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This is a studio both and production. You can't explore the culture and anthropology
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of homosexuality without discussing religion, which
is a bit of a Pandora's box.
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Identity and religion are perhaps the two
most deeply personal and sensitive topics a person
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can hold close or discuss, but
religion has played a huge part in how
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gay people have been treated, how
gay people continue to be treated, and
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somewhat surprisingly in gay culture itself.
And I thought my friend Eric carter Landin,
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the host of the True Consequences podcast
and co host of the Crime Lines
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and Consequences podcast, was the perfect
person to discuss this with. I realized
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that I liked boys pretty early on. I think I had crushes on boys
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when I was probably like three or
four, and I didn't really know what
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being gay was back then. It
wasn't something that was really talked about,
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So I think it wasn't until I
hit puberty that I really started to understand
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my attraction to the same sex and
started to kind of grapple with the concept
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of being gay and trying to still
live in my very religious household. Tell
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me how your religious household influenced your
coming out but also your ongoing relationship with
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being gay. It was really hard, you know. I was very connected
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with my spirituality, or what I
thought was my spirituality at that time.
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I was raised in the church and
my dad was a Pentecostal evangelist. So
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it's like the fire and brimstone,
and being gay is absolutely not okay.
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It is the probably the worst possible
thing that you can be, at least
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as it pertains to the kind of
sermons that I listened to growing up.
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And I would pray every single day
from probably eleven until seventeen to that God
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would make me straight. And when
I turned seventeen, I realized that I
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had my answer, because nothing happened, nothing changed, And so I was
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actually outed by my cousin, who
is also very religious and was What he
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told me was that he felt like
he was intervening in my life to save
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me from damnation. So he told
everybody that I was gay, and I
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was outed. I lived in a
very small, very conservative town, and
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that caused a lot of problems for
me. People really started to kind of
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mess with me, and I got
thrown out of my house. I was
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living on the streets for a while, so there was a lot of things
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happening along with coming out, But
at the same time, like all this
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tragedy and terrible stuff is happening,
I'm really starting to like find myself and
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embrace who I am and love myself
and accept myself and start disclosing, you
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know, my sexuality to some friends. So it was a very kind of
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up and down, tumultuous time.
How do you reconcile? I guess the
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upbringing and indoctrination of gay is bad
with the bad experiences in many senses,
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losing your family because you were gay, with then developing an identity and a
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fulfillment around being gay. Because I
feel quite in conflict. Well, at
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that point, it was more like
it didn't matter anymore. I didn't have
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to hide it. I already knew
within myself before I was outed that I
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was going to come out and I
was going to live my life as a
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gay man, and I was going
to choose to be happy rather than choosing
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to force myself into something that wasn't
for me, that didn't work for me.
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So I think I just resolved that, like, if this is it,
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if my family doesn't want to ever
talk to me again, then that's
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fine. Like I'll go find other
people and they will be my family,
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and I'll make my own way if
I have to, because it wasn't an
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option for me to go back to
that. And even when my mom came
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back to me and apologized and asked
me to come back home, I told
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her like, it's we're not going
back to me being in the closet,
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Like this is just who I am. So if you want me back home,
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like this is who you're going to
get, and you can either like
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that or not, right, So, I think there was like this very
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liberating thing that happened by being outed, even though it was an ideal,
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even though like my choice to come
out was taken away from me, I
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felt very emboldened to pursue my life
because there was literally nothing in my way
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at that point. And what was
dating like dating? Well, this was
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before any of the apps, This
was before any online dating. It would
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be like sneaking into the gay bar, mostly as an underage person and drinking
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and dancing and having a good time
and meeting people that way. There was
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obviously like call lines chat lines back
then that people would use. That was
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like the precursor to the apps.
And so I met people. I think
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through there sometimes, but mostly it
was through the gay bars that was kind
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of like the place where you could
feel safe enough to be yourself in the
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nineties and not have to worry and
feel comfortable talking to people about being gay,
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and you felt safe in that kind
of community. Yeah, it was
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the first time that I didn't have
to hide who I was or pretend to
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be something else. Did you feel
like with other gay men there was a
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brotherhood or that people were looking out
for each other. Yeah. I think
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this is kind of a phrase that
isn't used anymore, but often you would
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get asked are you family? Are
you family? And at first I thought
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that was really weird, But then
as I kind of got immersed in the
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community, I felt like, no, this is this is family. These
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are people who get it. These
are people who understand what it's like to
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grow up in a tiny town and
to be bullied your entire life and to
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be told that your existence is awful
and you should die. So like,
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there was that camaraderie that comes from
that understanding, and a lot of the
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pretense kind of falls away in that
situation because you're like, no, I
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can just fully be myself and I'll
be accepted. According to a study by
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radbud University sociology professor doctor Jan Johnson
titled how Religiosity shapes rejection of homosexuals across
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the globe, religiosity appears to be
one of the strongest socializing determinants to explain
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rejection of homosexuality. This relationship is
based on the premise that indi visuals moral
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attitudes are adopted via exposure to socializing
agents. In this respect religious institutions.
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Although most religions emphasize that people should
respect others, most religions tend to categorize
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homosexuality as something unnatural or impure.
