Some More News - SMN: The GOP Sure Hates Queer People

Episode Date: May 4, 2022

Hi. In today's episode, we explore the GOP's latest veiled attempts to remove the LGBTQ community from public life. Are their laws good? Are they bad on purpose? Let's find out! Support Trans rights! https://www.transgenderlegal.org/ https://translifeline.org/ https://transgenderlawcenter.org/ https://transstudent.org/ https://transfamilysos.org/ Please fill out our SURVEY: HTTP://kastmedia.com/survey/ We now have a MERCH STORE! Check it out here: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news Ready to give your brain some TLC? Download Best Fiends FREE today on the App Store or Google Play. That's friends, without the r—Best Fiends. And for our listeners, right now Trade Coffee is offering a total of $20 off your first three bags when you go to drinktrade.com/morenews. To get started, take their quiz at drinktrade.com/morenews, and start your journey to your perfect cup. That's drinktrade.com/morenews for $20 off your first three bags. When you purchase a 3-month Babbel subscription, you'll get an additional 3 months for FREE. That's 6 months, for the price of 3! Just go to http://BABBEL.com and use promo code MORENEWS. That's B-A-B-B-E-L dot com, code MORENEWS. Babbel—Language for life. Source List: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r4zJ-MtBPVvlbqu6uGySjI2ChyfvjbWZIc_kh3h2ewQ/edit?usp=sharingSupport the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, you folk, here's some news. Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis fucking hate queer people. Goodbye. Ah, I'm just tickling your nuts. There is more video. We have fun here. We have fun here. I mean, except when we talk about crime or the IRS

or racism or war or in this episode, a horrendous removal of human rights that's being currently attempted by the GOP, who, as I said, sure seem to fucking hate queer people. In fact, we can just go ahead and make that the title of the episode. The GOP Sure Hates Queer People. Good title, strong, direct, lots of Es and Os, or shoot,

maybe it's more complicated than saying the entire GOP hates queer people, but also counterpoint. Maybe it isn't. Maybe there's some conservative people out there who claim to be cool with the L's and G's and B's and T's, but if those people still support and vote for the GOP, then guess what? And if you don't think the GOP is launching

a serious attack against the rights of the queer community, then double guess what? They super are. Most notably, on March 11th, a Texas judge temporarily halted statewide investigations of parents with transgender children. This was after Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered state officials to consider gender-affirming health care for trans youth, care like puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy, as child abuse. The judge in question, Amy Clark Meacham, ruled that Abbott's actions were unconstitutional

due to the order violating the separation of powers by impermissibly encroaching into the legislative domain. So while this ruling is unquestionably good, it's more about whether or not Abbott himself has the authority to pass legislation like this than it is any kind of official verdict on the legitimacy of trans healthcare. It's like issuing a health code violation

on a deli serving human meat. And of course this ruling is already being challenged. So it's still good for the moment, but also an extremely minor victory on a much larger and more horrifying scale, like a deli scale built to weigh human meat. You see, despite this one order being overturned, this move is just a small part of a much larger wave

of anti-trans and LGBTQ legislation sweeping across America right now. Remember that wave from Deep Impact that killed Tasha Yar? It's exactly like that, but evil. Like that evil goo in Star Trek that also killed Tasha Yar. In 2022 alone, nearly 240 anti-LGBTQ bills have killed Tasha Yar. Sorry, rule of threes had to do it. Okay. In 2022 alone, nearly 240 anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed by state legislators so far, a huge increase from the 41 similar bills filed in 2018 and up as well from

the 191 bills proposed in all of last year. A number that was so large that it had prompted some advocates to label 2021 as the worst year in recent history for queer rights. And now this year is significantly worse only four months in. And that'll show those advocates, aha, take that. Because if the 2020s taught us anything, is that everything could always get significantly worse

if you just, you know, wait a minute. Anyway, a great deal of these bills are wrapped in the disguise of protecting religious rights, specifically the right to discriminate against other people, effectively declaring religious rights to have priority over LGBTQ rights. In several states, we're seeing bills allowing people to deny adoption to same-sex couples.

Kentucky is trying to allow government officials to refuse to acknowledge gay marriage based on their beliefs, despite being, you know, government officials. And a handful of states are dabbling with the idea that healthcare professionals should have the right to refuse treating people based on their personal beliefs,

which is just so incredibly vague and weird that it could be used to discriminate against literally anyone. And in Tennessee, they passed a law effectively forcing businesses to have a trigger warning on their doors if they happen to have co-ed toilets for, I guess, any snowflake who doesn't understand the concept of family bathrooms. Tennessee also tried and failed to pass a bill that would quote, prohibit officials from creating, enforcing, or endorsing policies that respect or promote non-secular self-asserted sex-based identity narratives. And like, I have no fucking clue

what that is supposed to mean. It's like the cloud atlas of laws. Most of these bills are so ridiculously vague and weird that they appear to ban everything and nothing, which we will certainly talk about in a bit. Not only that, but almost half of the bills put forward this year specifically target transgender people, with a large chunk of those prioritizing,

or at least claiming to prioritize, the health and well-being of trans children. So today, we're going to talk about all of these bills, what they're trying to do, about how and why they're being proposed at such a high velocity all of a sudden. Also, we might reference Cloud Atlas at least once more, maybe Jupiter ascending.

We'll see how we feel. And let's start, if we have to, with the currently blocked Texas bill, which is technically the least bummer story in that it hasn't happened yet. So that's good. The least badmer story in that it hasn't happened yet. So that's good. The least bad. Sure.

