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Aug. 1, 2025 - Where There's Woke - Thomas Smith
53:58
WTW86: The New York Times Pride Hate Crime
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Time Text
Hey, everyone.
Little pre-intro intro here.
Here's the thing.
We recorded what I think is some of my favorite stuff we've ever done about Pride and about the New York Times and what they the hate crime that they did around Pride.
I really wish we had gotten this out at the time.
And this is actually one of the many things that made us realize that we got to make some changes and we got to reduce workload.
And so we are doing that.
It's exciting.
It's had for me.
It's happening.
And we're going to be able to put more of a focus on this show because I love this show.
I really want to do more of it.
Me too.
And so, yes, this is late.
It's about Pride.
It was, we recorded this right after Lydia went to SF Pride and she talks about that.
But this is a pre-intro intro.
We have another intro that was at the time.
She wanted to say, sorry, we didn't get this out sooner.
And I, I really am upset I didn't because I really, like I said, this is some of my favorite stuff we've ever done.
It's really fun in a yelly way.
So this is just a classic Thomas Smith way.
Yeah.
It's a yellow way.
Sorry, we haven't put out much lately, but we're shifting things to be able to change our focus.
Yeah.
Thanks for bearing with us.
Priority for us.
Excited for you to hear this the next two parts.
And then a bonus not related to this for patrons.
So we're trying to get back in gear for this show.
And we're really sorry we haven't put out much lately.
So without further ado, here's the intro intro.
This was pre-intro.
And then we'll do a post-intro.
That was the amuse bouche.
And now you're going to get your first boosh.
I don't know.
No.
I don't know how the language works.
Is that how scary about the woke mob?
How often you just don't see them coming anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.
Everything, everything, everything, everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green Eminem will now wear sneakers.
Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 86.
I'm Thomas Smith.
That over there is one of the letters in the LGBTQ something, Lydia Smith.
And you guys have to guess.
Yeah, we're not telling.
I'm doing pretty well.
How are you?
I don't think I'm any of the letters.
I don't know what they are anymore, actually.
And I don't mean this in a complaining way.
I mean this and I just haven't kept up with it.
Maybe we should check that.
It'll be part of today's coverage.
I don't think you get like, I have no idea if I'm any of the letters.
And happy pride, everyone.
Podcasters, not one of the letters, so.
Oh, good.
Yeah.
There is no movement that should include podcasters.
Yeah, it shouldn't be.
Happy Pride.
This is a celebration of Pride in us together all reading and hating a fucking New York Times opinion.
Surprise, surprise.
In this year of our Lord 2025, with the fascists in total control of everything, with it being illegal to be trans basically now.
That's not even an exaggeration.
It's pretty much illegal to be trans in most of the country.
And the New York Times published a piece from Andrew Sullivan called How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost Its Way with a spill of rainbow ink behind it.
Wow.
I'm going to do you one better.
And I don't know if you've seen this.
I'm going to send you something real fast.
That's a clever image, clever and compelling image to go with their stupid transphobic trash, but it gets worse.
Blue Skylink.
I'm going over.
Check out this bleach.
I get my typical please verify your email pop-up and I say maybe later every single time.
It's been that way since I started my class.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It takes two seconds.
I don't mind.
It's fine.
Oh, yeah, it takes two seconds.
But what you're not factoring is you have something like that in every single aspect of your life in every account.
A lot of apps.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But we won't have that relationship fight right now.
Why do that when we can join and look at what I'm trying to say?
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Not only was this this artwork.
Yeah, go ahead.
Front page of the Sunday opinion of the New York Times.
Yeah, not the front page.
Obviously, but like of the little opinion insert part of the paper.
Front, not just front page.
Yeah.
How big is what?
What do you see?
You have to unfold it.
The whole fucking page.
The entire first page filled with that rainbow graphic that starts as a rainbow and then dissolves in the bottom.
Right.
Now, think about this.
If it's folded and you see Sunday opinion, the title's not on the first, the top half of this.
So it just looks like it's an intact rainbow.
Yeah.
And then you unfold it and it's dissolving in front of your eyes.
It's spreading.
It's becoming a virus.
It's like they're tricking.
It's almost like when you get a tip from the religious pieces of shit and it's one of those, it's a folded up like bill of some kind.
Like you're like, oh, a tip.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then you open it.
It's religious propaganda.
Yeah.
It's like that.
Yeah.
That's exactly what this is.
It's like that, but really wider scale and worse.
Yeah.
Wow.
I'm glad you pointed that out.
That didn't even really occur to me.
Full page.
So that, as you say, if it's folded, looks like just a rainbow.
Sunday opinion.
Hey, it's pride.
Happy pride.
And then if you unfold it, then you get this shit with has the gay rights movement lost its way.
The push to redefine gender is threatening hard-won support for equality by Andrew Sullivan.
Incredible.
Just incredible work, New York Times.
Anyway, oh, what was I going to say?
I was going to, I'm wondering, like, I don't think I'm any of the letters, but like, is there any sort of partial credit system?
Like, if you're, because I'm just like, so I don't care or anything.
So maybe I'm like parts of different letters.
Can I add that together?
No, it's okay.
I mean, there's a plus.
So yeah.
Well, yeah, but then everyone's included.
You know, you can't let everyone.
I wouldn't be a part of the club that have me as a member, to be honest with you.
So I'm fine.
Happy pride.
But you're an ally.
I, okay.
I, of course, I'm an ally.
I would seek to be an ally.
And if they include that, then I'd be happy to be considered that.
But no, this is something that means a lot to us.
And I know so many of our listeners, of course, as well.
And this fucking opinion piece is outrageous and has multiple where there's woke debunkable things in it.
So I thought that would be a good use of our time.
And there's so much bullshit in it.
And we're so upset about it.
We don't know how long we're going to go.
We'll see.
Everybody sit down.
Yeah.
Well, go to the bathroom first.
Yeah.
And then sit down.
Get a snack, maybe.
