Religious Bigot Gary Click Targets Trans Kids

[0:00] We meet Ohio House Representative Pastor Gary Click, who introduced an anti-trans bill and lies about his motivation for it. Next, Republican bullies try to intimidate Ohio public school boards complaining about school vouchers. And finally, we find out the Nebraska legislator, Megan Hunt, a darling of the secular democratic movement, doesn’t like labels, or atheism. I’m Doug Berger and this is Secular Left.

[0:50] Gary Click is a member of the Ohio legislature. He’s a member of the Ohio House. He’s from the 88th district, which includes Fremont and Vickery. And he introduced the bill that’s currently under consideration, House Bill 68, which is known by its weird name, Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act or SAFE Act. The SAFE Act would prohibit physicians from providing gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, to trans youth. Gender-affirming care is supported by every major medical organization in the United States. And Representative Click’s bill would ban that, would not allow that from happening. And one of the things about it is that there is no, there’s no need for this bill. There’s no crisis in Ohio of kids being experimented on by, for gender affirming care, or there’s no genital mutilation going on, as Representative Click likes to point out in public comments.

[2:07] But yet he introduced this bill. This bill was also introduced last session, during the lame duck session, and it didn’t advance out of the committee, just because he claims they ran out of time. So he reintroduced it in January, and it had a hearing this week for opponents. There was probably 12 to 18 proponents who offered testimony, and according to Ohio Capital Journal, Over 200 people submitted either written testimony or appeared to give testimony against this bill.

[2:48] As I said, it’s not needed. So who exactly is Gary Click? Well, Gary Click is a pastor of a church in Fremont, the Fremont Baptist Temple, and he’s been doing that for many, many years. And he is a religious wingnut, as we like to call. He’s a religious conservative. He’s anti-abortion. He’s anti-LGBT, obviously. And he believes in conversion therapy and he pals around with people like the Family Research Council in Washington DC that’s a known hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and he pals around with the leadership of the so called Center for Christian Virtue down in Cincinnati. In fact they’re the ones that approached Click in the spring of 2021 to bring this bill to the legislature. So he has no skin in the game, as it were. You know, it’s just it agrees with his religious bigotry to try to ban gender-affirming care for people under the age of 18.

[4:11] And this would also lock out parents. Parents who want to support their children who are going through gender dysphoria to get the care that they need so that they can be whole people and not be either commit suicide or or get addicted to illegal substances as some of them have have done etc. But allowing them to live the life that they wish to live. And Click wants to interfere. He wants to use the power of the state to interfere, in the decisions of parents. Because that’s kind of ironic, because people like Click, the religious conservatives, they want to.

[4:56] Support parental choice for vouchers, and they want to redo the public school curriculum, and, and they call it parents’ rights and those that oppose the upcoming, maybe, reproductive rights amendment that might be on the ballot in November, they’re saying that that takes away a parent’s right to be involved in their kids’ pregnancies or need for a sex change, which isn’t part of that amendment, but yet they keep bringing it up. So, you know, they’re all about parents’ rights, parents this, parents that, but when it comes to gender-affirming care.

[5:44] That affects a small minority of a minority, they want to use the power of the state to prohibit parents from supporting their children. That’s who Gary Click is. He’s not a very nice guy. This blogger that does stories about the statehouse and people there, he goes by the moniker Rooster, the Rooster. He did a pretty good job and I want to play the audio of this video that the Rooster did recently. And there’s two clips. The first clip is Gary Click giving testimony for his bill, his anti-trans bill, last session in 2022.

[6:33] And then the second clip is a more recent time when he was giving his supposed proponent testimony for House Bill 68. Now in the first clip he is asked point blank if religion is a major driver, causing him to to introduce this bill and he flat out tells the fellow colleague of his on the committee that no he’s not, it’s not the major driver.

[7:05] So then that’s juxtaposed with his sermon given at his church several years ago, where he says that we have to install the Bible in the state legislature, and we have to do this. We have to get involved and to save the family, etc., etc. So we’re going to listen to this clip, and then we’ll come back. I want to check with you. Are your religious beliefs the driving factor and motivation for this bill? No, sir through the chair. No, sir. If my religious beliefs were the motivation I’d be baptizing everyone in here before we’re done today and a few.