A study conducted by Bernardi Whitley, Junior
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Emeritus Professor of Psychology science at bal
University titled Religiosity and Attitudes toward Lesbians and
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gay Men. A meta analysis,
which was published in the two thousand nine
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issue of the International Journal for Psychology
of Religion, panalyzed sixty four studies which
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examined the relationship between religion and homosexuality. Here are some very high level findings
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from that study. One possible mediator
of the relationship between religiosity and attitudes towards
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lesbians and gay men is the extent
to which people believe that homosexuality is controllable,
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changeable, or a matter of choice. Editors note it is not.
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In general, if people believe that
a stigma is under the control of the
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stigmatized person and therefore changeable and a
matter of choice, the more negative the
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attitude they will hold toward the stigmatized
person. Homosexuality is one of the stigmas
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to which this principle applies. Many
religious authorities, especially those who are more
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conservative, tend to portray homosexuality as
a matter of choice and thus controllable and
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changeable. As a result, people
who report hearing about homosexuality in church are
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more likely than those who do not
to perceive homosexuality as controllable. Not surprisingly,
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then, several studies have found perceptions
of homosexuality as contro changeable or a
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matter of choice. To mediate the
relationship between religious and negative attitudes towards lesbians
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and gay men, It goes on
to say, another factor associated with multiple
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forms of prejudice is perceived threat.
The greater the extent to which in group
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members believe that an outgroup poses a
threat to the in group, the more
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negative the attitudes towards the outgroup.
This principle applies not only to threats of
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physical harm, but also to threats
of important in group values. Lesbians and
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gay men are frequently portrayed as violating
important American values and are perceived as threatening
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those values because people who are religious
may be especially sensitive to threats to their
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values. The greater the extent to
which they perceive lesbians and gay men as
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threatening those values, the more likely
they are to hold more negative attitudes toward
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them. And Finally, the results
of the meta analysis supported the hypothesis that
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religiosity would be related to religiously permitted
targets of prejudice lesbians and gay men,
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but not to a religiously prescribed target
of prejudice race ethnicity. This finding is
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surprising given that different forms of prejudice
tend to be correlated. For example,
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people who score high on measures of
racial ethnic prejudice also tend to score high
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on prejudice against lesbians and gay men. Based on this relationship, one would
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expect that a given predictor variable would
show similar correlations with different forms of prejudice.
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It is especially striking, therefore,
that the meta analysis found intrinsic orientation
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and endorsement of Christian Orthodoxy to be
correlated with positive racial ethnic attitudes, but
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to be correlated with negative attitudes towards
lesbians and gay men. This difference clearly
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illustrates the distinction between proscribed and permitted
prejudice, and comment that religion can both
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make and unmake prejudice. So how
did we get here? According to the
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American Psychology Association, homosexuality has been
documented in every culture across the globe,
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and it can be traced as far
back as ancient Greece and ancient Israel.
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In ancient Greece, it was common
among both men and women. Indigenous peoples
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in the Americas and East Africa had
revered terms for homosexuals, but depending on
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varying interpretations of the Old Testament,
homosexuality was denounced by the Judaic and Christian
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depictions of God, interpretations that many
scholars have since been able to negate.
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Homophobia became widespread in conjunction with the
rise of Christianity and the invasions in and
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expansion into the West, Northern Africa, and the South Pacific. The indigenous
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acceptance and often reverence for two spirit
people or same sex love appalled European colonizers
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who rejected any practice's behaviours or beliefs
that weren't consistent with their own male and
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female roles. Men were to present
and behave in a masculine way. Women
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were to present and behave in a
feminine way, whatever the fuck that means.
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In fact, it was during that
time that the first documented death sentence
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was committed against homosexual activity in fifteen
sixty six, when Spanish colonizers executed a
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French settler in the Great State of
Florida. And as the greater world was
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colonized by European Christians, homosexuality was
shunned or criminalized across ancient cultures that once
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revered it, and homophobia began to
spread, and in a very reductive conclusion,
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here we are today. Religious and
governmental persecution of gaze, which happened
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in conjunction and collaboration, has continued
to strip gay people of their etona identity,
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community and safety for way over five
hundred years, and in some places
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with little to no abatement. As
of this recording, laws explicitly provide for
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the death penalty of sex between consenting
adults of the same sex. In eight
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nations. In five countries there is
unclear law around whether homosexuality a criminalized act,
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is punishable by death. In fifty
four countries, people can be imprisoned
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for homosexuality, and four nations practice
what is essentially a don't ask, don't
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tell law. And while ironically enough, many Western nations have progressed in their
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attitudes toward homosexuality, as of this
recording, there are still only thirty eight
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countries that have legalized gay marriage,
sixteen fewer than those who legally permit the
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imprisonment of gays, and even here
in the United States, there has been
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an abundance of new and inactive anti
LGBTQ legislation, and even in liberal Seattle,
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just last week, three gay bars
were rated by police. And all
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of this matters because it contributed to, if not created, an environment for
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the crimes of Lorenzo and Schweikert and
many many others who targeted the gay community
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to flourish. In circling back to
my conversation with Eric, I'm struck by
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a few things. One, just
about every gay person I know, myself
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included personally, know someone who died
by suicide because of gay persecution, most
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often because of familial or religious persecution. According to the Trevor Project, LGBTQ
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plus young people are four times more
likely to attempt suicide than their peers,
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and more than one point eight million
young LGBTQ plus people seriously consider suicide each
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year in the US alone. Two, about half of the gay men I
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know fled the areas where they were
raised, where their families are in order
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to escape gay persecution. And three, just about every gay person I know
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lost a loved one when they came
out of the closet, Some lost many,
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and some lost all. So to
Eric's point, young and vulnerable gay
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men often find themselves in new places, desperate for the community acceptance and love.
