Justin Nash is a self described recovering bigot, and
apparently he has changed his ways and asked for
forgiveness at this year's Denver Pride Parade.
So three days ago, a TikTok video of Nash ended up going viral.
Here's a screenshot of the video that we're talking about featuring Nash and
the sign he brought to the parade.
It reads Recovering Bigot.
I am sorry, free hugs.
Now, how did Nash go from being a bigot to being someone who's asking for
forgiveness from the LGBT community and looking to be an ally?
Well, Nash told the Washington Post that he was raised to believe that being
gay was wrong.
He was raised in Texas by conservative family members.
He spent years feeling uncomfortable about gay people and
even cut off one of his close friends, a high school friend who came out to him.
However, Nash began to question his beliefs when he reread the Bible,
which is kinda surprising.
He reread it in the early two thousand s, and
that made him realize that Jesus was just telling him to love.
Now, Nash's son and friends kept pushing him to change his views.
I suspect that that probably had more to do with it.
And a particular moment that Nash remembers was when he asked one of his
colleagues who was gay how he could be a better person.
Nash wanted to know, like, how can I be a better person?
Which shows what his character really is, which I appreciate.
So as Nash recalls, quote, I was so moved at the immediate acceptance,
the immediate forgiveness by my coworker.
She doesn't even really know me.
So Nash didn't even plan to attend the Denver Pride event, but
was in the area to visit family.
And he's like, you know what, I'm gonna go.
So he saw the chance to amend his past mistakes and he took it.
For me to sit in that parade with that sign was 20 years in the making.
Nash and his wife drove to a Walmart to buy a poster board for his message.
The words he wanted to use came to him quickly.
Bigot, while strong, captured his regret.
Nash insisted on recovering, not recovered.
He says, quote, I still have to keep going.
And he hoped his I'm sorry might symbolize an apology for
any harm that LGBTQ plus people have suffered from anyone else.
To say you're loved, Nash said, I love you, and
I hope all these people who hurt you will come around.
So the thing that stood out to me about this story wasn't just
the change of heart that he had and
the evolution he experienced when it comes to the LGBTQ community.
It's the way members of the community treated him when
he wanted to open up to them, right.
And I think it runs counter to what the current trend is with people
like digging up old tweets or
old videos of other people to condemn them for their past, right.
When you do that, it actually pushes people away rather than reforming some
of the beliefs that people might have.
>> And of course, there was somebody that responded to this by saying that he
hasn't done enough, and he hasn't earned forgiveness yet.
Just give it a break for a second, okay?
So this is a wonderful, heartwarming story.
I love it.
The guy's a bit extraordinary because keep it real, guys.
For guys his age, including guys my age, even,
we all grew up in an environment that was very hostile to gay rights.
Very hostile, okay.
And so I played on a football team in the 1980s.
What do you think people thought back then?
Do you think that they were LGBTQ plus friendly back then?
No, people didn't know that, right.
And awful things were said and etc, and that was the culture.
>> But I think we should judge how people acted back then by today's standards.
>> Yeah, but people genuinely say that with a straight face.
>> [CROSSTALK] No, they do it all the time.
>> As if it makes sense.
That's crazy.
It doesn't make any sense.
Now, look, within that context, I think I did pretty good for myself,
unlike this gentleman, where there was a friend of ours who was gay.
He came out to me cuz he trusted me the most, and that was felt amazing.
And of course, I support him 100%, etc, and
we're friends to this day, blah, blah, blah, right?
So I was lucky that I grew up in a culture that was not friendly to
the LGBTQ community, but I managed to get past it.
And I managed to get past it fairly quickly, right, but
I bet a lot of people didn't.
And it doesn't necessarily mean that they were all bad guys.
It means they grew up in that culture.
And as you can see with this guy, give him a chance to be a good guy.
Give him a chance, right?
And here he's going out of his way.
But when I saw that, he said, like, I've been trying to do this right for
the last 20 years.
I was like, wait, is this someone who's, like,
an ally of the community who just regularly does this?
Then I read more into it, no.
When they gave him an ally pin, he didn't even know what it was,
and he was like, you guys, so I'm your friend now, and you're calling me an ally?
He's not in the movement at all, right?
He's just genuinely with his friends and coworkers, sorting all this out.
>> I love it.
>> Right? >> I love it so much.
>> And for a guy like that who's not at all in the movement,
I don't even know what his politics is outside of this.
To call himself a bigot when most of the people growing up at his time,
you could have characterized that way [CROSSTALK] right.
But he took on that himself anyway.
But that's amazing.
But I think the most amazing and the best part of all this is that I'm sorry.
I think that's really powerful, okay?
And I wish all of us did that.
And here I'll say it, and I've said it in other contexts, and I'll say it in this
context for whatever thoughts I had, however long ago, I'm sorry, too, right?
And we all owe LGBTQ folks in this country an apology.
Don't tell me that if you're around my age,
you didn't grow up in that culture, right?
>> Yeah.
I mean, look, I'm younger than you, but even when I was growing up,
I mean, the anti gay slur word was thrown around all over the place in school,
on the playground, right?
[CROSSTALK] Super normal guys.
Absolutely.