[7:50] Politics is driving a wedge right now against Christian values and biblical values and the things that are best for society and best for people So, we engage them properly and biblically. This is Aaron Baer. He is the Director of Citizens for Community Values down in Columbus, a friend of mine. I met him at that hearing where that little boy was dressed up like a little girl, and he and I stay in constant communications. So as you can tell by that clip, that to be charitable, we’ll say he misled the committee. I think he lied to the committee because he wanted to head off any problems, which is odd because most of these people that are in the Ohio legislature currently are religious conservatives like himself. So I don’t know why he was trying to hide. Maybe he’s just used to lying about his political positions. But anyway, so this next clip that I’m going to play is they had one of the committee members was asking him about conversion therapy.

[8:57] So during his recent sponsor testimony for House Bill 68, Click said that he has never practiced conversion therapy and does not know anyone who has. And that question was asked by State Representative Rachel Baker of Cincinnati. And for those that don’t know, conversion therapy has been condemned by several medical associations and human rights groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the National Association of Social Workers, and the United Nations and more. So he claims that he doesn’t practice conversion therapy, he doesn’t know anybody who has, and he basically acts like he doesn’t even know. But then during one of his sermons, he appears to admit, according to the Ohio Capital Journal, he appears to admit having helped with attempted conversion after condemning a California bill that sought to ban the practice as an assault on the First Amendment. Click describes conversion therapy as counseling someone who struggles with with those same-sex attractions or struggles with their gender identity by showing them what the Bible says and how to be one with the body God gave them. Following this, he says, I’ve helped people overcome that before.

[10:12] So again, he either charitably is misleading the committee or he just outright lied. And then as the Ohio Capital Journal, and I’m gonna post a link to this in the show notes, that throughout the sermon, Click emphasizes his view that God provided a specific plan for the family. He suggests that homosexuality, trans people, and single parent homes all break from this plan. And he claims that Satan works to stray individuals away from the plan, which he says leads to the crumbling of society. That comment is also ironic, because during the proponent testimony of House Bill 68, House Bill 68, there was a man who tried to claim that demonic possession that trans people were.

[11:00] Possessed by demons. And if you look in the background of that video on the Ohio Channel, it shows Click kind of rolling his eyes. So he is either misleading the committee again, or he’s lying. And I don’t think he tried to change someone, or I don’t even know what the the differences between reparative therapy and conversion therapy. I’ve never done anyone, I don’t know anyone who’s done that. They have this thing, they call it conversion therapy, or they call it reparative therapy. Those are their words for it. That’s not what I would call it. But what that is, is that’s when you counsel with someone who struggles with those same-sex attractions, or struggles with their gender identity, and you lovingly counsel with them, and show them what the Bible says, and you show them how they can be at one with the body that God gave them, and how they can live out biblically, and you help them and you counsel them.

[12:00] They want to make that illegal. Now, can you imagine that? So, and not just illegal for everyone, illegal in churches. And not only that, they were banning books. How long has it been since books have been banned? They were literally saying you could not sell books in a bookstore, including a Christian bookstore, that would help someone overcome those unwanted desires.

[12:26] I mean, if somebody comes to you and says, hey, this isn’t how I want to be, but I wrestle with this, you know, by the way, don’t ever hate on somebody. I mean, I’ve counseled with people. I’ve helped people overcome that before. And this is why we cannot have religious conservatives.

[12:47] Writing laws and making laws and imposing their religious beliefs, because his, He never offered in his bill and the proponents never offered any credible scientific evidence that this is a problem. You know, they brought in a couple of people from outside Ohio who claimed that they were regretted transitioning and they wanted to go back and they and some of them have tried to go back to to the gender that they were before they transitioned. That’s.

[13:22] Anecdotal evidence. There’s been plenty of studies that show that that gender affirming care helps teens and helps kids who suffer from gender dysphoria. It’s a real thing and it’s not just something that’s a fad and they’re like oh hey I think I will be a female today or I think I will be a car or you know So those are some of the arguments. The other thing that really bothers me about Gary Click is he’s not a nice person. He mocked people who were expressing their First Amendment rights inside the state house to complain about the amendment that’s going to be voted on in August about raising the threshold for passage of amendments to 60%. He made fun of the people who were protesting it.

