Tangle - Pride Month controversy.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Starting point is 00:00:19 Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking with a little bit of my take. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about Pride Month and some of the controversy surrounding it. In case you've missed it, we'll wrap up some of the stories

Starting point is 00:01:05 that brought this into the Tangle podcast today. Before we jump in, though, as always, we'll start off with some quick hits. First up, scholar and activist Cornel West announced he is running as a presidential candidate for the People's Party. Meanwhile, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, the Republican, said he will not run in 2024. Number two, Robert Hansen, the former FBI agent who spent two decades spying on the United States for Russia, was found dead in his prison cell on Monday. Hansen, perhaps the most notorious spy in U.S. history, had been serving a life sentence since 2002. Number three, the Khovka Dam was destroyed in southern Ukraine in an attack that Ukraine and Russia have each blamed on the other side.

Starting point is 00:01:58 Thousands of people in Russian-occupied territory downstream of the dam are now evacuating. Number four, acting ICE director Tay Johnson announced he would be retiring after 30 years at the agency. Number five, Oklahoma approved the first ever publicly funded religious charter school, setting up a potential legal battle over the separation of church and state. june is pride month it's a celebration of lgbtq life but after years of hard-won civil rights gains there's a backlash that includes violence and tests of corporate commitments. There are T-shirts and hats. Apple has a watch. Absolute Vodka has a special bottle.

Starting point is 00:02:49 Companies have gotten more involved in pride as a sign of how the whole culture is changing. But this year, the landscape has shifted. You are going to get rainbow vomit on everything across corporate America. Some corporations stepping into a fierce fight over transgender issues. Tonight, Target, one of the nation's largest retailers, Some corporations stepping into a fierce fight over transgender issues. Tonight, Target, one of the nation's largest retailers, is pulling some products that celebrate Pride Month off store shelves.

Starting point is 00:03:15 Citing threats to employees, the company says, given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior. June in the United States is Pride Month, when members of the LGBTQ community celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer pride. Pride Month is often commemorated in major cities with pride parades. Many companies and workplaces have taken part in Pride festivities for several years, offering specialty products or encouraging employees to participate in certain educational events. This year, Pride Month has spurred an unusual level of political animosity and

Starting point is 00:03:56 controversy. Major retailers like Target, Kohl's, Walmart, and PetSmart have faced backlash from customers upset by certain promotional items celebrating the LGBTQ community. Target in particular became engulfed in controversy after customers began tearing down or vandalizing Pride clothing lines, including bathing suits for transgender women and Pride- related clothing and kid sizes. Target, citing incidents where its employees have been harassed, either pulled some of its Pride line or moved it to less visible parts of the store. Then, some LGBTQ organizations criticized Target for abandoning its LGBTQ employees and customers. All of this comes just weeks after Anheuser-Busch faced backlash for its partnership

Starting point is 00:04:39 between Bud Light and transgender actress Dylan Mulvaney. Conservative influencers began lobbying their supporters to boycott Bud Light and transgender actress Dylan Mulvaney. Conservative influencers began lobbying their supporters to boycott Bud Light, resulting in the company pulling the campaign and two executives responsible for it taking a leave of absence. However, that reversal also upset members of the LGBTQ community, and sales of Bud Light have fallen for consecutive weeks since. Pride backlash isn't just hitting retailers either. The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, once owned by a conservative Catholic family, invited the drag group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to perform at its June 16th Pride Night game. The group, which dresses

Starting point is 00:05:16 up as Catholic nuns and performs at Pride events, has been fundraising in the LGBTQ community for over 30 years. The Dodgers uninvited them after angry backlash from fans and then re-invited them after backlash to the backlash. On the political front, the Human Rights Campaign has tracked more than 500 bills it deems anti-LGBTQ plus legislation that have been introduced at the state level so far this year. The vast majority of those bills won't become law, and many involve prohibiting or restricting certain medical intervention for trans minors. In Tennessee last Friday, a judge struck down a bill designed to restrict public drag shows. The judge, appointed by former President

Starting point is 00:05:56 Donald Trump, ruled that the bill was an unconstitutional limit on free speech. Today, we're going to explore some opinions about the backlash we are seeing to Pride Month with views from the left and the right, and then my take. Alright, first up, we'll start with what the right is saying. Many on the right say the backlash is a product of progressives and the LGBTQ community forcing their agenda on others. Some argue that we should end Pride Month given the state of LGBTQ acceptance. Others say conservatives are now mimicking the overreactions and sensitivity of the left they have long mocked.

