A Pride Month Check-In Amid New Anti-LGBTQIA+ Policies

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone and here we are again, on a Supreme Court decision day. They announced their decisions right around now 10:00 AM on these decision days, they have around 30 left to announce this month believe it or not from their busy docket from this year and most of the cases you've never heard of but once again, there is anticipation in the air about whether this is the day they will announce on some of the big decisions they are having to make on abortion rights, on gun rights, on immigration rights, on climate protection.

We have Supreme Court watcher and Yale Law professor, Emily Bazelon standing by today to give us details and analysis of whatever does come down. No matter what else we're doing on the show, we will break in to announce any important decision as soon as it comes which could be any minute. Now that it's 10 o'clock.

In the meantime, we begin here. We are in Pride Month, 2022 and while there are always examples of anti-LGBTQ hate we could point to, the prevalence and politics of it feel somehow different right now than in many years past. Maybe reversing an arc of acceptance even that had been building for decades. Why do people even care who other people love or where on the gender spectrum we feel ourselves to be?

Queer rights are facing backlash by conservatives from the so-called, don't say gay law for public schools in Florida to violent right wing extremism. Trans-people are the most at the center of the hater sites, but it's generalizing to gay and lesbian people too with the laws and school policies and safety fears all forcing people more into the closet. Just this past weekend, as you may have heard, we learned that 31 men were arrested near an event called Pride Stride in the city of Coeur d'Alene Idaho for allegedly planning a riot.

Authority said they were part of the group Patriot Front, which the Southern poverty law center calls a prominent white supremacist group, which was also involved in the infamous 2017 unite the right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Somehow white supremacy and heterosexual, cisgender supremacy go hand in hand for them.

One of the leading journalists covering these trends in politics and culture and responses to them is Kate Sosin, the LGBTQ reporter focusing on transgender rights, incarceration, politics and public policy for the 19th. That's the news organization founded in 2020 on the Centennial of the 19th Amendment to the US constitution which gave women the right to vote. The full name of the site by the way is actually The 19th with an asterisk. The asterisk is because the 19th Amendment really only gave white women the right to vote at that time. Kate, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Kate Sosin: Thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Can we start with this Patriot Front alleged riot conspiracy in Idaho at a Pride event? What, according to the best information you have at this point were their plans?

Kate Sosin: We're still getting information about what happened with the 31 Patriot Front members arrested in Idaho, but what I do want to point out is that there have been three, to our knowledge, events that have happened around pride just in the last week or two.

Proud Boys were arrested after harassing a drag event in San Francisco and then in Arlington, Texas at an Adult Drag Brunch event there was a disruption by anti-LGBTQ protestors who said that they were there for the purpose of protecting children.

This is something that we have not really seen in the past at Pride events, which is violent threats escalating at these Pride events. We have seen an uptick at violence each June. Starting in 2017, we saw the greatest number of trans homicides that we had tracked and that trend in violence the antiviolence project said we saw around June which meant that visibility, as visibility ticked up, we saw that violence ticked up, but this is a new-

Brian Lehrer: Because Pride Month equals the most visibility.

Kate Sosin: This is new though to see white supremacists actually come out around these events. What seems to be happening is that these events are being advertised by far right wing accounts like Libs of TikTok on these kinds of media where then they become publicized and then we see these white supremacist groups show up and threaten these events that are supposed to be celebratory.

Brian Lehrer: You anticipated my next question because I did mention in the intro and you're commenting on that, that Patriot Front is best known as a white supremacist organization. What's the connection for them as best as you can understand it between white supremacy and targeting trans or other LGBTQ people which has nothing to do with race?

Kate Sosin: I think that is the best question that we should be asking ourselves right now, which is that a lot of us we share the same struggle which is-- one of my favorite quotes is by a gender writer, Riki Wilchins, who says, "I've come to think of gender as a system for punishes bodies for how they look and feel, who they love, for the shape and color and their size of their skin." Which is just that if you are other in this country, if you are something that is not white, if you are something that is not cisgender, if you are not a white man in this country in this moment, it is really easy the rhetoric to divide us.