[14:19] The other thing that he did in a tweet, in a public tweet, is he equated social transitioning with genital mutilation. Those are not the same thing. You know, kids can do social transitions anytime that they want. They may be starting hormone therapy. The surgery doesn’t happen until much, much later in the process, and it’s not a genital mutilation. Genital mutilation is his false narrative about a practice that he doesn’t agree with. You know, just as I believe that male circumcision done to infants is genital mutilation, male circumcision on infants is wrong.

[15:10] You know, that’s something that they should be making laws against, but they don’t. I mean, an infant has no ability to have informed consent to something like that. Now, personally, me being a guy, I believe that that decision should be left for the guy when he is of age and can understand the process.

[15:35] That’s how I feel about it and I don’t know why Reverend Click doesn’t feel that way. The other thing that the religious conservative like Click screw up is they’re saying, well, we’re protecting children. You know, they have this false idea that children, when exposed to LGBT ideas and people, become instantly gay, which we know that that’s not the case. That’s a ridiculous idea that’s irrational. Even for religious people, that’s irrational. And so they believe that. The other thing that he does is, the other, thing that religious conservatives like Click mess up is, you know, like I said, they say that they’re protecting children. And there was a thing that was under consideration. They were working on the school budgets, the public school budgets for the coming fiscal year, and they added some money for school lunch, the school lunch program, but they didn’t pass universal lunch, universal free lunches. That should be a thing. You want to protect children. You want to make sure that they get a meal, that they’re able to get a meal without regard to their socioeconomic status.

[16:55] And they totally botched that because they think that that’s giving people free stuff. They believe that you should have to work for your free stuff. So that’s why they never do universal lunches. They never seem to do or support universal lunches, free lunches. And a universal free lunch basically would be that any kid, no matter who you are or, or what your economic status is, you would get a free lunch.

[17:25] You know, and I’ve talked about that before with some other people telling my story, that when I was a kid and I was in elementary school, I got reduced price lunch, free lunch, and there was a stigma because you had this big honking colored card that had to get punched, every time you used it. So kids knew when you were getting welfare and they’d make fun of you. Well, universal free lunch would help kids that are already getting bullied because of their socioeconomic status. But no, we want to deal with trans people. We want to make their lives a living hell. Because that’s what we do. We’re religious conservatives. We make their lives living hell because of Jesus. And it’s disgusting. You know, they just like to hurt people to hurt people. So that’s That’s where I will leave my little talk about the Reverend Gary Click from Fremont. That’s the kind of people that we don’t need in the State House. We need people in the State House that will address problems that need to be addressed, and not address problems that they make up. And that’s all I have to say about that at this time. For more information about any of the topics covered in this episode, check out our show notes at secularleft.us.

[18:50] Music.

[18:57] There was an article in the Columbus Dispatch the other day that kind of caught my eye. The title of it was, Vouchers Hurt Ohio to State, Asking for Data Was Contemptuous in Criminal Behavior. So I had to check it out. This was published on May the 24th and updated on May the 25th. There’s a coalition of school districts in Ohio that is suing the state over their implementation of school vouchers. And there’s also a bill in the legislature now that would expand the voucher program. The proponents, such as the Center for Christian Virtue, wanted universal vouchers, but right now, it doesn’t appear that that’s what they’re working on. And universal vouchers are that anybody that would want one could get one, for any school, no matter where it was at.

[20:01] Now, vouchers here in Ohio are a problem because they were meant to get kids out of failing public schools, typically urban schools. That’s where they were targeting these vouchers so that these kids could go to sectarian private schools mostly because that’s most of the private schools in Ohio. They’re either run by Catholics or other religious groups. And there was a thing called EdChoice a couple of years ago, and what it would do is the money would follow the kid.

