James Dobson and Focus on the Family face scrutiny over their anti-LGBT activism, specifically the 2008 "Letter from a Christian in 2012" sent to millions predicting false Obama-era agendas like same-sex marriage by 2010. The episode details the harmful "Love One Out" conversion therapy ministry, which claimed homosexuality stemmed from parenting mistakes despite scientific consensus and links to increased suicide rates among LGBT youth. While Mike Pence praised Dobson as a mentor, John Oliver exposed these practices, prompting Jim Daly to defend counseling options even as Colorado banned such therapies for minors. Ultimately, the discussion highlights the dangerous legacy of conversion therapy and urges support for legislative bans to protect vulnerable youth. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Financial Literacy Month Kickoff00:02:21
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
On paper, the three hosts of the Nick Dick and Poll Show are geniuses.
We can explain how AI works, data centers, but there are certain things that we don't necessarily understand.
Better version of play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Yes, which by the way wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time.
I actually, I thought it was.
I got that wrong.
But hey, no one's perfect.
We're pretty close, though.
Listen to the Nick Dick and Paul Show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
Coming up this season on Math and Magic, CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario.
People think that creative ideas are like these light bulb moments that happen when you're in the shower, where it's really like a stone sculpture.
You're constantly just chipping away and refining.
Take to interactive CEO Strauss Selnick and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.
Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating Wall Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
There's an economic component to communities thriving.
If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they've failed.
Listen to Eating Wall Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
This is Amy Robach, alongside TJ Holmes from the Amy and TJ podcast.
And there is so much news, information, commentary coming at you all day and from all over the place.
What's fact, what's fake, and sometimes what the F.
So let's cut the crap, okay?
Follow the Amy and TJ podcast, a one-stop news and pop culture shop to get you caught up and on with your day.
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Behind the Bastards Intro00:03:55
Hello, audience.
I'm not the audience.
I'm the person who makes things for the audience.
Robert Evans, this is my podcast, Behind the Bastards.
Only this week it's not because this is part two of Garrison's armed coup against, you know, to usurp all of my powers.
So once again, nothing coup if you just say let somebody take over.
There's guns near him.
I'm Robert Evans.
I brought a baton.
He brought a baton.
I just want to say that he's 18 because that statement was very sketchy.
Yeah, he's 18.
It's fine.
This is Behind the Bastards.
We talk about bad people, and this is part two of the episode that Garrison wrote, which is the first reversing of the status quo we've had on this show.
Garrison.
Hi.
What are we, what are we, what are we, what are we talking about today?
Last episode, we were talking about the history of Focus on the Family and particularly James Dobson, its founder.
Jay Dobbs.
Today, we're going to mainly talk about gay conversion therapy.
Woo!
Yeah.
Yeah, this will be a fun one.
Nice little light topic, but we're going to start off with something actually a little bit more fun.
Okay.
We're going to ease our way kind of into the less fun things.
So, yeah, last week we're talking about Focus in the Family, how it started, you know, Dobson getting very politically active during the Reagan years with getting put on a whole lot of weird government boards that he was not qualified for.
And then we learned about his media empire.
And remember that database that he was putting together?
Yeah, yeah, the gigantic mailing list.
Huge, like millions and millions of people's mailing lists that all the Republican lawmakers wanted to become friends with Dobson so that they could have access to this mailing list.
Yeah, yeah.
Why else would you be friends with someone?
That's the only reason I know you is your incredible mailing list.
So yeah, anyone who communicated with them was added to his mailing list.
Huge thing.
In 2003, so like the last time you heard about this mailing list was around like 95.
It's when it had like 4 million names.
So it's only been added two cents.
It's hard to come up with exact numbers because they didn't really talk about it that much because it's, you know, they shouldn't.
Like for them, it's not in their best interest to really publicly talk about it.
Yeah.
Yeah, because then people will think that they're just numbers on a list to these people who are pretending to be spiritual advisors.
Yeah, pretending to be your friend.
Yeah.
So in 2003, Dobson actually stepped down as acting president and the chief executive officer of Focus and the Family.
He was still remaining like the figurehead over the organization, just less involved in day-to-day activities.
As we'll learn, most of the day-to-day activities in the 2000s were being extremely homophobic and campaigning against the gay agenda.
And what is, give me a heads up.
What is the gay agenda?
Well, we'll find out what Dobson thinks it is.
What they think is the gay agenda.
Because that's a term that they used.
Okay, yeah.
It kind of got very popular for...
If I remember being a conservative kid well enough, the bulk of the gay agenda had to do with the TV show Will and Grace, but I don't remember much else from my Republican days.
Yeah, we'll get into details on what they think the gay agenda is.
But before we get to that kind of depressing stuff, let's ease into the most funny homophobic thing that Dobson and Focus and the Family ever did.
Oh, good.
I love a little light-hearted homophobia from a man with incredible wealth and power.
So this is probably the best thing that's ever been done with this database ever.
In October 2008, about a month before the 2008 presidential election, Dobson secretly wrote and sent out this letter titled, A Letter from a Christian in 2012.
Boy Scouts Homophobia Debate00:14:32
I would love to just read this letter in its entirety.
But because it's all of, because it is absolutely magnificent, but it's over 9,000 words, which is about as long as these two podcasts combined.
Yeah, that's about two hours with commentary.
So I will have to go over some of the highlights and kind of give just a general gist.
The concept of this letter...
It's spelled, it's pronounced Gist.
Gist?
Gist.
General Gist?
It's a General GIST.
That doesn't sound right.
I know, because that was a lie, Garrison.
Yeah, that was a lie.
I was trying to make you be as bad at pronouncing things as I is.
The concept is that this letter was written in 2012 by a Christian warning those in 2008 what will happen if the then far-left radical Barack Obama was elected in 2008.
I will just read off the opening of this letter just so you get kind of the mood of what the piece is going to be.
Here's how it starts.
October 22nd, 2012.
Dear friends, I can hardly sing the Star-Spangled Banner anymore.
When I hear the words, oh, say, does that star-spangled banner wave over the land of the free?
I get tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat.
Now in October of 2012, after seeing what's happened the past four years, I don't think I can still answer yes to that question.
We are not the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Many of our freedoms have been taken away by a liberal Supreme Court and a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate.
And hardly any brave citizen dares to resist the new government policies anymore.
The 2008 election was closer than anyone expected, but Barack Obama still won.
Many Christians voted for Obama.
Younger evangelicals actually provided him with the needed margin to defeat John McCain, but they didn't think he would really follow through with all the far-left policies that had made his career.
They were wrong.
Far-left policies, like doing everything a Republican would do except for being shitty on abortion and to gay people.
Well, even in 28, Obama wasn't even for gay marriage.
No, he was not.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, basically, a Republican, but not as not bigoted as much.
So, like, I wasn't around, I wasn't paying attention to the 28 election because I was like six.
So, like, I don't let's not let's not dwell too long on that.
Continue.
So, like, I don't, like, I've heard legends of what Obama's campaign was like to rule.
I heard it was like very progressive in nature, but didn't actually get followed through.
And so, like, I'm trying to understand from a Republican perspective, like, were they actually like, did it actually make sense they were scared of like this far-left radical?
Or was it now with Biden where like, no, he's not at all?
Like, he's not even pretending to be.
He was a little more, he, he definitely was playing to the progressive side, whereas Biden's playing to the conservative side.
But, like, the stuff he was talking about, like, there was talk of, you know, improving health care.
He was going to close Guantanamo Bay.
He was going to not get the U.S. into wars.
But, like, he did a lot of things.
There wasn't a lot of, there wasn't a lot of, like, he wasn't promising like social life, full socialized medicine.
He wasn't promising, like, he was promising, you know, improvements, but he wasn't promising, like, we're going to be like, you know, have an NHS like the UK.
And he wasn't promising like basic income.
Or like, he was not, he was running for the, towards the progressive wing, but like, like you said, he wasn't even backing gay marriage at that point.
And here's the thing: even though even though Barack Obama is toted as this progressive, in reality, Joe Biden is more progressive than Barack Obama, which looking at your face now, you're like, huh?
Yeah.
But if you're going off of records.
If you're going off of record, you're not in what Biden is running on now is technically you could consider more progressive than what Obama did.
Correct.
And looking at like their records, et cetera, et cetera.
But if you're looking at like the, I guess, social side of it or the, you know, PR side of it, you definitely people looked at Barack Obama as this extreme liberal progressive movement when it really wasn't anything of that.
It was just, he was just a Democrat.
He was a Democrat after like the worst Republican ever had been president for eight years.
Say that in 2020, Rob.
I don't know.
I'm still giving the edge to Bush because Trump has not started two new wars.
I'm sorry.
Like, we'll see.
Trump still has the chance to be worse, but at this point in 2020.
We're going to agree to disagree.
Garrison, finish your sentences because I'm going to punch Robert through the iPad.
I mean, Trump got a lot more Americans.
I'll say this.
Trump was a worse president domestically because he got a lot of Americans killed.
I agree with that.
George W. Bush did a hell of a lot more international damage.
And so what this letter is going to be detailing for this far-left agenda is written by a conservative who was born in the 30s who is again secretly wrote this and sent it out to everyone on his database.
Right.
So like, it's just they just receive a letter from a Christian in 2012.
That's, oh, God.
Right.
It's like, this is the concept of the letter.
And he's going to describe all of the things that he thinks is going to be, is going to be doing.
I bet these have all happened.
Yeah, these things are all absolutely exactly what happened.
So the first, the main problem that the author, secretly James Dobson, writes about is the Supreme Court because Obama makes a six to three far left Supreme Court.
Yeah.
Imagine having one party with that kind of dominance of the Supreme Court.
