Has Pride Month Gone Too Far? Why a Lesbian Founder Is Fighting the LGBT Movement From the Inside

Why do you want to kick out the T from the LGB? I have more in common with a straight man than I do a trans person. They have made me hate June. Being force-teamed has obviously only had very negative effects on the gay community. What is happening inside the LGBT community against kids? They're essentially using children for profit. In order to remain in business, they had to continue being victims. This delusion is the only mental health problem that is treated physically. Why do you view something like Drag Queen Story Hour a problem in our society? And welcome back to The Brief. We have a great show for you today, but just before we begin, make sure you are liking, subscribing, commenting to ensure you do not miss any new episode of the show. And with that, we are joined today by Jamie Michelle. Jamie is the founder and head of Gays Against Groomers, which actually just published its first book, The Gender Trap. Jamie, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. So I want to frame the conversation as follows. I would argue that in American political discourse, we refer to the LGBT community. I mean, sometimes people will even say the LGBTQ plus IASS, but that's a conversation for another time. But in your eyes, why is it wrong or inaccurate for the American people to conceive of sexual orientation, lesbian, gay, bisexual, as synonymous with gender identity, transgenderism? Why do you want to kick out the T from the LGB? Yeah, well, that's a great question, and it's 100% accurate. Even before this madness, like the alphabet mafia started pushing onto society and onto children, especially, I was always a proponent of LGB being very separate from the T and the Q and the never ending acronym that like came after. But because sexual orientation has, I often say I have more in common with a straight man than I do a trans person, and it's true. Sexual orientation is wildly different than gender identity. One is who you love, and one is about sexual attraction, romantic attraction, and one is who you are or who you think you are. My gayness, being a lesbian, to me is the same as me having brown hair. It's just part of who I am, and it doesn't consume my whole identity. And yeah, I think that being force teamed has obviously only had very negative effects on the gay community as a whole. I find it sad that more LGB people don't speak out and feel the same way, but I think we actually see that trend changing now. And because of voices like ours at Gays Against Rumors and other gay people who have been courageous enough to speak out against the insanity, just the total rewriting of reality, and pushing horrible things onto children, like sexualizing them, and worst of all, medicalizing them under the name of gender affirming care. I must put that in quotation marks because that's not at all what it is. I think more and more of us are starting to speak out, and you can see the trend reversing, finally. So I do want to talk about gender affirming care, but just before I do, I want to unpack what you had said about sexualizing kids. If one were to go to your website, Gays Against Rumors, your mission statement is quite clear. I want to make sure I get this right. To end the war on children inside the community. So let's just diagnose the problem and educate myself and our viewers. What is happening inside the LGBT community against kids that you feel the need to speak out against? Back when we were fighting for equality, just to have the same rights as every other American, I was under the impression that was the gist of it. That was where the fight started and was going to end. As far as I'm concerned, we should have packed it up and gone home. We won, right? Victory. But unfortunately, that's not very profitable. Going home and packing things up, LGBTQ plus incorporated is a business more than anything else. It's not about rights. It's not about equality or acceptance or any of the million buzzwords that they like to throw around. In order to remain in business, they had to continue being victims somehow. We want our rights, right? So you could no longer really say that gay rights were under attack or that we didn't have them. Obviously, we did as of 2015 nationally. So I think that the issue then became this. That's how the trans madness started, really. They were the next group. Even though they never didn't have rights. There was not a time really that trans people didn't have rights. Mutilating kids, sterilizing kids and forcing taxpayers to cover your cosmetic surgeries, that's not really a right. But going after children and sucking them into this ideology and making them think that they're trans, now that is big business for the rainbow organizations besides us. It's big, big, big business for the medical industrial complex. And so I think that we're seeing a very big problem there. They're essentially using children and targeting children for profit more than anything. And that's a very big problem. Let me piggyback on that point about the medical industrial complex. I like that term. I'm going to respectfully push back because you have a plethora of American medical associations, including the literal American Medical Association, the AMA. You also have the American Psychological Association. You have the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. And they have all made it clear either implicitly or explicitly that they recognize and even support what they refer to as gender affirming care as like clinically necessary. It's effective for transgender and what they call gender diverse youth. And that includes surgical interventions, but