Okay, so the Texas order that Governor Abbott is still fighting to enact would call on both licensed professionals and members of the general public to report parents of transgender children as child abusers if those children had received gender affirming care. Not only that, but the order came as part of a letter from Abbott to the Department of Family

and Protective Services, in which he asked the department to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation into the families of any minors undergoing elective procedures for transition. Now we've already done a whole episode on the way anti-trans advocates use the, what about the children narrative to obfuscate their puritanical conservative attitudes

towards gender and sexuality. And we would probably make a whole other video what about the children narrative to obfuscate their puritanical conservative attitudes towards gender and sexuality. And we would probably make a whole other video about other ways that transphobic ideology is wrong and bad. In fact, make more videos. All right, but it bears worth repeating here. Puberty blockers are broadly reversible and cause no meaningful harm.

What's more, gender affirming care, including puberty blockers, as well as hormone replacement therapy and gender confirmation surgery, is shown to noticeably improve quality of life and decrease depression and suicidal ideation in trans adolescents. And most importantly,

being transgender isn't a problem we need to prevent or fix and parents trying to affirm their children's identity aren't being abusive, Greg, you fucking Gumby. According to the failing New York Times, Abbott's order managed to sow chaos and confusion amongst trans families and their medical providers before it was temporarily halted. Dr. Megan Mooney, a licensed psychologist

whose clients include transgender children, as well as a plaintiff in the case to halt the order, testified to there being outright panic as the order caused children to there being outright panic as the order caused children and their families to fear for their safety and force medical professionals to choose between their legal duties and moral obligations. One mother, an employee of Texas' Family Protection Agency,

who showed up to court in goddamn disguise, testified to being terrified for her trans daughter's health and wellbeing. And Rio Grande Valley resident, Adam Malice-Vigil, told the Texas Tribune that her 13-year-old trans daughter's health and wellbeing. And Rio Grande Valley resident, Adamalis Vigil told the Texas Tribune that her 13 year old trans daughter, Adelaine, is so terrified she will be forcibly separated from her mother that she doesn't even want to sleep in her own bed.

Because in Texas, being found guilty of child abuse can come with a first degree felony conviction and up to 100 years in prison and or a fine of $10,000. Which seems pretty problematic when you start defining child abuse as stuff I don't like. Seems bad. Yeah, it says right here it's bad. Not to mention, of course,

that it also means having your child taken away from you by the state and presumably prevented from continuing the often life-saving processes of hormone replacement therapy and gender confirmation surgeries. And so when this potential law causes a wave of panic and fear from the people it claims to protect, you kind of have to wonder if it's perhaps not at all actually a law designed to protect those people. Maybe it's a bad, shitty law aimed at pleasing a base of voters who simply don't like transgender people,

all at the expense of kids and parents who just want to live their lives. Well, you would notice I have three thriving children. You know, the issues we're facing right now are not things that we have to deal with on a regular basis. My daughter is, she loves riding her bike, she loves swimming, she loves hanging out with her friends, playing Pokemon Go, all the things that you would expect from a 12-year-old who's happy. And you'll have to forgive me because it's pretty hard for me to talk about this without tearing up

because it's just been such an awful couple of weeks. Can you imagine being a parent suddenly told by the state that you might have your happy and healthy kids taken away from you because a group of politicians decided that your existence is wrong and bad. It's honestly, sisypheanly hard to express just how intentionally cruel and dishonest this ongoing conservative attempt to fuck over trans kids and their families is. But of course, here at Cody's Shody, we love nothing more

than pushing huge rocks up various hills and inclines, as well as talking about the hit film, Jupiter Ascending, out now in 2015. On top of everything we've already mentioned, Abbott's order was prompted by a non-binding legal opinion from Attorney General Ken Paxton, released only a few days earlier,

in which Paxton argued that gender affirming care constitutes child abuse. The opinion is unsurprisingly full of shit. Not only does Paxton claim that care widely accepted by leading healthcare groups like puberty blockers are abusive, but he also cites as examples, things like body modification surgery, a process which is rarely if ever performed on children.

Paxton's opinion statement has been criticized alongside Abbott's directive by various medical and human rights organizations, including the Endocrine Society, an international medical organization for the field of endocrinology, which said the conservative argument rejects evidence-based transgender medical care.

But of course, this isn't about evidence, nor is it about actually getting these laws through. By doing this, they are sending a signal to both their base, but especially to parents of trans kids, that by allowing your child to pursue their own personal happiness, the government is going to make their lives as hard as possible.

Because the GOP loves interfering with the lives of families, right? It's like their motto says, "'Tread on me harder, big government. P.S. We hate families. Seems long, but you know, that's the grand old party we know and tolerate. See, while Paxton's statement was non-binding

and Abbott's order is currently blocked, that doesn't mean their words don't have weight and impact when they come from important elected officials. And like we said before, Abbott's order was only blocked on the grounds that it was an overreach of the executive branch, not on the grounds that it was evil and dishonest

because apparently morality is subjective and a functioning democratic system can't base its legislative process on how good or evil a law is because that's just not how it works or something. I don't know, I refuse to read a book or like can't read, except for the teleprompter, which reads, the point is while it kicks absolute ass

that Judge Meacham told Abbott to shut the fuck up, you awful piece of shit. All it would take to actually pass legislation that does the same thing as Abbott's order would be for enough Texas legislators to believe the same hateful lies that Abbott and Paxton believe. And unfortunately, the only way to stop that from happening

is to use that same legislative system to pass bills that explicitly protect trans people and permanently enshrine their rights into law. So, phew, good thing the legislative process is in this country or simple and fast acting, right? Sure. Right, okay. Moving on from the good news.

How is the good news? Jesus fucks frogs. All right, well, here's some worse news. On March 28th, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, yuck, zero stars, signed into law Bill HB 1557, Parental Rights in Education Act, or as virtually everyone has decided to call it, the Don't Say Gay Bill.

