Today, a United States congresswoman, my aunt Vicky,
started crying because gay people like me can get married.
>> I hope- >> That's Andrew Hartzler, who is about to
call out the Republican,you see on tape right now, Vicky Hartzler, for
not only being an embarrassing homophobe but also being a terrible aunt.
>> And pray that my colleagues will find the courage to
join me in opposing this misguided and this dangerous bill.
>> So despite coming out to my aunt this past February,
I guess she's still just as much as a homophone.
>> So it takes courage to come out against a homophobic family member
like congresswoman Hartzler, and I want to give Andrew a lot of credit for
speaking out the way he has.
We've also learned a lot about him, including the kind of activism he's been
engaged in, which I think has been tremendously helpful and important.
In the video that he posted on TikTok,
he also goes on on to debunk the lies that his aunt told on the House floor.
And of course the speech happened at a time when the House was about to
vote on legislation that would provide some protections for
same sex couples in this country.
Luckily that legislation passed,
even though it wasn't as strong as I would have liked it to be.
But nonetheless, here's more from Andrew who debunks his hateful aunto.
>> Birkenfeld is not in danger, but people and institutions of faith are.
>> Aunt Vicki, that's not right.
Institutions of faith, like religious universities, are not being silenced.
They're being empowered by the US government to discriminate against tens of
thousands of LGBTQ students because of religious exemptions, but
they still receive federal funding.
>> The bill's implications, submit to our ideology or be silenced.
>> It's more like you want the power to force your
religious beliefs onto everyone else.
And because you don't have that power you feel like you're being silenced, but
you're not, you're just gonna have to learn to coexist with all of us.
And I'm sure it's not that hard.
>> I love this guy, he's awesome.
So we're gonna go to an interview that he had with CNN in just
a moment where he talks about how his aunt's policies led to a lot
of difficulty in his life growing up.
But just to give you a little more on his background,
he grew up down the block from her in Kansas City, Missouri.
He said he recalls childhood memories of picnics, bike rides, and
trips to Washington DC with her.
But he eventually came out as gay to Hartzler, and she didn't handle it well.
He says, quote, I was met with the same type of, I love you but
I don't accept you because you're gay.
I'm in the mindset where if you're not for me you're against me,
and if you don't 100% accept me you reject me.
That's what Andrew Hartzler had to say about her reaction to him when he came
out as gay.
They haven't really talked since then.
And she, of course based on the videos that we've shown you,
has continued to push for anti-gay policies in this country,
which is disgusting to say the least, Cenk.
>> Yeah, so let's make a distinction here.
Let's see if this works.
So if somebody came up to me and said, look, I know back when I was Muslim, or
they found out that I grew up Muslim, I'm now an atheist, and said, you know what,
even though you're a Muslim and that's a sin and it's terrible, I still accept you.
I mean I don't fully accept you, but I partly accept you.
Would I be like, that's so open minded of you, I really appreciate it.
No, and I do that exercise so
that you can think about it from your identity, whatever it might be.
Because we ask gay people to do it all the time, like, yeah, I mean what you're
doing is sinful and terrible and awful, but you know what, I don't fully hate you.
I can maybe let you come to Thanksgiving.
I've been trying to talk you out of it, who you are,
because it's of course terrible and awful.
What part of this is acceptable?
No, it's totally not acceptable.
So you're telling me that I'm a bad person because of who I was born as,
which isn't even remotely true.
Well I think you're a bad person for saying such awful things to me.
>> Right, she decided to be a discriminative hateful person.
>> Yeah.
>> She made a decision.
>> Andrew didn't do anything but be born as he was, right.
But his aunt made the decision to be hateful towards him for how he was born.
By the way, if you criticize me for being an atheist though and say,
well I mean I still like you even though you're an atheist, that's different.
That means we just disagree on opinions.
There's nothing wrong with that, right.
It's not a matter of I was born this way or I was born that way.
I criticize you for being black, but it's okay, I'll still allow you in the house,
wow, aren't you merciful.
No, on gay issues it's the same exact thing.