it also includes non-surgical interventions. You have puberty blockers. You have hormone therapy. So I guess my question to you to play devil's advocate is, are all of these medical associations wrong? Why are you opposed to them saying that there could, in fact, be medical interventions for young people who believe that they were really born into the wrong body? I mean, the thing with that is that medical interventions are fine if you're an adult, if you're a consenting adult. The problem going after children is that their brains aren't fully formed. They're extremely impressionable. They go through phases. It was common knowledge through all of human history up until like five minutes ago that kids go through phases, you know, like that there are fads. It's a thing like it's like now instead of the emo phase or the goth phase or punk or whatever, we, you know, what have you, now kids are exiting these phases and moving on with their lives after a few years with missing body parts. And no, you're right. It's not always surgical, but the hormones and the cross-sex hormones and the drugs are just as bad in my opinion because I mean, the effects that they can have on children throughout their whole lives, you know, it's very serious. It can lead to so many, a myriad of effects that, you know, it's not just a one and done thing. Even if you stop these medications, the issue is that they will affect your health for your whole life in many cases. And no child is in a place to make a decision that will leave them with ramifications that last the rest of their lives. I believe it's a child abuse. And, you know, I think that these people, not just the doctors, not just the therapists, but anybody who is pushing this, who is profiting off of this should be imprisoned. I mean, I don't, you start to see like once Trump threatens withholding Medicaid and Medicare from these hospitals, that's the only thing that really gets them to wake up. So you have to hit them where it hurts. You have to be very serious about this. You know, child abuse is already illegal in this country. And I think that all of these things need to fall under that as well. So let me just ask anecdotally, because I'm curious, do you know of young people or those under 18 who've gotten this irreversible surgical intervention and have later come to regret it? Oh, yeah. I mean, Gays Against Rumors has worked directly with numerous detransitioners a few years ago. We held a fundraiser to provide funds for these young people who are lied to and who live with full of regret after they went through these permanent medical decisions and procedures. And yeah, I think that you see, you know, the detrans community is just like snowballing, like it's growing so quickly now. And that's going to sadly continue to happen as we see this generation who was lied to and who fell victim to this nefarious agenda and ideology as they start to snap out of it as well. And yes, I know many personally, and I see just more and more of them every single day coming forward. So let me just play devil's advocate. Recent surveys of LGBT youth from the Trevor Project have found that anywhere from 40 to 46 percent of transgender and non-binary youth reported seriously considering suicide in the previous year. And in the same survey, about 11 to 14 percent of those same transgender and non-binary youth reported actually attempting suicide in the previous year. So transgender activists will say, look, I would rather my kid be happy in the wrong body than miserable and another suicide statistic. So what would you say to those transgender parents, those transgender activists, and the transgender kids themselves? Well, the thing is, is that, you know, there's actually been many studies that have come out recently in other Western nations and also here. Actually, Dr. Johanna Kennedy, I believe her name was, she recently, I think it was last year, got very exposed and in trouble for suppressing a study that she did showing that puberty blockers do not alleviate mental health symptoms or depression or thoughts of suicide. And we've seen all these new studies come out finally that are backing up reality, just common sense, that, you know, changing the physical isn't going to actually solve issues that are internal. It's like putting a Band-Aid on, you know, a lethal wound. It's not going to really do much. It may alleviate symptoms temporarily, but the problem isn't, you know, the outside. The problem is something going on inside. And oftentimes, the majority of times, the people, the young people, especially who fall victim to this ideology and who start to believe that they're trans, have other comorbidities going on. Like there's either trauma, they've been sexually abused before, they're dealing with other mental health disorders. And it's very rarely just a standalone, oh, I think I'm trans now. There's often so many other underlying issues. And I think it's malpractice for these therapists to say that this could possibly be the cure. Like it's funny, transgenderism, someone believing that they are born in the wrong body, this delusion is the only mental health problem that is treated physically. Like an anorexic would never go to the doctor and say, please give me liposuction. It's going to make me feel better. Somebody who's 90 pounds already, that would never happen. And it's the perfect analogy and I use it a lot because that's actually how absurd this is to do the same to a person who's suffering mentally to treat them physically by cutting off body parts or giving them drugs that will chemically castrate them, which by the way, I'm not sure if your audience is aware, but they are the same drugs given to these