Because we don't know how long we're going to be here.
Fuck this guy.
Fuck the New York Times.
Okay.
Well, after the break, we'll dig into this pile of shit.
Patreon.com slash Werther's book.
Ah...
Yeah.
We haven't even started.
I'm so mad.
I know.
How do it, where do we, should we just start reading?
I think we should start reading.
Okay.
I would have you read, but I think that I'm more annoying.
So like that might go better with this, you know?
I'm going to read.
Yeah.
And I think you should save your annoyance for the reaction.
Okay.
10 years ago, Thursday, the movement for gay and lesbian equality scored a victory that only a decade before had seemed unimaginable.
We won equal rights to civil marriage in every state in the country.
In 2020 came another stunning win.
In a majority opinion written by one of President Trump's nominees, Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court found that gay men, lesbians, and transgender men and women are covered under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and protected from employer discrimination.
I know it was a good decision.
It's just funny to like try to link that up, that one good decision that happened.
Yeah.
Bostock or whatever amid, he doesn't include like scores of shitty decisions against gay rights in that time.
But okay, you picked one great one and then learned.
And I'm giving all the credit to Gorsuch too.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
In 2024, the Republican Party removed opposition to marriage equality from its platform.
That's because they didn't have a platform.
And the current Republican.
Yeah.
What are you talking about, dude?
They literally did not have a platform.
Well, that was 2020.
Oh, 2020, they didn't have a platform.
2024, their platform was immigration is bad and we hate people who don't look like us.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you, I'm sorry.
That's important.
Let's read that sentence.
In 2024, the Republican Party removed opposition to marriage equality from its platform.
Wow.
Really?
So that sentence would serve, or that clause, that first clause of it.
The point of that would be, well, look at this.
We've made so much progress that the Republican Party, they're not even bothering to oppose gay marriage anymore.
I think this is also incredibly disingenuous because anyone who was around in 2024 for the election knows that the Republican platform also like didn't mean anything because what really mattered was Project 2025.
And Project 2025 certainly feels away about non-traditional families.
Certainly.
We are seeing that now, even with this push to like try and convince people to have babies.
This is not like a Republican, wow, way to go.
They're on our side.
No, they just found a more like insidious way to still have those same feelings, but to pull better.
And here's the truth.
Because of our stupid fucking country that's been ruined, all that matters is the Supreme Court.
And I think it's incredibly likely.
Now, we've been worried about this for a while and it hasn't happened yet.
So in a way, I would love to be wrong about this, but I find it highly likely that we're going to lose the very fucking case that he talks about as the cornerstone of his argument.
Like, hey, we got gay marriage across the land.
Oh, Burgel.
I think it's highly likely that that goes away.
I really hope I'm wrong.
I think we're seeing rumblings, though, in some of the states.
Like there are some senators who are putting forward legislation.
And, you know, who knows if it's actually going to make its way and then blah, blah, blah, blah, up to the Supreme Court.
But yeah, I would not be surprised if we saw that.
And Clarence Thomas has like laid down some of that.
Alito's laid down some of that in some of their opinions too.
Like I think Andrew Sullivan should be worried, honestly.
Yeah.
And he won't be because here's the thing.
You'd have to be an idiot.
He's either disingenuous or an idiot.
And I don't think he's an idiot because all that matters is that.
Because once the Supreme Court takes away everyone's, it's everyone's rights in that.
You know, it's anyone's right.
It's our liberty.
I know it is gay rights, it is same-sex marriage rights, but I do think we should think of that as all of our rights.
We never know who that's going to be in your life, your kids, your family, you.
You just never know.
And one person's liberty in this country, I think, is everyone's liberty.
Like it really is.
And we should think of it that way for the sake of like fighting for it.
And that could go away.
And then how do we get that back?
How do we get it back?
Tell me the political process by which we get nationwide marriage equality back because it's going to take a lot of people supporting it and either a Congress willing to pass a bill, I guess.
Yeah.
I'm foggy on like whether the Supreme Court would even be cool with that.
Like I don't know.
You know, I'm not actually sure.
Well, all you need is the president via executive order.
And like, there are no rules.
There are no rules anymore.
No, no, I mean, to pass a bill to legalize it back, to make same-sex marriage recognized across the nation.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I think that works in the same way that I think we could codify Roe and we should, but that requires a majority, if not an actual like, you know, super majority because we're never getting rid of this fucking filibuster, apparently.
But that requires widespread support.
It doesn't require, oh, look, the fascist party forgot to write it down in 2024.
Yeah.
That doesn't mean we're good to go.
In order to undo what is likely coming, it could be another decades-long fucking battle if we don't work hard enough.
If we don't doing things like this and the front opinion page of the New York fucking Times, has the gay rights agenda gone too far?
Yeah, that's a great way to set yourself up to protect your marriage rights, Andrew Sullivan, right after the Supreme Court takes them away.
Again, God forbid, I hope they don't, but they really might.
Yeah, I mean, let me just read this one little bit from Project 2025 and kind of talk about what they think family is.
I mean, our listeners are very familiar with this, but Andrew Sullivan, if you're listening, maybe you can be familiar with this too.
In Project 2025, it says, every threat to family stability must be confronted.
This resolve should color each of our policies.
The Dobbs decision is just the beginning.
We must replace woke nonsense with a healthy vision starting with the American family.
And on page 451 in Project 2025 of, you know, 900.
Which might as well have been the Republican Party platform.
It literally is.
Like we're seeing things from that 900-something odd page book make its way into like literally the executive orders, literally the policy, the agenda.
This was their blueprint all along.
We knew it and they gaslit us and we knew it.
But on page 451, it defines what the right kind of family is.
And they say, quote, a married mother, father, and their children.
This is the foundation of a well-ordered nation and a healthy society.
And this shouldn't be surprising for like other folks who've been kind of in the conservative think tank sphere also.
Like we did a whole breakdown on marriage and the public good from the Witherspoon Institute on SIO.
