This Gay Week 13: Political Scapegoating, Health Care, and Backlash

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/01/09

Karel Bouley is a trailblazing LGBTQ broadcaster, entertainer, and activist. As half of the first openly gay duo in U.S. drive-time radio, he made history while shaping California law on LGBTQ wrongful death cases. Karel rose to prominence as the #1 talk show host on KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles and KGO AM 810 in San Francisco, later expanding to Free Speech TV and the Karel Cast podcast. His work spans journalism (HuffPost, The Advocate, Billboard), television (CNN, MSNBC), and the music industry. A voting member of NARAS, GALECA, and SAG-AFTRA, Karel now lives and creates in Las Vegas.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Karel Bouley discuss how trans people—about 1% of the population—have become a convenient political scapegoat in the U.S., Queensland, and beyond. Bouley argues that attacking gay people broadly is harder now, while targeting trans people is easier because they are more marginalized and less electorally powerful. They examine whether Donald Trump catalyzed a global backlash or merely intensified existing forces. The conversation links policy restrictions (including puberty blocker bans) to mental-health harms, highlights the amplifying role of social media, and contrasts today’s hostility with earlier public responses to Christine Jorgensen.

Karel Bouley: It is This Gay Week time. With Scott Jacobsen and Karel. 

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What a fabulous time to be alive.

Karel: Because today, that four-year-old is richer than I am. On Cooking with Carter. He is only four. I looked it up. He is four. He probably earns more money than many adults. And God bless him—he is an adorable child, and I hope as an adult he reaps the benefits of all of this. It is This Gay Week. He is not gay. We do not know that yet, though. He could grow up to be.

I went over the stories you sent, and I asked this on my show, and it deserves consideration. You sent a story about the Queensland ban on medications for transgender-affirming care—let us call it that. You have already discussed with your American guest the Trump administration’s efforts to end youth gender-affirming care for teenagers in the United States. In Queensland, in the story that I saw and sent you, they say young people are going to take their lives over this. That will likely lead to suicides.

On my show, I asked a question that I want everyone watching, listening, or reading to think about. As you said, this past week has once again offered almost no positive news for trans people—whether in the United States, in Queensland, or elsewhere. There has been virtually no good news for trans people. And you have to ask why. Why have trans people become—if not the “enemy of the people”—then certainly a central focus of multiple governments?

Trans people make up roughly one percent of the population. That means policies targeting them directly affect a tiny percentage of constituents. And I do not believe that more than half of any country’s population actively thinks about trans issues in daily life. Trans people have always existed in society. Yet only recently has trans identity become such a public political flashpoint. And you have to ask why.

I believe it is because attacking gay people broadly has become more difficult. Targeting LGBTQ communities—gay men, lesbians, bisexuals—is harder now because of legal protections and shifting public attitudes. Public opinion in many places no longer treats same-sex marriage as controversial, and advocacy has built resilient networks. Attacking trans people, however, is easier because trans people are more marginalized, including within queer communities. They are a small portion of the overall population, and that makes them politically vulnerable.

It is easy for politicians to target a group that does not constitute a significant voting bloc and is unlikely to cost them elections, while energizing a segment of the electorate that believes—often without deeply understanding the issues—that opposing trans rights matters to them. If you asked many of those voters why trans people concern them, they would struggle to answer, because prejudice is rarely grounded in reason.

All of this pressure is directed at a population seeking medically recognized care, simply because governments can target them, because they are low-visibility targets, and because they lack the organized political power that even the broader LGBTQ community has developed. I would like to see more gay people—especially those in government—stand up for trans people. It is disheartening to see how isolated trans communities remain.

The story you sent from Queensland—published in both Australian and New Zealand outlets—reported that restrictions on puberty blockers risk driving some trans youth to take their own lives. Puberty blockers have been limited or banned in multiple jurisdictions, and experts warned that removing access heightens suicide risk. So again, you have to ask: why? Why are governments doing this? The only answer I arrive at is that it is easier—easier politically, easier rhetorically, easier to rally fear than empathy.