children that are given to convicted sexual predators that are in jail. They give these to those people, the same drugs to those people to chemically castrate them. And that is what is being given to children whose bodies are not fully developed yet. So just so I understand, the drugs that are given to people who harm children in order to chemically castrate them are the same drugs being given to America's youth who believe that they are transgender. And it actually reminds me of what, I believe it was Ben Shapiro used to say, going off of your analogy, that if his grandfather who had schizophrenia was deluded by his doctors into thinking, yes, the radio really is talking to you, we would not see that as affirming. We would see that as quite cruel. Yet when it comes to transgenderism, the opposite approach is taken, which I find interesting. I do wanna read just a snippet of a blog I found to be interesting, let's say, and I wanna get your reaction to it. So this was written by a woman, Danielle McKinley. The title was called Drag Queen Story Hour, The Face of the Moral Panic. And she says, quote, in recent years, drag queen story hour events have gained popularity across the US and many other countries out the world as a way to promote diversity and inclusivity, as well as the love of reading in libraries and schools. These events have created spaces where representation matters. And to some children who may not feel accepted in more mainstream spaces, it matters a lot. So I know I said I was done playing devil's advocate, but that was a lie. I'm gonna play it one more time. I would say, okay, this is, certainly it's free speech, but more than free speech, this is about teaching children empathy, not to judge individuals who might look different or sound different. Why do you view something like drag queen story hour, which I must admit is such a bizarre cultural niche, but I digress. Why is this such a problem in our society, do you think? You know, I, first of all, children by nature are empathetic. Children typically don't need to be taught how to be accepting and kind. They are born that way. They are that way. That's their baseline. You know, all forms of hate and judgment, I think are taught. But like, let's say, let's say that we do wanna teach kids that regardless, even though I think that's inherent in them. Why are we showing them sex clowns to introduce them to the gay community and gay people? You know, my wife has, she loves bringing up this point and it's so good. So I'm gonna steal it from her. I'm sure she won't mind. But it's like, you know, gay people are just part of society. They're your neighbors. They could be your doctor, maybe your lawyer. Why not showcase the best of society? Like the best that gay people have to offer, which is just your everyday American. Why not show that, you know, the extent of it as far as I'm concerned is basically just telling children that some families look different and that's okay. You treat everybody the same. Some people are different than you and you treat everybody the same regardless. I really think that it can be much simpler and you don't have to shove, you know, gyrating half naked, sometimes more than half naked drag queens, which I amply, you know, called sex clowns because that's really what they are, in front of children. It's just, when did this become okay? And I don't understand who decided this was okay. You know, drag has always been adult entertainment and there are far better and far more ways to teach a child about, you know, being nice to everybody and not judging others than that. So this might be a bit of an unfair question, but do you think Pride Month has gone too far, especially when you look at pride parades like in New York City and Boston and LA, when it's so overtly sexual? Do you think perhaps there has been, as I said, a little too much in terms of public sexuality? Yeah, I don't think that that's an unfair question. I think that if you wouldn't have asked it, I would have found a way to get that in. I personally, they have made me hate June. You know, I live in Wisconsin. Finally, the weather's nice. June's a beautiful month. You know, my least favorite month now. You know, I just, if anything, okay, a weekend maybe. Like, but no, in terms of these pride fests, even with and pride parades, like even if without kids, it's too much. Like, like I said, back in 2015, 11 years ago now, we got all the same rights as every other American. What are we still out here for? I don't have pride in my sexuality. Like, I have pride in the work I've accomplished. I have pride in gays against groomers and that we've turned it into a worldwide movement speaking out against, you know, harming children. That is something I take pride in. I think it's very sad people who, that's all the worth that they have in themselves is who they're attracted to. It's just very weak. You know, it seems like a very unfulfilling life to only have pride in that. So Jamie, your organization, Gays Against Groomers, have been banned from Twitter at least four times that I could count, banned from TikTok, banned from Reddit, banned from Facebook, and Google, PayPal, Venmo, Printful, and Wix have all suspended or distanced themselves in one way or the other from Gays Against Groomers due to what they see as hate speech. By the way, it goes without saying, welcome to the club, but the SPLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center, put you on their hate map. So are all of these large companies just wrong about Gays Against Groomers and the work that you do? Is there a hate speech argument that's relevant here? How would you respond? No, first of all, hate speech, I don't think really