Latest / Surviving-ISH Podcast / Why Are Some Gay Men Saying They Support Trump? | Social Media Trend Breakdown

Transcript

Why Are Some Gay Men Saying They Support Trump? | Social Media Trend Breakdown · Surviving-ISH Podcast

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome guys.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: So today I need us to have a very honest, uncomfortable conversation about something that I keep seeing in the LGBTQIA community.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, wait, let me backtrack.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I personally have only seen it in the white male gay community.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's driving me absolutely crazy.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Lately, I'm finding that when I'm scrolling through social media, there's a specific group of gay people, mostly the cisgender white gay men, standing up and saying, I support Trump.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I support this administration.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't lost any of my rights.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me what rights I've lost.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: So what is everyone complaining about?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a gay man standing on that stage claiming that everything is fine, just because your marriage certificate is still sitting in the drawer and your bank account isn't okay, you're operating under a dangerous level of privilege and denial.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So today, what I want us to do is break down the brutal truth.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I want us to look at the actual laws, the court decisions, the paper trial.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because the idea that we can throw people within our own community, but any marginalized person, period, under the bus and to have the audacity to think that the MAGA movement will leave us alone in the end, that's completely false.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Take Mike Pence, for instance.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: He is a straight, wealthy Republican Christian white man.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And January 6th, they sought to hang him.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: We are not safe.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: None of us are equal, none of us are safe until we are all equal.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk about this.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: But when you are a middle class or wealthy white cisgender gay man, society almost gives us a buffer.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: We can walk down the street, and most people might not even know that you know you're gay unless you tell them you fit into these traditional corporate spaces.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you own a house, you pay your taxes.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So when you look at the news, it's easy to think, well, Trump isn't talking about closing gay bars, and I can file joint taxes with my husband, so why should I care?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: My opinion is that as a white gay male privilege in a nutshell, it's the belief that as long as the fire hasn't reached your specific room, the house isn't on fire.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: But history teaches us a very clear lesson.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Civil rights are not a criteria menu where you get to pick and choose who it protects.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: The entire modern LWTQIA plus rights movement wasn't started by suburban gay men in suits playing it safe.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was started at Stonewall by trans women of color, drag queens, lesbians, and the street youth who had nothing left to lose.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So when I see gay men standing here today and say, I've got mine, so I don't care about the rest, you're betraying the very foundation of how you got your freedom in the first place.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what's worse than that is these gay men are ignoring the fact that the legal tools being built to crush trans people today are the exact same tools that will be used to strip their rights away tomorrow.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I have found that when I bring this conversation up to conservative gay men, I get the same talking point.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump isn't doing that.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Those are just state laws.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's local governors, not the president.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let's dismantle that lie with actual facts right now.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, who do you think enabled those states to pass the laws in the first place?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Donald fucking Trump.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: During his time in office, Trump appointed over 200 federal judges and three Supreme Court judges.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: He packed the federal courts with far-right judges who were handpicked by conservative groups like the Federalist Society.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Even when the Supreme Court overturned Roby Wade, Clarence Thomas explicitly wrote in his concurring opinion that the court should reconsider all due process cases.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know which two cases he named specifically?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's Lawrence versus Texas.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to read this.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Lawrence versus Texas, and that is the 2003 Supreme Court case that decriminalized being gay in your own bedroom.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then Obergetel versus Hodges, the 2015 case that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the two specific cases.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Justice Thomas literally put a target on marriage equality and gay privacy rights.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: The only reason red states are embolted right now to push anti-LGBTQIA plus laws is because Trump built a federal court system that is waiting for a test case to strike those rights down nationwide.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: All right, now I want to talk about the federal executive power.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Through executive actions and federal agency rulings, the administration has rolled back non-discrimination protections.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: They've stripped away health care protections from the Affordable Health Care Act and ordered federal agencies to strip away gender identity and sexual orientation definitions from federal programs.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So don't tell me this is just states.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I want us to talk about what's actually happening in red states across the country.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: In states such as Florida, Texas, Idaho, Tennessee, Oklahoma, where MAGA Republicans hold supreme majorities.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, civil rights groups are tracking over 500 active anti-LGBTQIA plus bills in state legislators.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of gay men look at these and say, well, those are mostly anti-trans bills, so it doesn't affect me.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Are you sure about that?