I think that there is a vitriol that we are pushing in just a very small pocket of this country and it's really scary for a lot of folks. The commonalities that LGBTQ+ people, the people of color, the people with disabilities face in terms of the threats are pretty real. I think that there was a conversation that we had last year around this time when Dave Chappelle came out with his Netflix special about why are LGBTQ people coming after Black people. The conversation really could have been, what do we have in common? Why are there so many LGBTQ people of color who are under attack at this moment?

Brian Lehrer: Why do those two things seem to go together? LGBTQ people under attack and people of color under attack. We just got a tweet from a listener who writes, "Conservatives can't mind their own business. Are they so bored that they need to interfere with other people's happiness?" I'm going to take a call from Gary in Ridgewood who says he is gay and religious and wants to give a perspective on this. Gary, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Gary: Thank you for taking my call, Brian. I just wanted to say that as a person who's always been religious and has always been gay, that there's a place where I've always looked at fundamentalism whether it's Islamic fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism, whatever, Jewish fundamentalism and the objection to homosexuality, to LGBTQ people as being the creation of the other, that instead of saying, what is my responsibility to the world and to my fellow people. It's about as long as I'm not that, then I'm in the elect, as long as I don't have an abortion, as long as I'm not gay then I'm one of the good people and the other people are the bad people.

In a similar way in conservative circles, I think it's easy because this goes back to Harvey Milk saying, everybody needs to come out because so many people, there are people who just don't know gay people until someone in your family comes out. It's very easy to make gay people the other. I think that's why it's such an easy target and why it's been so connected to religion.

Brian Lehrer: Kate, you want to engage with Gary, you're relating to this.

Kate Sosin: Gary, I think that's a beautiful point and I think it speaks a lot to the reason right now why we're seeing so many attacks against transgender children in particular. We've seen rights for gay and lesbian people move really quickly and part of that is that a lot of us know gay people, a lot of us know lesbian people. When we think about a transgender child, how many of us know a trans person and specifically how many of us know a transgender kid, that's hard for a lot of Americans to picture. What I like to say to people is that's just another kid.

Gary: Exactly.

Kate Sosin: For a lot of us, that's just like we don't understand what that looks like and so it's really easy to say, this is what's happening and this is what it looks like and it's really scary and all of us are just people. We all just want to make it through the day and get our laundry done and get our work done and figure out how to make dinner. It is really a scary thing. If we can pitch this as something that's totally unknown and totally terrifying because so many of us think that gender is what makes us who we are.

Brian Lehrer: Gary, thank you very much for your call and you talk about fear. Of course we use the terms homophobia and transphobia, not just hate, but phobia meaning fear, different a little bit than racism or anti-Semitism in the way we use the language. We have a caller who I think wants to talk about that. Justine in Astoria, you're on WNYC. Hi Justine.

Justine: Yes. Thank you for taking my call again. I think one reason why the right is so focused on transphobia and homophobia is that part of their platform is replacement theory that they think either they see themselves as losing, either they're losing in the population war, if you will, either that white cisgender men are becoming less and less of the population and they think that we're part of the reason why that we're not doing our jobs.

I think that's also part of the reason why they stress traditional gender roles so much, that basically they want to turn women into incubators or Margaret Atwoods breeders. I think a lot of what is being titled as religious fundamentalism is really replacement theory.

Brian Lehrer: Do you ever run into that in your own life, Justine, as a trans woman and I'm not outing you. We know from your previous calls, you've called in and identified yourself as a trans woman, so I'm Just saying for the context for our listeners who haven't heard you before. Do you experience it in your own life at all? It's so irrational in a sense for people to think, oh if it's okay for Justine to be trans, then somehow I'm going to be trans or there aren't going to be any cisgender, heterosexual people left or in the majority.

Justine: Yes. It's almost like we can infect people. When I came out, I had a family member, a sibling who stopped speaking to me for that very reason because he thought that I was going to-- as the right likes to say, groom his kids, my nephew and my niece. That I was going to turn them into not only gay or transgender people, but they wouldn't become good breeders. I know, there is this idea that somehow I can turn. If only I had that power to turn anybody into anything.

Brian Lehrer: Justine, thank you.

Justine: I would've become the world's teacher of the year or something.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for continuing to be a presence on the show. We really appreciate it. Anybody else who's LGBTQ or anyone else may call 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. What do you think about the recent rise in homophobia, transphobia? The recent sweep of anti LGBTQIA+ bills. Do you feel personally safe after that incident in Idaho and other things? Why or why not. Anything else you want to chime in on 211-243-WNYC with Kate Sosin from The 19th, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Kate, I heard you laughing at some of Justine's funny lines there, anything you want to reflect on from their call?

