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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. To begin the show today, I want to draw attention to something I had first intended to ignore. It's something that happened over the weekend at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, which took place this year at a convention center near DC. If you've heard any news about CPAC, maybe it was that Donald Trump gave a speech that lasted nearly two hours, or the fact that CPAC wasn't very well-attended compared to past years.

One moment that has gotten a little bit of press coverage was a really hateful speech by a political commentator who called for the eradication of transgenderism from public life. Using the word "eradication" was received as incredibly threatening, you could imagine, by many transgender Americans. Some compared it to the Nazis who wanted to eradicate the Jews and then, of course, tried to literally do that.

In this case, the commentator also said, "There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing." That's another threatening line, right? He basically denied the existence of transgender identity, instead calling it an ideology. That was the context of his call for eradication. The line was, "If it is false, then for the good of society and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely, the whole preposterous ideology."

Then maybe even more scary than even the words in that line and maybe even more reminiscent of Nazi Germany, the crowd attending the speech heard those words, and what did they do? They cheered. You don't have to be paranoid in America today to imagine that crowd becoming a mob and acting on the call to action as they had just heard it. Now, I've decided not to play the tape from CPAC to not give that kind of hate speech and provocation that much dignity.

I wasn't going to discuss it at all. Why draw attention to someone so out there with no actual power to enforce his hateful views? I'll take you behind the scenes a little to our daily meeting yesterday to plan today's show. The topic of the speech came up. After some discussion, our team decided that the importance of the speech was not that it was given at all or given by someone most Americans have never heard of at a conference that few Americans attended.

No, it was important because it was given in a context of a rising tide of calculated stoking of hatred and fear of transgender people for political gain that is actually being enacted into law around the country. Did you hear Morning Edition today? At the beginning of the seven o'clock hour, they had a story about new bills for the Florida legislature expected to pass under Governor Ron DeSantis' guidance and leadership that would, for example, ban colleges from having a gender-studies major or minor and expand the so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill, which already bans classroom discussion of gender identity or sexual orientation through third grade, extended through eighth grade.

So much for the argument that it's only about protecting really little kids from inappropriate sexual content, right? It would now be banned through eighth grade. The bill also would prohibit teachers, if you haven't heard this one, get this, from referring to students by any pronouns other than their sex at birth. The language of the bill includes a line that really goes all the way to where the CPAC speaker went in denying transgender people's existence altogether.

The bill says, "A person's sex is an immutable biological trait." A person's sex is an immutable biological trait. Sorry, transgender people. Your identity no longer would legally exist in Florida schools. For as bad as that is, Florida is just one state where that kind of thing is going on. Tennessee just passed the law. Maybe you saw some of the coverage on this that appeared aimed at drag events, including voluntary and innocuous Drag Story Hour events as allegedly sexualized material that is harmful to minors.

Drag Story Hour could be interpreted as a crime in Tennessee and there are others. All of which is just to say on that fine line between denying oxygen to something that could lead to Nazism versus calling it out, we first decided to deny it attention but eventually decided in the whole context of how far these kinds of threats have already gotten, maybe it's better to call it out. I hope it's the right call.

With me to discuss, Kate Sosin, LGBTQ+ reporter for the news organization, The 19th*, named for the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Their latest article, by the way, from another part of their beat is headlined, Oklahoma Lesbian Will Appeal After Her Parental Rights Were Transferred to Son's Sperm Donor. Maybe we'll get to that too. Kate, thanks for coming on for this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Kate Sosin: Thanks for having me, Brian. I'm happy to be with you this morning.

Brian Lehrer: How do you see the national context for the speech at CPAC?

Kate Sosin: It's pretty complicated. I think your complicated feelings about calling this out are on point and I am with you there, right? It's difficult to want to deny this and ignore it. It's true that comments like this really only have fuel in the context of national media, which is that the more energy we put into them, the more screen time we give them, the more meaning that they have.

We really don't have a lot of information that gives us credence, right? These arguments are not winning with voters, right? At the same time, some of these bills are passing and it is important to point them out. I'm with you in that. It's really complicated to track stuff like this. I'm happy to be here with you talking about this and digging into some of it.

