Speaker 1: Welcome to the nonprofits. In our second segment this week,
Speaker 1: we continue our examination of the US government's cancelation of
Speaker 1: grants already earmarked to support projects of inclusion. Jonathan Raudebush
Speaker 1: these stories are becoming too common, but is it? But
Speaker 1: it is still very important that we break out the
Speaker 1: magnifying glass and examine them. So what are the details here?
Speaker 2: Well, Dodgy Dodge strikes again in the new administration in
Speaker 2: their efforts to erase anything not white or heteronormative in government,
Speaker 2: with the excuse of creating a meritocracy where only your
Speaker 2: personal accomplishment matters. Any minority is not allowed to be
Speaker 2: shown as meriting anything. Is the result, so and primarily racist, transphobic,
Speaker 2: and homophobic, denying minority and divergent people the credit and
Speaker 2: for the accomplishments they deserve. So as a result, it
Speaker 2: is an attempt to make an all non privileged citizens
Speaker 2: invisible to the white, heteronormative Christian minority. So they canceled
Speaker 2: in Ohio grant to place historical markers. And these these
Speaker 2: historical markers include famous LGBTQ sites. So this is a
Speaker 2: little personal for me, but this is part of the
Speaker 2: cancelation of twenty five million dollars in grants. The Ohio
Speaker 2: History Connection received two hundred and forty nine and ten
Speaker 2: federal Of the federal grants in twenty twenty two, one
Speaker 2: marker for where Ohio's first and longest running lesbian bar
Speaker 2: once stood it's since been demolished, was not paid from
Speaker 2: this grant the historic There was a historic group that
Speaker 2: paid for that, And this is another shameful attempt to
Speaker 2: erase our history and our lives. They will ultimately fail.
Speaker 2: We're still here and we're still alive, and we know
Speaker 2: what we had as history. But until then, who knows
Speaker 2: story is? Is from Central Ohio News by David Reese,
Speaker 2: published April eighth, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks Jonathan. Yeah, so these cuts were made
Speaker 1: in the name of, quote government efficiency. As a member
Speaker 1: of the LGBTQ community yourself, as you mentioned earlier, I
Speaker 1: imagine you take that quite personally, that you know, having
Speaker 1: part of your history removed as government efficiency. So how
Speaker 1: do you feel about having those contributions of this community
Speaker 1: just being cast aside? What are your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2: I think that that's something we've been suffering from since
Speaker 2: I was since I was a child, and long before that,
Speaker 2: society has never accepted LGBTQ plus people as people, as
Speaker 2: human beings. They've always tried to demonize, tell us that
Speaker 2: we're things that were not define us for ourselves. All
Speaker 2: the nasty, ugly things you do to people when you
Speaker 2: just want to make them go away, you think they're
Speaker 2: icky or something like that, and your culture is what
Speaker 2: does that? And when the culture started changing to accept us,
Speaker 2: there is a large part of that culture who is
Speaker 2: trying to say no, no, no, you can't do that.
Speaker 2: You know, this is how my identity, you know, this
Speaker 2: is me, you know, and we're saying, yeah, but we're
Speaker 2: here too, We're a me too, you know. So you
Speaker 2: get your act together, get over it, and move on
Speaker 2: with your life, you know. So we're moving on with
Speaker 2: ours regardless of what you do or say. You know,
Speaker 2: you stay in my way, I'll walk over you.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: We're not going away. We're not going back in the closet.
Speaker 2: So there, you know. So there that's my opinion anyway.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, yeah, yeah, thanks for sharing that. Eli.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you specific about the article. It
Speaker 1: mentions that of the over eighteen hundred historical markers in Ohio.
Speaker 1: Only three of them lawed contributions of the LGBT community,
Speaker 1: three out of eighteen hundred. I think we all know
Speaker 1: the answer to this question, but I'm going to ask
Speaker 1: it anyway. Is this really a matter of government deficiency?
Speaker 1: Quote unquote?
Speaker 3: I mean, they're saying it's about budget consciousness, but I
Speaker 3: think there's a good reason to believe that that's not
Speaker 3: the case. I think it's cultural warfare, just you know,
Speaker 3: for all of the reasons that you know Jonathan described,
Speaker 3: and it's people. You always hear people say like one
Speaker 3: of the most I don't know if it's most common,
Speaker 3: but there's always this idea of like, I'm fine with
Speaker 3: whatever people want to be as long as they don't
Speaker 3: shove it down my throat. And then when you ask
Speaker 3: for an example of like, okay, well what do you
Speaker 3: mean when you say shoving it down your throat? It's
Speaker 3: something like this. It's like, well, why do there have
Speaker 3: to be monuments for gay and trans people? Why can't
Speaker 3: they just be monuments for people? And it's this idea
Speaker 3: that like in that identity, having uniqueness and having identity
Speaker 3: and individuality is like just not something to be that
Speaker 3: that's worth acknowledging when you when you what's I had,
Speaker 3: I had a thought and I had it put in
Speaker 3: a certain way that they they When you don't acknowledge
Speaker 3: their existence, you participate in their erasure.