What a nightmare.
What a nightmare that would be if we had a six to three Supreme Court leaning on one side.
Yeah.
Unfathomable.
Yeah, it could never happen.
So I'm going to read the first major change the far left liberals enact.
So I'm going to start.
I'm going to quote from the letter here.
The most far-reaching transformation of the American society came from the Supreme Court's stunning affirmation in early 2010 that homosexual, quote, marriage was a quote, constitutional right that had to be respected in all 50 states because laws barring same-sex marriage they broke the equal protections clause in the constitution.
So he discusses how he thinks same-sex marriage is actually not constitutionally protected because of these dumb things.
Whatever.
He gets very mad.
He writes, suddenly homosexual marriage was the law on the land in all 50 states.
No state legislator, no state Supreme Court, no state constitutional amendment, not even Congress had any power to change it.
The Supreme Court had ruled and the discussion was over.
This was a blatant example of creating law by the court instead of just interpreting it.
For homosexual marriage was mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, nor would any of the authors have imagined same-sex quote marriage could be derived from their words.
So this is the first huge change that happens in America.
I mean, that did happen.
Not by 2012.
But not in 2010.
It happened in 2015.
Much later on.
So now the fun part of this letter is that we get to hear about all of the bad things that have happened because of this ruling.
Because this ruling is very important.
I'm excited to hear how it's collapsed society.
If you remember from the last episode, in 2004, Dobson wrote this whole book called Marriage Under Fire.
Yeah, I do.
Maybe you're not I mentioned that in the last episode.
I know I mentioned it later, which is all about what will happen to this country if homosexual marriage becomes a thing.
So now he gets to write this very fun piece of fan fiction of orgistic fiction.
Excellent.
Speculative fiction about what this change does.
So the letter details far-reaching changes due to this decision.
The first impact, the letter writes, is that the Boy Scouts are no longer an organization.
This is the first thing she cites.
Yeah, okay.
They banned the Boy Scouts.
So the Boy Scouts, quote, chose to disband rather than be forced to obey the Supreme Court decision that they would have to hire homosexual scout masters, which just sounds like good workplace discrimination laws to me.
You know, it's like it's that one of the reasons that's kind of wild to me, just I guess it's not surprising because, again, I grew up in this world.
But the first gay person that I ever knew personally was a kid about a year older than me who I was an academic decathlon with in high school.
And we were both in the Boy Scouts, and he was about to finish his Eagle Scout.
And one day we were alone in this little classroom that we had.
And he just kind of blurted out that he was gay and then asked me not to tell anybody because he didn't want to lose his eagle.
And that was like, I was still very hardcore, like right wing at this point.
But that was like my first, that was in retrospect, kind of one of the first cracks in my worldview because it was like, well, okay, I like this guy.
This guy's a friend of mine.
Like, why is he so scared of admitting this thing?
That doesn't seem good.
Yeah, that doesn't seem like a good thing to anyone.
It's a little off topic.
No, but yeah, no, yeah.
Like that, then it's a real thing.
When I was, when I was growing up in the conservative circle, that was actually a big fear is if, is if gays are allowed in the Boy Scouts.
Oh yeah, that was a hotly debated topic on a lot of person's sites.
Yeah.
It still is, I think.
Yeah, but stuff has changed since then without how the Boy Scouts as an organization operates where it's less of a big deal, but it used to be really a huge big deal.
Robert received the end of the world.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I learned a lot of great stuff in the Boy Scouts.
I really enjoyed my time in the Scouts.
Not to whitewash the various significant problems that organization has, but yeah, it was a good experience for me.
So the letter also details about the Boy Scouts.
Quote, it had became increasingly difficult for the Boy Scouts to find a meeting place anyway because in 2009, Congress and President Obama signed an expansion of the Civil Rights Act, which extended federal civil rights protections to people engaging in homosexual behavior.
So the Proud Boys have been kicked out of all public facilities.
No, no, not Proud Boys.
Sorry, I'm thinking of, there's a big fascist rally tomorrow.
So I'm thinking of Proud Boys.
No, the Boy Scouts had been kicked out of all public facilities.
Because there's like the Boy Scouts have become public enemy number one under Obama's justice system.
I love it.
So they've been kicked out of all public buildings because of their homosexual rules.
Think of how much more fun today would be if the government was going full bore after the Boy Scouts and not Antifa, just running down 12-year-olds in the street, throwing them into unmarked vans, Cub Scout troops disappearing in the night.
Because they don't like gay people.
That's why the government's putting them down.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe they didn't tie one of their rope nonsense.
Webelos in Guantanamo.
Oh my God, that would be funny.
I'm so sorry, Garrison.
Please continue.
Other aspects of this far-left failing state are that schools now teach gender science and incorporate queer studies into their sex ed.
Oh no!
As a result, quote, tens of thousands of Christian teachers either quit or were fired.
And many Christian private schools chose to shut down rather than be forced to, quote, obey the law and teach that homosexuality and heterosexuality are both morally good choices.
So all these Christian schools shut down because they would have been forced to teach that both homosexuality and heterosexuality are like okay.
Yeah.
And this is the thing.
And tens of thousands of teachers quit rather than do that.
Than do that.
Also, Dobson was very upset that you talk about gender now in sex ed?
I don't think we should talk about gender at all.
I don't think there should be genders.
I think everyone should just, I think when it's time to breed, you should just have one large group of people ejaculate into a pool and then another group of people swim around in it.
And if children happen, that's the only thought anyone ever gives to it.
If you can incorporate that into a gender abolition argument, maybe you can get Dobson on board based on what he wrote there.
I think he and I are allies on this.
No more gender.
Yeah, we can figure something out.
We can email him.
He's still around.
He's still around.
You look horrified.
Robert, no.
Think about just a network of semen pools all around the country.
It could work, Sophie.
No more gender.
Just a bunch of warm, salty swimming pools.
We're not leading today.
Speaking of getting children with no homes, which I feel like the swimming pool idea would probably get some kids with not many homes.
All Christian adoption agencies have been shut down because they refuse to let gay couples adopt people.
So that's a big thing in the Christian scene is Christian adoption agencies.
I know about this from experience dealing with those adoption agencies.
Yeah, this big, they hate it when a gay person gets to get one of the kids.
Yeah, they try to avoid it at all costs.
Yeah.
And stuff has changed now, but Doug Dobson's writing here that remember that the family had to drive, like flee from a state or some shit.
They were like being chased or something.
Yeah, yeah.
So in this fanfiction, Dobson writes here that they just all shut down instead of letting gay people adopt adoption.
That scans.
None of that is surprising.
And one of my favorite parts of this first section about the changes that gay rights made is that in 2012, no one's allowed to read aloud the Bible on TV and radio.
Yes, I remember when they banned the Bible.
Quoting the letter, the Bible can no longer be freely preached over radio or television stations when the subject matter includes such offensive, quote, doctrines such as criticizing homosexual behavior or other offensive sections.
The Supreme Court agreed that these should be kept off the air, prohibited as, quote, hate speech that is likely to incite violence and discrimination.
These policies follow broadcasting and print restrictions that were in place prior to 28 in Canada, which is a lie.
Tax Exempt Church Lines00:05:28
Yeah.
It's just, I don't know if he knows that a lie.
No, that's a lie.
Because I was a Christian in Canada in a very conservative cultish environment.
And no, I had friends whose parents would preach hate speech on the radio.
No, no, no.
I'm pretty sure the Mounties kill everybody who so much as looks at a Bible near a radio.
That's Canadian law.
It's right under the thing about making it illegal to falsify maple syrup.
Yeah.
The famous Canadian legal code, no Bibles, lots of syrup.
Also, the other main thing Mounties do is hunt down Indigenous people and beat them up.
Yeah.
Those are the three main things.
If they see a Bible, they lose it.
They see faking maple syrup, they lose it.
If they see an indigenous person, they freak out.
The three things everyone knows about the Mounties.
The thin, kind of reddish line.
The thin, reddish line.
They wear reddish light.
The thin horse wearing line.
Yeah, the thin horse line.
See, this does play into my theory that horses are bizarre.
Anyway, you know horses kill me, right?
Deathly allergic to horses.
I didn't know that.
If I get near one, it's bad.
See, everybody, like, I was right when I said we need horse genocide now.
Human beings need...
Sorry.
All right.
Let's just go on.
Speaking of health-related issues, like not being around horses, physicians and lawyers who refused to serve queer people lost their licenses.
If churches refuse to be used for LGBT weddings, they lose their tax-exempt status.
Which is actually, that's kind of an interesting idea.
I mean, I have my own opinions on churches should be tax-exempt anyway.
But if a lawyer and doctor refuses to do their job on someone because they're queer, maybe they should lose their license.
I agree with that with lawyers and doctors.
Like, I don't think, I think it's kind of a fake boogeyman, the idea that churches would be forced to marry anybody.
Like, because it's never happened.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, I think if you're a fucking doctor and somebody's like dying and you're like, oh, but gay, icky, like, yeah, you should.
Is that a rainbow pin?
Sorry, I can't do this.
Like, I, just as a guy who carries a medical kit around, if we're at like a rally and I see like a fucking proud boy get shot and I have the ability to stop them from bleeding to death, I'll try to stop them from bleeding to death because it's just what you do.
If you're not going to do that, you have no right to call yourself a fucking doctor.
Yep.
So here's another section about the church, the church changes.
Quote, while churches are still free to turn down homosexual applicants for the job of senior pastor, churches and parachurch organizations are no longer free to reject homosexual applicants for staff positions such as part-time youth pastor and director of counseling.
Those that have rejected homosexual applicants have also had their tax-exempt status revoked.