I have to ask you, as a journalist: do you think this anti-trans wave began with Trump—globally, I mean? Did you see other national governments giving trans issues this level of political attention before Donald Trump? Because I did not.

Jacobsen: It also goes to a deeper question: is Donald Trump the cause, or the symptom?

Bouley: In this case, I think he is the cause.

Jacobsen: Yes. And perhaps there is a two-fold structure here. First, he is a symptom of forces already present in society—factors that helped elevate him into public life and sustain him. Then, once in office, he became a cause or at least a strong driver of international backlash. Many protections for small sex- or gender-minority populations require sustained resources: lobbying, legal defence, community spaces, and access to health care. We talked a few weeks ago about community centers and care facilities struggling to stay open because they could not afford rising costs. Even basic community support requires financing. So, like other government retrenchments—whether through the Department of Justice, USAID, or comparable bodies—it becomes part of a broader withdrawal of public goods.

Bouley: What is interesting is that trans people cannot be costing the system that much. Gender-affirming care is not comparable, in scale or expense, to procedures like open-heart surgery, which are widely used and costly. Yet someone like RFK Jr. publicly advocates eating more saturated fat, almost as if concern for long-term cardiovascular health depends on convenience rather than evidence. It is astonishing to watch people portray trans health care as an enormous financial burden when it is not.

Trump is the cause. Under Biden, there has not been comparable federal hostility toward trans rights in the United States—although high-profile figures like J.K. Rowling continued to push exclusionary views. I believe I sent you a story about Rowling being in the news again for anti-trans commentary. And even there, J.K. Rowling is a billionaire author who wrote extremely successful children’s books. Her fictional world contains metaphors about marginalization—Dumbledore is presented as gay in Rowling’s later statements, and the “Muggle vs. wizarding world” dynamic has long been read as an allegory of in-groups and out-groups.

Yet this billionaire writer, who had no professional or financial need to take a stance, chose to position herself as a trans-exclusionary feminist. Nobody specifically asked her to enter that fight, and it is not in her commercial interest. She is not a politician. So you have to ask: why choose that hill? Some readers and public figures have distanced themselves from her; cast members of the films have spoken out. Why did she choose that position? That remains my biggest question. I wish I could, as your “gay expert,” offer a confident explanation. But over the past five years, there has been a collective shift toward vilifying trans people, and they were not on most people’s radar before.

We did not even treat Christine Jorgensen this way. Do you know who she is? You should look her up. Christine Jorgensen was a former U.S. Army private who travelled to Denmark in the early 1950s for gender-affirming surgery. When she returned to the United States, she became internationally famous and appeared on the covers of major magazines. She later performed in Las Vegas and became the most widely known trans person of her era. My parents knew who Christine Jorgensen was.

And despite the significant challenges she faced, she was not attacked on this scale. She was not universally embraced, but she was not subjected to sustained nationwide political hostility. In fact, she became a celebrity and worked in the entertainment industry. She was not treated as a public enemy. We are treating trans people worse in many respects now than they were treated in the 1950s and 1960s.

Jacobsen: Do you notice differences across the decades you have examined between hostility directed toward an individual versus hostility directed toward a category? Because we are now talking about the category “trans,” rather than individuals who happen to be trans.

Bouley: I think what really accelerated this backlash was conservatism’s response to medical developments. Christine Jorgensen transitioned as an adult in the early 1950s. When physicians later recognized that beginning care before puberty—using puberty blockers to pause endogenous puberty—can support trans adolescents psychologically and physically, opponents reacted strongly. Early medical interventions do not involve surgery before adulthood, but puberty blockers can delay physiological changes associated with natal puberty. That means a trans girl who begins blockers before puberty does not go through male puberty, and a trans boy does not go through female puberty.