[20:41] So let’s say the kid was in Toledo City School District and he wanted to go to St. Francis to sales here in Toledo, then they would get a voucher and then that money would be deducted from Toledo’s budget, from their allotment, their allotment that they get from the state for each pupil. And that caused a lot of problems. For example, Washington Township School District in Toledo, Lucas County, they were going to lose a million dollars if they had to deduct all of the funding, student funding, from the students that were going to attend private school and not come to Washington local schools. So they did, they kind of put the kibosh on that, but.

[21:33] They come back wanting to expand it.

[21:37] And the other thing, the other thing about these vouchers currently, the current system is, that a majority of the people that got the vouchers were for families that could afford to send their kids to private school out of their own pocket, which means they were more affluent, than the targets because the vouchers were meant for poor kids to get out of failing public schools. Instead, they were used by rich families to have Timmy and Johnny go to a private school, and pay for it. Of course, the voucher doesn’t pay the full tuition, but it was a good chunk. The other thing that’s wrong about vouchers in Ohio is they’re useless in the rural areas of the state, which is a large amount, a large swath of this state is farm fields and corn and soybeans and agriculture. There aren’t any private schools in the country of Ohio, in the rural areas of Ohio. So somebody that’s going to a rural school district that wants to go to a private school, there’s no limit, they’re limited in options. And if they’re not limited in options, then they’d have to create their own school, right?

[23:04] Anyway, so that’s what’s wrong with school vouchers. That and the fact that they’re mostly for, religious people to impose their religious upbringing on kids by getting them into sectarian schools. But anyway, so there was a coalition of school districts that got together to sue the state. And the name of the group was Vouchers Hurt Ohio. And they filed a lawsuit over the constitutionality of it. Ohio’s Constitution says that the state has to provide decent common public schools for, everybody in the state. It’s in the Constitution. So they’re suing the state and they get a memo from the state auditor, Keith Faber, who is requesting, it says, the survey in question was sent by Faber’s office on May 22nd to a thousand fiscal officers at public schools, education service centers, STEM schools, and community schools across Ohio. It asked them to produce records by June 2nd, showing how much money they’ve spent on lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of laws passed by the General Assembly.

[24:21] Now, Matt Huffman, who’s the Speaker, not the Speaker, he’s the President of the Senate, the Ohio Senate, he said, you know, hey, we just want the information. We just want to know. Well, that’s not the case. We know. We know that that’s not the case. The reason why they want that information is they’re going to retaliate. So, let’s say X school says, we spent $100,000 on legal fees. Well, then the state will say, well, we’re going to deduct $100,000 from your school allotment. And it’s payback, it’s retaliation.

[24:58] You’ve seen that done in Florida with, what’s his name? Mickey Mouse, not Mickey Mouse, DeSantis, same thing. Well, Disney would probably dispute that. Anyway, anytime these fascists get together and somebody challenges them, they punish them or try to punish them and that’s what they’re going to do. And so the school districts are, you know, hit back and said, you know, We’re not going to answer these surveys. So now the state’s like, well, you better, or we’re gonna find you in contempt or whatever.

[25:37] Yeah, it says, vouchers heard Ohio interpreted this as retaliation in the purest form and abuse of power by the state auditor on behalf of Senate President Matt Huffman of Lima who requested this survey. It’s unacceptable that Mr. Huffman is trying to bully school districts at the same time his attorneys are trying to squash his subpoena. Says on March 22nd, the coalition served Huffman, a long-time advocate for school choice with a notice of their intent to subpoena him. During his tenure in the legislature, the Senate president has been the driving force, or driving voice, behind several major expansions of the Ed Choice scholarship programs. Vouchers Hurt Ohio wants to question him about these laws and his end goal for school choice in Ohio, but Huffman’s attorneys are arguing against it. You know, and my thing is, you know, if you don’t have anything to hide, then why are you trying not to talk? And then it’s telling, it says, the spokesman for Senate Republicans went a step further saying the contempt in this case lies with this anti-parent group. See, there you go. They’re all about parents’ rights when it comes to schools, public schools, But when it comes to anti-trans language and bigotry, they’re not so much for parents’ rights.