In its preamble, HB 1557 claims that one of its goals is to prohibit classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels or in a specified manner. The precise wording in the law later states, again, exact quote, classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity

may not occur in kindergarten through grade three or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards. The bill goes on to give parents the ability to sue a school district if they believe this law has been violated, stating, if a concern is not resolved by the school district,

a parent may bring an action against the school district to obtain a declaratory judgment that the school district procedure or practice violates this paragraph and seek injunctive relief. A court may award damages and shall award reasonable attorney fees and court costs to a parent who receives declaratory or injunctive relief. A court may award damages and shall award reasonable attorney fees and court costs to a parent who receives declaratory or injunctive relief. I want to be crystal clear with the text of this law

because one of the extremely baby-brained responses from the right has been to either smugly declare that the bill doesn't literally say the word gay or to simply deny the bill is aimed at teachers talking about being gay. Some have pointed out that while they use the word discussion in the preamble, the law itself swaps that for instruction, as if that somehow makes it better.

However, as one law expert pointed out, courts will often look at the preamble of a law to help them interpret the enforcement of it. Not to mention the extremely broad wording in all of this. Does it count as instruction for a teacher to explain what a same-sex marriage is? That's technically instructing kids how to get gay married. And did you notice that this prohibits teachers from instructions for kindergarten through grade three,

or in a manner that is not age or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards? And again, as legal experts have pointed out, this law doesn't list what those state standards are, nor what counts as age appropriate. It's vague and weird and seems to leave it up to the parents to decide.

And if you have a parent like, I don't know, black conservative Ben Shapiro, who accused body bags Mark Hamill of indoctrinating children by simply spamming the word gay over and over again, well then things get a bit subjective. This doesn't mean that a parent would win a legal battle, but much like Texas says anyone can sue someone for getting an abortion or driving someone

to get an abortion law, it's clearly designed to gunk up the system. Because even if a parent's complaint is unwarranted and ultimately loses, it creates a climate where schools and teachers won't want to risk triggering an intentionally vague law for snowflakes that would damage reputations and careers. Just like that Texas trans law,

it's designed to send a message to certain people that by supporting LGBTQ kids, they are going to make their lives very difficult. And thanks to the colossal vagueness of it all, the supporters have the added bonus of standing back and acting like supreme logic kings, pretending that their bill is actually not exactly what it seems like.

I'm asking you to tell me what's in the bill because you are pushing false narratives. It doesn't matter what critics say. It says advanced classroom instruction on sexual identity and gender orientation. For who? For grades pre-K through 3. So 5-year-olds, 6-year-olds, 7-year-olds.

And the idea that you wouldn't be honest about that and tell people what it actually says, it's why people don't trust people like you because you peddle false narratives. And so we disabuse you of those narratives. And we're going gonna make sure that parents are able to send their kid to kindergarten without having some of this stuff injected into their school curriculum. Checkmate libs, we sunk your battleship.

Uno, Cloud Atlas, hey Ron. When you say stuff injected into curriculums, just what are you talking about exactly? If it's not trying to ban teachers from saying gay, what is it trying to ban then? Well, let's dig into that. After a few ads, we love ads just like we love you. And so to deny these ads,

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more news. $30. Did you feel our love for you in those ads? Good, that's the only reason why we played those ads. And if you recall, we were talking about the infamous Florida Don't Say Gay bill and how the GOP is claiming that the bill actually has nothing to do with an obvious attempt to limit the rights of LGBTQ students and teachers. One of the most common conservative talking points from the likes of the Daily Wire is that the evil left-wing mainstream media is wildly misinterpreting the nature of the bill on purpose in order to push their insidious gender ideology. gender ideology. The Daily Wire pulls the same misdirect as DeSantis,

self-righteously pointing out that nowhere in the legislation is the word gay mentioned, though the word parent is mentioned 32 times and the word parental is mentioned seven times. In a pretty lazy attempt to make it seem as though the bill is really about parental sovereignty. They're technically not wrong in that the bill focuses a lot on a parent's right to be informed

about what their kid is being taught. Except, hey, hey there, buddy. What specifically is this sovereignty about? Does the bill say that? Oh, right, it's about sexual orientation and gender identity. This isn't a bill about a parent's general right to know what their kid is being taught.

In fact, Florida already passed a bill like that last year. That bill, dubbed the Parents' Bill of Rights, allowed parents to have the right to pull their kids out of any class they deemed inappropriate, as well as have the ability to inspect any sexual education material and have access to their kids' school records. Sure seems like that law would have covered any concerns

about parental sovereignty the conservatives are claiming this new law involves, doesn't it? So why introduce a second bill specific to teaching about LGBTQ issues? And if that first bill allows parents to review sex ed material and pull their kids from specific classes, why then have a new bill that gives them the rights

to sue the school about one specific topic being discussed? Why can't they also sue over violent material or on religious grounds? Is it because it would be a nightmare to allow parents to sue schools for anything they teach? Not to mention that by giving one parent the ability to sue over just one topic, you're effectively blocking the sovereignty

of all the other parents who want sexual orientation and gender identity explained to their kids. How is that allowing freedom for parents? It's almost as if, and this is a wild thought, I know, but it's almost as if this bill definitely isn't about parental sovereignty because Florida already has a bill specific to that. And the threat of a lawsuit clearly creates a situation

where just one parent can decide for all the other parents what every kid gets to learn about. But of course there's a second reason the GOP is giving for why they think this law is absolutely necessary. Are we ready for it? Pedophiles. Oh boy, that is gonna look bad out of context. And I guess in context too, but that's right.

