time that it did. They did the same thing, both Paxton – well, let's just say Paxton, but Abbott did basically the same thing with masks in the last year or two. same thing with like masks yeah in the last year or two where it's like yeah you know i mean it's great because these people are just they will literally kill thousands of people in order to just hold on to their power and it's um among to be the first people investigated uh for child abuse was actually an employee by the state's protective services agency, who had a 16-year-old transgender child. On March 1st, the ACLU of Texas and Lambda Legal, great, great name, went to state court in Austin to try to stop this inquiry into this family. Who, again, who worked for the Child Protective Services Agency. The employee, who was not named in the court filing, works on reviews of reports of abuse

and neglect. She was placed on administrative leave a few weeks ago, according to the filing. The Friday after Governor Abbott made the initial kind of letter, she was visited by an investigator from the agency who was also seeking medical records related to her child. The family of the child identified in court documents only as Mary Doe has refused to voluntarily turn over records and is taking the case to court. According to the lawsuit, the state investigator told parents that the only allegation against them was that their transgender daughter may have been provided with gender-affirming health care and was currently transitioning. And that was the basis for the claims of child abuse.

So initially, it wasn't clear if Abbott's order would survive judicial scrutiny because the order doesn't change any texas law um it's just it's just an opinion piece and several county attorneys and district attorneys of dallas and houston have publicly condemned abbott's and paxton's directives um clarifying that they would not prosecute families for child abuse under the new definition and they would not irrationally and unjustifiably interfere with medical decisions the mayor of austin announced that austin should be considered a safe place

a sanctuary for transgender children and their families and they would not be enforcing the governor's mandate so it's quite a time to be alive to have sanctuary cities for being trans yep and of course all of these things whether it be from like the da's or the mayor that doesn't stop child protective services from not investigating you like that doesn't like that isn't like they can still investigate and harass you they can still send agents to your door they can still try to seize medical records right they can still investigate claims even if even if the da won't prosecute there's still that massive like like, looming threat of, and, like, that, like, terror, like, holding over, you know, people's heads. You know, it's, it's, it's a, it is, like, a mass,

it's a massive scare tactic, right? It is, it is to terrorize people, right? But they'll be too scared to transition because they don't want their family to get in trouble. It's, it's pretty grim. It's pretty, it's pretty, It's pretty evil. So for the ACLU and the Lambda legal court filing, they're seeking to block the request for medical records from the employee's case and more broadly kind of challenge the legitimacy of the entire investigation and the power that the government has to change this definition of child abuse.

It's also important to mention that the mandatory reporting aspect of the bill, which was, well, not bill, of the legal opinion that was really emphasized in Governor Abbott's directive. Abbott described in his letter that the order would mean that all licensed professionals who have direct contact with children, including doctors, nurses, therapists, and even school teachers, would be required to report to state authorities if they believe that there is a minor who is trans or could be receiving any kind of gender-affirming treatment. And if they don't report this, they could themselves face criminal penalties. And if they don't report this, they could themselves face criminal penalties. So the whole the whole mandatory reporting aspects, another like insanely, insanely bad thing that we could talk about for a long time. This episode is getting long enough, so we're just going to continue through and we can we can ponder at how at how bad that is. one parent of a transgender teenager in Houston said that the family's health clinic, Legacy

Community Health, had suspended all refills and new prescriptions for transgender youth in light of Abbott's new order. So, it's happening. Like, yeah, the stuff has happened. The stuff has started. It's already scaring people into not doing stuff.

It's doing what it was designed to do. Yeah. And I know we keep making this episode already scaring people into not doing stuff like it's it's that is doing what it was yet designed to do yeah yeah and and i and i know we keep making this episode longer but like it is worth mentioning that like it actually like having someone even temporarily like being off of the hormones that they've been taking for for hrt like that fucking sucks yeah it's like it has really bad negative effects i mean yeah like people will be surprised how fast hormones start working and how fast going off of them they stop working like it is it is it is pretty it is pretty surprising and like i didn't want to get tons into like the science of being trans in this because that's because that's not

the focus of this week we're talking about the legislation and the onslaught of queer rights of people trying to hurt them. But it's obvious that there is not many cases at all where there's being genital surgery done on minors. That does not happen. It can happen for medically necessary reasons. If there's accidents and stuff, but that doesn't happen for gender-affirming care.