[27:00] I just had to point that out. But anyway, so it’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out, because I really do. I agree with the school districts. And somebody will say, well, why are they spending taxpayer dollars to sue the state? Well, they’re trying to protect taxpayer dollars. Because if these voucher programs go through, that’s going to be money they’re going to lose anyway. So they’d rather spend the money trying to prevent losing their funds than to sit back and do nothing. And then they would be giving up what they’re supposed to be doing. It’s going to be interesting how this plays out. Out.

[27:40] Buy me a coffee ad

[28:10] Although I’m not a member, I have participated in some Zoom webinars and I read newsletters about the group. It’s called the Secular Democrats. And what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to get secular democratic caucuses in various state legislatures around the country. And one of the places that they’ve had success is Nebraska. Megan Hunt is a Democrat, or I should say was a Democrat. I need to, sorry, sorry to give away the lead there, the lette. Megan Hunt has appeared at several of the conferences, online conferences, the lobby day for the secular coalition she spoke. One of the things that she’s been doing, she’s been in the news recently, was that she was filibustering every single bill that was coming before the Nebraska legislature. Nebraska has a unicameral legislature, they only have one house.

[29:24] Instead of like a House and Senate, they just have the legislature. And every bill that was coming up, she was filibustering because they wanted to consider an anti-trans bill, ban gender-affirming care, kind of like the Ohio bill that’s under consideration. And she has a trans son, so she was fighting tooth and nail to protect his son, which is good. I’m not, I don’t have a problem with that, okay? Well there was an interview that she did with the Semaphore. It’s a newsletter. Dave Weigel was the reporter. It is chronicling America’s political landscape. I’ve heard of Semaphore before, not really reading it a a lot.

[30:13] But anyway, so they had an article, it was May the 19th, and the headline was, Megan Hunt doesn’t want to be your democratic hero. She just wants to protect her trans son. And it talked about, she’s a state senator, it starts out, she says, I don’t like you, Nebraska State Senator Megan Hunt said to Republicans in March, as she filibustered legislation that would ban gender affirming treatment for minors like her son Ash Homan, you aren’t a safe person for my child to be around or any child, frankly. That standoff dragged on for months, burning time the GOP majority and a new governor expected to spend passing their agenda. It ended this week when the when Republicans added a 12-week abortion ban to the bill and broke the filibuster. Hunt talked with Semaphore shortly before the new GOP strategy unfolded. All right, so she talks about she never wanted to run for office.

[31:13] Then she got involved because things were going on at school, and traditionally they have a non-partisan legislature in Nebraska. It’s just one, you know, you’re just a legislator. And it says, it’s always lent itself to a lot to collaboration and compromise. This session with a new legislature is the very first time in Nebraska’s history that we’ve ever seen so many culturally conservative, far-right, extreme bills make it to the floor for general debate. It’s kind of scary and overwhelming. Even though this is a Republican state, we hadn’t been sidetracked before by this anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-woman bullcrap. And so she goes on to say what changed was the anti-trans bills introduced by Kathleen Couth. She had been appointed, she was a a religious conservative. But then I’m reading this article and I’m like, OK, OK, OK. And then it says they ask her during the filibuster, you left the Democratic Party and registered as an independent. Why? And that shocked me, because like I said, she’s been touted and brought out by the secular Democrats as a Democrat that we should admire. And she’s fighting the good fight against the religious conservatives, you know, all that.

[32:32] And so she responds to that question, He says the way they talk about it just really doesn’t represent the way things actually are here, What I hate is when on TV, they’ll say something like Democratic hero Megan Hunt claps back against Republican leadership, Stuff like that. Okay, maybe that would work for some other legislative body. That’s literally not right They’ll say something like Democratic Queen is pushing back against Republican trash and it’s so annoying because it totally misrepresents how things work here if, If Fox says Democrat Megan Hunt, that means we hate Megan. If Vox or something says Democrat Megan Hunt, that means we love Megan. I get it. Labels are useful. But obviously Democrats are not a monolith. We’ve got Democrats in Nebraska who support complete abortion bans who are voting for the anti-trans bill. And we’ve got Republicans in Nebraska who aren’t. I just don’t want to be a part of it. Somebody on Twitter was like, oh, you’re going to lose your next election because you won’t have their donor list. And I was like, B-word, I’ve never seen a donor list in my life. Is the party supposed to help you fundraise? I’ve literally never heard of that. The National Democrats never noticed anything we were doing in Nebraska until one or two of us got a little popular on Twitter. And then it was like, all of a sudden, we’re your favorite, shut up. So I’m like, oh, oh, well, you know, it’s disappointing.