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They were denied by their churches and
families, with little sense of social
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or personal value due to a long
history of broad and often personal homophobia propagated
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by those very churches, which makes
them incredibly easy to take advantage of,
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and according to the National Institutes of
Health, psychosocial variables like persecution, isolation,
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depression, increased drug and alcohol abuse
in gay men and women, which
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make them even more vulnerable, And
then the coping mechanisms gay pride, gay
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clubs, promiscuity, drug and alcohol
abuse are then used to both further persecute
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and marginalize gay people, but also
further validate people's persecution of gay people.
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There was something that my friend Jason
said back in episode two that has really
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struck with me and cultivated quite a
bit of anger within me. In essence,
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with a greater cultural shift toward acceptance
and tolerance of gay people, words
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I find contextually quite disgusting, there
was no need for personal or cultural atonement.
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Essentially, we tolerate you, now, stop complaining and never mind what
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came before. It makes me think
of all the people who called me or
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other gay people words like faggot,
sissy, fruit, queer, fairy,
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degenerate, sinner, cocksucker, and
so on and on and on, who
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now refer to themselves as pro gay
or advocates or allies or friends of because
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culturally that's where we are now.
And while I value their shifts in behavior
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and thinking, I have to wonder
was there ever atonement, Was there ever
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any acknowledgment of how they contributed to
the marginalization of the community they now stand
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behind, Because if not, where's
the personal growth and how pliable are they?
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Especially now as we face a shift
away from tolerance and acceptance for gay
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people, it was the gay people
who had to do the work to get
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where we are today, which is
still a far cry from where we should
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be, and they have literally died
doing it. From twenty twenty two to
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twenty twenty three, there was a
thirteen point eight percent increase in gay related
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hate crimes. There were more than
one thousand single bias LGBTQ hate crimes reported
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just to the FBI in twenty twenty
two, the same year that saw more
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than five hundred and fifty anti LGBTQ
bills introduced in forty three states. More
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than eighty were signed into law.
The problem not only persists, but is
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getting worse, and quite frankly,
if it's religious and straight and governmental people
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who created the problem, it's religious
and straight and governmental people who need to
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fucking fix it. Voting for a
politician and then saying you don't agree with
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his social views is neither activism nor
concession. Its willful ignorance and actual bullshit.
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Now you reached out to me.
What prompted you to reach out?
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I stumbled upon in your podcast and
things that were in your podcast, I
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were things that kind of weighed on
me. Does it take a genius to
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know that there are other victims out
there? That I'm sure of it.
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And I've been told that somebody that's
been working on also working on the case,
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can put Stephen in the vicinity of
where these men are have gone missing
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the area, and so that leads
me to believe that they again, that
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this investigation did a shoddy job.
And knowing what he said, one of
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his goals was to assault, make
somebody disappear on the holidays or any day,
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just so the their family would suffer, you know, the heartache every
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year. You know, I think
about my mom knowing if he did ultimately
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carry out what he meant to do
to me, that my mother, who
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has an adible luxury, wondering where
I was so time really really upsets me.
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I can't imagine a parent being one
that there are people not knowing what
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happened to their loved one. And
I do believe that he's attached to other
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cases that could be solved if somebody
cared enough to dive in a little deeper.
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Every time I've spoken with Albert Perkins, he's urged me to keep investigating
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Steven Lorenzo and Scott Schweikert, at
one point even asking if I would do
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a second season focusing on them,
which was never the plan. The plan
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was eight episodes covering this case and
then next season would be a new case.
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But over time, throughout both the
season and our investigation, I felt
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more and more that I was doing
a disservice by ending things after just eight
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00:21:44.359 --> 00:21:48.440
episodes. There is still so much
more story to tell. There is still
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00:21:48.559 --> 00:21:53.839
so much more to this investigation,
and at this point we've only just laid
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00:21:53.880 --> 00:22:00.000
out the facts of the case and
the anthropology and history that helped to cultivate
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these senseless crimes. And yet we've
spent hundreds of hours investigating potential victims and
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have a list of, in my
opinion, at least eight very likely victims,
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and I could just give high level
explanations of who they are, rattle
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their names out in a list in
the back half of an episode, but
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not only would it be unkind,
it would miss the entire point of this
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podcast. This was never intended to
be a true crime podcast. This was
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always about marginalization and visibility and self
examination. How we've all contributed to the
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00:22:41.519 --> 00:22:45.799
problem, How we've all neglected to
fix it. But it's also about the
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00:22:45.920 --> 00:22:52.319
victims of not just hate, but
of these hateful men, Jason Galehouse and
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00:22:52.359 --> 00:22:56.839
his friends and family, Michael Wocklets
and his friends and family, the unknown
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00:22:56.920 --> 00:23:02.319
and unnamed victims and their friends and
family, Albert Perkins and his friends and
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00:23:02.400 --> 00:23:08.119
family, and the gay family at
large, and so on and on and
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00:23:08.240 --> 00:23:15.119
on. So next season, I'll
take you deep into our investigation into Lorenzo
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00:23:15.160 --> 00:23:22.039
and Schweikert, as we continue to
discuss gay culture and persecution while shining a
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light on the many missing and murdered
gay men. And as this season comes
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to a close, I ask you
all to really sit with everything we've shared
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00:23:30.799 --> 00:23:36.519
with you, sit with how you've
contributed to the problem and how you can
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00:23:36.559 --> 00:23:41.880
contribute to change, because none of
us are growing if we're not constantly interrogating
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00:23:41.960 --> 00:23:48.759
our values, our beliefs, our
opinions, and our pasts and how we
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00:23:48.640 --> 00:24:07.359
impact the people and spaces around us. Taxi driver, you must shrink for
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00:24:07.400 --> 00:24:18.160
the hour, leave the meter running. It's rush shower, So take the
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00:24:18.160 --> 00:24:21.880
streets. If you want me just
start running the demons? Could you?