What happens is you go on puberty blockers, which are already prescribed to cisgender kids all the time. If they have early-onset puberty, they have no lasting side effects. They're completely safe. And in some cases, depending on the kid's therapist and their doctors, they may be prescribed HRT. Or they'll be prescribed that a bit later. But even still, that is, that is really the only things that happen. And what they're really trying to suppress is both,

both of like those things, but also like the ability for like therapists to even talk about gender with kids. Like if kids are having problems with like, with gender dysphoria, they don't feel comfortable to even have, to not even be able to talk to that, to talk, talk about those feelings with therapists is like part, is part of the goal because that can be considered gender affirming care um i think that

there's one other thing we really should mention which is that i so there there is one kind like one that is there's few but there's there's a very important kind of like quote-unquote like gender surgery that is done on children which is the stuff that's done to intersex kids and yes i mean intersex kids yeah they like also like circumcisions are already like yeah yeah yeah but i mean with with specific with intersex kids this stuff matters because all of these bills that you're talking about where it's like oh you can't uh have gender affirming surgery you can't have like surgery on kids like every single one of these bills like they all have they all specifically have carve outs to allow doctors to fuck up uh the generals of intersex kids yeah yeah it that that's it's all carved out there so

yeah well let's see we we are we are near the last we are we're near near the last little stretch here um on march 11th a texas state court uh halted the new department of family protective services policy of investigating the parents of transgender children. District Judge Amy Mencham concluded the hearing on the requested statewide injunction by saying, quote, the governor's directive was given the effect of new law or new agency rule, despite there being no new legislation, regulation, or even agency policy. Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Department of Family Protective Services Commissioner Davey Masters, their actions violate the separation of powers by impermissibly approaching

into the legislative domain. Judge Mensham also granted a temporary restraining order, blocking the state from investigating the family that prompted this lawsuit from happening, from the person who already worked at the Department of Family Protective Services. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed this decision. Well, first of all, he appealed the restraining order and lost that appeal, and the ASLU is trying to make this temporary restraining order against the state permanent and extend to all parents of all transgender kids in Texas. And there's going to be a whole trial scheduled for this topic on July 11, 2022. So this is going to get – this is going to happen. We will figure out what is going to happen with this later on this year.

And after the judge's ruling halting the investigations due to lack of legal binding, Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an appeal for the ruling. So that's going to get appealed. And he tweeted out that the, quote, Democrat judge's order permitting child abuse is frozen. Much needed investigations will proceed as they should. The fight will continue up to the Supreme Court. I'm ready for it. But it's unclear how much legal backing this actually has. So we don't know if if the if the if the protective services actually has permission to keep investigating or not. It is kind of unclear.

Paxton says that they can. This state judge says they can't, and that's kind of legally up in the air right now. So we don't totally know, but there's going to be a whole trial on the topic in July. Kind of one of the last things I want to mention is this Idaho bill

that was passed by the House of Representatives that would criminalize gender-affirming medical procedures, including puberty blockers and HRT for any kind of transgender youth. And it was also reported that the bill would make it a felony punishable by life imprisonment to anyone who helps a kid travel across state lines to get gender affirming health care uh but this actually maybe isn't actually true like this actually probably wasn't part of that bill um the bill just amends current laws regarding female genital mutilation of course uh carving out a specific section to allow the mutilation of intersex kids um yep but uh but yeah it added a section also criminalizing gender affirming care um but the section of the bill making it a felony to travel out of state only refers to the general mutilation section um it doesn't refer to the gender affirming care

section and it's unclear if that was an oversight um or if the limitation was intentional who knows um but it still did attempt to criminalize gender affirming care within the state the bill was i believe i think earlier this morning as of time time of recording the bill was not passed by the senate um so that's good uh they said this the the senate said that it was too vague in scope and it was unclear how it was going to be enforced. So that bill was halted and it did not continue. Yeah. But that's – there is a lot of – the reason why all this stuff has kind of started is that there has been so much progress happening in queer rights in the past 10 years, right? has been so much progress happening in queer rights in the past like 10 years right um so now because progress is more visible what was once like obvious but like low-key bigotry is trying

to be put into law right there's there's there used to be so many medical hoops to jump through to get any type of gender affirming treatment but now almost every like legit medical organization recognizes the importance of gender affirming careming care. So that, plus the visibility and the cultural acceptance of queerness, is making some, you know, mostly good old white Christian conservative populations a little bit uncomfortable, right? There's this increasing fear that what if your kid thinks they're trans? What if they become an unholy degenerate? And what if there are people trying to make that happen on purpose, right? All of the brutality,

all of the brutality in these bills, the total nonchalance at the possibility of kids killing themselves because of this bill and because of all these legislations,

all of the transphobia negatively contributing to mental health, all of that brutality is justified in the minds of these anti-trans people because it's to save their kids from experiencing that in the first place, right?

