The Ben Mulroney Show - A heat crisis for dogs / LGBT community embracing "homonationalism"?

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

GUEST:  Dr. Bryan Gelman / Yonge and St. Clair Veterinary Hospital  GUEST:  Adam Zivo / National Post Columnist If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025.

Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, An optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show.

And boy, oh boy, is it a scorcher where I'm from? As a matter of fact, it's a scorcher in a lot of places around this country. But as we go west, it becomes cooler because it's more sensible in certain parts of the West. Toronto today has broken its historical July 14th temperature record as extreme heat has gripped the city. We hit a high of 37 degrees Celsius. Now, when you combine it with the humidity, it feels closer to 45 degrees. I'm a smart guy and I don't not care if it's 37, if it feels 45, it's 45 degrees. There's a lot of meteorologists who disagree with.

with that. They'll just say no, no, no, no, no. There's no such thing. Yeah, I don't, I don't care. It feels that way. If it feels 45, it's 45. That's just it. I mean, it's the, because all temper, that's what temperature is. It's, what does it feel like? Like, I don't care what that, what the, what the mercury says. If I'm hot, I'm hot. That's the feeling of being hot. Anyway, I'm just an idiot. I don't know anything. Relief, however, is not coming any time soon. Not until Friday when temperatures will drop below 30. Okay. Everything's relative, I suppose. But meanwhile, Ottawa is between 35 and 37, feels like 45. Winnipeg, between

30 and 32. That's trending downward. So congratulations, Winnipeg. Montreal is up there as well, 30 to 33. Calgary, this is where things start getting sensible. 22 to 23. In Vancouver, a lovely 20 to 22 degrees. So there's that. So at least it's not the entire kind of that's in a brick oven. Correct. But, you know, we all live on that little band, right?

That little southern band right by the border with the United States. But the heat has been going north. Temperatures are breaking records everywhere. Northern Ontario hit a, this is crazy, 40.7 degrees. In northern Ontario, in Manitoba, seven communities recently broke temperature records, some of which have stood since World War II. And look, if you don't know how to deal with the heat as a human being, I can't help you. Like the elderly need our help and the, you know, if you're the homeless need to be directed to cooling stations for sure.

But if you're somebody who's been walking around the world as a fully formed human being and you're getting heat stroke because you're not attuned with what's going in your body. well, you should be. Dogs, on the other hand, they need our help. They are man's best friend for a reason. And we've got to act that way. And there are a lot of dogs out there, especially in Europe when they had their their unseasonably hot heat wave just a few weeks ago. So many dogs in Europe as well as North America have died of heat stroke.

And one British man saw a woman in the middle of the heat walking her dog and he took issue with that. Field of ground. Put your hand on the ground. Yeah? Where do dogs sweat from? Where do they sweat from? No, where do they sweat from?

Feet. Their feet. No, not all over. Their feet. The bottom of their feet. So when you're doing that, it's burning their paws, yeah? They don't need to walk.

It's not going to kill them, is it? Look, I appreciate that this man is thinking of the dogs? Because not everybody does, but he doesn't know if she's walking that dog for five minutes. He doesn't know if she needs to be. He doesn't know if that dog was complaining.

Please take me outside because I really need to go to the bathroom. So that guy doesn't know much. But he does know that he is better than the woman he is attacking. But to be honest, in the current climate that we're living in, maybe a little bit of this guy is a good idea because animal welfare organizations are reporting. Like I said, at least 47 dogs have died of heat stroke across North America. so far this season. That's 47 too many. That's 47 too many. And we saw, there's this a disturbing video in, from the UK of four iris setters on July 4th, 2025. Three of three of them,

three of them died, one survived. He was like in a car and the, it got ridiculously hot. It's terrible. It's a terrible, terrible, terrible video. It takes, Listen, we've all been in the car. We've been in the car on a hot day and we turn off the air condition. We turn off the car. And for whatever reason, we don't immediately get out. Right?

We've got a, I don't know, our wallet, our phone fell between the chairs. So our seats. So we stick our hand down there trying to grab our phone. And within 10 seconds, the temperature starts rising. Now imagine being a dog. Now imagine being a dog that cannot get out of the car. And imagine that 10 seconds turns into a minute, turns into 10 minutes, turns into 30 minutes.