Gosh.
Oh, that was two years ago?
No, it was before this show.
Oh, geez.
Yeah.
Freaking crazy how much time has gone by.
And Andrew Sullivan's Catholic.
So is the Witherspoon Institute that does not believe that he should have a right to be married.
They don't because he is gay.
Like end of story.
That's not legitimate in their eyes and it never will be.
And so the cognitive dissonance that he is living with is now like thrust upon people who are more marginalized than he is.
And it's like, it's yeah, so that's the actual Trump agenda, Project 2025.
Already we're off to such a bad start and there's so much more to go.
Okay.
So in 2024, the Republican Party removed opposition to marriage equality from its platform.
We just talked about that.
And the current Republican Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, is a married gay man with two children.
Gay marriage is backed by around 70% of Americans and discrimination against gay men, lesbians, and transgender people is opposed by 80%.
So yeah, he's trying to say, look, gay marriage is backed by 70% of Americans.
That's awesome.
And by the way, discrimination against gay men, lesbians, as you read, is opposed by 80%.
I find that meaningless because I think at least the second one, I think support for gay marriage is a pretty clear polling question, but something like, oh, do you oppose discrimination against blah, blah, blah, I don't think is a meaningful poll question because these people always don't think they're discriminating.
Like they always are just like, no, they should, they shouldn't be able to marry, but like they shouldn't be discriminating.
You know, like, I just don't really trust that number.
So that's him kind of taking a victory lap over.
Look, don't, don't worry, 70% of Americans.
That's, yeah, I mean, should be totally fine, right?
Well, here's a poll from, here's a Gallup poll from literally May 29th of this fucking year.
Here's in this Gallup.
It's not whatever the fuck that poll is.
So like a month before he published this.
Yep.
Here's the title of it.
Record party divide 10 years after same-sex marriage ruling.
Republican support.
Ready for this?
This is fucking a bummer.
Jesus.
It's worse than I thought.
Republican support has dropped 14 points since 2022.
Wow.
Wow.
Unbelievable.
In three years.
2022.
That is so sad.
If you look at this fucking chart, if he had written this in the looks here, based on the chart, I can tell you, Andrew Sullivan, when you could have been slightly less wrong writing this.
Ready?
Right.
In, okay, I'm looking at this chart of a steady sort of increase in support among, and it's separated out by Democrats, U.S. adults, and, you know, Republicans who are obviously way below those, those two groups, dragging down the average there.
And you see, you know, increase is steady increase kind of ups and downs until May 2021.
It stagnates at 55%.
And weirdly, they must do this every May before Pride.
May 2022, same number.
It's like it hit a ceiling and then bam, drops like a rock in, again, like flips.
One, two, three.
Yeah, three years from 55% to 41%.
That is sad.
That's really sad.
Wow.
That is something to be fucking concerned about.
To write this off is like, yeah, most people support.
It's still fine.
Nothing to see here.
It was great.
We got our gay rights.
It's awesome.
And actually, like, even just looking at his own source for this, at first I was like, oh, maybe they don't split by political affiliation, but they do.
And so he's kind of being disingenuous here too, where he's citing the overall number and not actually looking at this Republican-Democrat split, which I think is really, really important because who's in power right now in all three branches of the government?
Who is going to be setting policy and interpreting laws right now in the government for all of these people?
Now, he knows this and is going to use this same information later, I think, to make the same point, even though it contradicts him.
So we'll see.
Okay.
As civil rights victories go, it doesn't get more decisive or comprehensive than this.
Okay.
Really?
Then something that is going to be reversed.
And that's.
That has already started chipping away.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But a funny thing happened in the wake of these triumphs.
Far from celebrating victory, defending the gains, staying vigilant, but winding down as a movement that had winding down.
Yeah.
That had achieved its core objectives.
All right, guys, we're done.
When you say that's the NAACP, like, what are you talking about?
Wind it down, everybody.
We got it.
So we're good.
Everybody, go home.
What are you still doing?
That had achieved its core objectives, including the end of HIV in the United States as an unstoppable plague.
Gay and lesbian rights groups did the opposite.
Swayed by the broader liberal shift to the quote social justice left.
Here we go.
They ratified.
They radicalized.
They've been acting on.
Their eyes turned red all of a sudden.
They're like sleeper agents for the fucking woke agenda, I guess.
Yeah.
It's incredible to me.
Incredible.
Yeah.
They don't need to like, you know, still make sure that gay people have the right to live in southern states and shit.
Like there's still plenty, plenty of places where discrimination is happening.
He's just really privileged and doesn't know or give a shit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And also like you're still talking about a minority group of people in the United States too.
Like they deserve to know that they have support and protection when the majority decides to change their mind because that happens because we're human beings.
And importantly, he also might, I don't even want to say have a point, but like it would make a slight amount of sense if the movement had been literally it's gay people and gay people only for marriage.
Like if that was the movement.
Yeah.
Sure.
But was that the movement?
Like what was that?
What it was?
Let's see.
In 2023, the human rights campaign, the largest gay, lesbian, and transgender civil rights group in the country, declared a state of emergency for gay men, lesbians, and transgender people.
Remember this, the first time in the organization's existence.
It had not declared a state of emergency when gay men were jailed for having sex in private, when the AIDS epidemic killed hundreds of thousands of gay men or when we faced a possible constitutional amendment banning marriage equality in 2004.
In fact, we found out this quote emergency was almost entirely in response to new state bills proposing restrictions on medical treatment for minors with gender dysphoria, bathroom and locker room bans and transgender issues in school curricula and sports.
I want to pause here because I was like, oh, that's really surprising.
I wonder what their history is.
I feel like I fucking did this back then, but sure, I don't remember.
So the human rights campaign actually started as the human rights campaign fund.
It was a political action committee.
So it was funding political candidates in order to try and like gain support for ending discrimination against gay people, specifically in healthcare and employment.
And it didn't grow into like this lobbying organization until 1989.