Kate Sosin: Yes. Something that I think is so important to talk about is, it is true that these attacks are coming from the right. I do want to point out that these bills are not popular broadly. The country broadly supports LGBTQ rights nearly eight in 10 Americans back federal non-discrimination protections for queer people and that includes 65% of Republicans. What we're seeing here is we're seeing these lawmakers try to appeal to a sliver of their base and that's these white evangelical voters that make up a core of the Republican Party and this is one issue for them. Just one that they're trying to keep white evangelicals voting and that they're using abortion. They're using LGBTQ+ rights.

Oftentimes it's race and they're taking these more and more extreme stances to try to win the space and to try to keep that base voting, but that base is shrinking and it's shrinking year after year, polling shows us that and it's becoming more and more extreme to try to keep that base going, because they need it in order to win. We know that the country broadly does support LGBTQ+ rights and part of that is because most of us know LGBTQ+ people. I get this is a scary moment for LGBTQ+ people. I am a trans person living in this country, but I also want to offer some reassurance to people that there's a reason why this is happening and it is because the country is changing.

Brian Lehrer: The thing that the caller brought up about coming for your kids. The allegation and we hear this in connection with the so-called don't say gay bill in Florida, which is framed as a matter of parental rights and as a way to protect kids and the allegation or the fear is that the kids are being recruited in some way to gay or trans identities. We've heard that for decades honestly, but it's rising again now and how much the right is centering it as trans people are insisting on more rights and visibility and appropriate services.

What's the response from the community as you report on that community to parents who may actually fear their kids might be recruited or groomed for a gay or trans lifestyle.

Kate Sosin: You mean the response to straight parents who are worried that their kids are going to be LGBTQ+?

Brian Lehrer: Exactly that. Yes.

Kate Sosin: Kids are going to be LGBTQ+ whether or not they have the support from LGBTQ+ people or resources or not and the statistics show that a kid who is supported is 40% less likely to consider suicide if that kid has the support in the home. Kids who live in isolation, kids who do not have parents, friends, family who reflect their names or pronouns struggle intensely and study after study shows that it's not a guessing game at this point. Nearly half of kids who are LGBTQ+ have considered suicide over the past year, according to the Trevor Project and over 90% of those kids have said that the state of LGBTQ+ politics has impacted their mental health over the past couple of years.

What we're looking at is a crisis situation that we are creating. It doesn't have to be like this for our kids. I try to think about it when I was little and I was playing hide and go seek and I couldn't find a spot to hide in and you just cover your eyes and then you think, well, no one will find me if I cover my eyes. That's what we're doing with LGBTQ kids. We're like, well, if I just cover my eyes, no one will see me because that's more convenient for me.

We can't do that forever. These are our own kids and we have to just embrace what it is and love them as they are. You could worry that your kid is going to be LGBTQ, but I would be more worried that they're not going to make it because you are worried that they're LGBTQ.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a call from Tony in Westchester who has a theory about people like the members of the Patriot Front, who allegedly were going to stage that riot at a pride event in Idaho and starting, I think with the fact that all 31 people arrested as part of that allegedly conspiracy were male. Tony in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Tony: Hello. As sinister as it was when I saw all of those Oathkeepers being pulled out of that truck. It was almost like a five o'clock closing time for a dark room in Chelsea with a bunch of Chelsea boys getting kicked out of it and I think that's my point is that the right wing has always eroticized power under men and they've always been extremely at the same time threatened by the homosexual movement as not wanting to be identified with that.

In particular, that's why this is happening right now is that in this particularly small place where there's not a lot of police control, very opportunistically these extreme branch of the white supremacy movement is focusing on gays in order to differentiate them from their own masculinity. I think that's what perhaps is going on in that segment. Quite frankly, for decades, in particular, the white gay movement has eroticized that kind of aesthetic. I think that's where you're getting this weird confluence.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. When you say eroticizing power and talk about those guys who were pulled out of the truck in Idaho Patriot Front, I think not Oathkeepers for that technical distinction, but when you say it looked like they were eroticizing power like something that could have come out of Chelsea. Are you talking about a way that they dressed or carried themselves? What were you referring to?