Brian Lehrer: I don't see that you or The 19th* have published on the speech. Maybe I'm just not finding it. If I'm right, did it just not make the cut or did you grapple with the same kind of question that we were just discussing and land on the other side for the moment?

Kate Sosin: Look, we're a really small news team, first off, and there is so much LGBTQ+ news right now that it's hard to cover it all. Then the other thing is if someone else has done an article, I tend not to. That's what most of us do. This was going to be covered widely. Then the other thing is I want to do a story that a trans person can look at and use, right? Rhetoric like this doesn't serve anyone. When we look at a speech like we saw at CPAC, it's not particularly surprising, but it also is not particularly relevant.

I know that that's going to sound surprising because we are seeing all these anti-LGBTQ bills. If we look at the numbers and the polling, and especially, I think, midterms are the best indicator we have of where the country's at, this kind of rhetoric, it's not winning with voters. What it is doing is it's getting people like us on the radio to talk about it, which is, of course, why you are so conflicted about bringing it on.

Now, all of us know the names of the people who are doing this, right? All of us today are talking about CPAC, which a lot of people just didn't attend, and are giving air to these conversations. The voting just tells us there are more, what the human rights campaign calls, "equality voters" voting than ever before. That number in 2018 was 29%. This year in 2022, it was 39%. It's a 10% jump. White evangelicals who typically don't vote for LGBTQ issues and make up big percentage of the GOP base, they were at 26% in 2018.

They're 24% now. That core base is shrinking. Digging into this issue, which we've seen, has just not been winning. More LGBTQ+ candidates won in 2022 than ever before and by numbers that we have just never seen before. I think we are focusing on these anti-LGBTQ bills and we should be. We should be talking about them because, in some red states, they are getting traction. At the same time, the country is moving on from this. This is a backlash to the country shifting.

Brian Lehrer: Can you expand on that phrase you just used a minute ago, equality voters? When you say there are more equality voters in the 2022 midterms in previous elections, how do you define that?

Kate Sosin: This is not my concept. The Human Rights Campaign, which is the largest LGBTQ organization in the nation, did some polling with Catalyst, which is an organization that does polling. Basically, equality voters are people that are motivated to go to the polls and they vote on LGBTQ+ issues as well as other civil rights issues. They are motivated to go to the polls to vote for LGBTQ rights.

They have been tracking this for the last few election cycles to see how many people actually go up to vote for LGBTQ issues. Then they run those numbers up against what are the issues that motivate people to vote just generally. I think it's important to also note, more than half of the voters that were polled in this last election cycle and the midterms chose inflation as their top issue, and then the next big issue that they chose was abortion at 29%. Transgender health care--

Brian Lehrer: On the pro-abortion right side, overwhelming.

Kate Sosin: Right. Transgender health care and participation in sports came in dead last of issues that voters cared about with just 5% of people in that polling. This rank is just so low. It's not an issue that most of us are thinking about when we're like, "Hey, my gas is expensive. I can't afford my groceries this month. I want to make sure that I can send my kid to college."

Whether or not a transgender child has access to the medical care that is recommended by major medical institutions, that's just not an issue that affects most people and whether or not they can get through their days. It's not an issue that is terribly motivating for a lot of people because, a lot of us, we don't know transgender children, right? If we do, then, for the most part, we see those kids as kids and are not going to vote against them.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you want to talk to me, talk to Kate Sosin, just hear yourself talk, I'm kidding, but give us a call, 212-433-WNYC. Since the CPAC speaker does get his voice heard and discussed and Ron DeSantis, who we'll get to, get his voice heard and discussed, we want to center transgender voices to the degree that we can in this segment. For better or worse, almost all our lines have already filled up before I even gave out the phone number because this is of such interest to a lot of people.

Listeners, don't be insulted and we're not trying to censor you if we bumped some of you. We definitely want to make room for transgender callers or short of that, people who use they/them pronouns, or maybe if you're a teacher anticipating these kinds of restrictions on classroom conversations, coming to a school district near you. In Florida, it looks like even discussing gender identity will soon be banned, no longer through third grade but through eighth grade, so 212-433-WNYC. We want to get some voices of people personally affected or potentially affected, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer with Kate Sosin from the news organization, The 19th*.