So then they had their PAC and then they had their separate like lobbying entity.
And they were lobbying for ending discrimination in healthcare, specifically ending discrimination in healthcare, and for extending hate crime policies to include protection of lesbian, gay, and bisexual folks.
Moving into education and political advocacy, that didn't happen until 1995.
So these first couple of things that he's citing here, that wasn't the role of the human rights campaign at the time.
They were trying to just fund people because like Ronald Reagan wouldn't even say the word gay or AIDS.
He wouldn't say any of it.
And so at that point in time, they were just trying to give money to people who want money, all of our politicians, and help them get elected because that was going to move the needle for them at that point in time.
And then in terms of like this particular national state of emergency, I don't know why this really bothers him that much.
Like when you're looking.
Sure, he's going to tell us, but yeah.
Well, well, when like you look at their website for the human rights campaign, they call out, hey, this is the first time that we've done this.
And they say, because we are tracking more than 750 pieces of legislation that could harm our community.
And this is spanning a variety of different topics, right?
There's Florida's Don't Say Gay bill, anti-conversion therapy.
And then of course we get like transgender bills as well too, bathroom bills, locker room bans, bans on transgender healthcare.
But then there's also things like censoring of curriculum and education.
There's a particular bill I pulled up, I think it was out of Arizona that it said like parents have the right to decide their children's education.
That's the only thing it says there.
And then it goes on to, you know, talk about anti-trans stuff throughout the rest of the bill.
But implementing that, I was like, Jesus Christ, how are they going to do that?
Non-discrimination, restrictions on drag.
These span so many different areas and for the entire community.
And I think it's understandable for the human rights campaign to be like, we have never seen something as pervasive as this, as potentially horrible for the people that we are advocating for and fighting for in all of these ways than we have seen now.
And people need to know about it.
And so we're going to create a database, which is what they have on their website, and ring the alarm, ring the bell that something is happening here that is bad.
And it could be completely irreversible if we're not paying attention and fighting back.
Yeah, there's so many reasons this is fucking stupid.
He obviously had also cherry-picked the examples that he gave in that paragraph too.
As I said just now, it runs across all LGBTQ plus issues.
Like the human rights campaign is not discriminating on their end and just focusing on bills that could affect transgender folks.
There are things that are talking about just free speech.
I mean, like banning drag, that affects everybody.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There are so many reasons why this is so fucking stupid.
It's just so fucking stupid.
I cannot believe this is what the New York Times would spend their time and their pages and their ink on.
Like a person who was first saying, hey, my marriage was protected and that was great.
But then after that, an organization that is still worried about gay rights said things were an emergency, but they didn't say that back before my marriage was saved.
Yeah.
Really?
Do you also, did your little brother get an extra cookie?
Like, it's just so fucking childish.
That's the thing you're worried about is like, well, how dare they not declare a state of emergency in these other times?
I'm pretty sure I covered this at the time or something because I remember this.
I remember this pretty distinctly that this was a bad faith argument at that time.
Yeah.
First off, looking back, which I'm sure we already were a little bit worried about the partisan divide in support for gay marriage.
Looking back, this was a great time to sound the alarm.
As you look at that chart that we were just talking about, Republican support has dropped fucking 14 points in three fucking years.
Yeah.
So that's a great time to sound the alarm, considering that Republicans now are back in control of every single part of the government.
And the most important part, the Supreme Court.
That's a good time.
Also, it's just like, it's just kind of a marketing thing.
Like, and I don't mean that to diminish it.
I think it is important to get the word out.
Like, but if you're the human rights campaign and your goal is, you know, is fundraising and awareness and all that, this is kind of a marketing decision.
And I agree with the marketing decision.
Like it is also a very valid thing to say that they should have been like in a state of emergency from their inception, like that would make any fucking sense.
If you take the state of some sort of civil right right now and go back to the 60s or 70s or 80s, it's going to feel like, holy shit, this was terrible back then.
But to the people back then, it didn't feel quite that same way, like broadly speaking.
It would be a weird tone to try to strike to be like, okay, we've incorporated as the human rights campaign.
We're like an organization fighting for gay rights.
Holy shit, state of emergency.
Like it just doesn't really rhetorically work.
You know, it's just a, it's just such a stupid complaint on his part.
Like the reason they're sounding the alarm, they sounded the alarm two years ago now in this way is because Jesus fucking Christ, they were right in every single respect.
Yep.
Could not be more right.
Yeah.
And there's a big difference between there being deficits in this civil right that we're working to correct and that we're fighting for and that over time the trend line is looking positive.
There's a big difference between that and all of a sudden a steep downturn.
Even if that means we've only gone back to 2015 when we wouldn't have necessarily said it was like an emergency or 2010 when we wouldn't, I don't think we would have said like, oh, this is an emergency per se, like rhetorically.
But when you go from like steady progress chipping away at some of these numbers, you know, like some of this, the support nationwide to a fall off a cliff.
Fast fall off a cliff.
Yeah, that is an emergency.
We don't know where that cliff ends.
All these bills, like I just want to reiterate.
The human rights campaign was right in every single fucking jot and tittle, as they said, the biblical phrase or whatever, of this declaration of emergency.
They could not have been more correct.
They're proven more correct today, the very time he wrote this article than at that time when it came out.
They're absolutely right.
They were absolutely right.
They're worried about things that are very important.
And to complain that they didn't declare a state of emergency at some other historical time is just fucking nothing.
It's just children being mad at each other for having one extra toy or something.
It's fucking nothing.
It's pathetic.
This is the kind of bullshit grievance that makes up our entire fucking media now.
It's all it is.
This is unfair.
They should have been more mad when I didn't have my rights, even though now I've said I have all my rights and no one else should care about anything.
It's just, God, grow up.
And I do want to call that out a little bit too, because like he is not a stranger to incremental progress, right?
Like I mentioned this to you off the air, but just sharing with everybody, Andrew Sullivan is HIV positive.