Speaker 1: And that's an excellent point. Say that again, please.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when when when you don't acknowledge their existence in history,
Speaker 3: their contributions, you're participating in their erasure. And what that
Speaker 3: means is is that gay kids, and trans kids, and
Speaker 3: and and all types of kids, all kinds of kids
Speaker 3: from everywhere deserve to see that people just like them
Speaker 3: have always existed, have always contributed, have always mattered and participated,
Speaker 3: and that there's no one particular way that you have
Speaker 3: to be. You're allowed to be an individual. You're allowed
Speaker 3: to have an identity, and there's nothing wrong with whatever
Speaker 3: that identity is. And the history is not the way
Speaker 3: when you take out identity, the default view of history
Speaker 3: is that it's just filled with a bunch of white
Speaker 3: men fueled by guns and God power, God by God
Speaker 3: and gunpowder. Right, and it's just not consistent with reality.
Speaker 1: Right. I want to stick with you, Eli, So, building
Speaker 1: on what you were just talking about, so these were
Speaker 1: historical markers that were canceled, So they're really just tearing
Speaker 1: pages out of the history book. Basically, why would the
Speaker 1: inclusion of the of a marginalized segment of the population
Speaker 1: be important in a historical context.
Speaker 3: So well, and partly for for kind of how I
Speaker 3: was describing, you know, kids deserve to see that, like
Speaker 3: you know, there's there's all kinds of individually. But also
Speaker 3: there was like a statement made by you know, one
Speaker 3: of the individuals involved in this is like, you know,
Speaker 3: we don't fund identity politics, and it's that it's that
Speaker 3: identity shouldn't be political. Like there's no one event in
Speaker 3: I think human history. I might be justified in saying
Speaker 3: that only involved exclusively one demographic of people and no
Speaker 3: other people. And so like you think of like you
Speaker 3: know wars, the Civil War, the Revolutionary War nine eleven,
Speaker 3: like yeah, the co like the COVID pandemic, all these
Speaker 3: things have always involved all types of different demographics of people.
Speaker 3: And when it's just like kind of how I was
Speaker 3: saying before, if you don't you don't you don't have
Speaker 3: If you don't acknowledge their existence, you're just erasing their
Speaker 3: existence and you don't have to be a part of
Speaker 3: a demographic of people that Harry and Tubman you benefited
Speaker 3: in order to acknowledge the benefit of her contributions and
Speaker 3: the work and the effort that she put in. Right,
Speaker 3: So there's there's value in celebrating the just there are
Speaker 3: things that make you know, people different from each other,
Speaker 3: and those things are great and fine to celebrate and
Speaker 3: not be ashamed of it, not hide from and not
Speaker 3: you know, put away and a race from history and
Speaker 3: it's it's I don't know, I can't put it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like before you were saying, you know,
Speaker 1: why not why do we need to celebrate specific categories
Speaker 1: of people, Why don't we just celebrate people? Well, what
Speaker 1: they're doing is they're eliminating those separate categories, and so
Speaker 1: they're really they're actually saying that while at the same
Speaker 1: time they're arguing to actually not just celebrate people. We
Speaker 1: talked before about how three out of the eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: historical markers were related to LGBTQ people, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: way less than the percentage of the population that would
Speaker 1: fall into that group.
Speaker 2: We're part of history, right, So if you don't, we don't.
Speaker 2: If you're not, if we don't have LGBTQ. If we
Speaker 2: don't have black Hispanic Asian people designated in our history,
Speaker 2: they are in there our history. You're just trying to
Speaker 2: rewrite history. You're not concerned about history. And this budget
Speaker 2: excuse is the one that conservatives have used for time
Speaker 2: immemorial to pass discriminatory legislation, and that's what has happened
Speaker 2: here as well. They're just and the thing is that
Speaker 2: people who are doing it do not have the authority
Speaker 2: to do that. Congress passed these these these dollars to
Speaker 2: go to that place. It's Congress's job to control the
Speaker 2: burs strings. The administration does not have the right or
Speaker 2: the authority to change what Congress said. So it's you know,
Speaker 2: it just drives me insane that they think they can
Speaker 2: just go in and we're just going to take a
Speaker 2: hatchet to the budget. No, you do that in Congress.
Speaker 2: We don't do that. You don't get to do that
Speaker 2: as an administrator.