Kate, you were just giving us a very optimistic take, I think, politically speaking. I know you wrote a whole article after the November elections to that point, Republicans Doubled Down on Anti-LGBTQ+ Rhetoric in the Midterms. It Wasn't a Winning Platform, the headline of your article from November, but then how do you explain Ron DeSantis? He won in November in a blowout. He's now presumably laying the groundwork for a presidential run precisely by doing this in the Florida legislature.

Kate Sosin: Look, there's no question that this is a strategy and that, for some candidates, it is getting them a ton of airtime, right? I want to also point out that this kind of rhetoric has real consequences. I think that we can look at the number of transgender homicides and spike in them and draw a line to this kind of rhetoric. This kind of rhetoric has real serious consequences. Also, this kind of rhetoric, it is winning a lot of people a lot of airtime.

It is making people big names because the more outlandish your statement, the more airtime you're going to get. I don't know that DeSantis' win can be connected to how anti-LGBTQ+ is, but it has put him in the national spotlight a lot, right? Can we draw a direct line? I don't know. If we were voting on just this issue as people, most of us, and the polling shows that even across Republican voters, Republican voters largely do not want to vote against LGBTQ+ people.

That's because most of us, whether or not we are Republican, Democrat, independent, whatever, have LGBTQ+ people in our lives, right? DeSantis may be a popular candidate. A lot of people see him as an alternative to Trump, who's appealing. People have gotten weary of Trump, but are they seeing that as a result of his stance on LGBTQ+ issues alone? I don't know that we have evidence of that.

Brian Lehrer: In the analysis that you gave, is it worth unpacking LGBTQ+ just a little bit? Because I know that the polls certainly show that most Americans, and I think at this point, I don't know if it's a majority of Republicans but certainly trending in that direction, support gay and lesbian marriage. That's becoming a consensus position, but their views on transitioning or even just having a kind of softer non-binary, they/them persona, however you want to describe those parts of LGBTQ+, much more negative feelings, but do you think that's wrong?

Kate Sosin: No, I think you're onto something. Part of that is simply the math of knowing, right? I always go back to this moment in the movie Milk, which I don't know if a lot of people have seen anymore or not, but Harvey Milk makes all of the activists call their families--

Brian Lehrer: Harvey Milk, for people who don't know, the city supervisor or a member of the board of supervisors, whatever they call it in San Francisco, who is gay and who was assassinated.

Kate Sosin: Yes, and the idea basically is he just tells all of these activists, "Look, we're not going to get anywhere unless you come out. You have to just tell your families that you are gay." Most of us in this country know and are close with someone who is lesbian or gay, whether that's someone in your family or someone that you work with or a friend of yours, a neighbor. The numbers of people who are trans that we know are far fewer. Maybe we have those representations on TV.

They're not always positive. Historically, they have not been. Then to have a transgender kid, we have far fewer examples of that. For us, our identities are so wrapped up in gender that we feel like, "Oh, kids transitioning genders is a scary concept," right? Yes, there is certainly a divide. There's even a divide in the LGBTQ+ community because we really feel like gender is very much tied to our identities.

If you want to explore or change your gender that your life is ruined, right? I am a transgender person. I'm non-binary. I've known that about myself just about my whole life and I've had a wonderful life, a beautiful life, lots of people who love me, and it hasn't been filled with pain at all, but I think most of us think like, "This is a terrible existence. Something is wrong." There's an intervention and we just don't want there to be trans people.

It's like the worst outcome, which is how we used to see being gay and lesbian. I think that if we just shifted that view and said like, "Look, people can grow up and just have beautiful lives and gender is not the end-all, be-all because it's fine." What makes being trans difficult is people not loving and accepting us. That is it. That's all. We'd have a different outcome. Yes, we are not there yet. Most of us do not know or have people in our lives who are trans who are close to us.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Right after a break, we're going to take a call from Gregory in Harlem, who has a son who's transgender in Florida, as we continue with Kate Sosin from The 19th*. Call up and talk to me. Call up and talk to them. 212-433-WNYC.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Kate Sosin, who covers LGBTQ+ issues for the news organization The 19th*, on the topic of the particular hate-filled speech that was given at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend, but, more importantly, the context of bills that are being introduced and passed in Florida, in Tennessee, in Oklahoma, elsewhere. Gregory in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Gregory.