And all that dog wants to know is where's my owner? Where's my best friend? And I'm getting hotter. And I'm overheating. And then the dog dies. A dies a painful, lonely, confusing death. And all dogs are vulnerable. but extra caution needs to be offered up for short-nosed dogs like pugs and bulldogs and Boston Terriers

because they can't pant officially and they struggle to cool down. Those flat-faced guys. You're a little flat-faced. Not at all. I'm French, dude. Nothing flat-faced about me. No, but I've got a pug. And he, well, he snores and snorts in the cold.

And you love that about him. Oh yeah, it's endearing. Yeah, it's endearing. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, you do have to watch because they don't breathe very well. Yeah. Well, they don't breathe well. So those are the ones that need special attention.

Of course, senior dogs and puppies. Older dogs, very young dogs have weaker immune systems, harder time regulating their body temperature. And they regulate their body temperature differently. It's true. They don't sweat the way we do. And so it's harder to tell whether they need our help or not. But it is so hot that, look, I took my dog out this morning.

for a walk. We went out until she was done. As soon as she was done, we went back inside. Which should be the rule. I mean, it is the rule. I mean, you can bring your dog out whenever you want, but you just got to be smart about it. And that's why this guy who's screaming at the woman,

like, I don't know that she took the dog on a two-hour walk. I wouldn't go on a two-hour walk when it's 35 degrees outside. I don't know why he would assume that the dog was out for too long. That guy feels like he was a little bit of a Karen. Heart was in the right place. but sort of really he let his Karen flag fly, I think. People do that. People do that.

Yeah, yeah. But of course, the fact that we know about it is because he had a phone out, which makes it, you know, you're judging this woman. I get to judge you a little bit. No, we're going to learn about dogs and what we have to do. And I think that's something that people need to do because they don't understand. And the one key question is, what's that magic number?

What is the magic number for when it's too hot for you to start, to start really considering what you were doing with your dog. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I want to know. I love my dog. My dog is sunshine in my life. She is an angel that was given to me by God. I'm not even exaggerating.

She is, oh, I will wake up in the morning, and I open the door to my son's room, and she comes out, and she just looks at me like, her day can finally start. That's what I'm seeing from my dog. And I want to take care of her. And so after the break, we're going to be talking with a vet about all of these things. What are the biggest risks to your dog?

How to avoid them? What about their paw pads, right? If it's that hot, how do you determine that? Like the paw pad situation is a big one. So we want to ask all the questions that the dog owners at home probably have never asked. I've never asked these questions before. Hey, and if you have any questions, text them into us. Yeah, text them in by 416870, 6,400.

is also AAA-1-2-1-3-2-2-25 talk. And Intrepid will be going through them as best he can. I mean, he's a little slow with the reading. Reading it's not good. Yeah. You know, I try. Yeah. Try.

Yeah, the learning for him stopped a long time ago. But we want this to be a public service announcement for all of us out there who love our dogs, and we certainly don't want to hurt them inadvertently. So that's coming up next right here on the Ben Mulroney show from Coach. to coast to coast on the chorus radio network and also on the iHeart radio streaming app. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back. And I do want to say that we've received a lot of text messages, especially even today,

asking us about the Ben Mulroney show tour. And so please do us a favor. Go to ben mulrooney.com. And all the information is there. Let us know that you want us to come to your town. Say hi. Register with us. Give us all that information so that we can then accurately decide.

where across this incredible country we want to go. It's a big country. So we want to see as much of it as possible. That's ben mulrooney.ca.orgia.com. The Hulu original series Furious is coming to Disney Plus. Starring Emmy Rossum, Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice.

And as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong, begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. He's 22. He's never seen a lake, roasted a marshmallow, or had a break from survival. Until now, Good Shepherd nonprofit homes sends adults in their care to camp. It helps them heal, breathe, and remember joy. You can give that moment of peace for just $290 or send a group for $9,500. Give the gift of healing through an escape to the outdoors. Visit goodshepardcenters.com.ca and donate today.

We are Canadian. All right. It's hot out there. It's very, very hot. And as hot as it is for you and me, we can always open a door and go inside. But our dogs are at the mercy of us, right? And if we don't appreciate that they are hot,

as well, then a lot of bad things can happen. So here to answer some really important, maybe basic questions, but important questions, is Dr. Brian Gelman from Young and St. Clair Veterinary Hospital. Doctor, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. So today is as hot as it's ever been in Toronto, or at least in recorded history. Talk to us about what's going on in our dog's body on a day that is as hot as today.