If blockers and hormonal transitions were allowed early, many of the arguments about sports would not arise in the same way, because the traits associated with going through a different puberty—height, bone structure, muscle mass—would not develop to the same degree. When transition occurs after puberty, those traits persist, which fuels controversy; when transition begins before puberty, those traits do not develop in the same way.

Backlash intensified when people learned that adolescents could begin medically supported transition earlier. These practices were driven by clinical evidence, not by parents acting impulsively. Doctors concluded that beginning care earlier could improve long-term outcomes, and parents followed medical guidance.

Once the political right—whether in the United States or internationally—realized that youth could begin this process, they reacted. When only adults transitioned, and the numbers were small, the issue was not a central culture-war topic. There was no Caitlyn Jenner. I personally dislike Caitlyn Jenner, but she is widely known. The last trans person with comparable name recognition before Jenner was Christine Jorgensen, so there was a long period without a globally recognizable trans figure.

Caitlyn Jenner was an Olympic gold medalist, and transitioning after that achievement became major news. The Kardashian media ecosystem amplified the attention. After coming out, Jenner aligned with conservative politics and has publicly opposed some youth transition policies. The combination of celebrity visibility, medical developments, and right-wing mobilization turned trans identity into an issue politicians could weaponize.

This is the issue du jour. I am 63, and I have watched political cycles come and go. Politicians are using trans people to campaign and fundraise. They do not care about supporting trans children or their parents. If they cared, they would show empathy and expand access to evidence-based care. They care about winning elections, and trans people have become a means to that end.

Jacobsen: Another component is visibility—especially visibility amplified through social media over the past decade. When a marginalized group gains visibility and some degree of mainstream acceptance, backlash often follows. When algorithmic platforms magnify that process, the backlash becomes larger and more intense.

Bouley: Yes. Social media has given trans people unprecedented positivity: connection, information, visibility, and community. But the same visibility attracts a great deal of hatred. It is a two-edged sword. Online, you can find support and solidarity. Still, you also find hostility from people who hate for the sake of hating. Social media is a megaphone—one that amplifies compassion and cruelty alike. Politicians saw how easily online hostility toward trans people could be mobilized and translated it into campaigns. That is why we are here. They do not care. If they cared, they would let doctors make medical decisions. I always thought of places like New Zealand and Queensland as progressive and accepting, but I was wrong.

Jacobsen These are societies—like mainly other Western democracies—with a comparatively free press. Journalists can report on these issues. In places with lower press freedom, based on press-freedom indices, the topic may barely appear. It is not even framed as something to debate. In the United States, a government can say publicly, “there are only two genders,” and certain religious conservatives—often Protestants, and some Catholics—will embrace that. But elsewhere, it does not need to be government policy; the binary is culturally entrenched long before it becomes written law. The restriction of gender into two categories is normalized to the point that alternatives are not considered legitimate public discourse.

Bouley: There is an excellent line in a Barbra Streisand film, Nuts, and I have to quote her at least once, because I am gay. In the film, they try to have her institutionalized after she commits a crime, and she insists on going to trial because institutionalization could mean being held indefinitely. In a dramatic moment, she says to the doctor, “You cannot make me nuts. Just because you stand up here and say that I am does not make me nuts.” 

It is the same here. You can repeat “there are only two genders” endlessly, but repetition does not make it accurate. Trans people exist. Gender diversity exists. They are normal and natural. They have always existed. Many cultures long predating contemporary Western civilization recognized gender variance and roles beyond a binary—across the Americas, parts of South Asia, Oceania, and elsewhere. It is remarkable that cultures predating what we call “civilization” treated gender-diverse people with more dignity than we do now.

Donald Trump and J.K. Rowling can denounce trans people all they like, but the facts do not change. Trans people exist. They deserve to exist. Gender-affirming care sits within the medical domain, not simply the social or psychological. We should treat trans people like anyone accessing medically guided care. People insisting otherwise do not make their claims accurate by repeating them.