Tony: It's like a very clean clock cut white fraternity boy look that is very popular in some segments of the white gay community and it has, and whereas-- what I was astonished at was how uniform that particular movement was in that moment in Ohio and how the aesthetic was focusing at-- we're in that point, they had to go to pride, because actually, they could be part of that. That's where the weird, but it's almost like an extreme projection that could only happen in America, I think because it was so aestheticized in this kitschy way.

I think that is in that particular segment. There's a whole lot of other stuff going on as well but I think they're focusing in a way for the other and they have to find it at Pride. If you go back to the Nazis, the same thing was happening. There was an overlapping of gay Nazis and then they were extremely cut off. There was one night when they were all basically-- You have this weird confluence in that moment. I think that's what might be going on with this sunrise of threats. I don't think it's spontaneous, I think it's planned.

Brian Lehrer: Tony, thank you, so interesting. Call us again. Wow, Kate, what are you thinking after that call?

Kate Sosin: I'm not sure what to do with that.

Brian Lehrer: You don't have to do-- we can leave it just there.

Kate Sosin: We can leave it there.

Brian Lehrer: It's hilarious and interesting at the same time, and so we're going to take a break. We'll continue with Kate Sosin from The 19th and more interesting looking calls coming in. Stay with us.

[music]

Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Kate Sosin, the LGBTQ+ reporter, focusing on transgender rights, incarceration, politics, and public policy for The 19th, the news organization founded in 2020, on the centennial of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, as we talk about the incident in Idaho this weekend, where 31 alleged members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front were arrested and charged with riot conspiracy for allegedly planning to riot at a pride event.

Other things related to that, the increase in anti-LGBTQ expression, let's say right now, along with, Kate, I think it's fair to say an increase in trans expression. 10 years ago, 20 years ago, we may have been talking a lot about gay and lesbian people coming out but we weren't talking so much about trans people coming out, and also requesting appropriate services for themselves and their trans kids in the way we are today. How do you see the relationship between the two?

Kate Sosin: That's a really good question. There's been this movement towards LGBTQ+ equality brewing, of course, I think since Stonewall, arguably, and-

Brian Lehrer: 1969.

Kate Sosin: -1969 and a lot of people have just marveled at how quickly things have moved for LGBTQ+ people and trans people have been a big part of making that push, but a lot of trans people feel like they've been left in the dust of that. Now, when marriage equality became the law of the land in 2015, the Supreme Court decision, of a [unintelligible 00:26:02]. Trans people were like, okay, trans rights now and advocates looked at trans rights to be the next thing and so did opponents of LGBTQ+ rights.

The focus shifted, and we saw these bathroom bills come up and we saw the sports bills come up, which we're seeing now, the bathroom bills' largely failed, state after state tried to ban trans people from using the bathroom, and for the most part that it didn't work and now what we're seeing is this push, and they've hit it. What seems to be a winning issue, which is kids, trans kids. Now we're hearing a lot about trans folks, for the most part, because trans folks have just been pushed to the back burner for so long.

Even though trans people have always been here, we have records of trans people since the beginning of time in every culture and so I think trans people are often treated as a novelty or something that's new, and we've existed forever. We just have been pushed back and asked to wait. This is the first time that we're really seeing trans issues pushed because a lot of LGBTQ issues have been dealt with and are considered settled law. This feels like a winning issue for the right at this moment.

Brian Lehrer: Dave in Newark is not buying all of this, or at least some of it, I think. Dave, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in.

Dave: Hey, how you doing? Thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to call and say that, I do not agree with your colleague because I feel like she's trying to politicize this topic. I think is because she says, she's right. There's always been gay people, transgender people, but that's a major decision. If you're gay, you're gay, no problem but transgender children, what if they decide to change their mind a couple of years later down the line, is their mental and emotional stability going to fall through the cracks, because I'm sure they will fall into a subtype of depression. It's like, so much of a focus to try to change everybody, instead of seeing if they're mentally able or stable to do that.