Yeah, so it's unfortunately becoming more and more common these days that we're seeing these type of heat waves. And it's a general rule of thumb we tell our clients that if you're warm, you could obviously assume that your pet is feeling that same type of temperature. There are predisposing factors. Certain breeds, unfortunately, are going to be at a higher risk of what we call heat stroke or heat exhaustion. Those are going to be what we call the brachycephalic breeds. so the ones that have those short noses that don't allow themselves to pant as well, which allows them to heat regulate.

You know, the most popular being Frenchies, but pubs, bulldogs, bulldogs, those breeds for sure are overrepresented when it comes to these types of heat stroke type of situations. And so the, I've been told you with people, that heat stroke can come on pretty quickly. Is it the same for dogs? Absolutely. Absolutely. dogs have a tougher time, tougher time heat control, you know, heat regulation or temperature regulation. They don't sweat like we do.

The only part of their bodies they actually sweat from are their paw pads. Yeah. The rest of their bodies, the rest of the body does not have sweat glands. So between them sweating from their paw pads, which obviously is a very small area, their main temperature control comes from panting. Yeah. Is there a magic number? Is there a temperature that is just at which point it's too dangerous to take them?

outside at all because I took my dog out this morning for for a quick yeah and when she was done her business we went back inside but I told my sons today I said listen she's got to go for her walk she's got to go uh you use we don't want her peeing in the house she doesn't like peeing in in the house she's embarrassed when that happens of course so I said take her outside quickly and when she does her business bring her back inside make sure she has enough water is that safe or am I doing something wrong oh no that's absolutely safe I mean honestly it's one of those things that it's common sense and I know a lot of people are like well my dog wants to go out and what I tell them is a lot of like they don't know they don't appreciate until it's too late

that their body is out of over is reaching that point so it's our responsibility to observe the environment to know that listen even five 10 minutes a you know a brachycephalic dog that might be a bit overweight that has a full coat of fur being outside a day like this for five 10 minutes like that could potentially push them over the edge. So we tell people early morning, late evening, always, you know, and even a day today, it might still be quite warm at those times. Those are always safer. And if you're warm, you know, if you're feeling that it's really, you're uncomfortable,

it's safe to assume that your pet's going to be feeling that same type of discomfort. Now, what about, you know, we had a video that we were sharing the audio of a little bit earlier of a man in the UK criticizing a woman because, how hot the asphalt was on on the dog's paws and I have no doubt that that would be hot but would the dog complain would you hear your dog complaining that it's too hot would they or would it just be business as usual these are they stoic that way it's a really good question we unfortunately do see quite quite a lot of we call like abrasive type lesions to the paw pad yeah it depends on the dog but a lot of dogs are so stoic that they'll go

about, they'll run, they'll play. We actually see a lot of this during the summer. People that have pools, dogs will be outside running around the pool with the kids, playing, playing, playing, and all of a sudden an hour later they can't walk because all four pawpads are blistered. And during the moment, they're so in tune with, you know, their mind, they have a one-track mind. It's pleasing people, right? So they're not going to notice. And then afterwards, between the heat and the, you know, running, they get these blister-like paw-pad lesions. So some of that is, unfortunately, the dog is not going to necessarily give you the feedback that you need to know what's going on. You know, darker pavement is always a bit hotter than the lighter colored pavement.

You know, it's one of the things that grass is always safer, too. You know, grass is never going to get to that temperature that cement is. You know, and listen, brief little walks here and there. If you stay in the shade, you know, you stay in the shaded regions, the shade's never going to get hot enough. I should say, usually won't get hot enough. but the sun you can't appreciate sometimes that day like today when the sun's been beating down on the sidewalk for hours. Yeah. How hot that asphalt or cement to get.

And then is it safer? I have to assume it's safer that if you can get to a park very quickly, if they could be running on grass, which will be naturally cooler, if there's shaded area, if you're near some trees, which will cool the air, that's probably a smarter bet. A hundred percent, 100 percent. But remember, even like it, obviously today is like, today is a very unusual. Hopefully it's not that cup. But even on a warm day where it's, you know, 30 degrees, being in the shade, like the way that they're going, their body temperature, some, you know, some dogs, you know, you can play with them literally till they pass out, right?