How do I say this without sounding insensitive: there is far more LGBTQ news happening around the world than only trans news. Yet everything we hear is trans, trans, trans—which is understandable, but at the same time, there are many other LGBTQ stories globally, good and bad.

For a country as transphobic as the United States, we have Jonathan Bailey—a British actor—named the highest-grossing actor of the year. I just read the headline: Jonathan Bailey is generating the most box-office revenue and success right now. He has made a lot of money for himself and for the studios, and he is openly, unapologetically gay across his work and social platforms.

He appears in films children watch—Wicked, for example—and no one cares. People say, “Jonathan Bailey, love him,” “the internet’s boyfriend,” and so on. He is openly gay and remains the year’s highest-grossing actor. And in the same breath, people will celebrate Jonathan Bailey and then denounce a trans person. It is a kind of cultural schizophrenia. Again, it has to connect to what Donald Trump catalyzed with anti-trans and anti-DEI sentiment. I asked ChatGPT to name one of the biggest stories of 2025, and it said that Trump’s anti-DEI policies and rhetoric influenced similar movements globally. That was one of the significant stories.

So it is bizarre to watch a society celebrate Jonathan Bailey while simultaneously tearing trans people apart. It makes no sense.

Jacobsen: In the Guardian article by Melissa Davey, the medical editor, she quoted Dr. Natasha Kennedy from Goldsmiths, University of London, based on her research with young people affected by the UK’s puberty blocker ban. The quote is: “These are young people living in abject misery and severe distress, unable to lead normal lives and socialize with their peers at a crucial time as they are developing into adults. The psychological harm they are experiencing is very significant and includes extreme stress, anxiety, fear, trauma, and increased suicidal ideation.”

So the rhetoric used for political expedience—whether rights-based, medical, or ideological—targets youth because they are seen as convenient. But the central issue is the human and humane impact on young people.

Bouley: LGBTQ youth have had the highest suicide rates for as long as I have been alive, and not enough people cared. Let me rephrase that—many people cared, but society at large did not stop and ask: why are queer youth the most likely to die by suicide? And of course we know why: parents throw them out; families refuse to accept them; society is hostile; they are treated as second-class citizens; their identities are debated endlessly. I am exhausted by the world debating mylife—or the lives of trans people.

First, it is none of your business. Second, do people not have anything else to talk about? My whole life, I have wondered why people were obsessed with same-sex marriage. Why not work on getting me laid first? I have never understood the obsession with queer people.

Billions of dollars—billions—have been spent trying to suppress or eradicate a standard, natural form of human variation. It is astonishing how much funding has gone into anti-gay campaigns, anti-trans campaigns, conversion efforts, political targeting, and everything else built around policing who we are.

All the money that has been spent on trying to eliminate gay people has not worked. We are still here. And, astonishingly, the world has nothing better to discuss than whether a trans person can transition, whether a gay person can get married, or—in some African nations—whether LGBTQ people should be allowed to live at all. Remarkably, gender and sexuality have been focal points for so many people for so long when, truthfully, they should not be such significant issues.

Being gay is fabulous, but it is not worth all the ink and airtime it gets. Believe me, it is excellent, but it is not everything. We have the same concerns as everyone else. We worry about the same health scares—”what is this spot in my mouth?”—the same mortality, the same human struggles. It is not all that. And we, as gay people, do not spend our lives thinking about straight people.

Jacobsen: Wasn’t there once an epithet meaning something like “breeders”—dismissive, as in: we do not really care?

Bouley: We love straight people. That is where all gay people come from. If straight people truly wanted to eliminate gay people, they would have to stop having sex.

Jacobsen: Often, out of religious tradition, there has been foreign funding—particularly from segments of U.S.-based evangelical networks—supporting anti-LGBTQ legislation in countries such as Ghana and Uganda. Their theological premise is that homosexuality is “unnatural.” Still, the evidence shows same-sex behaviour across hundreds of species, while religion is unique to humans. So if we are talking about what is “natural,” they argue in the wrong direction.