Gregory: Good morning, Brian. Always good to speak with you. Listen, my daughter left here to move down to Orlando after the polls. We've always been a woke family. It was weeks later that I discovered, they allowed us to know that Alexandria is now Alex. It's just been a thing that I want everybody to know that there are people out here who are living with this and loving their children. That's, I think, the most important. Love your children. People are going to talk and people are going to say things, but we have to love our children because they're our children.

Brian Lehrer: Have you spoken to Alex or has Alex spoken to you about what seems to be coming down the pike in the Florida legislature or culturally in that state?

Gregory: Absolutely. Orlando was a safe haven in some respects. It's not like Miami or some other places like Tallahassee. Yes, we talk all the time. I'm keeping up with the transitioning and watching the mustache grow and just loving it. It's just a wonderful thing to see someone. It's like the caterpillar that turned into the butterfly. I really, really do appreciate the fact that this person has become the person they always knew they were.

Brian Lehrer: Sound like a great parent. Gregory, thank you very much. Isaac in Austin, Texas, you're on WNYC. Hi, Isaac. Thank you for calling in.

Isaac: Hi, good morning, Brian. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Doing okay. You got a story for us?

Isaac: Yes, I do. I'm a graduate student at UT Austin. I moved here from Brooklyn to begin my program here, my master's degree in 2021. I am a trans person. I'm a trans-feminine person, but I haven't started any type of medical intervention or anything. I was thinking about doing so around the time I moved here to Texas. I really love it here.

Despite everything, the way that the politics are going here, the way that access to medication is going here really prevents me from feeling comfortable and even beginning to actually consider doing things such as changing my name, beginning to take hormones or anything like that. This entire political environment across the entire country just prevents me from being able to relax or even thinking about completing my PhD here.

Brian Lehrer: This is a really personal example that you're sharing of how the political climate and the stoking of hatred against transgender people is preventing you from really just being who you are, the way you experience yourself to other people.

Isaac: Exactly. The university administration isn't actually able to help that at all. For example, if I wanted to take time off to take a surgery or whatever, they're mandated as a state-run institution. They're mandated by supportive regents that they would be forced to limit the amount of time I could take off or limit the amount of accommodations I could take just to, for example, get surgery.

Brian Lehrer: Is that for any medical condition or is that a particular rule targeting people who might want to transition in a transgender context?

Isaac: Well, generally speaking, they aren't that accommodating with graduate students, but add to that, the hostility specifically towards gender minorities that's coming from the state government even if they're members of the academic administration that don't agree with that.

Brian Lehrer: One more question for you, Isaac, if I can. Do you go by they/them pronouns in class or "she"? Have you just declared a pronoun preference?

Isaac: Yes, so everyone at my university, all my colleagues know that I use they/them pronouns. They present very fem in class. It's just these other types of medical interventions and just the reality of needing to be able to pass. If I'm going to go, for example, deal with members from the state government or go change my driver's license or go vote, it really restricts the-- This is the idea. I'm able to speak with you and able to speak with the New York City audience because I feel comfortable in my space in between. I think something worth considering is not all trans people are out to everyone all the time.

Brian Lehrer: Not all the gay and lesbian people either, right? The decision to come out almost has to be made every time you meet a new person.

Isaac: Exactly. I think the difference was these accesses to, say, affirmative medical care are the kinds of things that your body gets put into a very sensitive visual space for people where, all of a sudden, choices that you start making about your body become visible to other people. If you aren't sort of easily instantly read in a particular way, that in some ways is outing you in the way that choosing to, say, declare your sexual preference or talking about your partner isn't necessarily voluntary in the same respect. Does that make sense?

Brian Lehrer: Right, it makes total sense. Isaac, thank you so much for sharing all that. We really appreciate it. Kate Sosin, I imagine you're having a lot of thoughts listening to those first two callers. I'll just give you an open mic here. Anything you want to follow up on?

Kate Sosin: Yes, I think to Isaac's last point, that, I think, is really critical for people. A lot of us when we talk about transgender people really don't think-- I want us to take a step back and imagine what it would be like every time that there's a situation in which gender is an equation. That can present a myriad of challenges for transgender people, right? If we have gendered bathrooms, can you imagine as an adult every time you're out in public having to navigate a situation in which you could be harassed or beaten up like just going to Target and needing to use a bathroom or going to fly and having to go through airport security and there are two options?