So even though they seem like they're interested in playing fetch or playing Frisbee, you have to be a little bit of the responsible one and make that call for them and be like, this is enough. I feel it to, you know, let's push this off a day. You know, you have to make that judgment call, even though your dog might be giving those eyes and whining and wanting to go again. You have to be that responsible one to know it's enough. It's just like a child. You've got to make that call for them sometimes.

Just be like, you know, be the responsible one, even though even if you don't want to. And doctor, if you are outside and is there anything that your dog you should be looking for that is a concerning behavior that tells you, I got not only have to take the dog inside, but I might have to take the dog to see the vet. Yeah, yeah. So it's really hard. A lot of heat stroke symptoms actually are a little bit delayed. So what that means is it's actually going to start happening sort of after that heat stroke has already taken effect. Uncontrolled panting is a very common sort of initial symptom weakness. So if they all of a sudden don't seem like to get stand up, having trouble walking, they seem like they're at this point where, you know, they've been playing and running with you for half an hour, all of a sudden they just can't move anymore. Like that's a big red flag. You get them to like, you know, get them to a shaded area, a cool environment very quickly. Obviously, taking them to a right to a vet.

If you're able to check body temperature, that's helpful. Also, active cooling. So we tell clients on the way in, get some water onto your, cool water onto your dog, get that wet that fur down. Don't use a towel because a towel actually keep the heat in. Okay. But active water, soaking their paws and a fan. So water, like cool water with a fan, like that's pretty much what sweat does is evaporate. You're accelerating this evaporation that will actively cool them now.

And then again, to a vet, that will hopefully stop the body temperature from rising, maybe even bring it down a little bit. And then, you know, hopefully you get to a vet within 10, 20 minutes. And then they could kind of take over from there. And is it safe to say, I think this is the last thing that we'll talk about, is it safe to say that on a day like today, there is no amount of time and no number of cracked windows that would justify keeping a dog in a parked car.

Oh, God. Oh, there is, today is not even. I would say you know, it's coming back to that original question you asked about what temperature is it, you know, is it, you could assume the park car is going to be at least 10 to 20 degrees warmer than the outside temperature, right? So if you're saying 25 is the threshold, you could assume that it could get up to in the 40s very easily in that environment. So today, I mean, it could get up to 60 in a car very quickly. Yeah. There is no reason for a dog. to be in car. Now, some of these new cars, Tesla, for example, has this dog mode model that's great, right? You could turn it on and it will temperature regulate the car when you're not there. Yeah, I still wouldn't trust it. I would not trust my, I have, in Elon, I probably trust in a lot of stuff, but I don't trust anybody the much as I trust me with my dog. 100% day like today. I'm just saying if there's an emergency, you know, I wouldn't, I would that, like a window open, like no. Like, no. Like, still with that, the rule of thumb for sure. I was just saying that, you know, kind of in the joking matter.

Yeah, I don't think. General, though, yeah, I mean, cars are the number one reason that we see dogs that are, you know, overheated heading to heat stroke. Yeah. Is people who realize I'd like to run into pick something up for 10 minutes? Nope. And that's all it takes sometimes. It's really scary out there.

Dr. Brian Gelman from Young and St. Clair Veterinary Hospital. Thank you very much. Really important information. I think you've helped a lot of us today. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Have a good one. Stay cool out there.

All right. We come back. We're joined by our good friend from the National Post. Adam Zivo, lots to talk about, including the gay crews that was some of the people on board were surprised when they were denied entry into Egypt and Turkey. We'll talk about that and a lot more when we come back. Hi, I'm Jane Koston, former writer and podcaster for places like the New York Times, the Atlantic and National Review. And now I'm here to hang out with you five days a week on what a day, Crooked's Daily News podcast. That's right. Now who's respected on both. sides. Okay, yeah, it's not me. It's probably still just Dolly Parton. Moving on. These days, it's hard to separate what matters from all the noise, especially when the noise somehow also feels like it's made out of knives. That's why every weekday, the team and I scour the headlines to bring you the stories that matter most to the way you live in just 20 minutes. Listen to the show

wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. And, you know, I don't know if it's the algorithm, but I've been seeing a lot of these videos popping up on my feeds of the gay men who are on the gay crews with over 1,900 men being blocked from entering multiple Muslim countries, including Egypt and Turkey. And that to me falls under the category of no doi, right? Like seriously, I'm not surprised. I doubt many watching this show and listening to this show would be surprised. And, you know, so many of us were perplexed by the Queers for Palestine movement.