Bouley: I always say that. My dog does not pray—except for dinner. And at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, there were gay penguins; I met them. When an egg was abandoned by its biological parents, the bonded male couple took the egg, cared for it, and raised the chick. And did the other penguins have a fit? Did they hold meetings about the gay penguins? Did they ask what to do with them—push them off an iceberg? No. The other penguins did not care at all.

Barbara Walters once did a television special about same-sex pairing among seagulls in Santa Monica. She was astonished that there could be “gay seagulls.” And I thought: Barbara, it is nature. It is the way things are.

Jacobsen: Nature is the way it is, not the way you want it to be.

Bouley: But yes, nature does what it wants. And nature made me this way. I cried as a teenager: Please make me straight. I remember being in sixth grade—twelve or thirteen—and crying every night: please make me normal.

I will share something intimate that not many people know. My second cousin, a year older than me, and I were both discovering puberty at the same time. We experimented. His parents were evangelical ministers. My family was living with them in Texas because we were broke. One day, we came home, and I heard the adults arguing—my parents, my aunt Irene. I listened to my name and David’s name. I thought: they know.

I went to the front porch and cried—sixth grade. And I thought: I have to run. I cannot stay. I cannot face this. But then, like a moment in a movie, something shifted in me. I thought: no. I am not running. Whatever is happening is happening, and what I felt seemed normal to me. I am going to be myself. If that means I get thrown out today, if my parents stop loving me today, then that is what it means. But I will not be the one who runs. They would have to push me out.

And then I learned they were arguing about something completely different. They had no idea what was going on.

That moment stayed with me. By eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh grade, I came out. I had a girlfriend in junior high and another in my first year of high school, but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted. It was fun, but it was not whatI wanted. My second year of high school, that was it—I started dating a boy. This was 1978. I dated a guy in high school, and most people knew about it.

I told my mom, and she said, “I know.” And then she said, “If you ever get Burt Reynolds, he is mine first.” I said, “I am not doing sloppy seconds.” That is what she said. She also said, “You are telling your dad—although he already knows too.”

And that moment allowed me to become Karel—the entertainer, the activist, the person I am—because I realized: if my mom and dad love me, then fuck everybody else. If my close friends love me, then screw what the world thinks.

I wish today’s youth could reach that moment—the moment where they say, “Fuck you. My mom loves me.” And if your mother or father does not love you, then screw them too because you are not wrong. All of this anti-trans rhetoric can make trans people feel as if they are bad, and they are not.

If you believe in God, you think God does not make mistakes. I do not believe in God, but if you do, then you must believe that God does not make mistakes, and that we are all “God’s children.” Love thy neighbour; judge not lest ye be judged. By being anti-trans, Christians violate their own theology—every single one—because they judge, they fail to love their neighbour, they fail to do unto others. Their actions contradict their scripture.

And by the way, they worship a guy with long hair who wore a robe everywhere he went. Just saying. That was obviously a prototype for the priesthood. Any other story you want to dip into?

Jacobsen:  I want to follow up on a personal note. You mentioned, “fuck them,” even if parents reject their child. But what if someone has no support—no friends, no family? In the most extreme cases, what do they do?

Bouley: My life was not all roses. I have been beaten, threatened at gunpoint—you name it. Dan Savage had a campaign called It Gets Better, and you probably know it because you are a learned journalist. We once spoke about it on my show, and I disagreed with him. I said, “Dan, it never gets better.” There will always be a bigot, always a hater, always someone who thinks you do not deserve equal rights, always a bully. It never gets better. What does get better is you rability to deal with it.

That is what improves. And the way you build that ability—the ability to deal with assholes—is like building a muscle. It has to be exercised. Unfortunately, the only way that muscle gets exercised is by dealing with assholes.