It's the idea that queerness is an infection, that it can spread from person to person. It's like a contagion. If you hear about it, you could yourself become gay. So if they don't hear about it, then that's not going to be a possibility. So all of the brutality is like – it's both the point, but it's also justified because this thing is seen as such like an – it's seen as such an ontological threat to their whole idea of like the world. So yeah, that's – and I mean it's not going to stop, right? Every – 2021, we saw a massive increase in legislation on this topic. 2022, we're seeing an a massive increase in legislation on this topic 2022 we're seeing an even bigger increase in legislation on this topic and you know attempts to physically oppose it you know is our can can kind of be done i mean like you can you can see all there was some some successful counter protests to the whole school board thing you can can also like, you can sneak queer books into libraries.

So you can just put, you can just put them in there. You can request queer books in your library systems. You can, you know, attend school board meetings. And again, it's sure that the institution of the institution of schooling is problematic

in a lot of ways, but it's, we shouldn't make it worse for queer kids. So maybe it still is worth actually focusing on. And there is, there's a lot that, you but we shouldn't make it worse for queer kids, so maybe it still is worth actually focusing on. And there's a lot that you can, like in the case of the ACLU suit, there is legal challenges being taken up against all of these things.

We'll see how that goes. There's always been a shaky record of the legal, you know, of the court's ability to protect these rights. But every once in a while it does happen like with like with gay marriage um the last thing i'll mention with specifically with like hrt being made illegal in a lot of these places at least like prescribed via doctor

um i will kind of talk about i will mention um diy hrt as a thing. That is a thing that exists. You can go to dihyhrt.github.io to get information on this. It requires a lot of research, but you can find, you can get estrogen and stuff from made by the companies that supply pharmacies.

You can buy that legally. Testosterone's a little bit more iffy, because that is, I think, that is like a Schedule 2 or Schedule 3 drug. But estrogen is much more available to buy legally online. Just make sure you get it from a good place and make sure that you know how it affects you and all that stuff.

Like do lots of reading. But that is a possibility. So I will probably plan an episode on DIY HRT in the near future. It's like a whole episode on the topic. But I just wanted to kind of mention that as one of the last things of being like yeah if they're restricting all these stuff we should probably you know learn to provide it ourselves because there's no guarantee that the governments or any kind of even like pharmacies will be able to do that forever right like it's it's good to have alternative methods of figuring out how to get the drugs that make you

feel nice um so yeah that was uh that is my episode on the on the legislation that has been happening in the past in the past really like six months um yeah that's fun yeah and by the time this is up there there might there might be new stuff that has happened. Oh, most certainly. Yeah. That's good. That's why, you know, when all this stuff gets very depressing, I just like listening to my favorite Wayne Cohen song by Pink Floyd, and it really just really does calm me down and make me feel much better.

Wow. Well, I'm going to go listen to the new double album that 100 Gex did with Billy Joel. I do love me some 100 Gex. Yeah, the Gex Joel concert. I hear that Elton John's going to get in too, and they're going to do... That would be quite the show, honestly. That would be a fascinating experience. That would be that would be a fascinating experience that would be a very gay it would be an amazing mix of like horny women in their 60s and horny 17 year olds what an incredible thing that would that is what would happen well yeah that is uh there are plenty of organizations that are fighting against this stuff in Texas. I could list them.

But honestly, if you're not there, it's iffy. I mean, you should you should look into what's happening in your area. Learn what legislation is being passed in your area. Learn what your state representatives are doing and look into helping people get DIY HRT. That's really... If there's a way that bodybuilders can get testosterone, there's a way that you can get testosterone for trans guys if

estrogen is much easier to get. So look into that. Don't be stupid. But yeah, that is my piece. Find joy, find violence violence and find the correct application of the two that allows people to stay alive yeah

yeah and yeah and listen to music that makes you happy that is that is all you can do all you can do yeah is find your favorite U2 album featuring Roger Waters.

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