Latest / 775 Alive / Ep034: Gays Against Groomers (Guests: Palace Leavitt and Dr. Rich Guggenheim)

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Ep034: Gays Against Groomers (Guests: Palace Leavitt and Dr. Rich Guggenheim) · 775 Alive

• 0:03
  [music] Welcome to the 775 Alive podcast, your rural economics, and general global shenanigans. I'm Crystal Newton, your business strategist, breaking down why Nevada's hustle is stronger than a sagebrush root in a windstorm. Here with my trusty co-host, Scott Gavorsky, PhD historian, here to explain the smart lessons of history, even if we are likely to ignore them. Grab your boots for a wild ride through today's most important news.
• 0:31
  Scott - Hey, Scott here back down at America Fest in and talking today to some people from Gays Against Croo . . . Groomers. Sorry. Palace Levitt and Rich Guggenheim. So, thank you very much taking some time.
• 0:46
  Palace - Thanks for having us.
• 0:50
  Scott - So what do you all do in terms of your roles in the organization?
• 0:56
  Gays Against Groomers.
• 0:56
  Scott - Okay.
• 1:02
  is good, media and legislation. As we've been talking about here, of course, one of the issues we're dealing with, uh, just give you a little background. I'm from Elko County. Crystal's from Humboldt, which is the neighboring county. Elko is the fourth largest county in the country, 17,000 square miles, about 60,000 people, but it's also the youngest county in the state, right? And it has held that position for decades. And of course, one of the things that comes with is we have a growing homosexual population out in the rurals just like we do elsewhere. So question number one, what does your organization do? And then I'd like to talk a little bit because I think you've done some outreach and done some work in the rurals, Rich. So talk about that. So . . . .
• 1:47
  Palace - So we are Gays Against Groomers. We are an organization composed of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and others in the community that are adamantly against the medicalization, the uh the indoctrination and the mutilation of children all under the guise of LGBT love and acceptance. What we have found is that gender-affirming care is not care. It's the biggest child abuse scandal that the world has ever seen and it's unraveling before our very eyes.
• 2:13
  Scott - Okay. And Rich, you you actually knew where Ely was. So kudos in our book, right? Key part of the 775.
• 2:20
  Rich - Yeah, I've actually driven through Elko myself, so this too.
• 2:28
  Scott - You stop at the Star?
• 2:33
  you know, I know that you guys have a new LDS temple out there.
• 2:33
  Scott - Oh, yeah. Yes, we do. Yeah, the Star is a little Basque restaurant. We have a lot of Basque sheepherders out there. So, um, so that's one of the things that sort of uh that we started talking about here today. Crystal and I have been sort of discussing how to do a show covering sort of the rural gay community and how their needs differ from the urban community. In your guys experience, do you see a difference? Do you see that a lot of these issues and tensions are cutting across that divide? Is the transgender grooming thing much more an urban phenomenon?
• 3:06
  Palace - I think that it's a phenomenon that's happening all over the country and all over the world. It's subversive ideology that is being infiltrated into American values, into Western societies. It's . . . it's coming at an alarming rate. It and it's, you know, when we look at, you know, if we're taking like the macro view of it, it's the teachers unions that are pushing it. It's legislators that are pushing it and they're all in tandem pushing this subversive ideology onto children. And so, yeah, I mean, I . . . probably Rich speak more about that.
• 3:42
  Rich - Yeah. You know, it is it is something that as I've traveled to . . . I have literally traveled to every single county in the state of Colorado. I have seen this in states like Wyoming. If you've ever heard the story of January Littlejohn, she is from Florida. And so I talked to parents in some of the most remote school districts in the country and they all tell me the same thing, like this is happening in our classrooms, in our schools, to our children in rural red America. And so a lot of people think that they're safe. There's no safe place from this right now. The only way to protect your children from this, regardless of where you live, is to pull your child out of public school. So I do see it all across the country. And part of the reason for that is during the Biden administration, even back in during the Obama administration, they started building this into how schools would receive federal funding. So it was do this survey. If you get this, then this, this result then this is what you need to teach the children and then do this survey. Teach this get the money do this teach the money. So it literally became built in . . . the gender ideology and queer theory became built into the curriculum in order for the schools across America to receive federal tax dollars. And so in order for us to really reverse that, it's up to federal legislation to be passed that pulls that funding back.
