Bill Maher touched one of society’s third rails tonight on his HBO show Real Time, taking on the rise of the LGBTQ community in his “New Rules” editorial at the end of the show.
Noting that polls have documented an exponential increase in those who claim LGBTQ status, he asked whether people should be allowed to ask, “What’s up with that?’
It wasn’t that long ago that when adults asked children what they wanted to be when they grew up. “They meant what profession,” Maher joked.
He quoted a recent ACLU finding that claimed the controversy about abortion rights affects LGBTQ people more than so-called “Breeders.” While allowing that everyone should always be mindful of respecting and protecting others, he said, “Someone needs to say it – not everything’s about you. It’s okay to ask questions about something very new,” and turned toward the trend of putting young children on hormone blockers.
“We’re literally experimenting on children,” Maher claimed, adding that we don’t know about the long-term effects of that, “but logic tells you there’s going to be problems,” citing bone density and fertility, among other issues. “It’s not a lifestyle decision,” he added.
Maher said an upcoming Pride parade in New York has no gay men as Grand Marshalls. “That’s where we are now – gay men are not hip enough for a Gay Pride parade.” He added, “Gay is practically CIS, and CIS is practically Mormon.”
He tried to make the case that polls indicating a rise in the LGBTQ community is trendy, saying “teens know ‘The Prime Directive’ is anything to shock and challenge the squares who brought you up. It’s why nobody gets a nose ring at 56.”
Giving in to requests for hormone blockers and genital surgery is using children as part of the culture wars, he claimed, and called for waiting. “If you are a man who wants to experience life without a pair of balls, you can get married,” he noted.
“Never forget childen are impressionable and very, very stupid,” Maher said. “A boy who thinks he’s a girl maybe is just gay – or whatever “Frazier” was, noting that being a girl doesn’t mean you have to act like a Kardashian. And maybe, if life makes you sad, “There are other solutions than hand me the dick saw.”
“I understand that being trans is different, it’s innate,” Maher said. “But kids do have phases. Kids are fluid about eveything. If they know at age 8 what they wanted to be, the world would be filled with cowboys and princesses.” He recalled, “I wanted to be a pirate. Thank God no one scheduled me for eye removal and peg leg surgery.”
Earlier, Maher had a somewhat chilling discussion with former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who has a new book, A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times.
Esper, who was eventually fired by Trump, had to talk the former president out of ordering troops to fire on protesters outside the White House.
Asked by Maher on a hypothetical if Trump runs for president and loses – then contests the election again – where the military would stand, Esper said most would stand with the American people and against any attempts at a coup.
Maher did mock Esper’s claim that the $800 billion US defense budget was inadequate, as he claimed in his book, and held his feet to the fire when he waffled on whether there were compromises in his work.
But a key question – who would Esper vote for in a 2024 presidential race with Trump and “any Democrat” also had Esper scrambling. He allowed he wouldn’t vote for Trump, but added, “If Joe Biden continues to be pulled to the left, I can’t vote for him, either.”
The panel discussion featured former Democratic operative Donna Brazile and podcaster Adam Carolla. There was one interesting moment when Brazile brought out the claim by the government that the most important threat facing the country is white supremacy, something Carolla said was “full of shit”
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