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He said? A lot? Who
I can bar? I told him don't
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00:24:29.039 --> 00:24:37.759
cut me for buying meat prayer.
I guess it couldn't hurt me. If
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00:24:37.839 --> 00:24:51.960
it brings me to my name,
it's a bad religion. The sun crowds
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could in saynt must go from.
This episode was written, researched, edited
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00:25:18.680 --> 00:25:25.279
and produced by me Josh Hallmark.
Resources included religiosity and attitudes towards lesbians and
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00:25:25.359 --> 00:25:29.720
gay men, a meta analysis by
Bernard E. Whitley Junior, How religiosity
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00:25:29.759 --> 00:25:33.839
shapes rejection of homosexuals across the Globe
by Dirk jan Johnson, The New York
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00:25:33.960 --> 00:25:40.319
Times, Time Magazine, the Harvard
Political Review, the National Institutes for Health,
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00:25:40.559 --> 00:25:45.400
the American Psychological Association, the Harvard
University Press, The Hill, the
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00:25:45.480 --> 00:25:49.799
Trevor Project, and the Human Rights
Campaign. This episode featured Eric Carterlandine and
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00:25:51.039 --> 00:25:56.559
Albert Perkins, and it was made
possible by the following Patreon producers Adrian I.
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00:25:56.640 --> 00:25:59.839
Yello, Amelia Hancock, Amy Basel
and at El, Benjamin Chopp of
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00:26:00.319 --> 00:26:03.119
Casey, Jensen Richardson, Dana Keith, Drew Vipond, Hallie Reed, Jessica
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00:26:03.200 --> 00:26:07.839
Ally Hoadzig, Jillian Otale, John
O'Leary, Kendall, c kimberly Ka,
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00:26:07.039 --> 00:26:11.640
Lauren F. Lindsay Curtis Lindley,
tuscoff Manolas bullcous Nicole and Dennis Henry,
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00:26:11.720 --> 00:26:15.519
Sarah King, s C. Shelley
Brewer, Tuesday Woodworth, Vicky Russell,
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00:26:15.799 --> 00:26:21.039
Zach Ignottowitz, Warren Ashley Harris,
Beth McNally, John Comery, Jordan Taylor,
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00:26:21.119 --> 00:26:25.200
Carly mcnat, Lana Sarah C,
Shauna Harden and Lydia Fiedler. Thank
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00:26:25.240 --> 00:26:30.279
you to Studio both Ann's newest Patreon
supporters, Courtney B, Lisa c Ashley,
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00:26:30.319 --> 00:26:33.839
P, Steph F Kevin Di DeFranco, Nikki H, Christa Pe,
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00:26:33.039 --> 00:26:37.400
Tracy D. Hector, Christine A
l A P. Carla s Emily P.
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00:26:37.640 --> 00:26:41.240
Colin A, Tory Y, Olivia
R. And Quinnlin. To support
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00:26:41.279 --> 00:26:47.839
the investigation, go to Patreon dot
com slash Studio both And. This episode
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00:26:47.960 --> 00:26:53.920
included music by Otti Goldstein, with
featured music by Frank Oceans. I can't
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sell you the touth of my disguise. I can't shust no one goose who
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00:27:00.440 --> 00:27:07.839
I bar? I told him duncans
me buy your kneed brash. I guess
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00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:15.640
they couldn't have me if it brings
me to my name. It's a bad
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00:27:15.759 --> 00:27:30.839
religion required a love to me.
It's nothing but one man come in,
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00:27:30.079 --> 00:27:37.480
sying that my starter fall come.
I can never make them love me,
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00:27:38.559 --> 00:27:47.319
never make them love me. No, no, it's a it's a bad
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00:27:47.440 --> 00:27:57.119
religion. You love some one who
love love you, Holy bad, only
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00:27:57.279 --> 00:28:04.200
bad religion. Have you feel the
way I do.
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00:00:09.080 --> 00:00:32.560
This is a studio both and production. You can't explore the culture and anthropology
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00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:40.439
of homosexuality without discussing religion, which
is a bit of a Pandora's box.
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Identity and religion are perhaps the two
most deeply personal and sensitive topics a person
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00:00:47.920 --> 00:00:53.320
can hold close or discuss, but
religion has played a huge part in how
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gay people have been treated, how
gay people continue to be treated, and
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somewhat surprisingly in gay culture itself.