I love how granular they are about how much the Obama administration was going to interfere with the staffing decisions of local churches.
There's 9,000 words in the letter.
They get into a lot of detail.
He couldn't even get the website working for the shitty healthcare plan he gave us.
Like, what are you?
Come on.
Do you think he's going to be like, no, you can't.
Senior staff are allowed to, you can, you can, you can refuse to hire gay for them.
But if you hire a youth pastor, they have to be allowed to be like, what are you imagining them sitting down and doing?
It's 9,000.
I'm cutting out so much like small details he adds on.
It's astonishing.
He would be here for two hours.
It's just astonishing.
Oh, it's real.
It's really a great letter.
One of the few semi-accurate predictions he actually made was that Don't Ask, Don't Tell got ended.
Yes.
But with the weird addition that Dobson says new LGBT people enrolling in the military are given a special bonus for enlisting into military service to compensate for past discrimination.
Ah, yes, I remember that.
The gay bounty that the army gives out.
So they get gay people get paid extra for being in the military because they were discriminated against in the past.
Yeah, that sounds like a thing that the army does.
That sounds like the army.
So again, here he restates: if nurses refuse to help patients with abortions, they'll lose their job.
And if doctors refuse, they lose their licenses to deliver babies in any state, all mandated by federal law.
So as added on to like, if you're referring to serve queer people, if you refuse to help with an abortion, if you're a nurse, you're fired.
If you're a doctor, you lose your license to deliver babies.
Like you can still be a doctor, but you just can't assist in the delivering of babies in any state, which is a weird decision Dobson makes to speculate about.
Yeah, I can like, it's this thing that people who are, it's this thing that I see on the right and on the religious right in particular, where they imagine that all everyone but them thinks about is how to hurt them.
So like Obama, who had a lot on his plate when he became president.
I don't know, you don't remember this, Garrison, but like the entire United States was about to collapse financially.
Yeah.
In an even, well, maybe not as dire as the place we are in now, but pretty fucking dire situation.
And like it was just a disaster area of a country.
And they're thinking he's going to be like super focused, like laser focused on changing internal policy in a bunch of like small local churches just to be evil Obama.
Obama Era Financial Collapse00:04:31
He's very evil.
It's amazing.
I mean, Obama was the Antichrist.
That's what I heard as a kid.
Yeah, he sure was.
I remember that when he opened the seventh seal and let loose the hounds of hell.
It was a weird garrison that was there.
It was the October surprise in 2012.
Yeah, Robert, do you know what won't release the seven sins of hell?
I don't accept anyone to advertise on this show unless I think there's a decent chance they're the Antichrist.
Do you know who will open the seven seals of hell?
Possibly.
Allegedly.
Allegedly.
Or some of these products and services that sponsor the show.
What?
Yeah.
Yep.
Products.
On a recent episode of the podcast Money and Wealth with John O'Brien. I sit down with Tiffany the Bajinista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never ever taught.
Financial education is not always about like, I'm going to get rich.
That's great.
It's about creating an atmosphere for you to be able to take care of yourself and leave a strong financial legacy for your family.
If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Hey, Ernest, what's up?
Look, money is something we all deal with, but financial literacy is what helps turn income into real wealth.
On each episode of the podcast, Earn Your Leisure, we break down the conversations you need to understand money, investing, and entrepreneurship.
From stocks and real estate to credit, business, and generational wealth, we translate complex financial topics into real conversations everyone can understand.
Because the truth is, most people were never taught how money really works.
But once you understand a system, you can start to build within it.
That means ownership, smarter investing, and creating opportunities not just for yourself, but for the next generation.
If you want to learn how to build wealth, understand the markets, and think like an owner, Earn Your Leisure is the podcast for you.
Listen to Earn Your Leisure on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Hello, gorgeous.
It's Lala Kent, host of Untraditional Le Lala.
My days of filling up cups at sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley.
Life on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes.
But over here on my podcast, Untraditional Le La, I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate.
I've been full-on oversharing with fans, family, and former frenemies like Tom Schwartz.
I had a little bone to pick with Schwartzy when he came on the pod.
You don't feel bad that you told me I was a bootleg housewife?
I must flipped a pizza in your lap.
Oh, God, I literally forgot about that until just now.
Sorry, I don't want to, I don't want to blame all of that.
I got to blame that one on the alcohol.
This is about laughing and learning when life just keeps on laughing because I make mistakes so that you guys don't have to.
We're growing, we're thriving, and yes, sometimes we're barely surviving, but we do it all with love.
It's unruly, it's unafraid, it's untraditional.
Listen to Untraditionally Lala on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
I'm Iris Palmer, and my new podcast is called Against All Odds.
And that's exactly what the show is about: doing whatever it takes to beat the odds.
Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers, and breaking generational patterns.
I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Fiva Lingoria.
I think I had like $200 in my savings account, and my mom goes, What are you going to do?
And I was like, I'll figure it out.
We had a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month, and we all could not afford.
Like, I was like, How am I going to make $100 a month?
I'm opening up like I've never before.
For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me.
Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the Michael Tura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Porn Everywhere and Terrorists00:06:02
Hi, we're back.
Porn.
What?
Yeah.
Garrison, don't say porn.
Garrison just 18.
God damn it.
Apparently, porn is everywhere.
No.
Porn's everywhere.
This is not on me.
This is no, this is Dobson.
Yeah, this is on James Dobson.
Porn is everywhere now.
Back to the letter.
Porn.
Everywhere.
Huge problem in America now.
Gas stations, grocery stores, newsstands, all places that kids can easily find porn magazines everywhere.
Can God imagine if kids could easily find porn?
So like, this is the other thing where Dobson was like, right, but in the wrong way.
I mean, like, it's like he was imagining porn magazines on all these grocery store stands.
2012.
This is 2012.
Like, we don't have cell phones.
Come on.
Like, Dobson.
This letter, okay.
So the letter was written by Dobson in 28 from a Christian.
In 2012, right?
So it was written in 2008 from the perspective of someone in 2012.
But yeah, he says another big problem now is that porn's everywhere because of new rulings under the First Amendment.
Now that porn can be displayed in anywhere.
Gas stations, grocery stores, newsstands, all places where kids can now find porn because of the First Amendment.
Great.
I mean, the funny thing about that is that because of smartphones and access to stuff like that, kids have more access to pornography than they ever have.
And your generation also has less sex than previous generations.
And we're kind of the generation that understands concepts of consent kind of more than any other team generation.
It's like the opposite thing happened.
Yeah, it's like we might be fine.
When you provide some information, even if it's bad, the kids will still look up other information.
And then some of that will be eventually good if they go to actual medical sites.
Yeah.
It seems broadly speaking like we're fine.
Well, on that.
Anyway, besides on something less fun than porn, by 2012, it's illegal for citizens to own guns in eight states.
The letter writes, quote, inner-city violent crime has increased dramatically due to people not allowed to have guns in eight states.
In 2010, yeah, I'm just going to move on.
That's all he really writes about it is you can't have guns in some states.
I think Oregon's listed as one of the states he speculates doesn't have guns.
I just don't think he's a very good writer.
No, he's not.
He's not.
And according to Dobson, in 2010, Obama will begin withdrawing troops from Iraq.
Then later on, al-Qaeda operatives from Syria and Iran poured in and overtook the Iraqi security forces.
Further emboldening the terrorists, Obama caused, Obama ceased the mass wiretapping of all alleged terrorists in the United States unless a warrant was first obtained.
So that really emboldened the terrorists.
Now the government can't just wiretap any phone they want in the states.
That definitely never happened in Portland over the summer.
No, they certainly did not wiretap a bunch of activists' phones for the crimes of modest to minor property damage.
Yeah.
Since 2009, there's been four terrorist bomb attacks in the United States.
No arrests have been made.
Yeah, I do remember that when the entire national security establishment said, what if we just stopped giving a shit about Islamic terrorism?
Quote, President Obama has moved to deepen U.S. ties and U.S. trade with communist regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, regimes that have long enjoyed the favor of far-left factions in the Democratic Party.
I don't even know what he's trying to say there.
Neither do I.
It's a fantasy novel.
Iran dropped a nuclear bomb on an Israeli city.
Oh, I remember that.
Demanding Israel give huge amount, quote, huge amounts of land back to Palestine.
First off, Israel doesn't even have huge amounts of land.
Like, not to say they didn't take a lot of Palestine's land, but the whole area is like the size of Jersey.
Yes.
Yeah.
Obama said he abhorred what Iran did in dropping a nuclear bomb, but he hoped that the U.S. would be a part of an international peacekeeping force sanctioned by the UN.
But the Muslim nations in the UN have so far prevented any action.
That's a quote from Dobson.
The Muslim nations in the UN have prevented any action from the UN assisting in peacekeeping.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's why Obama didn't take any actions in any foreign Muslim-dominated countries at any point in his administration.
That's why there were no military actions taken against Muslims at all by the Obama administration.
You know more about this kind of stuff than I do.
Like, if Obama, you know, in 2010 withdrew withdrawal troops from Iraq, this dobs talks about al-Qaeda operatives in Syrian Iran pouring in and overtaking the Iraqi security forces.
How likely would that have been?
From Al-Qaeda in 2010 overtaking Iraqi security forces.
I mean, it's ironic because we pulled out in, I think, 2011 shortly later, yeah.
By the, at the demand of the Iraqi government.
And a large chunk of the country did get overtaken, largely by Iraqis, who were other angry and extremists.
And yeah, I don't know.
It's very like, it's funny because they got aspects of that right, but in the wrong way.
Like, Iran are the deadly enemies of ISIS, who despise them because they're Shia.