I have always told queer youth—and I have saved more than a few lives; you can read about it in my book You Can’t Say That. I have letters from youth in Germany, Switzerland, and Ireland—somehow they found my show or my writing, and it literally saved their lives. What I told them then, and what I tell them now, is that the best revenge against haters is living a happy life. They hate that. They cannot stand that. “You mean I am throwing all this hate at you, and you are still out there singing songs from Wicked?” You bet your damn ass I am.

And I think gay people—like women, like Black people, like Chinese people, like Irish people, like so many others—have to be more resilient. But that does not mean we are born that way. We are made to be that way. And sadly, some people do not have that inner strength, and they die. They take their own lives. Others become alcoholics. That is why substance abuse has been so rampant in the queer community. Meth ravaged us. Alcohol still does because it is hard to have a positive self-image when everyone tells you that you are wrong.

The difference is: I do not believe them. And it goes back to what I said earlier—you can call me nuts, but that does not make me nuts. They can say I am wrong, bad, sinful, a threat—it does not make it so.

Opinions are like assholes; everybody has one, and some are bigger than others. You have to persevere. You have to get through it. The hardest time is from about fourteen to twenty-five. If you are queer and you make it to thirty, you are going to be okay. I promise every gay person reading or listening: if you make it to thirty, you will be fine. By then, youhave dealt with enough bullies and assholes that it becomes routine. You wish it did not have to be that way—but that is how it is.

And many of those assholes will be in your own family. Family can be rough—ask Rob Reiner. Too soon, sorry. But family is rough. They can throw you out, beat you, kill you. Their parents have killed queer youth. Parents or siblings have killed trans youth. It is brutal. But you have to get through it.

Jacobsen: What do those families say as justification when they do kill?

Bouley: They always quote the Bible. Always. They do not quote the part that says thou shalt not kill, by the way. They quote abomination, against God’s law, unnatural, and so on.

I want to leave you with this: the massively popular battle-royale game Fortnite released new Harry Potter–themed cosmetics as part of a collaboration that financially benefits J.K. Rowling, whose public statements have been condemned by many as anti-trans. This followed Fortnite’s decision to drop its annual LGBTQ Pride event. The cosmetics leaked early, and the leaker—who goes by PokeIt—highlighted the harm this creates for LGBTQ communities.

So here is another company that now feels safe enough to step back from Pride and sell products connected to Rowling. They assume their core market—young, predominantly male players—will not punish them for it, and may even reward them. And I genuinely want to know: who exactly are these cosmetics for? Who puts makeup on in Fortnite?

I know my late husband, Andrew—a Harry Potter fanatic—would have gotten rid of all our Rowling materials if he were alive today. We had signed first editions we bought in Europe; he would have tossed them. And I did. I sold everything.

At the same time, I try not to judge. I try to separate the art from the artist. If we combed through every major museum and every work we admire, we would find creators who were misogynists, racists, abusers, violent, or worse. Deeply flawed people made some of the greatest works in history. So I try not to condemn the work outright.

J.K. Rowling created magical books—wonderful stories that brought joy to a generation. I will not deny the power of her writing. The Harry Potter books are spectacular. As a person, she is a fucktard. As an artist, her books are great.

Should we avoid her books because of who she is? That is personal. It is case-by-case. I may watch the new HBO series; I might not. I am older now, and maybe the material is no longer for me. But if I do not watch, it will not be because of her anti-trans rhetoric—it will be because I am not the audience anymore.

So I find it complicated. Look—Hitler painted. Would I own one of his paintings? I might. I might, just for the shock value—so someone walks in and I say, “Yeah, Hitler painted that puppy.”

Jacobsen: You mean the like the Key and Peele sketch?

Bouley: Yes. I tell this story at my house: there is a giant oil painting of me, and my friend Karen painted it using oil paints that once belonged to a mass murderer. In Long Beach, my friends managed an apartment complex. The man living above them went to a nearby grocery store and killed multiple people—he simply walked in and started shooting. We never really learned his motive. When authorities entered his apartment, they found his parents’ bodies concealed in a closet; he had been collecting their Social Security checks.