Starting point is 00:06:50 In the New York Post, Stephen F. Hayward called it the revolt of the normies as Americans reject extremism. The Democratic Party has gone all in on no limits gender self-expression, to the point that the Biden administration pointedly avoids using the term woman in any official policy documents, Hayward said. A popular slogan on the right is get woke, go broke, but until the last few weeks, there was meager evidence in support of this proposition. Then came the Bud Light debacle, which led to a boycott that cut sales by more than a quarter, and Target, whose stock prices fell after outrage over its tuck-friendly women's bathing suit line for Pride Month. The long-term trend in American social life for decades has now been expanding the boundaries for individual expression and

Starting point is 00:07:29 self-definition. Americans have generally been tolerant, if sometimes slow to move, toward what were once considered deviant traits like homosexuality, but also interracial marriage and women in the workplace, he said. But the current push on behalf of gender fluidity differs fundamentally from previous liberation movements, as it requires a wholesale denial of human nature itself and demands conformity to this radical view. This movement insists on transgressing every institutional and social boundary, from bathrooms to sports to the elementary school classroom. In town hall, former National Security Council spokesman and Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs John Uliot, who is gay, called for an end to Pride Month.

Starting point is 00:08:12 This annual frenzy of rainbow flag waving has shifted into overdrive in recent years and has reached the point of self-parody and irrelevance at the same time. The best way to honor gay Americans would be to wake up and end this dated annual tradition once and for all, recognizing that the decades-long battle for parity is already won, and we are simply proud and patriotic Americans, full stop, he said. In the exceedingly rare instance where someone is fired or discriminated against for being gay or trans, holding a gay pride month would do nothing to change such old-fashioned views. And today, that shop-worn bigotry represents a real professional and personal liability

Starting point is 00:08:50 for anyone who harbors it. Three decades ago, I had to mask my sexuality to serve my country in the Marine Corps, he wrote. Then, a few years ago, Trump made me one of the most high-ranking gay officials in U.S. history. He never mentioned that I was gay, even when he came under predictable fire from liberals on diversity and inclusion. That's because Trump, like most of society, believes we are all Americans and not special identity groups to be split up and pandered to for political gain. These divisive identity festivals diminish us as a country and are used primarily to drive far-left initiatives from the professional grievance grifters and for woke virtue signaling from corporations and sports leagues, in this month's case on promoting transgender education for young children and attacking

Starting point is 00:09:35 religion. In National Review, Philip Klein pushed back, saying, sometimes a onesie is just a onesie. Klein had tweeted, if someone wants to dress their baby in a pride onesie, why should it matter, which drew outrage from his fellow conservatives. Some of my conservative critics lashed out at me by branding me a groomer, by likening the pride onesie to swastika clothing and me to a Nazi appeaser, and by portraying my tweet as emblematic of all the things they hated about the National Review, he wrote. I agree with efforts to stop public schools from pushing lessons about sexuality and gender because it forces conversation of complex and sensitive topics on parents who may prefer to discuss them at a time and place of their choosing. In contrast,

Starting point is 00:10:18 the existence of pride onesies does not impose anything on parents who choose not to dress their children in them, Klein wrote. Conservatives have spent years mocking progressives for being overly sensitive and musing about how easily offended leftists get about small things to the point of being unable to function. But now they are imitating the worst instincts of the other side. All right, that is it for the rightist thing, which brings us to what the left is saying. Many on the left say the outrage is coming from homophobes and transphobes and criticize corporations who are folding so quickly. Some argue that folding to the boycotters is only making them more bloodthirsty. Others say the backlash is actually good news, as it is a sign of how much progress has been made.