Speaker 1: You know, sorry, go ahead of your life you wanted to.
Speaker 3: That's not an oval office, you know, activity right.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, exactly. So, Jonathan, something that you said at
Speaker 1: the beginning of your last little bit there really stod
Speaker 1: out to me. You said, we're part of history. And
Speaker 1: I would go beyond that. I would say, we're also
Speaker 1: all part of we. It's not it's not that you're
Speaker 1: part of history or you're not part of history. We're
Speaker 1: all part of us. And so if we're talking about
Speaker 1: our history, we're talking about our society, we need to
Speaker 1: include we. I mean, it all depends on you know it.
Speaker 1: It boils down to that, uh, well, that nasty word inclusiveness.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Do we want to include all these people or do
Speaker 1: we want to exclude them and make them into them? Right?
Speaker 1: And so if we can make them into them and
Speaker 1: then keep our we small.
Speaker 2: And for all our problems, and we will exactly take
Speaker 2: credit for what we do wrong, exactly to be responsible
Speaker 2: for the fact that we have just managed to rip
Speaker 2: off the majority pority of people by blaming a minority
Speaker 2: of the people for doing it right. And that's just
Speaker 2: what's happening. It's a deflection, it's and it's really sad
Speaker 2: that that we fall for that every single year at
Speaker 2: budget time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Jonathan, I want to stick with you for
Speaker 1: a second. I'm a cisgendered, heterosexual white man. I'm not
Speaker 1: a member of the LGBTQ community. Yeah, well, you know,
Speaker 1: none of us are perfect, right, Uh, but there are
Speaker 1: many people that I care about, including people on this panel, uh,
Speaker 1: that are important to me and so that are that
Speaker 1: are part of that community. And so what could I
Speaker 1: do to help validate this existence, validate the contributions of
Speaker 1: the others that are being cast aside by by things
Speaker 1: like this. What kind of advice would you give to me? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, what can I do to help.
Speaker 2: Being a good ally? It means a lot of things.
Speaker 2: One is first just recognizing the people in your life
Speaker 2: that are of LGBTQ. The other is getting acquainted with
Speaker 2: our history. That's something that even LGBTQ plus people should do.
Speaker 2: It's it's not a pretty history, but it is a
Speaker 2: history and it needs to be out there. And you know,
Speaker 2: if you see somebody or if somebody is telling an
Speaker 2: off color joke or something like that, speak up. It's
Speaker 2: all an ally can do. The rest of us have
Speaker 2: to be there to show them that we're human beings.
Speaker 2: You can't do that for us. We have to do that.
Speaker 2: But you can say that's not cool, dude, that's just
Speaker 2: not cool, you know. And and when they say, well
Speaker 2: what do you? You can say it's none of your business.
Speaker 1: What it is that what.
Speaker 2: You're doing is you're putting people down that you don't
Speaker 2: even know, right, you know, or however you want to
Speaker 2: do it, or whatever your idea is. ELI tends to
Speaker 2: come up with some pretty good ways of phrasing things
Speaker 2: like that that kind of get attention. But I'm not
Speaker 2: a poet, so I can't I use brute force a
Speaker 2: lot of the time. Like you know what, the language
Speaker 2: I would use probably shouldn't be broadcast.
Speaker 1: Well, you are a sailor, right, You're a sailor, So
Speaker 1: that's what I mean.
Speaker 2: You don't want to hear it.
Speaker 1: All right? All right? So yeah, so speaking of ELI,
Speaker 1: I wanted to jump over to ELI real quick here.
Speaker 1: So author Michael P. Watson Uh says that quote strong
Speaker 1: people don't put others down, they lift them up. And
Speaker 1: so how could how how could that reflect on this
Speaker 1: situation here? What do you what do you what kind
Speaker 1: of light do you think that that statements like that
Speaker 1: cast onto what's happening here?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean it's firstly, I think I wholly agree
Speaker 3: with that. I don't know if there's if I find
Speaker 3: any flawed in that, uh in that idea and when
Speaker 3: you take a look at what this, you know, these
Speaker 3: budget the particular budget cut or you know, actions like
Speaker 3: this are doing that are pretty clearly just targeting a
Speaker 3: group of already marginalized people. How is that lifting anybody up?
Speaker 3: What is and even it's not only not lifting up
Speaker 3: that group, it's not really lifting up anybody, it's not
Speaker 3: helping anyone at all. To not have these markers in place.
Speaker 3: I mean, you could, I guess, make the argument, well,
Speaker 3: now that money can go somewhere else, like you think
Speaker 3: that's gonna do something good for.
Speaker 1: You, But well, what about the other you know, seventeen
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety seven historical markers too, That money could
Speaker 1: have gone to something else too. True, Yeah, and it's not.