And you did have a lot of Iraq get taken over, but most of the paramilitaries doing it were either foreign fighters or other Iraqis.
And the leadership cadre that was in charge of the whole thing were all a bunch of people who had met because the United States under George Bush threw them together in the same prison camp, which was basically a big college for terrorists, Camp Buka.
Expensive Scams and Prayer00:15:00
So, yeah, that's pretty funny, I would say.
Good, good.
I'm glad someone was able to talk about that who knew more about that than I did.
We now pivot to healthcare in the letter.
So I'm just going to read off this great quote: Quote: The new Congress under President Obama passed a nationalized, quote, single-payer healthcare system in which the U.S. government is the provider of healthcare in the United States, following the pattern of nationalized medicine in the United Kingdom and Canada.
The great benefits.
So, yeah, so far, sounds great.
Yeah, I wish that had happened.
As someone who lived in Canada and got free healthcare for years, it was pretty good.
Yeah, but I bet they forced you not to have, I bet you weren't allowed to have kids anymore because you're Christian.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that was the one.
That was the one caveat.
Yeah, they stopped you from.
It was, yeah, unfortunate.
So, continue the quote: The great benefit is that the medical care is now free for everyone.
Yay.
But here it is.
If you can get it.
Now that healthcare is free, it seems everyone wants more of it.
Yay.
The waiting list for prostate cancer surgery is three years.
The waiting list for ovarian cancer is two years, just as the Canadian experience has shown prior to 2008 with its own nationalized healthcare.
So in the U.S., only a small number of MRIs are performed, down 90% from 2008, which isn't true for how the Canadian health.
There's a whole section of our right-wing lies about how the Canadian healthcare system works, which is very frustrating.
The things that are important to know is that y'all live longer and you have lower rates of physician-related deaths.
Yeah, and like prostate cancer surgery isn't three years waiting time.
Like, they just come up with these ridiculous lies about the Canadian healthcare system that I know is untrue because I have a grandma who relies on it to keep living.
So I understand what the wait times are and how they operate.
And the way American right-wing conservative media talks about it is very frustrating.
Yeah, it's it's it's infuriating.
Yeah.
And also about MRIs, because they are so expensive and they discover more problems that need treatment, they're almost never authorized.
Which is how like there's so weird thought process, like thinking about them because they're too expensive.
Like, no, they're expensive now because of the way our because of how the insurance scam works.
One of the people I love most in the world had to get an MRI last year and delayed it by months and almost didn't get it because it cost, even with health insurance, cost her like a couple of thousand dollars.
Meanwhile, my German friends go to the doctor if they just feel like, ah, something might be wrong.
Maybe I'll just go get it checked.
Oh, I have a tummy ache.
Time to go to the doctor.
Yeah, like the ridiculous nature.
Like, Dobson doesn't understand this at all.
Because he still thinks that MRIs will be expensive under nationalized medicine, which no, like, the point of changing to a nationalized healthcare system is that no, it won't.
It'll be very cheap because the only reason it's expensive now is because of the insurance scam.
I know Adam Conover did a really good episode on his television show dealing with this exact problem for how this whole price scam works in hospitals.
Yeah, it's infuriating.
Very frustrating.
The letter then fearmongers about some boring tax stuff that I don't care about.
I don't care about Dobson's tax nightmares.
I'm just going to skip over it because it's just him being scared of taxes.
Whatever.
Again, this guy was on the tax advisory panel under Reagan, which he shouldn't have been.
Which he was.
I know.
So I'm just going to skip over it because I don't care.
Probably the most ridiculous and incorrect and incorrectly correct.
Like it's correct.
It's wrong, but it's kind of correct in this weird way.
It's an accurate prediction in some ways, but still wrong.
The FCC imposed this new policy called the Fairness Doctrine, quote, which requires, you're quoting, which requires radio stations to provide, quote, equal time for alternative views on political or policy issues.
As a result, all radio stations have to provide equal time to contrasting views for every political or policy-related program they broadcast by talk radio shows such as Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingram, Sean Hanney, Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt, and broadcasters like Dr. James Dobson.
What if you're a business of individuals, first of all?
Oh, geez.
Every conservative talk show is followed by an instant rebuttal of the program by a liberal watchdog group.
So this is obviously very silly and very wrong.
But what he got right is how YouTube works now for like all of these, all there's like this whole genre of YouTube where like you'll watch, you know, it's like a lefty watching a right-wing person's program or a right-wing person watching a lefty's program and like pausing every 10 seconds to give a rebuttal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which is a huge genre on YouTube.
It's like 30% of the U.S. economy.
Yeah.
But like the idea that like radio stations would pause in real time on Rush Limbaugh to have like a left-wing person give a rebuttal for every show?
It's amazing.
It's very funny.
As opposed to like what actually happened, which is right-wing media has only has become like the most dominant media block in the country by a substantial margin.
After two years of Obama, it only got much, much more powerful.
Yeah.
And I like that Dobson subtly adds his name to the end of this list because again, he wrote the letter.
He like ghostwrit the letter.
He like adds his name at the very end, Dr. James Dobson.
I mean, it's just, it's just self-promotion at its most slimy.
That's just Dobson, baby.
So that was the 2000.
Okay.
So the FCC passed that in 2009.
By 2010, conservative talk radio had all been shut down.
Yes, I do remember that.
I remember the nightmare when I couldn't hear Rush Limbaugh convince my parents that it was okay to glass the entire Middle East from the sky because some dudes fucked up a building.
I do remember that.
So 2010, that shut down.
In good news, the Justice Department filed criminal charges and civil charges against nearly all Bush administration officials that had involvement in the Iraq war.
Ah.
A thing that would have massively improved the world we live in.
God, what a gift.
I want to live in this.
I desperately want to live in James Dobson's fantasy America.
James Dobson's fantasy world in which there are consequences for committing war crimes.
Oh, what a world.
Christian book publishers are all shut down because of anti-LGPT hate speech.
Yeah, okay.
I don't support shutting down book publishers, but also farmers.
It never happened.
Churches can no longer meet in public schools or any public places because of the new, quote, separation of church and state laws.
You can't meet in public schools.
That is a problem, actually.
Churches can no longer be in public schools because of, quote, new separation of church and state laws.
It does seem like that was always a violation of the separation of church and state.
With the operative word being separation.
Separation.
Okay.
Christian homeschooling has effectively all been stopped in part because parents were now forced to not teach their kids that homosexual conduct is wrong or that Jesus is the only way to God since these ideas have been found to hinder students' social adjustment and acceptance of other lifestyles and beliefs.
That last part was quoting the letter there.
Thousands of homeschooling parents had fled to Australia and New Zealand.
The last bastion of Christianity.
New Zealand.
So a massive refuge of Christian homeschooling parents have moved to New Zealand.
And I'll finally finish talking about this piece of speculative fiction with this quote from the end of the letter.
Many people thought Obama sounded so thoughtful, so reasonable.
And during his campaign, after he'd won the Democratic nomination, he seemed to be moving to the center in his speeches, moving away from his far-left record.
No one thought he would enact such a far-left, extreme liberal agenda.
But the record was all there for anyone to see.
The agenda of the ACLU, the agenda of the liberal activist judges and their dissenting opinions, the agenda of the homosexual activists, the agenda of environmental activists, of the National Board of Education, the global warming activists, abortion rights activists, gun control activists, youth and Asia supporters, one-world government pacifists, far-left groups in Canada and Europe.
All these agencies, all these agendas were in plain sight.
And all these groups provided huge support for Senator Obama.
The liberal agenda was there, but too many people just didn't want to see it.
Heartwarming.
God.
The far-left agenda of the ACLU.
Yeah.
Who is actually doing really good stuff in Portland right now?
They're helping elfs.
No, no, they're burning churches.
Harrison.
They're burning churches.
That's what the it's the American Christian lighting on fire.
They're showing up to the homes of homeschooling parents and scaring them away to New Zealand.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what the ACLU is about.
Buying them plane tickets to a better country.
How dare they?
So the point of this letter was like to scare young Christians who feel a little bit of hope that things can be better under Obama to be like, no, you don't understand how bad Obama is.
It's going to be really bad.
Now, the letter didn't do much because Obama still won.
So even though it was sent off to like at least 10 million people anonymously, which I mean, it's kind of a creepy thing to do.
Like, why would you listen to this letter?
Here's my anonymous fantasy about just showing up at your house.
You're like, what the fuck is this?
I don't know.
Yeah.
Now that we've warmed up on that really great, really great heartwarming thing, the next half of the episode is going to be about the actual bad stuff.
So Focus on the Family's active anti-LGBT activism really started in 98 when they launched their quote ex-gay ministry.
And this ministry was called Love One Out.
That was the title of what they...
Yeah, I remember making fun of that because it sounds like a resturbation.
It sounds like you're resturbating.
That's what it said.
Yeah.
Love one out.
Love one out.
Jesus Christ.
So ex-gay is just a more polite term for gay conversion therapy.
It's like, no, I'm not getting converted from being gay.
Just I'm ex-gay.
It's an ex-gay program.
So Love One Out, great name, is different from other gay conversion therapy programs because it's more, because it's more of a grift than any other one, which I mean, they're all kind of grifty.
But this one specifically is more than a grift of anything because Love One Out isn't actually a program.
It's a quarterly traveling conference.
Okay.
Here's their mission statement from one of their conference guidebooks.
Quote, to provide a Christ-centered, comprehensive conference which will enlighten, empower, and equip families, churches, youth leaders, educators, counselors, policymakers, and the gay community on the truth about homosexuality and its impact on culture, family, and youth.
So that is their...
Mission statement they put in their little conference book.