• 5:08
  Scott - Right. Well, and that's . . .
• 5:14
  it's sort of sad, because one of the things we just happened, like I said, we're the youngest county in the state. And our school district just basically is on is going broke, right, as of just a couple weeks ago. This came out of the school board meeting. And a large part of it is how many children have been pulled out of that school district. It's not that we're a rural area where where the children are just disappearing. It is a conscious choice of parents either to send them into homeschool. We've got two charter schools that are booming, right? And there seems to be a real dynamic. What do you do? And this might be a little bit odd, but you're on the you're on the legislative side. How do we address the problem that so many rural school districts generally are starved from funds in part because legislators are in urban areas and think rural areas are dying. And then we do something like this that pulls another set of funding away from it. Or is there some balance that probably needs to be struck and how how does one do that?
• 6:14
  Rich - I would go back politics. And the proper ask what the question the question that we should be asking is what is the proper role of government, right? And should we have the federal government overseeing funding for schools? Or should funding for schools be tied to local control and the local school boards and the citizens in that school district going to the ballot and saying, "I'm going to vote in favor of this or not in favor of this based on the outcomes that that school district is giving to the parents and how the children are performing in this." Scott - Okay. Very good. And of course, we've had a lot of . . .
• 6:52
  uh, I don't know how much you were doing with the the recent Nevada legislature. If you don't know, Nevada is one of the four states where the legislature only meets once every two years.
• 6:57
  Rich - So, yeah. Every other year.
• 7:02
  Scott - And so this had, there was not only the boys and girls bathrooms issue. We've had a big controversy where our lieutenant governor helped the bill get rammed through that prevent boys and women's sports. But also a whole range of down ballot uh . . . or not down ballot, but down legislative appeals on stuff like giving librarians free reign to put whatever they want libraries with parents not having any control. Um you know, not just in public libraries where maybe there is an argument, but in school libraries where there really shouldn't be, right? Were you following any of that or those the types of strategies?
• 7:43
  Rich - I actually was. I . . . as a bills last year. So there are a lot of bills that I was tracking across the country.
• 7:53
  the importance of this to somebody.
• 7:53
  Rich - It does but it's not that . . . and I think that answers another question that you asked earlier is this isn't just a . . . an urban issue. This really is a rural issue and we're seeing this play out across every single state in the country right now. In fact, we're actually seeing this play out across the world right now. And I think that when we start looking at what this is, this is incidious. And we're start . . . we're talking about the fact that they want to start introducing sexually explicit content and books that talk about sexuality, gender identity, queer theory to children as young as 2 years old. And I think that's an issue that we need to really get in front of. We need to expose that because my question to those people who think that this is inclusive, it's not inclusive. And we really need to be asking why do you want a 2-year-old to become a sexual being?
• 8:43
  Scott - Right.
• 8:50
  the stripping away of parental rights. That is something that we are seeing at the local level with school boards and with legislation that's being passed in places like Colorado and California where they're trying to remove that kind of parental guidance from anything having to do with the curriculum. So when we're taking this macro view of education and children and parents, it's very clear that there is a dark agenda of removing parents from this equation and grooming kids under the guise of loving kindness, sexually explicit material. Like why, why is that happening? And so when you see, when you see um you know a lot of the the kids are being removed from the public education, there's a reason for that. And they're going to be looking for alternatives. They're already doing it now. And so either that's going to be something that's an organic homegrown like you know co-op kind of situation with with education or if the Department of Education entirely just needs to be removed and you know built up from the ground up. It's a very, very interesting time that we're in but it's a lot of this is being raised to the surface for a reason. So . . .
• 9:51
  Scott - Yeah.