Starting point is 00:11:10 In HuffPost, Dustin Siebert said don't let the homophobes win. Despite beer brands long using sex to sell, Bud Light boycotters acted as if Dylan Mulvaney was bethonged while wielding a gun that shoots glitter and tiny plastic penises into crowds of school-aged kiddos. Both Bud Light and Target pulled their campaigns, which let the bigots win. This animus boils down to the country's culture war over everything transgender, Siebert said. The evangelicals have all but lost the battle over gay marriage and the increased normalization of the gay community, so they've set their sights on arguably the most threatened community in America, all the trans people looking to eat small children like Pennywise from It. These politicians and their constituents are simply scared that they'll

Starting point is 00:11:54 one day wake up to a non-heteronormative society, just as they were scared a couple generations ago of seeing black folks freely walk the streets minding their own damn business, he said. In the San Francisco Chronicle, Soleil Ho said Target Pride Month was peak rainbow capitalism. Inspired by nationwide anti-LGBT book bannings and a wave of legal and media-driven transphobia, right-wing influencers and other pockets of conservative social media erupted in outrage over the chain's pride collection, posting video after video of themselves tearing down displays and accusing store staff and CEO Brian Cornell of satanic pedophilia, Ho said. A right-wing rapper released a viral track calling for a boycott. In the aftermath, multiple Target stores around the country reported bomb threats, and openly LGBT staff spoke out online about an

Starting point is 00:13:05 uptick in physically aggressive behavior from shoppers. Unsurprisingly, Target's capitulation to bullying and, to be frank, domestic terrorism only made bad actors more bloodthirsty, Ho wrote. It's just a reminder that while corporate diversity initiatives can be nice gestures, they're largely just gestures. The last thing the LGBT community needs now is more fair-weather friends. At the same time, focusing on the right to buy a t-shirt might do more harm than good. We need to focus on more pressing matters like legal discrimination. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in

Starting point is 00:13:45 a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. In the Los Angeles Times, Robin Abkarian said there is good news about the reasons for the backlash. It's happening because ginning up fear

Starting point is 00:14:12 about the corruption of children is a tried and true technique for rallying the far right, she wrote. Because same-sex marriage is legal and transgender people have made extraordinary strides. Because the Christian right needed a new boogeyman after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, neutralizing an issue that has animated the Republican base and turned out votes for decades. There's a moral panic about sexuality and gender

Starting point is 00:14:35 right now because Americans have grown relaxed about the LGBTQ plus community. A 2020 survey conducted by GLAAD, an LGBTQ plus advocacy group, and Procter & Gamble found that 75% of people who do not identify as gay or trans or queer, that is a super majority, were comfortable with seeing non-straight folks in marketing campaigns. And because the number of Americans who identify as LGBTQ plus has exploded, which is astonishing proof that the stigma may finally be starting to fade away. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So, I gotta say, it is just hard not to feel cynical. If I had to bet, I would guess that none of the over 60,000 people on my mailing list or the thousands of people who listen to this podcast spent their weekend tearing down pride signs at Target, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I'd be pretty surprised if anyone I knew did this. My bet is that this news cycle, which started in May and has now lasted several weeks into Pride Month,

Starting point is 00:15:49 is being driven by a small number of people with extreme beliefs and a much larger number of people who may be sympathetic to the idea that this LGBTQ stuff is just too in-your-face right now. The rest of us are just spectators to the nonsense. Truthfully, the entire thing just makes me sad. I've already written about the Dylan Mulvaney controversy and then published all your responses to that controversy, and this feels like deja vu all over again, recycled. Why is Target running a pride-themed clothing line as they have for years? Because it's profitable.