exists at all. There's speech. And we have in this country freedom of it, which, I mean, at least I thought. But yeah, no, all those companies and more have banned Gays Against Groomers over the years. We actually just turned four years old and right out the gate. I mean, I think we got banned from Google, PayPal, and Venmo within a few months. Google actually gave it back the next day. I will give them credit. But to this day, we are still banned from PayPal and Venmo and not just the organization, but as well. I cannot use those services because I am the founder of Gays Against Groomers. But yeah, many of the companies you listed, they never put us back on. Luckily, we're back on Twitter now. If it were still Twitter, I don't think that would be the case. No, but the truth is, is that they had to find a way to silence us. We shook things up quite a bit when we came on the scene. I don't think that they were expecting people from... And when I say they, I mean like the alphabet mafia, the people pushing this agenda, who many times aren't even in the community, like corporate America, like the medical industrial complex, all the people using our community to harm children and push this trans agenda. But no, they didn't expect people from inside the community to speak out against it. And prior to that, the only line of attack they had was calling people homophobes and transphobes and bigots. But you can't really do that with Gays Against Groomers, even though they do try. I don't know if you've ever taken a look at our Wikipedia page, but the first sentence says, we're a far-right anti-LGBT organization. And it's like, we're all gay. We had trans people in our organization for many years. I think we still have a few, honestly, but it's so ridiculous. So the next step, the only other option is to just stop us from speaking to make us go away. But that never helped. It only made people much more interested in what we had to say. And now you see the tides seem to be finally turning. There's still a lot of ways to go, but things seem to be finally trending in the right direction, which is in our direction. So no, there was no cause for that, really. It was just, they didn't like what we were saying. Well, look, as you know, you have self-hating Jews. Maybe you have self-hating lesbians, but I digress. Let me ask you one last question, because this is a really interesting point that you brought up in the beginning, and that has to do with the idea of pack up, go home, we won. So marriage equality, of course, became legal nationwide in June of 2015, following the landmark Bergerfeld versus Hodgins decision, where in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court declared that, yeah, the 14th Amendment requires all states to license and recognize same-sex marriage on the same terms and conditions as heterosexual couples. So leaving aside the transgenderism activism or the activism against transgenderism as an ideology, what advances, if any, is your community still hoping to make in the 21st century? Well, sadly, all the advances and true progress that we made, I feel like is being wiped out, and it's at the hands of the radical sect of our community that is trying to harm children and erase women's boundaries and spaces and just shove pride down everyone's throats. Yeah, sadly, that's being erased now. And I always have said, and I continue to, that it's because of these people. So I think at least what Gays Against Groomers is trying to do is reclaim our good standing in society. I feel like the majority of LGB people are very normal. But sadly, that doesn't really make the news. Those clips don't go viral. You know, just a lesbian couple or gay couple sitting at home on their couch watching Netflix at night or going grocery shopping, that doesn't really have a virality to it. So it's not seen. But I think that is where the majority of us, like where we are. It's just, sadly, you only see the craziness. So we're trying to be loud enough to say, hey, like we really do not identify with these people. We want nothing to do with them. You know, I always said, since I started Gays Against Groomers from the day I started it, that our mission was twofold. It was first and foremost to protect children, to end this evil agenda, and to also, you know, help ourselves because the backlash is here. I mean, back when I started Gays Against Groomers four years ago, it was, you know, it was coming to the surface again. But it's here now. And you see a lot of people calling to eradicate gay marriage and get rid of that and go backwards. And that's their fault, the radical mob. That's the alphabet mafia, that's on them. And so we're trying to clean up the mess the best we can. Well, Jamie, this has been a really insightful conversation. I appreciate you giving a really different perspective, not only on this Pride Month, but also for the American people throughout the year to think about the ways in which we sort of conflate two very different things, sexual orientation and gender identity. Jamie Michelle, founder and head of Gays Against Groomers, and published one of your first books of the organization, The Gender Trap. Really appreciate you making the time. Thank you so much for having me. Well, thank you so much for watching. Make sure to like and subscribe if you have any questions, comments, or if you want to see a particular topic addressed, make sure to put it down in the comments and feel free to keep the conversation going through all of your questions or yellings or rants. Find me on social media. Just type in Shabba's Custom Bound. You're not going to find many other Shabba's Custom Bounds, and I'm looking forward to speaking with you all very soon.