P to the E to the defiles. The conservative tradition of associating queerness and homosexuality with pedophilia has a long and robust history that we don't really need to get into right now. But needless to say, Republicans famous for refusing to update the rhetorical strategies even a little bit

are back at it again. It in this case, being accusing LGBTQ people of being pedophiles who want to groom children. In defense of HB 1557, DeSantis' press secretary, Christina Pasha, argued that the bill merely prevents kids from being exposed to sexually inappropriate content, accusing opponents of the bill

of being either a groomer themselves, or at the very least, someone who supports the grooming of four to eight year old children. Now to start, I just wanna point out that pedophilia and sexual abuse and harassment of kids, specifically in schools by teachers or employees is a serious problem in this country. By one study, one out of 10 students

will experience some form of sexual abuse before they hit 12th grade. That fucking sucks and is gross. Dare I say, it should not happen. But you might notice that the study I just cited is from 2004. And it turns out that this is because the United States has an alarming lack of information about this subject.

We don't really have many statistics because no one has bothered to collect them on a federal level. And two reports by the Government Accountability Office found that the United States isn't doing nearly enough in terms of background checks or other measures to prevent child predators from working in our schools. So if you were say a politician who was very concerned

about pedophilia and grooming, this is probably where you would actually start. You wouldn't make a bill banning sexual orientation discussions, but rather you would be loudly talking about our failure to protect kids or even track misconduct on a federal level. But what we do know, and again, boy, it's very little, is that a study from 1994 of 352 sexually abused kids

found that the perpetrator was at the highest, 3.1% likely to be a gay or lesbian person. 82% of the time, the abuser was a heterosexual partner of a relative of the child. Most of the victims were young girls as well, meaning that from this, albeit limited data, if we insert the information into our Predator Tron computerized facial creation software,

your average child molester from Florida would look something like this. This is all to say that there's just no evidence that the Don't Say Gay bill would do anything at all to prevent pedophilia or grooming by teachers, nor does it seem to actually be a priority of anyone supporting the bill.

It doesn't use the word grooming or pedophilia in the text, nor does it line up with any statistics, and is just focused on a ban on teachers' freedom to discuss sexual orientation and gender identity. To claim that it's a ban of sexual material is a lie, because if that was the case, wouldn't the bill say it's a ban of sexual material is a lie, because if that was the case, wouldn't the bill say it's a ban on sexual material and not sexual orientation?

You can't just claim a bill does something when it is in no way actually doing that thing. That's called a lie. There's simply no logical connection to the bill and grooming. So where the hell did this even come from? Well, that would be something called libs of TikTok.

Started as like the fourth attempt to go viral by some dipshit named Chaya Raichik. The account was signal boosted by Joe Rogan before devolving into basically an anti LGBTQ account, labeling literally any instance of gay people existing around children as grooming. This video of Pete Buttigieg's husband leading a pride-themed pledge of allegiance

at an LGBTQ camp for teens. One camp. One camp. Full of pride. Full of pride. Indivisible. Indivisible. With affirmation and equal rights for all.

With affirmation and equal rights for all. Apparently that's grooming. This video of a teacher talking about coming out as trans to her students. So none of the kids knew me as trans, but I wanted to talk about it. So what I did is as soon as I came back, I joined up with the GSA, realized how many questions the kids had, and decided the best thing to do would be to host a Q&A.

Grooming again. The account made to, I don't know, mock the snowflake intolerant left would openly call for any teacher who comes out to their students to be fired on the spot. Incidentally, the teacher referred to in that tweet, I just showed, said he came out to his students because a student asked him if he was gay because the student's parents said to the student

that they thought he was gay because of his voice. So the teacher was like, yeah, I'm gay. Fired! Anyway, that tweet and many others have been deleted. I wonder why. But so what you'd imagine here is that any halfway reasonable person would realize that this simply isn't what grooming is, nor is it anything but hateful to compare teachers simply coming out to their students

or promoting pride to a camp specifically for gay kids to being a child predator is nonsense. The kind of decades old gibberish shit the Westboro Baptist Church would scream to nobody outside of a Comic-Con. And coincidentally, the account was apparently a source of inspiration for none other than Christina Pasha, D. Sanchez's press secretary we mentioned earlier,

who has claimed that this account somehow has evidence that grooming is happening. You know, if you define grooming as a gay person breathing near a child and evidence as being mad at ghosts online. So there you have it, a single Twitter account promoting false news stories and run by a viral hungry, hateful Trump supporter who after being big quotes, doxxed,

claimed that her house was egged by posting literally the first photo that shows up when you Google house egged and then deleting it is actually being used as the factual justification behind this entire bill. And subsequently, the completely baseless claim that it prevents grooming in any way. I can't stress this enough. None of this is about grooming.

Like it clearly is not. And yet this narrative has spun so wildly out of control that when Disney took an albeit cowardly stance against the bill, conservatives labeled them as pro-grooming along with anyone who speaks up against the bill that I can't stress this enough, doesn't in any way have anything to do with grooming.

Like I'm sure not about to like defend a multinational corporation doing the bare minimum to support LGBTQ people, but it's wild that well, a multinational corporation doing the bare minimum to support LGBTQ people is enough for the anti cancel culture GOP to go scorched fucking earth

when they dare to publicly oppose them. And by scorched earth, I mean, relieving a corporation of billions in financial obligations and passing it on to taxpayers. That'll show them. It's gotten so bad that even other Republicans aren't safe if they even think about straying off the narrative.

When Nate Hochman, a fellow for the conservative magazine, National Review pointed out on Twitter that even if teachers are indoctrinating kids with gender ideology, that's not the same thing as pedophilia. A bunch of people, including intellectual powerhouse and normal chill guy James Lindsay, immediately accused him of being a groomer.

This does seem to be James' go-to response for everyone, ranging from California representative Adam Schiff to random comedians on the internet to fucking Oreo cookies. They're just throwing out words here and hoping it sticks. Plan the GOP operative and religious think tank weirdo Christopher Ruffo has flat out admitted to regarding the CRT panic and now this.