He's from the UK.
And there used to be a policy in place that you could not get your citizenship in the United States if you were HIV positive.
That's horribly discriminatory.
And that eventually changed and he was able to become a citizen.
So this idea of like, we should fight for better things and the fight is never over.
Take a look in the mirror.
Yeah, unbelievable.
All right, continuing on.
Nonetheless, the money has poured into gay, lesbian, and transgender groups in the past decade.
Charitable funding for such groups totaled $387 million in 2012, according to the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy's Equitable Giving Lab.
By 2021, it was $823 million.
Oh my God, I'm outraged.
Yeah.
Jeff Bezos just got married and rented all of Venice.
So, you know, we should be worried about that.
That was an amount that if Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk lost, they wouldn't notice.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, exactly.
Fucking annual budget for every charitable group working in this field is a meaningless amount of money to these fucking assholes.
Yeah.
LGBTQ plus organizations also saw their assets grow 76% from 2019 to 2021, around double the size of their increase in donations.
A group like GLAD, founded in 1985 to combat anti-gay media bias in the depths of the AIDS epidemic, saw its funding increase sixfold between 2014 and 2023.
The human rights campaign has also seen revenues soar in the past decade.
I don't really know.
Why are you talking about this?
People can spend their money, how they want to spend their money, and donate where they feel the causes are important.
Yes.
And hey, how has spending on elections gone in that same time?
Yeah, exactly.
What the fuck is the point you think you're making?
What's happened is there's too much money in our politics for many reasons, including the very same Supreme Court that's going to take away your marriage soon.
And over that period of time has gone up at a rate that I'm sure is comparable.
Or more.
Yeah.
Like I'm trying to check the numbers here.
And these groups are like clawing to stay in the mix.
Yeah.
And like, there's just more money in politics year over year every single time.
So, but because of Oberjafell, it should have stayed the same or just gone down.
Again, we got to wind it down, everybody.
Let's wind it down.
Yeah.
That was the funniest.
Instead of just like disbanding and being like, we're done here.
So if I go to opensecrets.org, which I think is a pretty good website, they have the cost of election.
Here are the amounts spent on all federal elections by cycle.
These figures include all money spent by presidential candidates, Senate and House candidates, political parties, and independent interest groups trying to influence federal elections.
Here, I'll do this and you give me what he talked about in those numbers.
Give me the years, go over those figures again.
I'll give you the equivalent of just like the full landscape of political spending.
All right.
He starts with his base in 2012.
2012.
Okay.
Yep.
And said that these groups were receiving funding for about $387 million.
Okay.
And then he goes to what?
2021.
Okay.
And it was $823 million.
2021.
Why does he go to, okay, in that time, and these are skewed because it's going to matter more when there's a presidential race.
Like, obviously.
So we'll go, we'll go presidential race to presidential race to keep apples to apples.
2012, total cost of elections was 8 billion.
We'll say 8.5 billion, 8.6 billion.
Yeah.
2020, guess what it was?
I'm scared.
It's hard.
Yeah, it's a hard thing to guess.
But what was the percentage increase that he's talking about, basically?
If it went from 387, it basically doubled in that time, we'll say.
Well, here's what happened nationwide with all races.
It went from 8.6 billion in 2012 to 18.3 or 4 billion in that same period of time.
That's actually pretty equivalent, like roughly, that's, you know, that's kind of shockingly close.
Let me just, just for fun, just kind of get out the old calculator here.
Wow.
That's actually incredible and makes a lot of sense.
The overall spending.
So if just to simplify it in that time, and I don't, you know, I'm not checking all his fucking sources and if that's apples to apples, but just because we're doing a quick thing for a New York Times article, which apparently you can just write and not really, you know, know anything or put much work into it.
So if he's saying, look at how much this funding increased, it was 387 million in 2012.
And then by 2021, it was 823 million.
That has basically multiplied by 2.126.
Okay.
Overall spending that I just read you, 2.135.
Oh, wow.
Nearly identical.
Yeah.
That's not an unrelated point.
That's the environment that these political groups would have to fight in.
Yeah.
So if I'm whatever, a candidate or again, in this case, an organization trying to work for equality in queer rights, all that kind of thing.
And I have $5 one year, and then everybody else all of a sudden has $12.
Like, I also need more money to compete.
Just to take a stupid simple example.
Like, that makes sense.
It's all trending up because it's an arms race.
And the more money is spent on the other side, you have to fucking keep up because that's our dumb system.
This is a non-point.
Yeah.
And it could get even more dumb because I just saw the Supreme Court agreed to hear JD Vance's position that political campaign spending, the cap should be removed completely.
So cool.
Great.
Yeah.
Good for our country.
Okay.
So what point is he even making with a huge increase of funding?
Because I don't even know that he knows.
Let's see in his next paragraph.
But this huge increase in funding was no longer primarily about gay, lesbian, and transgender civil rights because almost all had already been won.
What?
You put transgender in there.
Your whole thing was gay.
If you wanted to say no longer primarily about gay and lesbian civil rights, I might kind of agree because it's not primarily about that.
What's weird is he first, we know he's going to make the point.
I mean, keen listeners will already know that his point is fuck trans people.
It should just be about me, Andrew Sullivan.
You know, that's the point he's going to make because he already teased it with the like, you know, oh, it was marriage equality, but now it's all this other stuff.
But now in this thing about funding, he says, but this huge increase in funding was no longer primarily about gay, lesbian, and transgender civil rights because almost all had already been one.
What are you talking about?
They were just waiting for that Title VII.
Once they got it, he was like, all right, we're going to.
Transgender civil rights in your sentence.
What fucking world are you living in, you idiot?
But this is so funny.
What is this money actually going toward?
Let's see.
It was instead about a new and radical gender revolution.
Wow.
Okay.
Focused on ending what activists saw as the oppression of the sex binary, which some critical gender and queer theorists associated with quote white supremacy.
Give me a quote.