Because, and we've, it's been said many, many times before. You're standing for a group that would probably throw you off a building if you were in that country. And so a lot of these people are surprised that, these countries have told them that due to a lack of moral standards, you're not allowed to come. That's what they say. Lack of moral standards, you're not allowed to come in. This is, this to me is, I don't know if it's the echo chamber of social media.

I don't know, I don't know what it is. But it's this confusion by certain members of the gay community that the country that they came from, be it Canada or the United States or parts of Western Europe, all of Western Europe, where you have been, you have fought very hard for the dignity that you deserve. That doesn't, that's not universal. It's not universal. It is, it is a product of an ever, an ever, increasingly fair society in the West. and countries in parts of the world where they just don't see things that way.

And so the confusion is, well, to make sense of the confusion, we're joined now by Adam Zivo from the National Post. Adam, welcome. Thanks for having me. Can you make sense of the confusion of certain gay men on that massive gay crews who have been turned away from ports of entry in Egypt and Turkey? Well, what I'll say is that many gay men and lesbians too and trans people as well in the West live in a bit of a bubble, right? And so they don't really understand the developing world and they project their own politics onto this area.

And so they assume, for example, that just because other parts of the world are, let's say, anti-Western, that they automatically have progressive notions. on gender and class justice, for example. So there's this consistent tendency for Western gays and lesbians to just undervalue the social conservatism of the developing world as well as the immigrant groups that come from these countries into the United States or Canada. Yeah. It feels to me, you know, something I learned early on in television

was just because you and your employer, have aligned interests does not mean that they have your back. And I learned that in television the hard way. But it feels like that is a lesson that needs to be learned here as well. That just because in a particular moment, you may share a similar goal, which is, I don't know, the weakening of the, you know, in a protest movement, be it, you know, the outcome of a war or a particular policy of a government, that does not mean that the two of you see the world the same way.

Yeah, well, I would agree. And so I kind of connect this mentally to this whole Queers for Palestine movements, which has been so prominent over the past two years. And I think you can subdivide that group into two different camps. So on one side, you have people who recognize the fact. that Palestinians and the Arab world more broadly are deeply homophobic, but they think that people don't have to be morally perfect in order to, like, deserve support. Yeah.

Right. So you have gays and lesbians who say, look, we know that the Palestinians and the Arab world is homophobic, but we still want them to have self-determination. And I may disagree with that in many respects. Like, you know, I think that the Palestinian causes certain issues, but at the same time, I respect that honesty. Yeah. On the other hand, you have a subset of LGBT people who think very much in black and white, right?

And so they think you have this, they think through this sort of oppressor, oppressed framework, and that all of the oppressed are morally righteous no matter what, and that all of the quote-unquote oppressors are just very, just totally evil. And so they put, you know, the error-broiled within this category of the oppressed, and because they can understand moral complexity, they don't want to think about the fact how actually this isn't just an easy game of good guys and bad guys

and how these countries are actually very prejudiced and socially conservative in many ways and don't like gays and don't like women. And so they contort themselves into pretzels to make their political framework work, which is just really bizarre to watch from the outside. Yeah. So let's go back to this specific case

of this gay cruise where you've got 1,900 people who are jonesing to get off the boat. And they were denied Turkey. They were denied Egypt. You know what's really close to Egypt? A country that would welcome them is Israel. Is that not something that they are considering?

No, they're not. Because from their perspective, they think that Israel is a terrible country. Now, you're a gay man, you've been to Israel. If they were listening, if anyone on that boat is listening, what would you tell them about what would happen if they docked in Israel?

Well, if they docked in Israel, they would right away see pride flags kind of everywhere. They'd see a vibrant gay community. They'd see so much social acceptance there. One anecdote I'd like to share is that when I was in a taxi cab to Tel Aviv from the airports last year, because I'd gone for Tel Aviv Pride, there was this big taxi driver,

very, you know, totally working class guy, I built like a bull, and he asked me if I was in a relationship. And I said, yes. And then he asked if I was going to have kids. And then I kind of told him, well, I'm gay. It's complicated. And he said, that's no excuse. That's no excuse.