For more info on Ruffo, here's our CRT episode that he apparently saw and immediately went to Twitter to block me. But anyway, again, it's just throwing stuff out and conflating a bunch of things under one fear-mongering umbrella, or even worse, flat out admitting that they It's just throwing stuff out and conflating a bunch of things under one fear-mongering umbrella. Or even worse, flat-out admitting that they consider any mention of LGBTQ people as dangerous grooming. This would be a downright archaic view of discussing sexual orientation.

At best, it's childish in that you'd be conflating the word sexuality and sexual into one concept simply because it has the word sex in it. sexuality and sexual into one concept simply because it has the word sex in it. But again, Ben Shapiro literally called Luke Skywalker an indoctrinator of sexual ideology after he simply said the word gay a bunch. It's just, it's very funny that they pretend that's not what they're concerned about while literally being openly concerned about it. You know, you can't claim the bill isn't telling teachers not to say gay and then claim that tweeting the word gay is grooming kids. That's like saying you're not scared of spiders and then shitting your pants while watching Charlotte's Web.

That's some homophobe. At the end of the day, even though it is more insidious and will probably cause violence, the term groomer is basically being used as the new woke that was the new CRT that was the new SJW. It's a broad, vague term that conservatives use when they can't just flat out say what they mean, because what they mean is widely accepted as hateful when said aloud. And they know this. They know that anti-LGBTQ stances are dying. A 2021 PBS NewsHour poll found that when asked directly

about whether or not trans people should have access to all the things these bills are trying to take away, two thirds of Americans were against laws that would limit transgender rights. This wasn't just liberals either, but spread out through every ideology and age group. Young people are of course more accepting of racial and LGBTQ minorities than their parents and grandparents.

And younger generations see changes to society and family structures as positives. So instead of saying anti-trans laws, they have to go with anti-groomer in the hopes of invoking irrational fears. Or as we discussed, rational concerns dealt with irrationally. Honestly, I'm surprised they don't do this more often.

I mean, they absolutely do, but not nearly as much as they could. You wanna limit healthcare rights? Call it health grooming instead. Why should the government pay to have some anatomy obsessed stranger look inside of our bodies? I'm now against that.

All pediatricians are pedophiles now. Both words start the same, don't they? However, unlike most of those previous words we mentioned, groomer and pedophile are actual terms that mean something, especially to victims of sexual abuse. It is profoundly ironic that by co-opting those phrases, the people pretending to care about sexual abuse are actually making it harder for victims.

After all, the same way terms like woke have lost all meaning, so too will these very real concepts. If you call any old person that refuses to use your experimental submarine a pedophile, then you make it so people will automatically tune out actual credible accusations of pedophilia. But again, and I really can't stress this enough,

they don't actually care about pedophilia or groomers. If they did, they would perhaps be more concerned about the shocking pattern of Republican lawmakers getting in trouble for just that, including our good buddy Matt Gaetz being involved in a fucking sex trafficking scandal. And the last GOP president of the United States openly creeping on teenage beauty queens.

Also the longest serving speaker of the house, former GOP representative and convicted pedophile, Dennis Hastert. I'm not using the term pedophile or groomer loosely like conservatives are doing. These are literal cases of GOP figures getting in trouble for literal acts against minors. Oh, also, you know who else the GOP loves who famously sexually abused children? Cops! It's actually a big problem. Let me just read a few sentences out loud.

A 2003 national study by the Police Professionalism Initiative written by Professor Samuel Walker at the University of Nebraska at Omaha found that 40% of reported cases of police sexual misconduct involved teens, often young women involved in youth engagement and job shadowing programs. Let's see any more sentences to read. Ah, yes, okay. A 2010 study by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that tracks police wrongdoing,

found that sexual misconduct by law enforcement generates more citizen complaints than any other factor except for excessive force. Surely I have more sentences. Oh, okay, yes, here we go. A database compiled by the Buffalo News reports that from 2005 to 2015, a law enforcement official was caught in a case of sexual abuse or misconduct

at least every five days. There are still a lot of states where cops can rape detainees, say it was consensual, which is literally impossible because they're detained and get away with it. Oh, and follow up on that 2003 study that found 40% of reported cases of sexual misconduct by cops to involve teens. Here's a separate study from 2014

that found reported cases of sexual misconduct involving teens to be 43.1%. So I guess cops can improve. Great job to the boys in blue. Also 15% of the victims were under 14. 8% were under 12. So I don't know. It's just weird that we're not seeing any

don't say you're a cop bills. Curious what that's about. None of this is subjective. These are just facts. You can agree with certain conservative policies or stances, but you can't deny that they have absolutely no fucking right to police teachers or LGBTQ people for the purposes of stopping grooming

when there's zero evidence to back them up. It's just cold, hard hate mongering. And if you really need it spelled out, look no further than the now failed Tennessee proposal that attempted to create an alternate pathway to legal marriage that would not be available to same-sex couples. First of all, petty.

Petty, spiteful bill, which did crash and burn, but not before people pointed out that they had included absolutely no age limit to who could get hitched, opening the door to literal child marriages. They went on to amend the bill to fix that, but this so perfectly points out how little the GOP actually cares about pedophilia or grooming, and in fact just wants to take away

the rights of gay people. In writing this bill, they were either so focused on taking away these rights or just didn't care that they were ready to accept child brides so long as those child marriages weren't same-sex. Point is, this is all the exact opposite of everything they claim to care about and should be rejected and mocked by anyone who isn't actively trying to attack the LGBTQ community. Right? Like you don't even have to be an advocate.

If you think that everyone should have equal rights and that pedophilia is bad, you have no good reason to be supporting the majority of the Republican party. You should also be absolutely in awe that we're still dealing with this stuff today, because like it is 2022. So how the fuck are we still having this conversation?