I'm so fucking sick of this.
This is why we did the podcast and why we also have burnt out and why we're getting energy for it again.
This is all of the fucking media.
What some people that I saw on Twitter once said was racism.
So that's stupid.
So I get to write a New York Times column about it.
I just want to know what actual activists he's saying.
Some critical gender and queer theorists.
Who?
Tell you what.
What would be interesting is if you, if you gave us a name, I wouldn't fucking know it.
You know why?
Because critical gender and queer theorists are not prominent people in power.
Yeah.
Like they are, they are thinkers and some, you might know, maybe have heard of a handful if they're activists and they're, you know, or something.
But like for the most part, they are people who have written some really thoughtful stuff and might be deep in the academic space.
Yeah, and they might, maybe they're, you know, trying to lead some movements and stuff, but like you haven't heard of them.
I haven't heard of them.
Likely.
They're not on the New York Times.
They're not fucking table names.
Yeah, they never get these.
They never get these fucking op-eds.
You never get that.
But guess what?
Some of them call gender white supremacy.
Well, that sounds dumb.
If you put it that way, that sounds really dumb.
So I guess your whole point must be correct.
I'm sure what he's referring to is some people writing about how there's likely some overlap with enforcement of gender norms and white supremacy, because obviously there fucking is.
It's trying to make you take a simple-minded view of it, which is, wait, one thing is gender.
That has nothing to do with race.
This thing is white supremacy.
That has everything to do with race.
How could those two things be related?
What idiots these nameless activists must be or whatever, you know?
But like, I'm sure we would get, if we looked it up, some very well thought out journal articles and academic papers about how enforcing the sex binary is part of the overall white supremacy of our system and all that.
Like, and I'm sure they're right, but what does that fucking matter?
Do you think that they're, hold on, do you think they're giving all the money, Andrew Sullivan?
Do you think that all went?
Show me in the fucking IRS forms where the 823 million now goes just to those people to write those that you can't even name.
You can't even give a name.
Yeah.
Well, and he's acting also like this is a question that like they've already gotten all their civil rights and now they're like, okay, what next?
Let's talk about this.
Yeah, we have all this money.
I'm seeing something, you know, this article from 1998 that says, constructing whiteness, the intersections of race and gender in U.S. white supremacist discourse.
These are things that they've been talking about since the freaking beginning.
Yeah.
What are you doing?
Jeez.
So fucking dumb.
Here, keep going.
All right.
Focused on ending what activists saw as the oppression of the sex binary, which some critical gender and queer theorists associated with white supremacy, they aimed to dissolve natural distinctions between men and women in society to replace biological sex with quote gender identity in the law and culture and to redefine homosexuality in the process,
not as a neutral fact of the human condition, but as a liberating ideological queerness, which is then meant to subvert and queer language, culture, and society in myriad different ways.
There's so many quotation marks that aren't quotes of things.
I get that that's kind of just how maybe like you're supposed to do it just grammar-wise, but like would love an actual quote, though.
Like it would be, it would just be, I'm just noticing like, boy, it sure would be cool if it was like a properly selected quote from somebody's academic work that I could actually evaluate.
Like I should rather than just a collection of scary phrases from fearmongering.
Fucking Google Chrome tab marked scary gender stuff.
You know, it's like this is just straw manning.
Here's the thing.
I think you could probably consider me part of the fucking woke mob.
I don't know.
I don't think anyone gives a shit about getting rid of the gender binary for like John Q public.
Like I just don't really think.
And furthermore, even if they do, they might mean that in the sense of it's not rigidly enforced on everyone.
Yeah.
It is entirely consistent with queer rights, with trans rights, with all that stuff to be like, oh yeah, I'm, you know, just a cis man.
I'm just a dude.
I'm a man.
I'm a cis man.
That's what I feel my gender is.
I don't feel any sort of, and I'm just speaking as an example.
You don't feel dysphoria.
Yeah, I don't feel dysphoria.
I don't feel like I'm, you know, fluid.
I don't feel any of those things as an example.
But here I am marching on pride, like ready to support trans rights and down with the oppression of a gender binary that's enforced on everybody.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's just such a very different thing.
Nobody's taking away your penis, dude, or whatever you think is happening.
Or you as being a homosexual either.
Yeah.
No one's touching.
I don't even know what he's talking about.
He'll get to it.
Okay.
All right.
Well, there we go.
Yeah.
The words gay and lesbian all but disappeared.
LGBT became LGBTQ, then LGBTQ plus.
Here we go, grandpa.
And more letters.
Develop that cloud.
And more letters and characters kept being added.
LGBTQIA plus or 2S LGBTQIA plus to include intersex, asexual people, and two-spirit indigenous people.
The plus sign referred to a seemingly infinite number of new niche identities.
And by some counts, more than 70 new genders.
I'm positive I've debunked that very we did with January Little John.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
There you go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There are news.
More than 70.
Have you been talking to James?
Name one.
So dumb.
The point was that.
Name one gender.
No, but like, in seriousness, name one time this has fucking mattered ever.
Like in your life, in your life, where have the trans people hurt you, Andrew Sullivan?
Like, again, I am just a fucking normal, boring cis dude.
I just am pretty much.
Yeah.
Especially in my everyday.
Especially in my, hey, I'm pretty fluid.
I don't, I just don't have any qualms.
I'm good with whatever, everybody.
So I, again, I want to get partial credit on enough of the letters and then I can collect some badges.
Again, there's no place in my everyday life, even in liberal woke mob, California, where this fucking has any effect whatsoever.
What if somebody writing a blog somewhere thinks there's 70 genders?
Who cares?
What does that mean?
How are you hurt by this?
Yeah, how does it infringe on any of your rights?
How does it infringe on anything of your experience in life?
Children.
I can't take it anymore.
We're ruled by children.
They're children in the government.
Children writing all the op-ed pages.
Children journalists.
It's all children.
The only people who aren't being fucking children is our children.
Yeah.