• 9:51
  Rich - I think it's also really when you is when you have legislation that is passed where schools are putting these books into the classrooms and parents aren't able to remove them and parents aren't aware of what's being taught. And then you look down the road where legislation is being passed in these states that say a child in a school as young as 12 years old can receive medical care without parental knowledge or consent. And that leads to things like gender-affirming care being given and administered to the child without parental consent. What that does is that erodes that trust that should exist between a child and their parent and a parent and their school district. And so if we really want to look at what's happening here, is it goes back to the fact that parents do not trust the government to educate their children without interfering and stripping parents of their rights to raise their child as they see fit. And that is an abuse of power.
• 10:42
  Scott - Yeah. And are you aware of our Ballot Question Six coming up?
• 10:47
  Rich - I am not aware.
• 10:55
  actually is about enshrining increased abortion rights into the Nevada state constitution. But one of the things they do is they adapt from a part of Nevada's revised statutes that identifies medical providers who would be capable of giving abortion pills down to like, you know, school teen nurses and stuff like this. Which gets back to what you're saying. Okay, so you know abortion might pass whatever one thinks about that. It's really problematic when you have a sports coach for 12, 13 year olds prescribing medicine and not being obligated to tell the parent who who then is sort of left with the legal and ethical and moral burden of taking care of that child. Right? So, I know there's going to be a lot of activity about Ballot Question 6 in November uh coming up here in 2026. And again, folks. Sorry, we've got the we got the noise here. Can I turn just one more to another side of the coin? Of course, you are gays against groomers, right? What issues do you see emerging here within rural homosexual communities? Is there anything baked into sort of ease, you know, what they're going through as well? Because this is something that had been talked about heavily for 30 years. And you know, I imagine it's part of your outreach and part of your interest, of course.
• 12:15
  Rich - You know, one of the things that I see with this issue is a lot of people assume that all LGBT people, LGBTIQA plus, whatever you want to identify as, we're all supposed to think and vote the exact same way. And that's really antithetical to what we as gays and lesbians fought for. We fought for the freedom to be able to think for ourselves, to express ourselves. We wanted the freedom and liberty to live authentically. And so we . . . it's a sexual orientation, not a political identity. And unfortunately, a lot of these legacy LGBT organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, GLAD, Listen, they've shifted away from that and they've created an environment. And a lot of these state lobbying groups have that advocated for gay and lesbian rights have shifted toward more of this gender ideology, trans rights things. And what that has done is it has created an environment that is hostile toward anyone who speaks out against that narrative. And the reality is I do this all the time. I live in a very, very blue state in a very blue city. And I speak out about it and I . . . my dog's groomer. It's two gay men. And I was walking the dog down the street one day and they they came out. They're like, "Rich, I googled you, and you are all over the internet." I'm like, "Oh man, here we go." And they're like, "You know what? My husband and I agree with everything you're doing. And I get that constantly whether I'm on online or whether I'm in person. I have so many gays and lesbians who will come up to me like we agree with you and thank you so much for saying what you're saying. And it encourages them and it emboldens them to speak out. And I think that's really, really important is it's we fought for the right to live authentically and we should not allow this attack come, to come from inside the house.
• 13:59
  Scott - Right. Right. Well, Palace, this is your sort of opportunity. If somebody's more interested in your group and wants more information, how they can they get hold of y'all? They can contact us at gaysagainstgroomers.com. We're on social media, on Instagram, gays against . . . actually, yeah, Instagram is gays against groomers, on Twitter or X, it is against groomers. Um, yeah. So, we're on social media. We have a new Substack, too, as well. So, I think it's gaysagainstgroomers.substack.com. Um, yeah, we're online.
• 14:35
  Rich - And the podcast. We have the Dark Side of the Rainbow podcast.
• 14:40
  name. Well, thank you for taking some time to talk with us today. This has been really good. And for everybody out there, we might see about doing something, work with your team and and do some further conversations, but until then, we'll see you around the 775.
• 15:09
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