Didn't we federally legalize gay marriage seven years ago to which the world did not end? So why dear sexy Christ who fucks frogs, are the GOP still trying to limit the rights of LGBTQ people? We're going to talk about just that, in detail, after a few ads, because ads are just, they're so great. You know, I love it when I'm really worked up about something important and have to stop everything

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Start a business. Mail order. Send farm fresh lentils straight to your door. Perfect. It's gonna be so good. Okay, so we were just finished pointing out that nothing in the recent GOP push against LGBTQ people has any logical standing. Next, we have to ask, why is this happening now?

What is the Republicans end game? What can we do about it? Can we do anything about it? And why sweet horse God, why is it always DeSantis and Abbott? Why these two sopping dildos? Except sopping dildos implies they did a good job. So that's too polite. They're more like dusty attic dildos from the 40s

that your grandmother tried once, but got electrocuted by. You know, the one you found as a kid and used as a lightsaber until your mother intervened, not pulling from your life or anything, just an imaginative tale about how whenever I watch Star Wars, I think about how sex is evil. I'm fine, it was fine. But that last question, why these two bad dildos,

is very easy to answer and begins to explain why these laws seem so broken. Simply put, thanks to Trump, bigotry is pretty popular right now. It's as big as the hit film, Jupiter Ascending. We've talked before at length about how the nascent proto-fascism that was the Trump presidency drew a line in the sand

for the conservative movement and how many Republicans, DeSantis in particular, have realized that the old traditional conservative way of doing things won't cut it anymore. Someone needs to step up and be the new Trump. And since Trump is figuratively and literally melting at the moment, DeSantis is currently in the lead for that position.

Similarly, Abbott has been struggling with his popularity among this base of the GOP. And so there's just no easier way to gain points than by beating the dead horse of woke politics. They certainly aren't the only people doing this, but rather the most vocally desperate at the moment. You could argue that this explains why these laws seem so hastily written

and legally incoherent in that the people making them don't actually care what the law says. But it's not that simple. As we mentioned, the Don't Say Gay Bill appears to have different wording in its preamble than the actual law. It is extremely vague about the actual age groups affected. This makes it so that depending on the courtroom and lawyers involved, you could actually get different

interpretations of the bill. And this is actually the same for a lot of these half-assed laws being introduced. They're often incredibly inconsistent, and that's possibly because conservatives don't even really understand transness well enough to effectively legislate against it. Why, for example, is it legal for doctors to treat kids with human growth hormone to alter their bodies, but a crime for doctors to treat trans kids with estrogen or testosterone? How do these laws affect intersex people people or people with hormone imbalances?

Are puberty blockers still allowed to treat non-trans children for things like precocious puberty? Where do we draw any of these seemingly arbitrary lines? Hit, it's wherever keeps the gays out. While it's pretty clear that these lawmakers don't understand the actual science, there are likely other extremely old factors at play. Writing for Slate, law professor Courtney Cahill

draws parallels between the current day attempt to define gender along biological lines and the Jim Crow era practice of doing the exact same thing, but with race. Cahill looks at Bill HB 935, a piece of anti-trans legislation out of Florida that while it eventually died in 2021, would have made it a crime for healthcare providers

to surgically change the sex of minors. Cahill points out that by defining sex as the biological state of being female or male based on sex organs, chromosomes, and endogenous hormone profiles, and then implicitly defining breasts as a female sex organ by listing a mastectomy as a prohibited act when performed on a minor,

HB 935 would have legally made having breasts an essential part of the biological state of being female. Except it wouldn't, obviously. As Cahill says, a cisgender Floridian woman would still be a woman even were she to not have breasts. And gaining breasts through hormones or surgery isn't enough for a trans woman to be legally considered a woman. That requires a legal sex change, which requires a note from your healthcare provider. It's the kind of pulling out the rug trick you can play on conservatives over and over again without them even ever coming up

with a satisfactory response. Oh, womanhood is defined by being able to give birth? Are infertile cis women no longer women? Of course not. Oh, womanhood is defined by having a certain amount of testosterone in your blood. What about cis athletes with naturally high T-counts? Are they no longer women?

Still no? Gee, sure seems like this biological system is just an ad hoc way to exclude trans people, huh? Cahill ties us back to Jim Crow and to similar attempts from the era to define race via various biological truths, which of course didn't work even a little bit because as Cahill says,

"'In practice, race regulation showed that legal race wasn't based on biological truths and wasn't absolute. The legal definition of race varied between states. Someone could be colored in Louisiana and white somewhere else. The legal definition of race also varied within states. The same person could be both colored and white depending on the official charged with making that assessment. could be both colored and white, depending on the official charged with making that assessment. Jim Crow eventually fell apart under the weight of all of its inconsistencies.

And so too, Cahill says, will states power to legally define sex as a binary between male and female. It's only a matter of time before all of the glaring problems with these bills finally start to cause problems for the conservatives passing them. And thanks to how loosely worded a lot of these laws are, they could easily be used for any purpose,

because it's not just how they define sex, but any attempt to turn subjective moral stances into absolutes. In Arizona, for example, they're pushing through a law aimed at limiting sexual content in school library books. It would give parents the right to demand a book get pulled lest the librarian be fired and barred from working in a public school.

The original law specifically targeted books that promote the study of sex, sexual preferences, sexual activity, sexual perversion, sex-based classifications, sexual identity, or gender identity. But after scrutiny, a lot of that was eliminated, leaving the official wording of the law to be quote, "'No public school district, public charter school,

"'or public school library shall maintain in its inventory "'or promote books that make as their primary subject "'the study of sex, sexual lifestyles, or sexual activity, "'or books that are of a controversial nature "'that a reasonable parent or legal guardian "'would want to know of or approve of prior to their child being exposed to it. And like, what does that even mean?