None of the relatives wanted anything from the apartment after that. But the man had been a painter: he owned an easel, canvases, and hundreds of tubes of oil paint. My friend Don told Karen, who is a painter, “Do you want this stuff?” She said yes rather than let it be thrown away. She used those materials to paint my portrait. So in my living room, I have a picture made with art supplies once owned by a mass murderer. I love that kind of thing.

Andrew and I once bid on Jeffrey Dahmer’s freezer because he wanted to host a barbecue and tell people the meat came from Dahmer’s freezer. I would buy Lizzie Borden’s axe, or the sword used to behead Anne Boleyn. These are historical artifacts. So I separate art or artifacts from their creators.

I would not buy a Hitler painting, nor would I buy a George W. Bush painting. He paints, yes—but I consider him responsible for a war that cost thousands of lives, including Americans, so I would not buy his work. But there are other artists and creators whose politics I dislike, and yet I still enjoy the art.

For example, I cannot stand Taylor Sheridan’s politics—he is very pro-Trump, very MAGA, and misogynistic in his work. But he is also incredibly successful and a talented storyteller. He and Sylvester Stallone created Tulsa King on Paramount+, and it is a great show. Landman with Billy Bob Thornton—sexist, pro-oil, problematic—yet brilliantly made. I watch them even though Sheridan and Stallone have politics I despise. Billy Bob, for the record, is liberal.

When Stallone received the Medal of Freedom from Trump, I said he deserved it. He is a cultural icon. Everyone knows Rocky. And he played Rambo, so no one should be shocked that he is conservative. I can forgive him for his politics because I enjoy his work.

Not many queer people think this way. They say, “I am not going to support that.” They believe consuming the art financially supports the creator. These shows are massive hits with or without me. Sheridan has one of the biggest development deals in Hollywood. So if I enjoy the work, withholding my viewership is symbolic but has no impact.

It is complex. I will say this: J.K. Rowling, as a writer, achieved something extraordinary. She created an entire world—beginning with notes on a napkin—to give her children something to read. That origin story is spectacular. The fact that she has become a radical anti-trans voice is sad. Truly sad.

Would I refuse to buy makeup simply because it is connected to her? No. There are plenty of makeup brands. It is not a unique product. But there is only one Harry Potter. So the relationship between art and artist becomes complicated.

As for Fortnite, they lose nothing by stepping away from Pride and partnering with material connected to Rowling. They assume the risk is minimal. Gaming culture has long had a reputation for homophobia. I later learned there are many gay gamers—and I mean a lot.

Jacobsen: There is a really well-known trans gamer. I remember covering it briefly years ago. She was a top-ranked StarCraft II e-sports competitor. Her name escapes me, but yes, she was highly ranked in that system.

Bouley: So Fortnite is only hurting itself. There are queer gamers. They are not going to like what Fortnite is doing, and they will switch—there are plenty of games to play. These companies think they are pleasing a majority of their users. Still, most players did not care whether Fortnite participated in Pride. How many Fortnite players ever cared about that?

Jacobsen: A lot of these decisions come from executives who seem detached.

Bouley: It is always the C-suite. Always. They have rarely been told no. And when I say the C-suite, I mean politics, too. The high-ranking people pick the issues. It is not usually the rank-and-file. Your state senator is unlikely to make LGBTQ issues the center of their career. Still, a member of Congress or a U.S. senator might. Local politicians want every vote they can get.

It is always the people in power who decide whom society hates. That has always been the way. Priests, popes, presidents, kings—the people with power determine who is targeted. And right now, they have decided we hate trans people. I do not know why, but they have.

To trans people listening: do not worry. In five years, they will have moved on to someone else. Trust me—speaking as a gay man. They will move on.

Thank you, Scott—another week of This Gay Week. Or as I call you on my show: the handsome Canadian journalist, Scott Jacobsen.

Jacobsen: I appreciate that.

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