But look, I like to think back at that time, especially in my moments of despair,
to remember how much progress has been made.
That's not to say that things are perfect.
Obviously, there are still severe issues in regard to discrimination and
hateful legislation being passed against the LGBTQ community.
However, when you look back at the way people would talk
about gay people back in the day, I mean, it really is night and day.
And look, there are a lot of powerful elements to this story, okay?
His willingness to grow and change is something that's admirable and
should be celebrated.
So you mentioned that.
But also,
I just wanna quickly discuss the people in his life who didn't give up on him and
were pushing him in the right direction, because the current environment.
The current climate is anyone who is deemed hateful,
anyone who refuses to accept a certain community or another,
you should immediately cut them out of your life.
They're toxic.
They're terrible.
They're never gonna change.
Well, when you do that and if his son had done that with him,
then there would be no opportunity to grow, right.
Instead, his son decided, no, I'm gonna gently nudge him in the right direction.
And look at that, it worked.
And when he wanted to grow, when he wanted to change,
members of the LGBTQ community welcomed him.
And that's how you actually accomplish change.
Get what I'm saying?
Instead of brushing people off is either good or bad.
>> Yeah, 100%.
I wanna talk about two different approaches that you just alluded to in
a second.
But first, two different phenomenon that's happening in the country.
On the one hand, Anna's right.
My kids are growing up in a world where it's totally unacceptable to
say something derogatory about gay people.
It's considered crazy, right.
And that's wonderful.
That means people are open, they get it.
There's nothing wrong with gay people.
That's crazy talk to my kids, and it should be crazy talk, right.
And so that's great.
At the same time, we have this pushback from yes,
the Republicans proposing over 600 laws against LGBTQ community.
Now, we did a story the other day about how
61% of people in that community are sometimes afraid to go outside
cuz they're worried about the reaction they might get.
And if you live in the coast, don't think you know their experience.
It's a totally different thing to live in Kansas City or
Tulsa or in some other or Idaho.
They might have very legitimate fear, right?
So those are the two different paths that Americans taking at the same exact time.
That's why we're having these cultural wars.
That's why there's these huge clashes, because we just don't agree.
One side says, I don't want that's a terrible thing for kids to be.
I don't want them exposed to that at all.
That's all right.
Another side says, I guess nuts, they're the same people just like us.
And nature or God or whatever you think is right made them that way.
You know better, you know better than God or their DNA.
That's absurd, right?
Okay, so those are the two tracks the countries on
in terms of the two approaches for people, look, it depends.
So if it's a Republican politician that's proposing an anti gay bill, anti trans
bill, etc yeah, you have to fight them in the battlefield of ideas in the arena.
And there I would say, and I live this, and everybody could even disagree with
this, too, but my opinion is that's when you go rip their political heads off.
Okay, that's when you engage in battle, okay?
I'm not gonna let you pass that bill.
And the battle might be fiery, or there might be emotional.
It might be logical.
There's a lot of different ways to fight.
You could show this guy.
You could show somebody who's gay in the family.
There's a lot of different ways to fight back.
But when it's your personal life and it's not about politics,
it's not about a builder, about the past, it's not a political figure,
please be more understanding, okay?
Because the only way to get folks back into the light or
into the light in the first place is to have a conversation and
to get them to open their minds, right?
So that's why you'll see me sometimes on the show.
I'll be super tough against a politician, but when it's a Rando or
what I call a civilian, I'll say, whoa, whoa, whoa, guys, take it easy, okay?
This guy's just a regular person, and yeah, it's what he did is bad, right?
Not this guy, but in another story.
But maybe there's a different way to handle it.
And remember, our side is supposed to believe in restorative justice, right?
And so this is a great example of that.
Now, this guy's taking the initiative on his own, but if someone,
especially if they're coming a little bit towards your direction,
welcome them instead of saying not good enough.
And I do worry that our side, some of the people on our side are in the not
good enough business, and they just constantly push people away when hold on.
Just hear them out, then say your side of the story, and
just maybe they'll open up their minds.
And it doesn't happen with everybody, but it does happen with a lot of people.
You see, this guy opened up his mind.
>> I don't know.
I mean, look, I think that it might be a better tactic to just bully people on
Twitter all day, and maybe they'll change their minds if you bully them hard enough.
>> But, Anna, let me defend those people a little bit, though.
>> Go ahead.
>> Okay, I hear you.
Look, folks have come after me in a thousand different ways,
right, and from every part of the political spectrum.
But nonetheless, I will say this for
the people who are going after the political figures,
our side, the Democratic side, because we're on the left.
For 40 years of my life, never fought back against the right wing and
never fought back against Republicans.
So could some people be overcompensating, maybe, right?
Because since our politicians never,
ever fought for us, the pendulum has swung too far.
Everybody's in a fighting mood.
Everybody's combative, and if anybody gives an inch, they're like,
no, don't give an inch.
Don't give an inch but context matters.
The situation matters, and overall, Anna's right, please,
you don't have to level Randos on Twitter.
You don't have to question everyone's intent.
And and if someone is has opened up a little bit,
have them open up more instead of shutting back down, right, try to reach out.
We've got to somehow begin to heal this country, and
this guy took a brave step forward, and we love him for it.