And I thought my friend Eric carter Landin,
7
00:01:04.400 --> 00:01:08.400
the host of the True Consequences podcast
and co host of the Crime Lines
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00:01:08.439 --> 00:01:15.439
and Consequences podcast, was the perfect
person to discuss this with. I realized
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that I liked boys pretty early on. I think I had crushes on boys
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when I was probably like three or
four, and I didn't really know what
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being gay was back then. It
wasn't something that was really talked about,
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So I think it wasn't until I
hit puberty that I really started to understand
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my attraction to the same sex and
started to kind of grapple with the concept
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of being gay and trying to still
live in my very religious household. Tell
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me how your religious household influenced your
coming out but also your ongoing relationship with
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being gay. It was really hard, you know. I was very connected
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with my spirituality, or what I
thought was my spirituality at that time.
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I was raised in the church and
my dad was a Pentecostal evangelist. So
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it's like the fire and brimstone,
and being gay is absolutely not okay.
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It is the probably the worst possible
thing that you can be, at least
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as it pertains to the kind of
sermons that I listened to growing up.
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And I would pray every single day
from probably eleven until seventeen to that God
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would make me straight. And when
I turned seventeen, I realized that I
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had my answer, because nothing happened, nothing changed, And so I was
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actually outed by my cousin, who
is also very religious and was What he
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told me was that he felt like
he was intervening in my life to save
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me from damnation. So he told
everybody that I was gay, and I
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was outed. I lived in a
very small, very conservative town, and
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that caused a lot of problems for
me. People really started to kind of
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mess with me, and I got
thrown out of my house. I was
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living on the streets for a while, so there was a lot of things
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happening along with coming out, But
at the same time, like all this
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tragedy and terrible stuff is happening,
I'm really starting to like find myself and
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embrace who I am and love myself
and accept myself and start disclosing, you
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know, my sexuality to some friends. So it was a very kind of
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up and down, tumultuous time.
How do you reconcile? I guess the
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upbringing and indoctrination of gay is bad
with the bad experiences in many senses,
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losing your family because you were gay, with then developing an identity and a
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fulfillment around being gay. Because I
feel quite in conflict. Well, at
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that point, it was more like
it didn't matter anymore. I didn't have
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to hide it. I already knew
within myself before I was outed that I
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was going to come out and I
was going to live my life as a
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gay man, and I was going
to choose to be happy rather than choosing
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to force myself into something that wasn't
for me, that didn't work for me.
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So I think I just resolved that, like, if this is it,
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if my family doesn't want to ever
talk to me again, then that's
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fine. Like I'll go find other
people and they will be my family,
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and I'll make my own way if
I have to, because it wasn't an
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option for me to go back to
that. And even when my mom came
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back to me and apologized and asked
me to come back home, I told
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her like, it's we're not going
back to me being in the closet,
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Like this is just who I am. So if you want me back home,
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like this is who you're going to
get, and you can either like
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that or not, right, So, I think there was like this very
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liberating thing that happened by being outed, even though it was an ideal,
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even though like my choice to come
out was taken away from me, I
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felt very emboldened to pursue my life
because there was literally nothing in my way
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at that point. And what was
dating like dating? Well, this was
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before any of the apps, This
was before any online dating. It would
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be like sneaking into the gay bar, mostly as an underage person and drinking
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and dancing and having a good time
and meeting people that way. There was
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obviously like call lines chat lines back
then that people would use. That was
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like the precursor to the apps.
And so I met people. I think
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through there sometimes, but mostly it
was through the gay bars that was kind
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of like the place where you could
feel safe enough to be yourself in the
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nineties and not have to worry and
feel comfortable talking to people about being gay,
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and you felt safe in that kind
of community. Yeah, it was
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the first time that I didn't have
to hide who I was or pretend to
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be something else. Did you feel
like with other gay men there was a
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brotherhood or that people were looking out
for each other. Yeah. I think
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this is kind of a phrase that
isn't used anymore, but often you would
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get asked are you family? Are
you family? And at first I thought
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that was really weird, But then
as I kind of got immersed in the
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community, I felt like, no, this is this is family. These
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are people who get it. These
are people who understand what it's like to
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grow up in a tiny town and
to be bullied your entire life and to
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be told that your existence is awful
and you should die. So like,
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there was that camaraderie that comes from
that understanding, and a lot of the
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pretense kind of falls away in that
situation because you're like, no, I
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can just fully be myself and I'll
be accepted. According to a study by
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00:07:39.360 --> 00:07:47.040
radbud University sociology professor doctor Jan Johnson
titled how Religiosity shapes rejection of homosexuals across
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the globe, religiosity appears to be
one of the strongest socializing determinants to explain
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00:07:54.959 --> 00:08:00.839
rejection of homosexuality. This relationship is
based on the premise that indi visuals moral
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00:08:00.879 --> 00:08:07.959
attitudes are adopted via exposure to socializing
agents. In this respect religious institutions.
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Although most religions emphasize that people should
respect others, most religions tend to categorize
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homosexuality as something unnatural or impure.