Brian Lehrer: Dave, I think the first wave of pushback to what you're saying is, nobody is trying to change anybody. They're just trying to acknowledge and accept what kids as they're growing up, may be feeling themselves and nobody's saying, if they feel one way, at a certain age, and then they feel differently at a different age, that that part of their development is to be rejected, and that they're to be locked in to, let's say, a transgender identity if they're feeling themselves to be trans at age 15. That it's really about accepting people as they express themselves, as they develop. No?

Dave: There's various ways to express themselves and [unintelligible 00:29:15] if there's a boy, and he identifies himself as a woman. There are steps I think that you go before you actually change your whole gender. Maybe you could start dressing like a woman first, steps than just say, "Oh, take these hormone blockers."

[crosstalk]

What are yo going to do when they change their mind later in life? What's going to happen? I am sure they will feel suicidal-

Brian Lehrer: I think everybody agrees with that but-

[crosstalk]

Kate, go ahead.

Kate Sosin: Let me jump in here. Dave, first of all I just want to tell you my pronouns, are they/them, and thank you, I think what you're raising is a concern that everybody has, and is a fair concern, and I think we all share your concern which is why trans kids for the most part when they're real little they don't get hormones. They don't medically transition. When we talk about gender affirming medical care for kids, what we're talking about for the most part is actually hormone blockers. This is something that's temporary and reversible so that kids can go through puberty, and they do not experience bodily changes that will make them suicidal.

If they go through puberty and they start to develop in a way that gives them gender dysphoria, then what we see are really high suicide rates for these kids. Then if they get to an age where they can make that decision with their parents, with their doctor, where they feel settled in that gender, then they can make a decision about hormones. Then they can make a decision about surgery. For the most part what gender affirming care for minors looks like is pushing a pause button on development and getting mental health services.

That is life saving care for kids, and as a trans person I can tell you, for the most part we know who we are at a really young age, that doesn't change. It's fair to want to buy some people time because I think that you probably knew that you were a boy at a young age or a girl at a young age, trans kids know who they are at a young age and still these medicines buy us lots and lots of time, so the kids can really be sure and that's all that happens.

Brian Lehrer: Dave, thank you for your call. We appreciate you raising your concerns because I think you speak for a lot of people and the concerns that they express and do call us again. Kate, I think that kind of engagement is really useful because I think he did speak for a lot of people and their deepest darkest fears about this thing. Kate, you still there?

Kate Sosin: I am here, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Before we run out of time, I guess we can say, I think we can say, I don't want to say with 100% confidence yet but it looks like we are not getting a Mississippi abortion case decision today. They're still releasing cases. There's a bunch of them coming out of the court on this decision day. They probably would've released the Roe v. Wade related decision by now if they were releasing, but they're still releasing so we'll keep you posted on that.

It looks like this is not Roe v. Wade reversal day or Mississippi law uphold while keeping Roe officially in place day. It still could be that, but I want to finish on this because you wrote in one of your articles maps of states that have passed laws that would ban abortion if the Supreme court struck down Roe v. Wade, almost mirror those that have passed anti-trans bans. Can you talk about the connection between anti-trans bills and abortion bills as you see them?

We did have the caller earlier who talked about one of the reasons that he thinks white supremacists latch onto anti-gay anti-trans politics and that it relates to abortion because they want to make sure that people like them continue to be populated.

Kate Sosin: Yes, clinics that provide reproductive services, abortion services, are some of the only places in many states that provide gender affirming healthcare for adults. Hormones, referrals for surgery, things like pap smears for trans people that are affirming and safe, and if those clinics shut down, a lot of trans people, trans men, non-binary people, and trans women don't have places to go that will be safe. Also trans men and non-binary people also get pregnant and need abortions at high rates experience sexual assault at higher rates than other folks.

It's these services that we're talking about are critical and they're often not talked about in media. We talk about abortion as a women's issue. We don't necessarily talk about it as an LGBTQ issue or as a trans issue but it really is. When we think about the fact that these maps mirror each other, it's a really important thing to point out that access to abortion is not just access to abortion.

Access to reproductive clinics also means access to other care that for the LGBTQ+ community means access to gender affirming care that is life saving. If people have to travel really far to get that, what we're looking at is going to be a crisis of healthcare in this country for queer people.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it with Kate Sosin who covers LGBTQ+ community for The 19th. Kate, thank you very much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Kate Sosin: Thank you so much for having me, Brian.

 

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