I don't like it.
It's not good.
So as you may have been able to pick up on, only actually like a fraction of those who attend are gay.
A lot of the attendees are parents of teens, quote, struggling with homosexuality or like youth pastors, among others.
So there is a fair amount of gay people that still go to the conference one way or the other.
We'll get to details for that later.
But it's really a mix of like pastors, people who think they're like counselors, and then like concerned parents who are like, oh no, I think my team could be gay.
What can I do to stop this?
And then also, you know, gay people were brought in against their will quite often, which we'll hear about the ramifications of later.
Yeah.
Not really great.
So what Love One Out views as the cause of homosexuality is also a little bit different from some of the other gay Christian conversion therapy programs, where other Christian organizations takes the position that homosexuality is a choice, or they'll say it's natural to feel feelings, you just can't act on them.
Then there's like the very classic just pray the gay away type of stuff.
There's all these classical kind of things.
It's a choice.
It's not a choice, but you can choose not to act on it.
It's okay to feel these things, just you can't act.
Or just pray a lot.
The main position is that Love One Out takes is that homosexuality is socially caused, usually by mistakes made in parenting or childhood trauma.
Because again, this is an organization called Focus on the Family that's only about giving very bad family and parenting advice.
Like childhood trauma, like getting beaten.
So their pitch for this is to parents, like, hey, you were a crappy parent.
That's why your child is now gay.
Let us teach you how to be a better parent so your kid can't be gay.
No, your kid turned out gay because you didn't hit him the way James Dobson taught you to hit him.
You got to hit him a different way.
You can't hit him the way you were hitting him.
That's what makes him gay.
You got to hit him the Christian way.
So remember, like James Dobson got his psychology degree in the 60s.
In 73 was when they ruled that homosexuality wasn't an illness.
Yeah, I mean, I imagine a psychology degree in the 60s was mostly learning how to punch.
Yeah.
And it was learning that gay is a disease and it should be stopped, right?
That was only changed in the 70s, which is still very, very recent.
Yeah.
You know, in comparison.
But around the same time, women got the ability to have their own checkbooks.
To have their own checkbooks and get marriages.
Which is why there was a massive divorce spike in the 70s because they were allowed to have economic control, which is why there's a huge divorce spike, which is very funny to me.
I mean, it's sad, but, you know, because of the trauma, actually, no, it's sad that there was a, it was sad that these people were like trapped in these abusive marriages.
That is sad.
And then had to, you know, like get out only when they could allow to have an economic life.
Very supportive of the fact that they are.
It's sad that they were in that position.
Sad that it had to happen in the first place.
So Love One Out advocates that homosexuality is, quote, preventable and treatable.
Most of these conferences talk about prevention and the causes of gayness, because obviously, despite their claim, there actually isn't an effective way to treat being gay, which they kind of know that.
But they still try to lie about it a little bit, but it's tricky.
The most effort they made on the treatment side is talking about prayer, you know, as one does, uh, mixing with vaguely kind of trying to address underlying childhood traumas that cause gayness.
Um, so, like, it's like a mix of like psychotherapy.
If you're like trying to like, no, you need to address the problems that cause the gayness, then the gayness will go away.
Also, pray a lot.
Yeah, but they really underscore the treatment side of things because they know it's all BS.
They're more focused on the pseudoscience of how to prevent it from happening because they can make more money off of that.
Right.
Yeah.
Social Media Company Threats00:04:45
It's all just the cash.
Yeah.
It's a massive grift.
A grift that resulted in people getting you know killed and died.
Um, yeah.
Um, is it time for time for an ad break?
Speaking of grifts, no, you know what kind of grift I like is grifting.
Okay, Sophie, I can't call myself a grifter.
I can't openly threaten the heads of social media companies.
I feel like what country is that two people are.
What did I say?
You couldn't openly threaten the social heads of social media companies, Robert.
You're right.
I usually am.
Continue.
I was going to make a joke where I threatened the head of TikTok, but I don't know who it is.
So we'll just actually go hide.
Some guy in China.
Some guy in China.
We're coming for you.
On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien.
I sit down with Tiffany the Budget Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
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If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
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Hello, gorgeous.
It's Lala Kent, host of Untraditional Le La.
My days of filling up Cups at Sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley.
Life on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes.
But over here on my podcast, Untraditional Le La, I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate.
I've been full on oversharing with fans, family, and former frenemies like Tom Schwartz.
I had a little bone to pick with Schwartzy when he came on the pod.
You don't feel bad that you told me I was a bootleg housewife?
I must flipped a pizza in your lap.
Oh, God, I literally forgot about that until just now.
Sorry, I don't want to, I don't want to blame all of that.
I got to blame that one on the alcohol.
This is about laughing and learning when life just keeps on laughing.
Because I make mistakes so that you guys don't have to.
We're growing, we're thriving, and yes, sometimes we're barely surviving, but we do it all with love.
Listen to Untraditionally Lala on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Iris Palmer, and my new podcast is called Against All Odds.
And that's exactly what the show is about.
Doing whatever it takes to be the odds.
Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers, and breaking generational patterns.
I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Eva Longoria.
I think I had like $200 in my savings account, and my mom goes, what are you going to do?
And I was like, oh, I'll figure it out.
We had a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month, and we all could not afford.
Like, I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month?
I'm opening up like I've never before.
For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me.
Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Red Flags on Gay Agenda00:15:27
We are back talking about gay conversion therapy.
One of my favorite things to talk about now, because I've done a lot of reading on it.
Yay.
Yeah, and part of the reason why my family escaped from Canada from the cult is so that I wouldn't have to go to gay conversion therapy when I got older because they thought me or my siblings could be gay.
Oh, well, kudos to your parents.
I'm glad you didn't have to go through that.
Yay.
That's goddamn it.
Yeah.
What a fucked up planet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
I am not going to think too much about that one, Garrison, because it's going to bum me out too much.
Yep.
All right.
The blame that Love One Out talks about for someone struggling with homosexuality is split between the parents' fault and society's fault.
They go into a whole bunch of like pseudo-Freudian bullshit about like a strong dominant mother and quite distant fathers or hostile aggressive fathers all being causes of this.
Which is weird because like Dobson often talks about like a dominant mother in his life.
Yeah.
Because you know, remember the thrashing with the girdle?
Yes, yes.
That is dominant.
It also sounds like a kind of trauma.
Yeah, I know.
Maybe Dobson had other things going on.
I don't know.
Frankly, it's all quite boring, like, like Freudian bullshit they get into for lots, for most of the causes.
A choice quote from one of the speakers who spoke at these conferences, who claims to be a reparative therapist.
And this is them addressing parents, quote, if you don't hug your sons, then some other man will.
Which is, I think it's very funny.
God damn it.
This is a reparative therapist.
Yeah, you know, there should be a German word for like thing I want to laugh at, but I know was responsible for like more too much human misery for it to actually be funny.
But it's like...
I have to laugh at this because I got very close to this thing in my life.
The speaker also remarks, quote, there's no such thing as a homosexual, just misbehaving heterosexuals who can reclaim their identity through prayer and therapy.
It's like a weird, a weird stance that Love One Out takes is like, there's no gay people.
Being, gay people don't exist.
One can choose to identify as gay, but you can't be gay, actually.
What you have is you experience homosexual thoughts.
And if you can adjust those thoughts, then you can actually be your true self, which is a heterosexual.
They get into a whole bunch of like wow, that makes that makes that is impressively nonsense.
Like, you have to give it to them.
You couldn't, you couldn't make less sense if you tried.
Yeah, they get into a whole bunch of like dumb psych psych pop kind of stuff.
They really try to worm their way around a lot of a lot of this.
Um, at least seven uh predominant social scientists have publicly called out and disowned Focus and the Family for deliberately misinterpreting their research to bolster kind of the homophobic claims that Focus and the Family makes.
So, like they try to appropriate people's like gender research and like parenting research, and they use it very badly.
And these scientists are like, No, that's not what we're saying at all.
You're very bad at what you're trying to do and really harmful.
We disown you and stop using our research because you're using it very poorly.
Yeah, that needs to be some sort of crime.
I don't know.
That's not freedom of speech.
No, because you're trying to make grift and make money off of the endangerment of human beings.
Yeah, and using like social science as a cover.
Yeah.
Kind of slandering the scientists in a way.
Yeah.
I don't know.
They're misappropriating their work in a way that they're still making money off it, so you could, you know, yeah, a few things could happen.
Yeah.
So when they're not talking about weird Freudian gender identity kind of stuff, but like two masculine mothers and bad parenting nonsense stuff, when they're not doing that, they're discussing the other causes of the optic on homosexual behavior, the advancing, quote, gay agenda.
Part of their mission statement reads, quote, we cannot escape the onslaught of gay propaganda that seeks to influence our churches, schools, businesses, and neighborhoods.
That was written in 2005.
So like they were really, they were on this gay agenda thing.
Yeah.
They were on it.
They were like the first people really nervous in 2005 about the schools and businesses and neighborhoods or this onslaught of the gay propaganda advancing.
The conference guide states that mainstream science is assisting the gay agenda in three main ways.
Normalization through desensitization, undermining parental moral authority, and equating homosexuality to heterosexuality.
So three main ways that science is helping advance the gay agendas by pushing these things into society.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yep.
And the reason why, you know, all these gay people are such a problem, kind of besides the whole biblical interpretation of homosexuality being a sin, which means even some Bible scholars even question that for what was actually being written back at the time.
A lot of modern Bible scholars believe they're talking about gay rape or an older man abusing a child.
That's usually what most scholars look at it now.