A study conducted by Bernardi Whitley, Junior
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00:08:26.920 --> 00:08:33.840
Emeritus Professor of Psychology science at bal
University titled Religiosity and Attitudes toward Lesbians and
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00:08:33.879 --> 00:08:39.000
gay Men. A meta analysis,
which was published in the two thousand nine
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00:08:39.039 --> 00:08:43.480
issue of the International Journal for Psychology
of Religion, panalyzed sixty four studies which
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00:08:43.519 --> 00:08:50.759
examined the relationship between religion and homosexuality. Here are some very high level findings
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from that study. One possible mediator
of the relationship between religiosity and attitudes towards
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lesbians and gay men is the extent
to which people believe that homosexuality is controllable,
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changeable, or a matter of choice. Editors note it is not.
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In general, if people believe that
a stigma is under the control of the
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stigmatized person and therefore changeable and a
matter of choice, the more negative the
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attitude they will hold toward the stigmatized
person. Homosexuality is one of the stigmas
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to which this principle applies. Many
religious authorities, especially those who are more
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conservative, tend to portray homosexuality as
a matter of choice and thus controllable and
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changeable. As a result, people
who report hearing about homosexuality in church are
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more likely than those who do not
to perceive homosexuality as controllable. Not surprisingly,
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00:09:50.120 --> 00:09:56.159
then, several studies have found perceptions
of homosexuality as contro changeable or a
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matter of choice. To mediate the
relationship between religious and negative attitudes towards lesbians
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and gay men, It goes on
to say, another factor associated with multiple
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00:10:07.120 --> 00:10:11.919
forms of prejudice is perceived threat.
The greater the extent to which in group
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members believe that an outgroup poses a
threat to the in group, the more
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00:10:16.159 --> 00:10:22.279
negative the attitudes towards the outgroup.
This principle applies not only to threats of
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physical harm, but also to threats
of important in group values. Lesbians and
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00:10:26.279 --> 00:10:33.440
gay men are frequently portrayed as violating
important American values and are perceived as threatening
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00:10:33.480 --> 00:10:37.759
those values because people who are religious
may be especially sensitive to threats to their
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00:10:37.840 --> 00:10:41.679
values. The greater the extent to
which they perceive lesbians and gay men as
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threatening those values, the more likely
they are to hold more negative attitudes toward
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00:10:46.279 --> 00:10:52.240
them. And Finally, the results
of the meta analysis supported the hypothesis that
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religiosity would be related to religiously permitted
targets of prejudice lesbians and gay men,
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but not to a religiously prescribed target
of prejudice race ethnicity. This finding is
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00:11:03.879 --> 00:11:09.679
surprising given that different forms of prejudice
tend to be correlated. For example,
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people who score high on measures of
racial ethnic prejudice also tend to score high
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00:11:13.759 --> 00:11:18.519
on prejudice against lesbians and gay men. Based on this relationship, one would
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00:11:18.559 --> 00:11:24.720
expect that a given predictor variable would
show similar correlations with different forms of prejudice.
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00:11:24.080 --> 00:11:28.840
It is especially striking, therefore,
that the meta analysis found intrinsic orientation
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and endorsement of Christian Orthodoxy to be
correlated with positive racial ethnic attitudes, but
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to be correlated with negative attitudes towards
lesbians and gay men. This difference clearly
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illustrates the distinction between proscribed and permitted
prejudice, and comment that religion can both
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make and unmake prejudice. So how
did we get here? According to the
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American Psychology Association, homosexuality has been
documented in every culture across the globe,
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and it can be traced as far
back as ancient Greece and ancient Israel.
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In ancient Greece, it was common
among both men and women. Indigenous peoples
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in the Americas and East Africa had
revered terms for homosexuals, but depending on
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varying interpretations of the Old Testament,
homosexuality was denounced by the Judaic and Christian
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depictions of God, interpretations that many
scholars have since been able to negate.
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Homophobia became widespread in conjunction with the
rise of Christianity and the invasions in and
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expansion into the West, Northern Africa, and the South Pacific. The indigenous
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acceptance and often reverence for two spirit
people or same sex love appalled European colonizers
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who rejected any practice's behaviours or beliefs
that weren't consistent with their own male and
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female roles. Men were to present
and behave in a masculine way. Women
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were to present and behave in a
feminine way, whatever the fuck that means.
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In fact, it was during that
time that the first documented death sentence
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was committed against homosexual activity in fifteen
sixty six, when Spanish colonizers executed a
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French settler in the Great State of
Florida. And as the greater world was
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colonized by European Christians, homosexuality was
shunned or criminalized across ancient cultures that once
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revered it, and homophobia began to
spread, and in a very reductive conclusion,
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here we are today. Religious and
governmental persecution of gaze, which happened
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in conjunction and collaboration, has continued
to strip gay people of their etona identity,
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community and safety for way over five
hundred years, and in some places
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with little to no abatement. As
of this recording, laws explicitly provide for
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the death penalty of sex between consenting
adults of the same sex. In eight
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nations. In five countries there is
unclear law around whether homosexuality a criminalized act,
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is punishable by death. In fifty
four countries, people can be imprisoned
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for homosexuality, and four nations practice
what is essentially a don't ask, don't
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tell law. And while ironically enough, many Western nations have progressed in their
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attitudes toward homosexuality, as of this
recording, there are still only thirty eight
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countries that have legalized gay marriage,
sixteen fewer than those who legally permit the
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imprisonment of gays, and even here
in the United States, there has been
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an abundance of new and inactive anti
LGBTQ legislation, and even in liberal Seattle,
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just last week, three gay bars
were rated by police. And all
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of this matters because it contributed to, if not created, an environment for
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the crimes of Lorenzo and Schweikert and
many many others who targeted the gay community
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to flourish. In circling back to
my conversation with Eric, I'm struck by
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a few things. One, just
about every gay person I know, myself
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included personally, know someone who died
by suicide because of gay persecution, most
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often because of familial or religious persecution. According to the Trevor Project, LGBTQ
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plus young people are four times more
likely to attempt suicide than their peers,
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and more than one point eight million
young LGBTQ plus people seriously consider suicide each
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year in the US alone. Two, about half of the gay men I
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know fled the areas where they were
raised, where their families are in order
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to escape gay persecution. And three, just about every gay person I know
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lost a loved one when they came
out of the closet, Some lost many,
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and some lost all. So to
Eric's point, young and vulnerable gay
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men often find themselves in new places, desperate for the community acceptance and love.