Speaker 3: And I don't I don't mean because of like the
Speaker 3: small amount that these three you know, structures would have caused.
Speaker 3: But I mean, like, I just I think that the
Speaker 3: there's a lot of discussion around government spending going on,
Speaker 3: and I'm just not of the opinion that it is
Speaker 3: going to become any more transparent than it ever has been.
Speaker 3: And I think there's a strong case that may be
Speaker 3: made that probably less so, So I just don't think
Speaker 3: that those those funds that would have otherwise gone to
Speaker 3: celebrating people that have done great things for others in
Speaker 3: their community and their society. That's what that money would
Speaker 3: have gone to. I would have celebrated those people, and
Speaker 3: now it's going to go to you know, question, my question,
Speaker 3: my question?
Speaker 1: Right right? I have one last question I want to
Speaker 1: ask both of you. I'll ask Eli first because I
Speaker 1: want to give Jonathan the last word here, but so
Speaker 1: uh in this same question for both of you? Can
Speaker 1: the harm that is being caused by this and other
Speaker 1: similar recent events? Can this harm ever be healed?
Speaker 3: You know, I am not a part of the group
Speaker 3: to whom the harm is being done, and for that reason,
Speaker 3: I don't I I don't know if it is my
Speaker 3: place to comment on that. I don't know if I could,
Speaker 3: if I could accurately make a judgment about that, because
Speaker 3: I I think that's up to the ones that are
Speaker 3: that are being harmed.
Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough, fair enough, Jonathan, what are your thoughts then? Can't? Can't?
Speaker 1: Can this? Can this real damage that's being done to
Speaker 1: an important community in in our in our society? Can
Speaker 1: this ever be healed? I mean, is this something that
Speaker 1: we can put behind us, or are we doomed as
Speaker 1: a species and as a civilization and as a nation
Speaker 1: to forever well to ever be shitting on other people?
Speaker 1: I guess well.
Speaker 2: I would say that all all harm can be dealt
Speaker 2: with and can be in the past. The repercussions of
Speaker 2: it will resonate through at least several generations. Eventually it
Speaker 2: will just be a footnote in a history book someplace.
Speaker 2: That's okay, But the real harm and pain it causes now,
Speaker 2: they're real people, and I just I don't think that
Speaker 2: people really understand that everybody who is in a minority
Speaker 2: situation anywhere in the world are real human beings. They
Speaker 2: could be your sister, and oftentimes are. If you own
Speaker 2: a uterus in this society, they're trying to put you
Speaker 2: back in the kitchen, and that's all that they want
Speaker 2: you to do, because you threaten men when you're better
Speaker 2: at their job than they are. And that's the same
Speaker 2: with all minorities. But the only thing you can do
Speaker 2: is be who you are and be the best that
Speaker 2: you can be, and do it publicly so that people
Speaker 2: understand that you're human and you're a good human and
Speaker 2: you're doing good things for them. As well, and I
Speaker 2: think that'll turn the tide eventually. I find that people
Speaker 2: who were pretty bigoted that I got to know and
Speaker 2: talk to on a daily basis, when they found out
Speaker 2: I was queer, they all of a sudden changed their
Speaker 2: mind on that. Well, they can't be that bad because
Speaker 2: here's John, you know, and he lives a very quiet life,
Speaker 2: and you know, he works hard, he does his stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, that's what we do as LGBTQ plus, as
Speaker 2: other minorities do. But you know, the one last comment
Speaker 2: I want to make about the whole thing is that
Speaker 2: the opposition to us always uses the budget while they
Speaker 2: are blowing the budget it up with financial giveaways to
Speaker 2: their very wealthy friend. Right, we're targeting the wrong people.
Speaker 2: You want to get a better society, target the people
Speaker 2: who are making ripping you off essentially. So I'm going
Speaker 2: to stop there because I don't want to get too
Speaker 2: involved in that, but just a.
Speaker 1: Thought, sure, sure, So I just want to clarify. Did
Speaker 1: I detect a hint of optimism in what you were
Speaker 1: saying there?
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. Yeah, I'm old enough to where I
Speaker 2: might not see it, but I have I have optimism
Speaker 2: that people are people and they basically are good, they're
Speaker 2: not They don't like being angry and mad, so I
Speaker 2: think that eventually that will wear off and we'll get
Speaker 2: together and at least not be trying to beat each
Speaker 2: other up every day.
Speaker 1: Well, hearing that from you, Jonathan, it does make you know,
Speaker 1: because I know many of us have difficulty these days
Speaker 1: finding room for optimism, and so I'm glad that. I'm
Speaker 1: glad to hear that you know that there is some
Speaker 1: of that out there, So thank you for sharing. I
Speaker 1: think both of you actually