But besides the whole biblical interpretation thing, the fact that if gayness is so widely accepted as normal, the reason why it's bad is then kids of Christian parents will feel more comfortable coming out as gay and will probably be more likely to not be Christians because of the homophobia in the church.
And of course, evangelicals don't want that.
But there's that aspect that also a big existential fear for them was gay marriage at the time.
That was really the thing that they would have and the repercussions that gay marriage would have, like what they laid out in the speculative fiction letter from 2008.
The fear that gay marriage and possible resulting anti-discrimination laws could threaten what they believe to be their freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
Dobson wrote the whole book, Marriage Under Fire, which we don't even have time to get into, but it's a whole big, huge book that was very popular in 2004.
And the conference guide that we've been reading from has a chapter called Addressing the Pro-Gay Agenda in Your School.
In this chapter, there's a checklist that's supposed to determine the level of homosexual promotion in your school.
So, yeah, a lot of their fears are like, if kids are gay, then they're going to not want to be Christians anymore, which isn't great for a for-profit.
Well, technically non-profit, but you know, it's a media empire.
It's not good for churches and Christian kind of publishers if there's less Christians.
And also, you know, they are really terrified of gay marriage and what's going to happen.
Those are kind of the two things that they're really trying to push through this conference.
And that's what all their fear-mongering about the gay agenda really is.
But these 12 things listed as red flags.
So in this chapter called Addressing the Pro-Gay Agenda in Your School, there's these 12 red flags to look for in your own schools.
And it's really good.
It's a fantastic list.
Number one, a safe schools non-harassment policy.
Safe schools is like a brand that teaches like, that has like, they do like, they do like discrimination training in schools and stuff.
So like if a school has posted a safe schools non-harassment policy, first red flag.
If there's guidelines against harassment, first red flag that the gay agenda is being infected into your school.
If you can't harass people.
That is a red flag.
Yeah.
Red flag number two, a homosexual student club.
I mean, that's, you know, that's a fair red flag coming from that perspective.
It makes more sense.
Number three, non-discrimination policy based on sexual orientation.
So again, more discrimination stuff being red flags.
Yeah, if you can't discriminate, that's definitely a red flag right there.
Number four, programs to stop homophobia, hate, or bias.
Yeah, you wouldn't want to stop homophobia, hate or bias.
Just generally, not even just homophobia, but a hate and bias too.
Those are, the liberal gay agenda is getting injected in like a vaccine.
Yeah.
Big problem.
Yeah, and like a vaccine.
Like a vaccine.
Big problem.
Yeah.
Number five is pro-homosexual literature added to the curricula and libraries.
And a pro-family material, quote, pro-family material, being bypassed or discarded.
So I don't really know what they mean by that, but I'm sure it was scary.
Yeah, it sounds scary.
Number six, AIDS and sex ed programs.
Yeah.
So if they teach you about AIDS and sex ed, that's a problem.
Not even gay sex ed, just sex ed in general.
Yep.
That's the advancing gay agenda in your school.
Number seven, teachers that are homosexual.
Of course, that's a huge problem.
Can't have that.
Number eight, involvement in your school by the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network or the Parents and Friends of Lesbian and Gays, which are two organizations that help for gay rights.
So if they have any involvement in your school or whatever, huge issue.
Number nine, celebrating Gay Pride Month or National Coming Out Day.
Big problem there.
That's the gay agenda advancing.
You have to be careful.
Exhibits or films on families by homosexuals.
Exhibits or films about family that are made by homosexual filmmakers.
Yay.
Yeah.
Which, again, I don't even know what they're really saying there.
It's kind of undiscernible.
No, it's complete gibberish.
We have two more.
Tuma red flags.
Tuma red flags.
Students and parents with concerns being silenced.
So that's good.
And number 12, a teacher in service meetings promoting diversity.
Yeah, you wouldn't want to.
Teacher meetings that promote diversity.
That's the final red flag.
That if you see these 12 things in your school, or even a few of them, this means the gay agenda is advancing.
That sounds right.
Yeah.
That sounds like how the gay agenda goes.
I was very happy looking through this conference manual and looking at the...
I mean, I found this page.
I'm like, yes, I have a few paragraphs to write now.
Ah, it was great.
The manual is poorly designed, too.
The graphic design is terrible.
It's like the worst era of 2005, like manual design.
It's really bad and ugly to look at.
It's a magnificent piece that I found artists.
Are there stock photos of people?
You know what I mean?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely.
Have you seen much like Christian?
Have you seen much Christian propaganda from the era?
Oh, yeah.
You know, all the same stuff.
So, guys, kind of now, the saddest part of this is that parents would often force their gay children to attend this convention against their will.
These kids can be stuck with the choice of either going to this anti-gay conference or losing the love and financial support of their parents.
That was really what a lot of kids talked about during this conference.
It's like, I was forced to go or else I would be kicked out of the house, or I would, you know, my parents would disown me.
So, yeah.
And the thing about this, this thing is like, this isn't just like a gay conversion therapy program you go to.
This is a traveling conference.
So it can go to your town.
You're like, oh no, if it goes to my town, I know my parents are going to take me there.
Right.
It's like, because it's like an act of threat.
It's not just like, oh, no, I'm not going to get driven to Texas to go to this program for that.
It's that you don't know when it's going to come into your life.
Horrible.
It's a nightmare.
Really bad.
Yeah.
An NPR article from 2007 talks with a 16-year-old kid named Brett.
Brett told NPR, quote, I did not want to come at all, but I guess, you know, I've no choice because my parents, you know, control my entire life.
His parents drove 350 miles from San Diego to Phoenix to attend this conference.
Fucking Arizona.
Yeah.
And the parents said in hopes that it will, quote, plant the seeds that, quote, one day their son will become straight.
So after Brett was forced to listen.
It's how it works, idiots.
Yeah, I'm, yeah.
It doesn't.
It's not how it works, but that's what they thought.
They thought it's how it works.
They even knew, like, oh, even if he's not going to get fixed here, at least maybe plant the seeds that he'll be able to be not gay later.
Yeah.
It's real, real sad kind of stuff.
And this is not uncommon.
After Brett was forced to listen to all those speeches and testimonials and pleas from these quote therapists that his quote disorder can be treated, Brett said to NPR, quote, don't tell my parents, but no, I know I'm gay.
And like, their stories are really inspiring, but I know this is me and I don't really want to change.
So like, again, this is from like a Christian kid who's like, yeah, I understand their viewpoints.
Like, even like that's sad.
But he's like, yeah, I understand.
It's kind of inspiring, but no, like, this is who I am.
Yeah.
I can't not be this.
And another really sad part is that the NPR article talked to Brett's dad and he said, he said, quote, the conference taught him that he needs to learn to love his son unconditionally.
So like, this is the kind of thing that gets, we'll talk about this more later, but like what the conference did is like, because like these things are very bad, but like one of the things it was teaching is like, no, if you have gay, if you have gay children, you still need to like love them as your children.
Yeah.
Which is like something that like these people needed to get taught.
Like this is, this is what Brett's daddy is.
Broad positive thing.
Right.
Like Brett's dad learned at the convention, I guess I still have to love my son.
That's the thing that he like took away from and talked to NPR about, which is really like as bad, like this conference is terrible and abusive, but still that's like a net good from it.
It's so fucked up.
Like that's so messed up.
It's so fucked up.
Going to this thing that was less fucked up than him helped.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's really.
That's just, I mean, this, everything.
It's bad.
A tragedy.
On Love One Outs' old website, which has been like since deleted, like, you know, it takes a while to dig for it in like the Wayback Machine.
But every time you change the page on the website, it has a little testimonial from an attendee, which is a great source for terrible and sad quotes.
Keep in mind, these are quotes that they're putting up on their websites to make themselves look good.
Yeah.
These are like advertisements.
Yeah, the poll quotes.
Yeah.
Okay.
Here's a quote.
Quote, I've been struggling for 20 months with the fact that my son tells me he is gay.
I've gone through all the first three stages of grief.
I found this conference on the internet.
We drove from Orange, Texas last night to the conference in Atlanta to begin on the reconstructive phase of our grief.
Thank you for giving me hope for a loving relationship with my son.
Which is real bad.
Yeah.
So again, it's like...
Yeah.
And I guess from the way that's written, I think it sounds like the hope that my son will be straight again so I can have a loving relationship with him.
That's the way that I kind of read that as.
It could also mean, you know, hope that I can still love and still have a relationship with my son, even though he's gay, but I kind of doubt that if they drove from Texas to Georgia for this, it sounds more like hope that my son will be straight one day so then I can love him.
Yeah.
Yeah, not great.
Police Officers and Articles00:15:16
From a 16-year-old, they said, quote, gay-identified boy, because again, you can't be gay.
You can identify as gay.
You're not actually gay.
It's that you're dealing with these homosexual feelings.
So from a 16-year-old gay-identified boy who came because, quote, my mom dragged me into this.
Quote, there were some things I did not agree with, but it was all presented with love, which I get really sad reading.
Yeah, that's heartbreaking.
Which really kind of messes me up on a fundamental level.
As someone who kind of discovered they were queer after being in a very hateful, conservative environment for so long, including with like a whole bunch of like self-hating in my younger teens, that really gets me kind of angry reading stuff like that.
Because like dealing with realizing things about myself while having such like toxic bad viewpoints, it's not, it's not great.
And yeah, this kind of stuff really makes me upset.
Here's one I actually like reading because it's going to be, we can maybe laugh at this one.
And, you know, good.
Quote, I was one of the police officers that worked at the Love One Out conference.
I thought the testimonials.
That's such a sentence right there.
God, what a sentence.
Okay, sorry.
I thought the testimonials were awesome.
I was trying to be a tough guy, but I could not keep the tears from running down my face.