Starting point is 00:16:23 Sorry, but I don't think Target's corporate executives are waking up in the morning and thinking about LGBTQ inclusivity for the sake of inclusivity. And they certainly aren't thinking about how to indoctrinate your kids to be gay or trans. Not that they could either. They're trying to make money. Pride is profitable because, breaking news, a lot of people exist in the LGBTQ community, and a lot of people support the LGBTQ community, and a lot of people are interested in buying Pride-themed clothing. Why are the Dodgers inviting Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to Pride Night? It's the same answer. They'll sell tickets and booze, too. It's a rowdy, fun performance, and people will

Starting point is 00:17:02 come out to watch it. If you don't want to see them perform, then don't go on the one night they'll be there. The Dodgers have 80 other home games, including Christian Faith and Family Day in July. The article that resonated most with me of all the ones I read was the piece from Philip Klein under what the right is saying. It's just a onesie. While I disagree with the conclusions of many conservatives on the education issue, I can truly understand the debates about the age at which different sexuality or gender topics are appropriate to discuss with kids in public schools. I can also understand not liking Dylan Mulvaney or not believing gender can be totally divorced from sex. I can understand seeing elementary school

Starting point is 00:17:41 kids at an erotic drag show and thinking, what the hell? I can see good reason for concern about medical treatments for trans minors. All of these things seem worthy of debate, discussion, and curiosity. But a war on Pride Month? Really? I know some of the backlash is tied directly to negative views people have about gay or trans Americans, but I also think there's a deeper thing happening here. It's the victim mentality I wrote about in 2021 intersecting with the mass paranoia I wrote about in 2022. Far too many of us think of ourselves as victims, and far too many of us are seeing ghosts in every direction. In this case, it seems some activist conservatives see themselves as

Starting point is 00:18:22 victims of a losing fight against gay or trans people and have paired that with paranoia about the threats to our kids or threats to a traditional way of life or just threats to a night out at the baseball game. Contrary to Stephen Hayward's piece though, I actually don't think this is the quote-unquote normie backlash at all. I think normies in America could care less about a rainbow t-shirt at Target or Pride Night at a baseball game or Pride Month in general. I think normies would rank those things very, very low on their political priority list. Most of our country is generally accepting of LGBTQ Americans. Most normies believe that if you don't want to go to a pride parade or don't want your

Starting point is 00:19:01 kid in Pride Month clothing, then you don't go and you don't dress your kids in that clothing. To me, it's the same story here we see playing out in so many places these days. The tiny number of folks with extreme views are taking up all the oxygen and making us think the other side is a lot crazier. To me, it's the same story here we see playing out in so many places these days. The extreme views are taking up all the oxygen and making us think the other side is a lot crazier than they really are. The worst part is that the vast majority of LGBTQ people who are just trying to live their lives like the rest of us are now stuck in the middle. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Jim in Colonial Heights, Virginia. Jim said, in Thursday's newsletter,

Starting point is 00:19:54 you referenced a report stating that 44% of U.S. workers are employed in jobs with an annual median wage of $18,000. This is a report from three and a half years ago. I checked the DLS and a report from April of this year says for the first quarter of this year, the weekly median age was $1,100 or $57,200 per year. The lowest was for 16 to 24 year old women, but even that was $35,880 per year. You seem to have cherry picked some old data to make a point. That's not what I've come to expect from you. Okay, so a few people have asked about this reference, which came in my piece on RFK Genius' bid for president. First, obviously, the annual median wage didn't go from $18,000 to $57,000 in three years, so that's a huge clue that what we're talking about are different things.