There's a button for male and a button for female. Depending on what they press, you will be screened and patted down. This is the world that we live in right now. There's been a lot of noise made about how transgender people are throwing the world off. It's not an easy, fun, enjoyable thing to transition in this world medically. A lot of people put it off. It's really a difficult big thing to take on. The world is just full of minefields in terms of obstacles for trans people every time that you go shopping, every time that you need to present an ID.

Brian Lehrer: Which exactly goes to, to me, the threat from that speaker at CPAC who called for eradicating transgenderism from public life, right? Because even if he's not talking about genocide, he's talking about exactly those conditions that Isaac in Austin was describing that you are just talking about now where if they want to eradicate it from public life, then every time you walk out to go shopping or anything else, it's a threat.

Kate Sosin: It already is truly and it has been always. What we're talking about now is an escalation of violence. I think for those of us who do recognize the dignity and humanity of trans people, if we can think about situations that we're in where gender becomes an equation and think about what it's like to navigate those spaces, I think we'll see a lot more of the humanity of what it means to navigate the world in a gender that is not assigned to you.

I want to also add, intersex people are part of this equation too, right? A person who is not born strictly male or female, intersex traits are as common as red hair. We often leave those people out of the equation. A lot of these anti-trans bills actually make exemptions for intersex children. Those are surgeries on kids to make them conform to male or female before they can consent.

Brian Lehrer: Lana in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lana.

Lana: Hey there. Thank you for taking my call. This is actually my first time calling [unintelligible 00:31:12] on the radio.

Brian Lehrer: Glad you're on.

Lana: I am a transgender woman. My pronouns are she/her. I wanted to call and thank you for this segment. I was listening. I know there's a desire not to provide platforms to people who say these things, but I think it is important to bring up these issues that they are important. Sorry. [clears throat] Specifically, what I wanted to talk about, I have been transitioning for the past two years, medically transitioning. I actually just got facial feminization surgery a couple of weeks ago.

A specific thing that I worry about is that although nationally, it may not be as important of a topic, it isn't something that I doubt that I will pass to the Congress to provide restrictions to gender-affirming care, that sort of thing. I do worry on the local and state level how really loud activists have really pushed so much of this rhetoric and so much of these changes that really do affect a lot of people in Texas, in Florida.

I worry because in more of a historical context, think about Hungary, think about Russia, a lot of the time in the past 20 years, first, few are targeted for public life was queer people, was queer expressions of identity. I do worry about that, that there is this context there. It is happening here. Of course, I have also been threatened on the street before here in New York City. I do worry about this rhetoric, leaching in other people, and putting a threat towards me, my friends, and that sort of thing. Thank you for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: Lana, thank you for making it. Call us again. One more and we're running out of time. We have Senator Gillibrand standing by as our next guest. Sue in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Can you do it in 30 seconds, 45 seconds, Sue?

Sue: Absolutely. Thank you, Brian. I'm an 88-year-old mother of a 63-year-old trans woman who has just moved to Portugal. The country is losing a wonderful citizen because she just had such anxiety. She hasn't had an anxiety attack in one month since she moved. She just was feeling so desperate here. Even though nothing was happening to her personally, no personal attacks, just the environment and the hatred, and we're Jewish, so it's compounding. Thank you so much for taking my call. I've never called before, but I listen.

Brian Lehrer: I'm glad you called. It's better in Portugal?

Sue: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Well, let's finish on that, Kate. Someone I know with a transgender family member says they're wondering if it's even safe to live in the United States anymore with all that we've been discussing. Have you looked at whether other countries are any safer for trans people?

Kate Sosin: Yes, I have. I also want to share. I do know of parents with trans kids who have left the country. I've talked with other families who are considering leaving because they are in states where these bills are passing, but they are also looking at the rest of the country and they're saying, "Where we'll be safe?" The whole country is looking at doing this and they want to raise their kids in an environment that feels affirming. The rhetoric in the country right now is really damaging. Yes, I know of families and had reported on families who have left the country and others who are looking at doing so.

Brian Lehrer: Kate Sosin covers LGBTQ+ issues for the news organization, The 19th*. Thanks, Kate.

Kate Sosin: Thank you so much.

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