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let's break down the laws and how they directly hit cisgender white gay men.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: So first, I want us to talk about the attack on healthcare and community fundings.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so when red states and federal orders ban or defund programs under the guise of stopping gender ideology, it impacts entire health networks.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Community health centers and HIV and AIDS clinics in Red States have lost federal and state grants simply for providing inclusive care.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Programs that provide PrEP, SCI testings.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: When you attack the clinics that serve trans people, you shut down the clinics that keep gay men healthy.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so now let's talk about drag bans and what is this, the public expression laws, I guess.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Red states pass sweeping laws targeting adult cabaret and gender non-confirming performances in public spaces.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: The wording in these bills is so broad that it doesn't just target trans people, it criminalizes drag queens, gay men who don't perform traditional masculinity, the pride festivals that are held in public parks.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: If your state can police what clothes you wear or how you express yourself in public, they are policing gay culture as a whole.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have the don't say gay.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess this is more on like the educational side, right?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's educational censorship.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: These laws didn't stop trans issues.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: They banned teachers from even mentioning same-sex parents or gay history in the classrooms.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: They've even pulled books about gay men from the public libraries.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: They erase our history from schools.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: If your marriage and your life is a threat, then that can't be spoken aloud around children.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: You haven't preserved your dignity and you're being pushed back into the closet.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, what if you and your husband had a child, two dads?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Which dad gets to be spoken about in school and which one gets put in the closet?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: So now I want to talk about the religious exemption laws.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Red states have passed laws allowing businesses, adoption agencies, doctors, and landlords to refuse service based on sincerely held religious beliefs.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: That means a doctor can refuse to treat you, an adoption agency can refuse to let you and your partner adopt a child, and a business can turn you away at the door, and the state will protect them.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Not you.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a legal domino effect to this.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about that legal strategy for a minute.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity violates the Civil Rights Act.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that that was a huge win.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: But do you know what the legal reasoning was?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: The court ruled that you cannot discriminate against a gay person or trans person without fundamentally discriminating on the basis of sex.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: So now look at what conservative groups and MAGA state legislators are doing.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: They're passing laws that explicitly redefined sex strictly as binary, biological, reproductive sex at birth, completely separating it from gender identity and sexual orientation.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all, they're doing that on purpose.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: If they successfully dismantle the legal definition of sex discrimination in federal courts, the entire foundation of Bosock collapses.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Once Bosock falls, there's zero federal protection keeping your boss from firing you on Monday morning just because he found out that you have a husband.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Every single legal challenge against trans people is a test run for dismantling the legal protections of gay men.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: When they chip away at the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause to ban trans health care or strip away identity documents, they are chipping away at the exact same clause that protects your rights to marry who you love.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the brutal truth for any gay man listening to who thinks he can cozy up to MAGA and save himself.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: You are a member of a club that doesn't actually want you.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: They will use you as a political token on your television when it's convenient to prove they aren't homophobic.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: They will clap for you when you criticize trans people or trash progressives.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the moment you demand equal protection under the law, the moment you want to raise a family with your husband in a red state or the moment they no longer need your vote, you'll realize where they actually stand.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: History is full of marginalized people who thought if they acted respectful enough, wealthy enough, or quiet enough, the authoritarian machine would pass them by.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Authoritarian movements always need an enemy, and once they finish stripping away the rights of the most vulnerable among us, they'll move right down the line to you.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that long ago when we were then.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that long ago when we were the enemy, when we were the target.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: In my opinion, if we want to survive as a community, we have to wake up.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: We cannot let privilege blind us to what is happening right in front of our eyes.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: When a trans kid in Idaho or Texas loses their health care, that is an attack on all of us.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: When a school board in Florida bans a book about a gay couple, that is an attack on all of us.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: When a red state governor signs a bill allowing businesses to turn away queer people, that is an attack on all of us.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: None of us are equal unless all of us are equal.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: We need to stop letting them divide us, stop pretending we're safe just because you're comfortable and start sending up for the entire community.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Don't let them trick you into selling out your own people.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you all next week.