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They were denied by their churches and
families, with little sense of social
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or personal value due to a long
history of broad and often personal homophobia propagated
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by those very churches, which makes
them incredibly easy to take advantage of,
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and according to the National Institutes of
Health, psychosocial variables like persecution, isolation,
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depression, increased drug and alcohol abuse
in gay men and women, which
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make them even more vulnerable, And
then the coping mechanisms gay pride, gay
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clubs, promiscuity, drug and alcohol
abuse are then used to both further persecute
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and marginalize gay people, but also
further validate people's persecution of gay people.
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There was something that my friend Jason
said back in episode two that has really
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struck with me and cultivated quite a
bit of anger within me. In essence,
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with a greater cultural shift toward acceptance
and tolerance of gay people, words
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I find contextually quite disgusting, there
was no need for personal or cultural atonement.
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Essentially, we tolerate you, now, stop complaining and never mind what
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came before. It makes me think
of all the people who called me or
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other gay people words like faggot,
sissy, fruit, queer, fairy,
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00:17:56.519 --> 00:18:02.039
degenerate, sinner, cocksucker, and
so on and on and on, who
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now refer to themselves as pro gay
or advocates or allies or friends of because
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culturally that's where we are now.
And while I value their shifts in behavior
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and thinking, I have to wonder
was there ever atonement, Was there ever
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any acknowledgment of how they contributed to
the marginalization of the community they now stand
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behind, Because if not, where's
the personal growth and how pliable are they?
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Especially now as we face a shift
away from tolerance and acceptance for gay
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people, it was the gay people
who had to do the work to get
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where we are today, which is
still a far cry from where we should
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be, and they have literally died
doing it. From twenty twenty two to
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twenty twenty three, there was a
thirteen point eight percent increase in gay related
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00:18:55.839 --> 00:19:02.119
hate crimes. There were more than
one thousand single bias LGBTQ hate crimes reported
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just to the FBI in twenty twenty
two, the same year that saw more
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than five hundred and fifty anti LGBTQ
bills introduced in forty three states. More
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than eighty were signed into law.
The problem not only persists, but is
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getting worse, and quite frankly,
if it's religious and straight and governmental people
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who created the problem, it's religious
and straight and governmental people who need to
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fucking fix it. Voting for a
politician and then saying you don't agree with
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his social views is neither activism nor
concession. Its willful ignorance and actual bullshit.
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Now you reached out to me.
What prompted you to reach out?
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I stumbled upon in your podcast and
things that were in your podcast, I
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were things that kind of weighed on
me. Does it take a genius to
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00:20:07.880 --> 00:20:11.880
know that there are other victims out
there? That I'm sure of it.
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And I've been told that somebody that's
been working on also working on the case,
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can put Stephen in the vicinity of
where these men are have gone missing
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the area, and so that leads
me to believe that they again, that
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this investigation did a shoddy job.
And knowing what he said, one of
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his goals was to assault, make
somebody disappear on the holidays or any day,
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just so the their family would suffer, you know, the heartache every
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year. You know, I think
about my mom knowing if he did ultimately
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carry out what he meant to do
to me, that my mother, who
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has an adible luxury, wondering where
I was so time really really upsets me.
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I can't imagine a parent being one
that there are people not knowing what
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happened to their loved one. And
I do believe that he's attached to other
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cases that could be solved if somebody
cared enough to dive in a little deeper.
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Every time I've spoken with Albert Perkins, he's urged me to keep investigating
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Steven Lorenzo and Scott Schweikert, at
one point even asking if I would do
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a second season focusing on them,
which was never the plan. The plan
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was eight episodes covering this case and
then next season would be a new case.
