Speaker 1: We have a voicemail number. That number is 2192 to David P. We got a voicemail from our
old friend Eric from Mass and he is moving on from anti-vax to anti-trans and he makes some claims
that don't make any sense that I actually want to spend some time talking about. Listen to
this. They're about trans kids and gay kids. Speaker 4: And they're going out for mass.
That was a funny video. Gay children, trans Joes, there's no such thing. Hmm.
Yeah. Think back when you were a kid. Any such thing as gay children. Trans children? What do
you mean? That's an adult thing. Thing? Maybe 60. Were you running around your gang when
you're running around sleeping with kids when you were eight, nine, ten, 11, 12? I mean, or girls,
maybe if you tried that once or twice about it. No such thing as gay children or trans children.
It's ridiculous. You will move the goalpost. Next will be they trying to do gay babies now trying to
trans babies, three year old transition. Okay. Speaker 1: So I happen I happen to be
heterosexual. I happen not to be gay. But I knew that at quite an early age,
my gay friends who I've talked to about this say, oh, no, I, I knew that I was gay when I
was very young. Most of them say five or six. And I think that that I mean, as I think back I think
I knew I was heterosexual at age five or six. At least that's as far back as I can remember. Eric
from Mass seems to think that the sort of default status for everyone is heterosexuality and that
age and and cis gender, gender identity, meaning that your gender identity just it aligns with your
biological sex at birth until age 16 and suddenly 16th birthday you go, oh, you know what? Actually,
I'm gay. Actually, I'm trans. And of course, this is ridiculous. Now there is a separate question,
which is a legitimate question about what age limits should there be on certain aspects to
transition when we're talking about medication versus surgical versus. There are all sorts
of realistic and practical good faith questions that should be explored by the medical community
about that. Much like, as I say many times, I don't think I have the answers when it comes to
trans sports on every sport and any situation. I don't I'm not pretending to have the answer.
But what I do know is that the bathroom fear mongering is actually nonsense. What
I do know is that everyone should be treated with respect. What I do know is that calling somebody
by a different name that they want to be called or using different pronouns is really no big deal one
way or the other. And it almost is boring to me. And what I mean by that is when I say it's boring,
sometimes people misunderstand what I say. I don't mean that I don't care about the plight of folks
whose identity isn't being respected or recognized by society. That's not what I mean. What I mean is
there are so many other issues that I actively believe we need to work on inequality, wages,
climate change, education, etc.. That having to talk about what pronouns someone wants to
go by or whether they're going to wear a dress or whatever, it's just such a distraction. It's
not a distraction to advocate for people to be treated properly. And so I want to make clear
that I'm making a distinction there. But this unfortunately, this view that Eric presents here
when it is believed it leads to unfortunate treatment of people. And this was an issue,
you know, I remember back in the days, you know, when I would interview the Westboro Baptist Church
people, this is like over ten years ago now. And gay marriage was like the big battle line on
issues of sexual orientation and gender. You had this argument People are either born gay or it is
a choice. That was often the dichotomy. And what underlined that argument was often that some folks
asserted, if it's a choice, we should be able to treat LGBT people like crap because they're
merely choosing that sort of like you might choose to be goth or whatever the case may be. And what
was often lost there was. Even if it were a choice of which for which there is no evidence. But even
if it were if even if any of these things are choices. Why would we treat anyone like crap?
Why would we discriminate against anybody? As a society, it still doesn't make any sense. And
that's much of what underlies this sort of thing with people like Eric from Mass and and others,
which is if they they think if they can convince society that all of these identities are merely
things that people choose in their teens, either for attention or because they believe it's mental
illness or whatever, then as a society, we would be free to treat these folks terribly. And that's
maybe the saddest part of it all, because we shouldn't be treating anybody like crap,
I think is the takeaway that I want to go to. So another disturbing voicemail from
Eric from Mass that serves as an insight into what is malfunctioning in the brains of many
of these anti-trans people. We've got a great bonus show for you today. I can't wait for it.
Target has decided to remove some of their Pride Month merchandise after receiving threats.
Yeah, they seem to be capitulating. Secondly, social media is driving the teen mental health
crisis. The surgeon general is warning as if we didn't already know that. But we have even more
data now that we're going to look at. I'm actually going to tell people about now having a baby,
even though we're nowhere near this phase. I have been thinking a lot about what is my policy going
to be on social media and smartphone use. And Cal Newport has an interesting episode about
this on his podcast recently. Jonathan Haidt has talked about it a lot to talk about. And lastly,
there is a new survey whose results are surprising to some, which finds that veterans are less likely
to support extremist movements of any kind. There's often the assumption that military
vets are more extreme politically, but the survey suggests something different. We're going to look
at it. Of course. It looks at averages. All of those stories and more are on today's bonus show,
which I invite you to access by signing up at join Packman dot com or making a pledge
on Patreon at Patria CNN.com slash the David Pac-Man show bonus show coming up today. New
show tomorrow will do the aftermath of the DeSantis announcement and so many other thing