It's perfectly normal here. You know, you have to have kids. It was a very Israeli experience. Yeah. But for me, it epitomized how accepted LGBT people are within large swaths of Israel, not everywhere, of course. You know, in some of the rural areas, you have people who have a bit more prejudiced. And it's a bit of an oasis in the region.

But unfortunately, many of the members of this cruise don't want to see that reality. And they're so invested in their political baggage, they don't want to take a clear view of LGBTQ rights in the Middle East. Well, you know, that's, this is a perfect time to sort of dovetail into the next part of our conversation, which is what you wrote about this week, which is this notion of, what's it, what's the, what's it called homo nationalism? And we're going to talk about that after the break because I don't know whether it's coming from on my feet, again, the algorithm or whether this, I'm glad you wrote about it because it seems

like it is a thing where there are, as there's an increasing number of gay men and women that are embracing, I don't know if it's a, I don't know if the right term is populism or conservatism, but I'm seeing more and more of these people standing up for what, or standing up for views that would be viewed as, it would be called as traditional and pushing back against the more progressive side of the LGBTQ movement. And so don't go anywhere, Adam Zivo. We're going to talk about your article next, because this is fascinating stuff. It seems like it's, it's an evolution of a movement that a lot of people thought, well, it is what it is. and it's not going to change, but change it does.

So more with Adam Zivo on the rise of homo nationalism when we come back right here on the Benmorenese show. Oh, welcome back to this show, and I'm glad that Adam Zivo was able to stick around. So Adam, on one hand, you've got these, the 1900 gays on the cruise ship, many of whom are operating under the false belief that there's no one culture that's better than another. And these cultures from the Middle East are, at least as it relates to homosexuality, they're just as good as, if not better, than the ones that they are living in. And then on the other hand, you've got what you wrote about this week, which is LGBT communities, especially in Europe, are increasingly embracing parties and politics that acknowledge that when it comes to protecting gender and sexual minorities, Western societies are morally superior. I tend to believe that we are, this Western culture is innately better because we strive to be better.

We strive for perfection, always knowing we'll never attain it. And I think that's the magic of these places. But talk to me about this movement within the gay community. My name is Peter Parker, but I'm also Spider-Man. This July, we're faced with a threat. That can be anyone. The world may have forgotten Peter Parker. I'm just a neighbor, friendly neighbor.

But he hasn't forgotten them. Sometimes Spider-Man has to do the hard thing. That's my responsibility. Talk to Banner? I didn't know you could get that big. Spider-Man, brand-new day in theaters July 31st. Adam? Well, so I want to say, first of all that I agree with you that I don't think all cultures are equal.

Blow, can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I got to say, you know, I agree with you that not all cultures are equal. And obviously there are some cultures that are better in certain respects. I think, for example, a culture that believes in women's equality is better than one than one that doesn't. And same with LGBT rights.

And this is something that kind of came up in the 2000s during the war on terror when that was the first time when you started to see, for example, American policy leaders saying that their adversaries in the Middle East were barbaric and inferior because they didn't support gay rights. And so that kind of rhetoric actually lets the coining of a term called homo-nationalism, which was developed by some gender studies professor back in 2007. So the sort of like radical queer activist academic space really latched on to this term and turned it to a popular pejorative in the early 2010s. And they would essentially denigrate anyone who was gay and nationalistic as being a homo-nationalist. So if you wanted to say, for example, oh, I think it's great that the West supports gay rights, and I think that that makes us better than other countries, and we should protect that,

the queer community, these queer activists say, oh, that's bad. That's homo nationalism. Well, this kind of discussion about homo nationalism ended up becoming more popular after the refugee crisis in Syria in the mid-2010s kind of died down a bit and has really been coming back over the past two years because the influx of refugees and immigrants who are pretty homophobic into Western Europe and Canada and the United States. Does this have, you know, you focus on Europe in the article, but my social media feeds are increasingly being populated by gay voices that seem to espouse conservative or more traditional opinions on all sorts of issues.

And I'm wondering if they're at all linked. I think they're definitely linked because we live in a fairly shared online space. And so when certain political discourse is normalized in parts of Western Europe, that has a downstream effect on political discourse in Canada and the United States. So what we're seeing right now in Western Europe is, gays and lesbians becoming much more conservative because they don't feel safe than many of their cities anymore because unfortunately many of the immigrants who have been welcomed so generously into their countries actually hate homosexuals and harass them.