Starting point is 00:20:46 Wages have gone up since COVID-19, but certainly not by that much. Additionally, this data was pulled from 2012 to 2016, which I actually don't think is that misleading or cherry-picked. The study is less recent than the jobs report, but broad analysis of data like this often takes years to collect and then years more to complete, so it is typically a few years behind. As the authors say right in their report, quote, the large sample size from five years of pooled data allows us to conduct relatively detailed analysis at the regional level. We profile low-wage workers at the national level and within 373 metropolitan areas. However,

Starting point is 00:21:26 there is a trade-off with timeliness, and our data do not allow us to capture the most recent wage trends. Finally, the major discrepancy you're seeing between the figure I cited and the summary figures from the BLS is caused by three things. One, the study is specifically analyzing only low-wage workers. Two, the studied population was 18 to 64-year-old workers. Three, the study's definition for low-wage workers varies greatly from the definition used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The entire point of this study is that low-wage work is much more pervasive than we think. The analysis was done by looking at five years of American community survey micro data. The study did not limit itself to people who are working full-time or year-round, but instead looked at any civilian 18 to 64 years old who worked during the last year and was in the labor

Starting point is 00:22:16 force, unemployed or employed, at the time they were surveyed. To me, this is a much more representative sample of reality in the United States, as it includes people who had and then lost low-wage jobs. Accordingly, the report notes, quote, More than 53 million people, 44% of all workers aged 18 to 64, are low-wage workers by our criteria. They earn median hourly wages of $10.22 and median annual wages of $17,950. These 53 million workers earn less than our hourly earnings threshold of $16.03 at the national level, adjusted for cost of living

Starting point is 00:22:56 differences by region, ranging from $12.54 in Beckley, West Virginia to $20.02 in San Jose, California. You can read the full report, which I linked to in today's newsletter and also today's episode description. All right, that is it for your questions answered. Next up is our under-the-radar story. A former intelligence official turned whistleblower has given Congress and the intelligence community inspector general, quote, extensive classified information about a deeply covert program he claims have retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin. You guys, you know I love this story. In other words, extraterrestrial spaceships.

Starting point is 00:23:50 The whistleblower, David Charles Grush, is a former combat officer in Afghanistan who has experience in various U.S. intelligence agencies and was then serviced on the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. Grush claims the recovery of partial fragments to intact vehicles have been made for decades. To date, he is considered one of the most credible whistleblowers to allege that the U.S. government is covering up evidence of encounters with extraterrestrial objects. He sat for an interview on News Nation last night, and the debrief wrote up a piece about his claims. There are links to both in today's episode description. We also have a short about this dropping on our YouTube channel today. also have a short about this dropping on our YouTube channel today. All right, that is it for our Under the Radar section. Next up is our numbers section. The percentage of adults in the U.S. who

Starting point is 00:24:34 identified as LGBTQ in 2022 was 7.2%, according to Gallup. The percentage who identified as LGBTQ in 2021 was 7.1%. The percentage of U.S. adults who identified as transgender in 2022 was 0.6%, according to Gallup. The percentage of U.S. adults in Gen Z aged 18 to 25 who identified as LGBTQ in 2022 was 19.7%. The percentage of U.S. adults in Gen Z who identified as bisexual was 13.1%. The percentage of U.S. adults in Gen Z who identified as transgender was 1.9%. All right, that is it for our numbers section. Last but not least, our have a nice day story today. A piece of music history has been rediscovered. The original 1976 demo tape that landed Prince his first record deal was recently found in an attic. The tape, recorded in Minneapolis by an 18-year-old Prince, contained original recordings of hit songs off his debut album Just As Long As We're Together and My Love Is Forever.

Starting point is 00:25:45 them just as long as we're together and my love is forever. Boston-based company RR Auction, who obtained the tape from the estate of late Warner Bros. record executive Ross Thillett, called it a testament to the visionary talent of the enigmatic musician and marks the inception of one of the most legendary careers in popular music. The historic artifact will be sold at auction. Good News Network has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com slash membership and consider becoming a member. Don't forget to also check out our YouTube channel and our event, which is coming to Philadelphia on August 3rd. There are links to the tickets in today's episode description. You can also find them at tangle.com slash live. We'll be right back here

Starting point is 00:26:30 same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Long. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bukova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll see you next time. character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.

Tangle - Pride Month controversy.

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