What books have a primary subject being sexual lifestyles? Does study of sex mean no sex education books? And how do you define what a reasonable parent is and what they'd want to know about these books? It's very clear they were want to know about these books? It's very clear they were trying to ban books that feature LGBTQ stories, but this new law can be so loosely interpreted

so that you could oppose pretty much any book with a romantic storyline. Or rather, it doesn't ban any book if you're targeting books that are primarily about sexual activity. Like, wouldn't that just ban erotic novels, something that isn't in a school to begin with? At least not the cool ones, of course.

It comes down to this, I think. Let's say you have a story about a person asleep who needs to be kissed by a prince in order to break a spell and wake up. If that person is a woman, then that kiss is not sexual. However, if the person is a man and the prince kisses that man, then it is instantly sexual. However, if the person is a man and the prince kisses that man, then it is instantly sexual to these people.

The existence of gay people automatically makes them think about sexual activity. That's what happens in their little brains. And it's one reason why it's impossible to talk to them about this. Others being their bigots and liars, but whatever. This is all not to mention that legislating what someone is allowed to learn about

or do with their own bodies flies directly in the face of the small government anti-cancel culture narrative Republicans have been attempting to weave for the past many decades. But of course, that's not a new contradiction. The hypocrisy is almost not even worth mentioning. Republicans have always wanted to have their cake

and not sell it to a gay couple too. They want Uncle Sam to fuck off and leave everyone alone until it comes to all the things they absolutely want the federal government to dictate like reproductive rights and marriage equality and you know, sexy erotic books about vas deferens and all the goop that lives inside of us. Of course, by hiding behind pedophilia,

they can at least try and mask this by wrapping their dry little hate turd in a tortilla of think of the children. And again, this is not a new strategy by any means. In the 1970s and 1980s, right-wing religious figures depicted gay men as depraved predators who groomed or recruited children. And similar rhetoric appeared again in the mid 2000s as Democrats and Republicans alike

fought against legalizing gay marriage. Something that a lot of politicians and pundits are definitely still against, but have to pretend like they aren't. What I mean is that despite how they tiptoe around it, people like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott and most of the GOP would happily move us back to a time where LGBTQ people had zero rights.

It's why when asked point blank, they often give answers like this. I don't want any discrimination in Florida. I want people to be able to, you know, live their life, whether you're gay, but also whether you're religious. I think you should be able to do that. And I don't want them discriminated against as well. So, you know, we're gonna have, we got a big diverse state

and that's just the way, the way it is. Oh yeah, do I think gay people should have rights and be protected? I mean, I think all, I think all things should be protected. All words are good really. And letters that are in the words, like did you think about religious people? That's also a word.

So to directly answer your question, I think religious people deserve rights. Meanwhile, his actual actions, such as leaving LGBTQ people off of anti-discrimination laws, speak much louder than fumbled words. But they can't just say it anymore. Just like when Ben Shapiro has to claim he's not against gay marriage, but the government getting involved in all marriage. I think the government ought to be completely out of the business of marriage. I think the government sucks at everything, is my short message for today. The government is

terrible at everything. If the government's goal was to forward traditional marriage, it utterly failed, obviously, as proof. But you don't mind it being out of the business of traditional marriage at all. No, I think that I think the government should be out of all marriage. Ah, yes. All marriage matters or something. Ben is totally cool with gay people, except coincidentally, whenever the government gets involved with granting them equal rights and also when someone tweets the word gay, apparently. And I guess what I'm getting at here is that Courtney Cahill's assessment

that these laws are similar to Jim Crow laws is pretty apt. I mean, obviously there are many historical differences and I'm not going to compare them one to one, but the Jim Crow era began roughly 10 years after slavery was abolished and the laws were enacted mainly in Southern states. In retrospect, they really seem like a last ditch attempt to maintain the power dynamics of slavery,

labeling non-white individuals as second class and proclaiming honky superiority. I can't stress enough that racial segregation and history can't really be compared to LGBTQ rights, but you can't help but see the similarity. The GOP lost when it came to same-sex marriage. They lost like losers. Only four Republicans voted in favor of it,

and three of them were immediately voted out for doing so. And now, almost 10 years later, the same party is clearly trying to find ways for individual states to pass laws that bring them back to an era where LGBTQ people didn't have so many pesky rights. They don't care if the laws make sense or can be easily defeated in courts.

What matters is that they keep that ball in the air for as long as possible, delay this obvious progress in the hopes that they can keep their own superiority intact. They're just prolonging their existence at the expense of others, like vampires, or more commonly known, Balaam Abrasax from the hit film, Jupiter Ascending.

And just like Jim Crow laws and the runtime of Cloud Atlas, this could last way longer than it has any right to. Because ultimately these conservatives just don't like gay people, but no, they can't say that. That's why these laws are so weird and vague and nonsensical because they're all trying to find loopholes around blatantly stating their prejudice.

And for that reason, and just like Jim Crow laws, these anti-LGBTQ laws will ultimately fall apart. I mentioned this run of laws aimed at allowing medical professionals to deny care based on their conscience. As one South Carolina bill states, "'No medical practitioner, healthcare institution, or healthcare payer should be compelled to participate in or pay for any medical procedure or prescribe or pay for any medication to which

the practitioner or entity objects on the basis of conscience, whether such conscience is informed by religious, moral, ethical, or philosophical beliefs or principles. That bill also protects those practitioners from legal repercussions for discrimination. And while this is clearly aimed at trans people, they aren't allowed to just flat out say that. And so because of the extremely vague wording, it could be used to discriminate against literally anyone

based on philosophical beliefs. By that definition, a vegetarian doctor could legally choose to not treat you because you're wearing a leather jacket. Hell, they could not treat you for liking the band Stained, which frankly should come with a penalty, but not from doctors. It is hard to fully appreciate the fact that

when you get down to it, this proposed law is basically saying to doctors, "'Do no harm unless they bother you. It is so broadly defined so as to be both ineffective and legally explosive. And if enforced, could gunk up the system so bad that it ultimately gets thrown out, along with all the other laws trying to do this.