>> The anti-gay bias and prejudice in her heart has to be so extreme,
because one of the reasons why the country progress towards a more,
just a more positive attitude, accepting and
tolerant attitude toward the LGBT community.
Although obviously we still have a lot of work to do,
is because people started coming out.
And family members who would kind of otherize gay couples had a moment of
reckoning when they realized, my own family members are actually
identifying as gay and I love my family members, I don't want to reject them.
But for Vicky Hartzler, the hatred inside her heart is so
extreme that she's willing to reject her own nephew, who she had a close
relationship with, based on his identity, based on who he is as a person.
And based on what I've seen from him, he seems like a lovely person, a lovely
individual, who's fighting for equality for other members of the LGBTQ community.
In fact, during his recent CNN interview, he talked about how
his aunt's work in Congress led to policies that tortured him growing up.
So he discloses that in this next clip, let's watch.
>> The harmful policies that she is a proponent of,
they have real consequences for young people like me.
When I was at Oral Roberts University,
I was subjected to conversion therapy practices, and that was totally
legal because of the policies that my aunt has helped put into place.
So after I graduated,
I partnered with the Religious Exemption Accountability Project.
And together with 40 other students from institutions across the country,
we are advocating for
all students at religious universities to receive equal protections.
>> So he just mentioned some of the activism he engages in.
The other work that he does is he's part of a class action lawsuit.
He joined a class action lawsuit filed last year against the Department of
Education that is seeking to end an exemption in federal civil rights
law that, according to the suit, allows religiously affiliated universities that
receive federal funding to openly discriminate against LGBTQ students.
First of all, I'm glad there's a class action lawsuit on that because why is my
taxpayer money going toward funding these disgusting hateful institutions?
I'm not okay with that.
And so when there are private schools that discriminate against various groups
of people, since they're not receiving federal funding, they're free to do so.
I mean the whole argument from the right wing in regard to these universities that
have been protesting right wing speakers is, well you're getting federal funds.
And if you're not allowing right wing speakers to come to your campus and speak,
you should get those federal funds taken away.
Interesting, they should expand that ideology,
which I think is actually accurate, to what's happening at these religious
institutions that are discriminating against LGBT individuals.
Why are we giving them federal funding?
Unacceptable.
>> Yeah, so to anyone who says that gay people should do conversion therapy,
if I was in that person's situation, I would say, you first.
They say, what do you mean you first?
Well I think you should be converted from being straight to being gay.
And they said that's outrageous.
You're right, it is outrageous.
It's also outrageous for
you to tell me that I should be converted from being gay to being straight.
Why is it not equally outrageous to say, yeah, I think you should be gay?
That's it, that's it, being straight is a sin, it is awful and immoral.
You should go to a therapist and sometimes they should zap you with different things,
etc, and maybe physically torture you until you're gay.
Now, everyone would recognize that's patently absurd.
It is equally absurd to try to make gay people do that to turn straight.
It's absurd.
Don't ever have a conversation about it.
And anybody tells you, you should do conversion therapy, they're saying, hey,
can I receive permission to torture you, okay.
And then, look, I want to say one last thing.
I get it, most of us, not all of us, but
most of us were taught to hate gay people, keep it real, okay.
So now did somebody ever tell me when I was growing up back in this 80s,
you should hate gay people?
No, but what they did teach me, every part of society, being gay is wrong.
It's wrong.
It's immoral.
My God, if you're gay, that's terrible.
And then you would hear things like, did you hear Bob's son turned out to be gay?
What a shame.
Right, I've heard that a thousand times in my life.
And especially if you grew up when I did, right, that was 98% of people.
So now I'm not saying that to shame you guys who grew up in that era,
that I did in, right, and by the way, many eras after that too.
I'm saying that so I can tell you, I understand, you were taught it.
And I got news for you, we were all brainwashed into thinking that
being gay is terrible, and that is what has led to all of this hatred.
And I'm asking you to unbrainwash yourself.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with being gay,
there's absolutely nothing wrong with any gay sex acts.
Yeah, I love the sinner, but I hate the sin.
No, it's not a sin.
Calling it a sin is being deeply immoral against gay people.