They're actually better than you.
I know they are.
They're mad.
God.
Fuck this guy.
You got to save some of that for later.
Oh, I have enough.
Don't worry.
I have enough.
The point was that this is all one revolutionary intersectional community of gender diverse people and intertwined with other left causes from Black Lives Matter to queers for Palestine.
They needed a new badge.
just trying to search like I actually don't know who is the like gatekeeper of the the What do you call that?
The letters.
Yeah, I mean, it's not an acronym.
No, doesn't an acronym have to spell something or to spell another word?
I don't think so.
Because you call NASA an acronym, but NASA's not a word.
Yeah, but you don't say legit, but you don't say the actual words.
Oh, it says pronounced as a word.
Got it.
Okay.
Yes.
Yes.
Then you are correct.
So I don't know what's going on.
An abbreviation.
Is that right?
It's just initials, right?
I don't know.
That's what it says for KFC, you know?
So KFC and LGBTQ plus.
Okay.
Sure.
How many letters are they on KFC now?
Have they added more of the KFC TQIA plus?
Someone on Google asked, is KFC an abbreviation or acronym?
And it says KFC abbreviation of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
So I think we need to take the KFC rule and apply it to here.
This is an abbreviation.
Yeah.
So who's the gatekeeper of that?
And I'm making jokes, but not in any sort of, I hope people know, not in any sort of like negative way.
I just, I don't know.
No, it's making fun of Andrew Sullivan way.
Yeah.
And also just I'm ignorant on whoever.
I don't know who's in charge of this thing.
And so I had a real Nate Bargatzi moment where I was like, how did I Google this?
I was like, I googled, where are we on the LGBTQ thing?
Oh, man.
Where are we on that?
Like, what?
I didn't know.
What do you search?
I don't know.
What?
Where is that now?
What is that?
Because I just don't know.
I don't even know if we have a water heater.
Where's the one?
He's like, what's the deal with these crows or something?
What is it, Nate?
That's the one I'm thinking of.
Where he has the, I've never, he's like, I think we have two internets and I've never seen the real one.
And he does a search.
Oh, what is it?
Now I gotta, now I gotta play it just for fun.
It's too delightful.
Well, I don't want to get in trouble.
So I looked it up on the internet.
Now, when I look stuff up on the internet, I never know how to properly phrase it, like to get the real answer.
So I think there's two internets, and I don't think I've ever seen the real internet.
I think they go down how you ask the question.
They send you down a dumb internet.
So I typed in, I was like, what are these laws with these evils?
What are these laws at these AIDS?
I'm pretty much that.
Where are we at with the LGBTQ thing is what I couldn't think about to search it.
I don't know.
Oh, wait.
Here's a Quora.
Sometimes you get those Quora results.
Someone asked, who decides what is and what isn't a part of this?
And the top answer is no one.
There's no community to be part of.
Antifa.
Yeah.
The Antifa Congress.
You heard it here first.
Yeah.
As a session, you know, bicameral fucking.
Yeah.
Yeah.
LGBTQ plus simply means anyone who's not 100% heterosexual and or cisgender.
It's not a community.
I don't know if I agree with that Cora answer necessarily, but like, again, I can't even, I'm so tired.
Everything is just random grievances of little stuff that you're complaining about.
They used to give an old guy with eyebrows that were incredibly long a segment on 60 minutes, which was delightful.
Whoever that old fuck was that he would just complain about an old person thing.
And it was delightful.
It was a two minutes at the end of a 60 minutes for some reason.
And he would just be like, what you ever noticed?
And he would complain about something that was like bothering him as an old man.
That's where Andrew Sullivan should be.
That's essentially the weight, if any, that you should give to this.
You ever notice the LGBTQ thing has too many letters?
Cool.
That's it.
Done.
Maybe that's the issue.
We need to bring that back.
Yeah.
And then they have their space.
Yeah.
They get their two minutes.
They rule every politics and media and everything because they're mad about the letters.
They're mad about the letters.
And yet I can't even find who's in charge of these letters.
I can't shit.
Like if this was a real thing.
This is a complaint.
If this was a real thing that mattered, I'd be like, oh, yeah, I'll just check, you know, acronyms.gov, you know, or whatever, abbreviations slash acronyms.gov.
It's a really clunky website.
It's where I go to like the federal death panel on letters.
And if you say one wrong, then you're killed.
You know, like if this fucking mattered in any way to my life, like if it had a bad effect on my life, it affected me in any way.
Shouldn't I be able to Google what's the deal with these laws and these eagles and find what this even is?
But I can't.
It's nobody has an answer.
It's just people decide to put some letters in the thing for different reasons on signs on organizations on whatever.
Put whatever letters you want, Andrew.
When you're out there not ever fighting for anyone else's rights, but your own fucking rights, you put it on your, you know, what I tell you what.
Once the Supreme Court takes away your marriage, inevitably, when you get out your sign and you're out there, you can just put LGB on your sign or whatever.
People will think it's kind of hostile and kind of an asshole and you're transphobe for that.
But they'll be right.
Then own it.
But you can do it.
Yeah.
And there will be a bunch of other yous who are privileged fucks who once they got their rights sold out on the entire queer community after that.
There will be a bunch of you actually.
Unfortunately, there's too many of you.
This doesn't matter.
This does not matter.
I don't know what these letters are.
I don't care like who's in charge in terms of the whole thing.
It doesn't matter.
It just doesn't matter, dude.
So that last sentence you read, because I got lost in the fucking letters.
That's the deal of these letters.
The point was that this is all one revolutionary intersectional community of gender diverse people and intertwined with other left causes from Black Lives Matter to Queers for Palestine.
Says who, man.
I like, sure, there's going to be elements of, it's just trying to minimize large groups of people and simplify it and then take the worst version of it in his mind and say that's everyone and they're this shadowy force that's in control of everything.
If you went to a Black Lives Matter protest, how many of those people who are fighting for those rights are like gender queer, do you think?