In one shocking anecdote, the police chief of Berlin recently said that there are certain neighborhoods that Jews and gays should be cautious in because of the prejudice of the immigrant communities that live there, right? So, you know, there are certain parts of Berlin, for example, that you can't, it's not safe to be gay. And, you know, in the United Kingdom, I have a lot of friends who are journalists from the UK

because they work in Ukraine, and they hear this again and again and again, which is that gays and lesbians no longer feel safe there, and they're concerned about their long-term future. And so now we have recent polling data. It's not perfect. It has to methodological flaws, but it's still like pretty enlightening, which shows that populist conservative anti-immigrant parties are actually fairly popular amongst gays and lesbians in Western Europe. And so when those gays and lesbians start talking

about their concerns for immigration, their desire to have, you know, closed borders, their embrace of nationalism, well, you know, gays and lesbians in North America, we see that, and it gives a certain ideas. And we think, well, wait a sense. second, maybe we should be a bit more forceful and asking about the importance of assimilation. Yeah. You know, maybe we should ask questions about whether or not mass migration has unintended negative consequences on gender and sexual minorities. It's interesting, too.

Does this also speak to the maturation of the movement in that when certain benchmarks have been achieved, you know, for a long time, gays and lesbians, they, you know, one of the stories or one of the ways it's been explained to me is that what they really want is they wanted, they want people to stop being afraid because, you know, all we want is we want to be able to marry who we love and have families and benefit from the legal protections of, that straight couples benefit from.

And when those things are achieved, well, in a lot of ways, for a lot of people, they could put down their, put down their arms in terms of fighting for the movement. and then and let the other aspects of what they want from life to develop. And some develop into traditional conservatives and others develop into traditional liberals. Some maintain some progressive bent. But it allows them to be whoever they want to be as opposed to, well, I'm gay and therefore I have to believe X. And I'm black and I have to believe why.

Well, so what I'll say is that there's always been a division within the LGBTQ community. So you have people who are more assimilationist and who want to. banalize their orientation basically wanted to be so that you know whether they're gay or or straight is irrelevant to what kind of life that they live yeah and then on the other hand you have sort of like radical revolutionaries who want to instrumentalize their orientation or their gender identity to push for for larger social change uh you know often that means dismantling capitalism for example and um for first the more traditionalists, like the more assimilationist voices, it was hard for them to make themselves

known historically because conservative politics weren't really friendly for them. But now many Western conservative parties are welcoming of homosexuals, so you can express that there and you'll be accepted. I know on my end, I've never felt any discrimination as a gay man in Canadian center-right spaces. And there's also a resentment amongst these assimilations, gays and lesbians because they see how the radicals hijacked LGBTQ activism over the past 10 years and kind of drove everything off a cliff and alienated a lot of people and jeopardized everyone's rights in this case, all LGBT people's rights. So the assimilations now are being more vocal about the fact that they don't want to dismantle capitalism,

they don't want to radically reform society, they want to assimilate into pre-existent. institutions. So could this, I mean, we've already, we've, we've talked about, you know, the LGBTQ moniker. And, you know, some people want, just want the LGBT to go on on its own and are the LG, well, the LGB to go on on its own and have the transgender break off. Is this another cleavage point within the movement? Is there, is there a danger that the movement itself could break apart into various smaller factions? Well, I think it already is. I mean, I think there are a lot of LGBTs who feel alienated

by the T's and the Q's and feel like, you know, it's a related but still very separate movements. And they really don't like the more radical gender ideology that has become popular in the past 10 years because they feel like it's basically homophobic because it denies the importance of biological sex and then by extension denies the importance of sexual orientation. For example, when a lesbian is told that she needs to like quote unquote girl dick, that's quite alienating. But even amongst the T's and the cues, there's a cleavage too, because you have the kind of traditional transsexuals who really put an effort into transitioning, you know, went through all the hormones and surgeries, didn't want a revolutionized society, wanted to basically live as their preferred gender and to be unassuming. And they're really pissed off at the new school of transnational. genders who think that trans can be anything, that you can have a beard and still call yourself a

woman. Adam, we got to leave it there, my friend, but it was a fascinating conversation. I'm so glad to chat with you, and I hope we get to do it again soon. Sounds great. Thanks for having me.