The three other officers who were there with me said the same thing.
It was a very moving testimony to the power of God and how he pursued you.
Oh, God, that's so bleak.
As police officers, we're often pretty rough on gay and lesbian issues, mostly making jokes and expressing disgust.
The conference made all four of us more sensitive to homosexuals.
Oh, my God.
Everything about that is as bad as it could be.
Like, the fact that this conference, again, helped people who were even more bigoted than the conference be slightly, maybe less bigot, or at least less dangerously bigoted, like, is still incredibly fucked up.
Yes.
It's that's so bad.
This police officer who's assigned as security is like.
I used to joke about gay people killing themselves.
Now I think that's wrong.
They should just be forcibly converted.
I've improved.
As police officers, we're pretty tough on gay and lesbian issues, making jokes and expressing disgust.
Like, what a great quote there.
As police officers, like, of course all cops do this.
Oh, buddy.
Someone should have gone to his...
That shouldn't be...
You shouldn't get to be a cop and say that.
And they advertised it on their website as a good thing.
Yeah, he was proud of that.
He was willing to be like, like all cops, I used to habitually make fun of homosexuals, but now I don't.
Yay.
The last person we'll hear about who attended is from an article in the Denver Post in 2008.
Christina Blake, 36-year-old Denver artist, moved to Colorado 10 years ago.
So in 1998, for the state's, she moved to Colorado for the state's ex-gay programs and underwent more than four years in two of them.
She also underwent psychological counseling.
So she moved to Colorado.
Again, this is where Focus on the Family is based.
Yeah.
They have a lot of like in-person stuff there, like all the time, as well as these traveling conferences.
Jesus.
And she attended like multiple programs, not just Focus on the Families.
Quote, I threw my whole heart and soul and life into changing.
There was a period of time where I actually believed I was changing, but then there would be reminders.
Oh no, still gay.
The whole time she suppressed her sexuality, her creativity disappeared.
She gave up on transforming herself into a heterosexual, she said, after observing many gay people leading healthy, happy, vibrant lives.
Quote, I still had to deal with a lot of feelings of shame, brokenness, and the failure that I had internalized from the ex-gay programs, Christina said.
And the article ends by saying she no longer considers herself a Christian.
Wow.
But like, so a person who's like, lived in these programs for 10 years, trying desperately to change yourself because you think that's the only way to connect with God.
Yeah.
And just, you know, it doesn't work.
No, it doesn't.
And it left a lot of people dead.
A lot of people killed themselves.
We'll talk more about that at the end for kind of the stats on all those sad things.
I think it'd be a little bit good to learn about the guy who kind of ran this whole operation because this is actually very important.
So Love One Out as the program was funded by someone named John Palk.
John's story is not unique in any way from the people that run these types of operations.
According to John, he came out as gay when he was 18.
This was in 1981.
He came out to an accepting family.
He was fine at the time.
In his mid-20s, he found himself becoming despondent and even suicidal in college.
At the time, he attributed his unhappiness to homosexuality.
Many years later, he would say it was actually because he was tremendously insecure and lonely.
Around the same time, a university campus pastor introduced John to Christianity.
So it's like in his mid-20s, he first kind of got introduced to Christianity when he was severely depressed and suicidal.
So trying to reconcile his depression, gayness, and new potential path forward with Christianity, John signed up for a year-long residential conversion therapy program.
What that means is you live in this, it's like a, you'd live in this spot.
Yeah.
They have like houses and dorms, and you live in this program.
Sounds like a healthy place.
It's real bad.
A lot of people died there.
Yeah.
So he signed up for this year-long program.
Eventually, he stayed there for more than actually a year.
He eventually got a job there working at the same conversion therapy business that he attended.
Him and a quote former lesbian that he met at the program got married.
They wrote a book together.
In the 90s, John got put in charge of Focus on the Family's, quote, homosexuality and gender division.
Oh, they have a division.
Whole division dedicated.
Yeah, you gotta have a division.
In 98, he founded and led Love One Out under Focus on the Family.
In 2000, while on a speaking tour in Washington, D.C., unclear if this was for a Love One Out conference or if it was just another speaking arrangement, John was seen and photographed sitting in a predominant popular gay bar by a known gay activist.
When approached, John said his name was John Clint, which is his name is John Polk.
But this guy calling himself John Clint said he was gay.
After news of this spread around, John told the media that he was just there because he was walking around and needed a place to go to the bathroom.
And he said he didn't know it was a gay bar until he went in.
However, other people there saw him for like an hour, talking intimately with other men.
It was the kind of a quote people said.
John later admitted to knowing it was a gay bar and has said, yeah, yeah.
And it said, quote, at a low point in my life, I went back to a place where I felt comfortable.
No matter what his intentions were, he was, no matter if he was actually going in knowingly to get sex or whatever, or if he was just lonely and kind of actually sad and needed up like a familiar place.
Whatever.
Whatever it was, he was forced to resign as board chairman at the conversion therapy place that he attended.
But he still continued to work at Focus and the Family and led Loved One Out until 2003.
2003, he suddenly quit his job at Focus and dropped out of the spotlight of becoming like a very famous XK speaker.
John and his family moved to Portland, Oregon.
Oh.
Okay.
John went to the- I know that town.
Yeah, you know.
This is where we get tear gas.
This is the town we get tear gas.
John may be getting tear gas too, actually.
Oh, good for him.
John went to culinary school and became a chef, soon opening up a successful catering business.
Of his time in Portland, John wrote, On the outside, it was a happy life, but inside, I was torn.
I deeply loved my wife Anne, who still believed in like the X-Gay movement, but I knew it would be extremely scandalous to embrace homosexuality after the career I've had.
But it was more and more apparent to me that it was what I had always been.
I was gay.
The older I got, the lonelier I was becoming.
In 2011, I was driving down a suburban street and I saw two men holding hands.
I burst into tears, realizing that I wanted to be one of those men.
So John got out of Focus in the Family because he realized he couldn't keep doing this work anymore.
But he still was married to his wife for like a decade afterwards.
Yeah, that's you know, just kind of slowly disengaging.
It's like after you're in this for so long, you can't just pop out very easily.
You have, it's, it's, it can be a slow process.
It's deprogramming yourself.
Yeah.
It's deprogramming yourself.
Yeah.
John describes his time working at Focus and the Family like this.
I was in utter torment.
I struggled on and off with addiction and wanting to take my life.
I wanted to believe I wasn't gay so badly that not only did I lie to other people, but I primarily lied to myself.
I wanted my homosexuality to change, but the truth is, for all the public rhetoric, I was not one bit less gay.
Behind closed doors, many of us in the ex-gay leadership at Focus and the Family would even admit this to each other.
We had this conversation many times.
Quote, we know our orientation hasn't really changed.
What has changed is our behavior, our way of life, how we see ourselves.
Our sexuality has not changed.
More and more, when I had to go up and speak to crowds of people about my gay conversion, I felt like a wind-up toy.
I'd go back to my hotel room, fall in the bed, and start weeping.
Yeah, which isn't uncommon for a lot of these people who were gay that ran these programs.
A lot of them have since come out and said, no, this is all bullshit.
I'm so sorry for causing the deaths of so many people.
I am gay and I want to kind of live a quiet life now.
I'm really sorry for what I have done, but I don't know how to deal with the trauma of not only me, but also the trauma I've caused.
Like, it doesn't sound like a great environment.
And there's a lot of brainwashing going on and cult-like stuff.
So it's hard to really...
I'm not sure what consequences for the actions should be.
Besides, if people should just be able to live alone for the rest of their life, live by themselves and try to find happiness.
I don't know.
Yeah.
It's tough.
In 2013, John made a public apology for all the harm him and the X-Gay movement he was a part of caused, saying, quote, I do not believe in reparative therapy.
I don't believe it changes sexual orientation.
In fact, it does great harm to many people.
I know that countless people were harmed by things I said and did in the past.
Parents, families, and their loved ones were all negatively impacted by the notion of reparative therapy and the message of change.
I am truly, truly sorry for the pain I have caused.
Now, I don't want to focus on John Paul too much because he isn't the primary victim here.
The primary victim are victims are like the teens and adults that killed themselves as a result of the rhetoric John and people like him, you know, spread.
But I also know that like John knows that.
He knows that as well.
And I'm sure it's awful to live with.
Yeah.
And I kind of do wish him the best.
He's living as a gay person.
I don't think he's Christian anymore.
Just living in Portland, running a very successful catering business.
Yep.
I kind of wish him well, but I don't want to focus on him too much.
Yep.
Due to financial restraints, we're coming to the end here, thankfully, because I'm kind of done with all of this.
Due to financial restraints, in 2011, in 2009, Focus in the Family sold Love One Out to Exodus International, a huge conversion therapy umbrella organization that had worked with Focus in the Family in the past.
Later on in 2013, Exodus totally shut down, ending Love One Out as well, stating that conversion therapy does not work and apologize for the pain they've caused.
And this was like the place.
This was like a massive conglomerate of gay conversion therapy programs.
Like this is actually huge news when this shut down.
Like this was massive.
Yeah.
Like I know people that have been sent to Exodus International programs.
Jesus Christ.
Exodus too.
Like what a nightmare all of that news is.
It's bad.
It's all terrible.
Also in 2009, John, no, James Dobson left Focus in the Family amid philosophical conflicts with his successor, Jim Daly.
Focus on the Family has undersince went down a, it has ever since gone down a downsizing and has dialed back its political activism, mainly kind of focusing on their media division now.
Its yearly operating budget still hovers around $90 million.
So like they're still very active.
They're just not like the massive political force they were in the 90s where they had like $150 million.