Of course, I do wanna be very clear here. These laws are bad, cruel, harmful laws that in the immediate short term will absolutely have a negative impact on the LGBTQ people, primarily children, being affected by them. Trans people in the US already face incredibly high barriers of entry to the basic possibility of participating in public life.

They're banned from equal education, targeted by state departments, prevented from receiving life-saving medical care, harassed in bathrooms no matter which one they use. The list goes on. We didn't even mention all of the recent attempts to ban trans athletes, which could fill an entirely separate episode.

Not only are these things bad on their own, but they have the added effect of preventing trans people from entering the formal labor market, let alone acquiring the huge expense of medical transition, assuming they survive that long, considering how often they get fucking murdered or take their own lives. The current legislative pushes aim

to permanently confine queer people, especially trans people, to the informal economy, and in some states, actively criminalize their existence. Fire the teacher for saying he's gay? They want people to be afraid to exist, is what they want. If the push succeeds, if these bills pass in any widespread way, the state will have effectively declared itself

cisgender and heterosexual for the first time in the same way that under Jim Crow, it declared itself white. These laws frame themselves as making moral arguments about the validity of trans existence. And they are doing that, but they're not only doing that. Gender affirming care, for example, is not only moralized as self-mutilation

and or child abuse, it's also framed as prohibitively expensive and as a luxury. A cosmetic procedure in the same category as lip fillers or an expensive dye job or getting metal teeth so you can bite open beer cans. It's not a coincidence that the defunding of reproductive health, the banning of abortion, and the goal of banning contraception are all tied up

in the political and legal strategy of anti-trans policies. By relegating all trans adjacent healthcare to the private sector, and then relegating trans people to lower second-class citizens, the state can effectively prohibit transness altogether without having to put it into law. And that is a scary, terrible thing. Also something a complete asshole does.

However, the light at the end of this very long, dark tunnel is this. History will look back on this treatment of trans people in the same way we look back on the Jim Crow era today, with disgust, shame, and the lingering feeling that if you'd paid slightly better attention during 11th grade history, you might be able to know what's going on more often.

The conservatives are fighting a losing battle and it's the exact same losing battle they've been fighting every 30 years for the past 150 years. This is possibly the fatal flaw with conservatism as an ideology altogether. Despite what the hit film Cloud Atlas might tell you, time moves forward whether we like it or not,

and we move right along with it, whether you like it or not, and we move right along with it, whether you like it or not. Progressivism, making progress, feels intuitive and natural because we really have no other option other than to move with the current. And to try to do anything else means not only standing still,

but pushing back against the flow and attempting to reverse the tide. Because that's where the conservative side of things takes us in the end. Do you think seriously that people like James Lindsay and Ben Shapiro and Ronald D. Santus want to stop at just these anti-trans laws? Or perhaps will they keep pushing us backward

little by little? But again, people like them have been fighting this same fight over and over again with different goalposts because they keep losing. Before this, they lost the fight for gay marriage. And before that, they lost the civil rights movement. And before that, they lost the suffragist movement. And before that, they lost the fucking civil war.

It's all the same fight. And we're already seeing with the don't say gay bill and the recent resurgence of conflating queerness and pedophilia, that if they win the fight against trans people, they'll immediately push back towards their next battleground. And so on and so on until every minority group has been stripped of their rights and America is great again.

It's like an incredibly high stakes game of Team Fortress 2, except instead of fighting for glowing checkpoints, you're fighting for the basic human rights of marginalized people. Maybe that's what TF2 is about too. Don't know, haven't played it. The point I'm trying to make here is that if the last century of American history can serve as any kind of precedent, the conservatives will lose this fight eventually.

That said, how fast they lose depends on us and how hard we fight against them and point out what obviously lying liars they are. And of course, saying we'll win eventually doesn't do shit for the kids who are right this moment, being targeted by laws either currently or about to be on the books. So on the screen, there should be a bunch of different links

to organizations dedicated to helping trans and LGBTQ youth and all those links will be somewhere in the description as well. So you can click on them and then be taken to their website and then give them money in the form of a donation. In fact, right this second, the Wachowski sisters are running an auction where all of the proceeds go to the Defend Trans Youth Fund.

That auction is for various props from their beloved films, such as Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending, which are really popular and cool films. Don't believe me? How many times have you heard those films brought up in just the last hour? Everyone's talking about them. And so right this second,

you can get the actual ears worn by Kane Wise, the half dog man, and also help trans youth. That's a win-win, assuming you get it before we use our show budget to swipe that up. And to sweeten the deal, if every single person subscribed to Some More News on YouTube donates at least $1 to a trans charity of your choice,

I, Cody F. Johnston, will purchase and eat those rubber ears. That's a Some More News promise, so you know it's real. Or maybe I won't do that. I don't know, is my name even Cody? Maybe not, and I probably won't eat those ears. But I'm still gonna try to get those stupid man dog ears. Or maybe this sweet, whatever that is, from Cloud Atlas. And you should still donate to like, not be a jerk.

And if you know a trans teen personally, the right thing and just you know leave them alone because like all teens they probably just want to be left the fuck alone or cigarettes give them cigarettes teens love that I am being told that I can't advise people to give cigarettes to teens because of laws or something. But as we've just pointed out, laws can be bad. So do what you want with that. Smokin'. Oh no, what do I say? What do I say?

Oh geez, it's the end of the thing. Oh yeah, like and subscribe. Thanks for watching and be sure to, you know, the alert bell or whatever. That's a YouTube thing. The links in the description also exist and podcasts. It's called Even More News. It's also this podcast.

This is a show. This show that you watch as a podcast is available. Patreon.com slash some more news. We've got merch. I should have found the... It's not here.