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But over time, throughout both the
season and our investigation, I felt
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more and more that I was doing
a disservice by ending things after just eight
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episodes. There is still so much
more story to tell. There is still
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so much more to this investigation,
and at this point we've only just laid
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00:21:53.880 --> 00:22:00.000
out the facts of the case and
the anthropology and history that helped to cultivate
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these senseless crimes. And yet we've
spent hundreds of hours investigating potential victims and
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have a list of, in my
opinion, at least eight very likely victims,
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and I could just give high level
explanations of who they are, rattle
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their names out in a list in
the back half of an episode, but
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not only would it be unkind,
it would miss the entire point of this
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podcast. This was never intended to
be a true crime podcast. This was
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always about marginalization and visibility and self
examination. How we've all contributed to the
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00:22:41.519 --> 00:22:45.799
problem, How we've all neglected to
fix it. But it's also about the
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00:22:45.920 --> 00:22:52.319
victims of not just hate, but
of these hateful men, Jason Galehouse and
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his friends and family, Michael Wocklets
and his friends and family, the unknown
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00:22:56.920 --> 00:23:02.319
and unnamed victims and their friends and
family, Albert Perkins and his friends and
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family, and the gay family at
large, and so on and on and
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on. So next season, I'll
take you deep into our investigation into Lorenzo
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and Schweikert, as we continue to
discuss gay culture and persecution while shining a
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light on the many missing and murdered
gay men. And as this season comes
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to a close, I ask you
all to really sit with everything we've shared
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with you, sit with how you've
contributed to the problem and how you can
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contribute to change, because none of
us are growing if we're not constantly interrogating
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our values, our beliefs, our
opinions, and our pasts and how we
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impact the people and spaces around us. Taxi driver, you must shrink for
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00:24:07.400 --> 00:24:18.160
the hour, leave the meter running. It's rush shower, So take the
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00:24:18.160 --> 00:24:21.880
streets. If you want me just
start running the demons? Could you?
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He said? A lot? Who
I can bar? I told him don't
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00:24:29.039 --> 00:24:37.759
cut me for buying meat prayer.
I guess it couldn't hurt me. If
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00:24:37.839 --> 00:24:51.960
it brings me to my name,
it's a bad religion. The sun crowds
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00:24:53.680 --> 00:25:18.599
could in saynt must go from.
This episode was written, researched, edited
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00:25:18.680 --> 00:25:25.279
and produced by me Josh Hallmark.
Resources included religiosity and attitudes towards lesbians and
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00:25:25.359 --> 00:25:29.720
gay men, a meta analysis by
Bernard E. Whitley Junior, How religiosity
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00:25:29.759 --> 00:25:33.839
shapes rejection of homosexuals across the Globe
by Dirk jan Johnson, The New York
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00:25:33.960 --> 00:25:40.319
Times, Time Magazine, the Harvard
Political Review, the National Institutes for Health,
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00:25:40.559 --> 00:25:45.400
the American Psychological Association, the Harvard
University Press, The Hill, the
259
00:25:45.480 --> 00:25:49.799
Trevor Project, and the Human Rights
Campaign. This episode featured Eric Carterlandine and
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00:25:51.039 --> 00:25:56.559
Albert Perkins, and it was made
possible by the following Patreon producers Adrian I.
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00:25:56.640 --> 00:25:59.839
Yello, Amelia Hancock, Amy Basel
and at El, Benjamin Chopp of
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00:26:00.319 --> 00:26:03.119
Casey, Jensen Richardson, Dana Keith, Drew Vipond, Hallie Reed, Jessica
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00:26:03.200 --> 00:26:07.839
Ally Hoadzig, Jillian Otale, John
O'Leary, Kendall, c kimberly Ka,
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00:26:07.039 --> 00:26:11.640
Lauren F. Lindsay Curtis Lindley,
tuscoff Manolas bullcous Nicole and Dennis Henry,
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00:26:11.720 --> 00:26:15.519
Sarah King, s C. Shelley
Brewer, Tuesday Woodworth, Vicky Russell,
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00:26:15.799 --> 00:26:21.039
Zach Ignottowitz, Warren Ashley Harris,
Beth McNally, John Comery, Jordan Taylor,
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00:26:21.119 --> 00:26:25.200
Carly mcnat, Lana Sarah C,
Shauna Harden and Lydia Fiedler. Thank
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00:26:25.240 --> 00:26:30.279
you to Studio both Ann's newest Patreon
supporters, Courtney B, Lisa c Ashley,
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00:26:30.319 --> 00:26:33.839
P, Steph F Kevin Di DeFranco, Nikki H, Christa Pe,
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00:26:33.039 --> 00:26:37.400
Tracy D. Hector, Christine A
l A P. Carla s Emily P.
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00:26:37.640 --> 00:26:41.240
Colin A, Tory Y, Olivia
R. And Quinnlin. To support
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00:26:41.279 --> 00:26:47.839
the investigation, go to Patreon dot
com slash Studio both And. This episode
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00:26:47.960 --> 00:26:53.920
included music by Otti Goldstein, with
featured music by Frank Oceans. I can't
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00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:00.319
sell you the touth of my disguise. I can't shust no one goose who
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00:27:00.440 --> 00:27:07.839
I bar? I told him duncans
me buy your kneed brash. I guess
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00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:15.640
they couldn't have me if it brings
me to my name. It's a bad
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00:27:15.759 --> 00:27:30.839
religion required a love to me.
It's nothing but one man come in,
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00:27:30.079 --> 00:27:37.480
sying that my starter fall come.
I can never make them love me,
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00:27:38.559 --> 00:27:47.319
never make them love me. No, no, it's a it's a bad
280
00:27:47.440 --> 00:27:57.119
religion. You love some one who
love love you, Holy bad, only
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00:27:57.279 --> 00:28:04.200
bad religion. Have you feel the
way I do.