But still, they're still a notable organization.
Despite Dobson being gone and Love One Out defunct, not much has changed on the rhetoric Focus in the Family spreads regarding homosexuality.
They currently have like over 30 live articles that I could find through scrolling in like 10 minutes about the prevention/slash treatment of homosexuality, with many other articles about adjacent gay issues and stuff, plus selling countless books on the subject on their website.
One article opens up with the Imagine Question prompt saying, What can we say to our teenage son who just told us he's gay?
I'm devastated.
One minute I'm so angry, I could scream.
The next I could just sit and cry.
We love our son, but we don't want this influence in our home.
So that's how they start an article.
Yep.
Articles offer helpful advice for interacting with friends and family members that, quote, identify as gay.
And such helpful advice that they list is: see a person, not a homosexual.
Yeah.
So like, just this.
So homosexual is not a...
Okay.
Just the sheer notion that they need to establish that people are still humans.
Like the fact that they need to say that really shows what their audience is and what they're actually doing.
Yeah.
Well, that I hate.
Yep.
Although I'm pretty sure that the understanding that this is now a failing cultural battle, right?
Like they understand that this is now kind of a losing battle.
Because they've turned their attention more recently towards transgenderism as the new thing that's going to destroy America.
Okay.
Yeah.
That makes sense because gays are too accepted.
Accepted.
Now there's Republican gay people.
And it didn't destroy America.
Yeah.
We have a gay marriage and everything is still basically the same.
All right.
Now, I will say America has been kind of destroyed, but I don't blame gay marriage.
I don't blame gay marriage.
Or the four people.
Or the four-left Supreme Court.
No, I do blame the Supreme Court for some of it.
Not the far left, not the six to three far-left leftist communist Supreme Court.
Yeah, they didn't do that.
Yep.
Mostly I blame Drudge, the Drudge Report.
I blame Matt Drudge.
That's Drudge.
I know Glenn Beck was very popular at the time.
Yeah, but they all got popular.
All of these guys that we're dealing with now, like including Alex Jones, got their first initial really big national exposure thanks to Matt Drudge, who now is kind of anti-Trump.
Interesting.
Yeah, it's been a weird journey for Matt.
I mean, he's still, I think, pretty conservative, but he just doesn't like Trump.
John Oliver vs Pence00:08:02
But he was like, he was the...
We'll talk about Matt Drudge someday, maybe.
Yeah.
So they're selling lots of books written in the past five years about transgenderism on their website.
There's countless articles, whereas their articles about homosexuality have taken like a dip.
They're not writing as many new ones.
They're mainly focusing on transgender stuff.
If you didn't grow up in the evangelical Christian scene in the 80s, 90s, or 2000s, the first time you may have heard of Focus in the Family is probably from John Oliver's segment on his segment about Mike Pence.
Because in 2017, Mike Pence spoke at Focus on the Family's 40th anniversary.
Of course he did.
Yeah.
Pence has called Dobson a close personal friend.
Of course he has.
All of this.
Yeah.
Then Pence said these words about Focus on the Family of the organization.
Quote, the truth is that Focus on the Family has been a force in American families, a force for good, for the past 40 years.
Millions of families and families like mine are indebted to your work.
And let me assure you, there's one other family that's truly grateful for your work and for this great ministry.
And I promise you, Focus on the Family, you have an unwavering ally in President Donald Trump.
Of course he does.
Yeah.
Yep.
Real good.
During this episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver talked about Pence speaking at Focus on the Family's 40th anniversary event and highlighted both Pence's and Focus on the Family's history promoting gay conversion therapy, which because Pence did too.
He ran on that platform in the 90s.
Yeah, which is why I'm really concerned about him for gay issues, even more than Trump.
I guess my thing, if like, if Trump ever got impeached and Pence was put in, I'm kind of more scared of him for queer stuff.
Because Pence is legitimately terrifying on the religious front.
Mike Pence is.
Donald Trump is the guy who I think is capable of wooing Americans into authoritarianism, but he's not a competent authoritarian.
Mike Pence, I don't think is capable of wooing in the same way.
Probably not Trump is.
But he would be a competent authoritarian.
I mean, because Pence has called Dobson like his greatest mentor and close friend.
He is very scary.
It's those kind of stuff that's very scary.
Like Dobson helped him get elected initially.
There's a strong case to be made that the most frightening thing about Trump is not Trump himself or even his MAGA people, but the degree to which he has empowered the dominionist Christian movement.
Yes.
Yep.
Absolutely.
Which of which Dobson was a huge part of pioneering.
So because of John Oliver's segment, this prompted a response from the head of Focus on the Family, the now head, who's Jim Daly.
Quote, the satirical late-night talk show host's secret was not just vicious in tone, but also vulgar and vile in every sense of the word and way.
That was the response Focus on the Family had to John Oliver's segment about them, which I think was great.
But then also in the same statement, further confirming the organization's continued support of conversion therapy in a press statement saying, quote, we support the counseling and availability of professional therapy options for unwanted homosexual attractions or behavior.
So that's what they said in a press statement in response to the last week tonight episode.
Yeah.
In the last week tonight episode, John Oliver unveiled a new book that his team had written about the vice president's bunny, Marlon Bundo, who, of course, is actually gay.
With all the profits going to the charities AIDS United and the Trevor Project, the book sold more than the book sold about 200,000 copies in the first two days.
Massively successful.
A lot of money was donated.
It was really good.
The Trevor Project does a fantastic work.
Yes.
Yeah, was a very good thing that John Oliver and his team did there.
At the time of this episode's publication, 20 states currently ban conversion therapy for minors, including Colorado, which was a very recent, like in the past, in the past, I think, a year, Colorado banned it for minors.
And that's where Focus in the Family is based.
Around 28% of U.S. LGBT youth who have been to conversion therapy has attempted suicide within the past year.
So like in the past 12 months, that's happened.
Compared to 12% of LGBT youth who had not gone through conversion therapy.
So it more than doubles your chances of committing suicide if you attend LGBT as a queer person or as a queer youth specifically.
Yeah, it's morally identical to just firing a gun into a crowd of children.
According to the San Francisco State University, according to their study on conversion therapy and queer youth, LGBT youths that go through conversion therapy can be 8.4 times more likely to report of having attempted suicide.
Good God.
Good God.
Yeah, that is almost six times more likely to report higher levels of depression, three and a half times more likely to report the use of illegal drugs for coping, and three and a half times more likely, more likely to have HIV and STDs for people that go through conversion therapy.
All of those, it just sounds to me, Garrison, like you're saying all of these are all the benefits of God's love.
And yeah, that's all I've written because that's all I could write before I started breaking down and becoming unhealthy at a mental level.
Yeah.
Well, enjoy this fun episode, everybody, that Garrison wrote for you.
He had his chance to make a Behind the Bastards episode, and he made it, made me very sad.
And normally I make people sad while laughing manically because I've had to deal with the depressing thing.
And now I'm just sad and Garrison's laughing.
Yeah.
And I understand the harm that I've brought to the world now, but I'm not going to stop.
Yeah, no.
More of this.
More of this.
Anyway, yeah, that's the episode.
Robert, do you want to unpluggables?
Actually, first let's...
I absolutely do not.
First, I'm going to plug the Trevor Project.
They do very good work on assisting queer youth in times of crisis.
Also, if you're in Britain, the Mermaids Foundation is great for trans issues.
I know there's a few new trans hotlines in the states that I need to learn their numbers for them because they're relatively new.
But yeah, the Trevor Project is great.
Mermaids in the UK is great.
A whole bunch of stuff that you can help for...
Oftentimes you'll see legislation going around to help ban conversion therapy for minors in your state.
Get involved with that.
That's one of the few things where legislation actually is possible.
I know there's a whole thing about voting or not voting.
You should vote for that.
If you see it happening, vote for that because it can save a lot of kids' lives.
Yeah.
That's the episode.
Yay.
Yay.
Real fun.
Garrison.
Where can people follow you?
If you want to see me talk about Crowdboys and the feds and tear gas, I'm on Twitter at EvoDon.
You can find us on Twitter.
I have an Instagram account, but I've never used it.
It's completely blank.
See, I told you, only the youths have Instagrams, and they don't like to use them.
No one's on Instagram.
It's Zuckerberg.
I don't want to go on that.
The only social media apps are Twitter and the TikToks.
We're on TikTok.
I don't have TikTok.
Guys.
It sounds like it's a healthier social media platform than any of the things.
A lot of great queer youth expressing themselves in healthy ways.
Yeah.
Thank God we're banning it.
All right.
The episode's done.
On paper, the three hosts of the Nick Dicken Pole Show are geniuses.
We can explain how AI works, data centers, but there are certain things that we don't necessarily understand.
Better version of play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Yes.
Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time.
I actually, I thought it was.
I got that wrong.
But hey, no one's perfect.
We're pretty close, though.
Listen to the Nick, Dick, and Paul Show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Podcast Wrap Up00:01:47
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
Coming up this season on Math and Magic, CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario.
People think that creative ideas are like these light bulb moments that happen when you're in the shower, or it's really like a stone sculpture.
You're constantly just chipping away and refining.
Take to interactive CEO Strauss Selnick and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.
Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating Wall Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum-Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
There's an economic component to communities thriving.
If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they've failed.
Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
This is Amy Roebach alongside TJ Holmes from the Amy and TJ podcast.
And there is so much news, information, commentary coming at you all day and from all over the place.
What's fact, what's fake, and sometimes what the F?
So let's cut the crap, okay?
Follow the Amy and TJ Podcast, a one-stop news and pop culture shop to get you caught up and on with your day.
And listen to Amy and TJ on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.