A few?
You know, this isn't some gatekeeping where in order to protest, you know, George Floyd, you had to lose your gender.
You're like, this is just not real.
None of this is real.
Stupid.
Well, they needed a new banner for that.
Who's they?
So the rainbow flag invented back in 1978 at the request of Harvey Miller.
Oh, Harvey Milk!
Is that the guy who just had his name removed from the fucking ship?
Yeah.
To be replaced with something else?
Like, what a great example for you to bring up.
I don't know what the timing of this was, if that happened just after this or before it.
But what a great example to bring up in your, hey, things were great with gay rights until the trans when we just left gay people.
And Harvey Milk's name has been taken off of something, replaced by someone else.
The other person, I don't fucking know.
It's some soldier or something.
Maybe he's great.
I don't care.
He's probably Confederate, honestly, is what it is.
At this point, I doubt it.
But yeah.
But what a great, what a great little example.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the rainbow flag was replaced over the last few years by a new progress flag representing intersectional oppression.
Never heard of it.
Yeah.
Black and brown stripes were added to the rainbow for black and brown people and the people lost during the AIDS crisis.
Oh, and the people lost.
Yeah.
Parenthetical, by the way.
Weird, because you could also just say it was the people lost during the AIDS.
I've never heard of this.
I don't know what this is.
And pink, light blue and white for trans people.
That flag now demarcates a place not simply friendly to all types of people as the old rainbow flag did, but a place where anyone who does not subscribe to intersectional left ideology is unwelcome.
Okay, man.
Wow.
What a leap.
What a leap.
I don't know what he's talking about.
What space does this apply to?
I'm going to stop saying the same thing over and over, but where are these people?
Where are they?
Tell me where they are, Andrew.
Who hurt you?
What is it?
His neighbor.
That's it.
His neighbor just bugs him.
It's just him distilling stuff from the internet.
That's all it is.
We're going to talk about it.
You were able to go to Pride.
It was beautiful.
It was great.
I don't go to public things ever, but I would love to.
It would be great.
No, it sounded great.
I love the pictures.
Maybe I want to try to go with you next year.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a beautiful thing.
Have you heard of whatever this fucking flag is?
It's probably grouped.
No, it is.
Yeah.
No, this flag exists.
No, I know it exists, but like it wasn't like you weren't let into the city if you didn't know and pledge allegiance to the news if this wasn't a sticker on my car.
If you had a plain rainbow flag, people would be like, fucking sweet, right?
I mean, nobody's going to be like, how dare you get the fuck out with your plain rainbow flag?
That's white supremacy.
Nobody, it's not real.
And I think, you know, I'm just reading a little blurb about the flag.
It was designed back in 2018.
And so it has the original rainbow stripes.
And then to the left of it is the black and brown stripes and then the transgender colors to represent those folks as well.
And then they're in what they say is a chevron design.
So it's kind of like an arrow.
It's an arrow.
There's no line to the arrow.
It's just the point, you know, going into the rainbow.
And it says to symbolize forward movement.
Like that's beautiful.
I think that is like so good and smart and inclusive.
And I don't think it excludes anybody.
It's making it more inclusive.
I want to make sure rhetorically you're understanding my point just in case anyone's misreading me.
What I'm saying is, and sometimes I skip a step in my brain or sometimes my mouth skips a step from my brain.
What I'm saying is there you go.
What I'm saying is this fucking fuck stick is trying to make an argument that this is taking over and is oppressive and is everywhere and that you can't, you're not even allowed to be.
I'm not exaggerating.
This is what he's saying.
You're not really allowed to be in a part of Pride unless you ascribe to this.
So I'm not saying this doesn't exist.
When I'm asking like, where's this flag?
Do you know it?
I haven't heard of it.
What I'm saying is I'm very much supportive of these.
You went to Pride.
You're part of it.
I would try to consider myself part of it.
I didn't really know this and it doesn't really matter to me.
So clearly it's not some gatekeeping thing that if you haven't heard of, they'll kill you, execute you on the spot.
And if you went to Pride with just a rainbow, they'd be like, cool, there's one of us.
Awesome.
Yeah.
That's my point.
Because if you reduce what he's writing to, hey, did you know some people put another thing on a flag?
Then all of a sudden it's like, cool, dude.
That's nothing.
So that's the thing I'm the point I'm making is in order for his bullshit to be anything, this would have to be some oppressive thing that overtook an entire movement and you're just not even welcome if you don't go With it.
And that's just not true.
Yeah.
Stupid.
All right.
That's where we're cutting it off.
I promised yelling, there was yelling.
There's going to be more yelling in part two, but I want to make sure to remind people that in part two, also, Lydia is going to talk about her experience at SF Pride.
And we do go out on a very positive note.
And so I know this is an angry pod.
I'm still mad about it, but there's some really, really positive, beautiful stuff at the end, too.
Yeah.
So this is just something we care a lot about.
This is something we care a lot about.
I know so many of you do too.
It's your lives.
It's a lot of people's lives.
It's something we don't mess around with.
And I wish the New York Times would not mess around with.
So much more to talk about in an even more anger-inducing part two.
Thanks so much for listening, folks.
Please support the show, patreon.com/slash where there's woke.
And you can get the bonus on Sidney Sweeney that we're putting out after this one because that's the woke.
The latest woke mob thing is Sidney Sweeney, I guess.
That's your marching orders.
She comes around every few months.
I honestly.
And it's always seems to be one way, but then not.
I don't know.
We'll dissect it.
We'll sort it out in the bonus for patrons only.
Patreon.com/slash where there's woke.
So thanks for listening.
We'll see you for rage-inducing part two, right?
Whenever you push play on that, yeah, just under a double for at 42%.
No, more than 142%.
Well, if it went from 387 to 823, that more than doubled, right?
Yes.
More than ever.
Notice there is no movement that should include podcasters.
Yeah, that shouldn't be.
Here we go, Grandpa.
And more letters.
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