[33:54] You know, anyway. But then the next question was, you’re an atheist, which is still pretty rare in electoral politics. How do your beliefs shape what you’re doing now?

[34:04] She responds, I’m not a joiner. I wouldn’t even quite call myself an atheist, because you go to these atheist conferences and they are more dogmatic than some of my Christian colleagues. I don’t want anything to do with that either. My viewpoint in terms of spirituality is that I literally can’t effing know. I will never know what the meaning of life is. So all I need to focus on is my happiness and making sure that I reduce as much suffering for people as possible, and that I’m never the reason that somebody else is unhappy. That is my political ethic.” And that’s the interview. So not only does she trash the Democratic Party and, say, oh no, labels, that’s not right, oh, the labels.

[34:51] But then she trashes being an atheist. Simply because some atheists are terrible people, she doesn’t want to associate with them. Now, what I will tell you is I’m an atheist. And even though I’m not a member of secular Democrats, because I’m not a member of a party, I was hopeful that they were doing good things. But I’m going to tell you, I wasn’t real enthusiastic about Megan Hunt to begin with, because she did this about compromise and collaboration and we have to talk to people and get together and that’s all well and good but the religious conservatives they don’t do that. They refuse to do that. It’s always us that have to tamp down our beliefs and change and we have to be quiet it with our criticisms. We’re not allowed to call them out. It always happens with us.

[35:54] Never with them. And so I just, I get a little, I just, it bothers me when people start saying, interfaith, we got to get together, we got to work with people and stuff like that. And, it just never works that way. It really doesn’t. And so, you know, this is going out, this little bits going out to the secular Democrats, you know, I’m not saying that they should just dump her, Megan Hunt, out of the group. I just don’t want to see them, you know, holding her up as a spectacle. Because it’s given me Kristen Sinema vibes, the Arizona senator who used to be a Democrat and she used to be an atheist. And she just stopped doing all of that thinking that she, no labels, we shouldn’t be labels. And she started working with Republicans and now she’s probably gonna lose her re-election because she basically burned all her bridges.

[36:59] And Megan Hunt, she is doing the good fight, trying to support trans rights, but it seems to me like she’s burning all the bridges in order to do it. And for somebody who says we’ve got to compromise and collaborate, she’s really not doing that, at least not for secular Democrats and atheists. So I don’t want to see her highlighted anymore in any other conferences or webinars or lobby days or anything like that. I just don’t want to hear from her ever again. I just don’t.

[37:36] She’s burned her bridges and she should lie in them. And people are like, well, Doug, you’re being pure. You’re being dogmatic. It’s like, well, sort of. I am being a little bit dogmatic that if you present yourself as a secular person, as an atheist, don’t.

[37:54] Badmouth it. Even if you don’t think it fits you anymore, don’t badmouth it. Just leave. You know, it’s kind of like the old Usenet news groups and some of the Facebook groups I’m in today. People get ticked off and leave. You know, it’s like, well, you don’t need to tell us you’re leaving. Just leave. And that’s what that’s the advice I give to Megan Hunt. You know, we don’t, we really don’t need you. We’ll support you because you support trans rights, but I’m not gonna donate any money to you. And you know, don’t let the door hit you on the butt on the way out. That’s the way I feel about it. One of the questions from the Q&A session. Which humanist values do you find it easiest to gain agreement from conservatives and republicans and which are most difficult? I think it’s easiest to kind of appeal to the love your neighbor type of thing, you know, um, you know, I think it’s easiest to whatever policy it is that I’m advocating for, you know, those Midwestern values of.

[39:06] Taking care of the people around you is something that really has been a shared value for everybody.

[39:17] Thank you for listening to this episode. You can check out more information, including links to to sources used in our show notes on our website at secularleft.us. Secular Left is hosted, written and produced by Doug Berger and he is solely responsible for the content. Send us your comments either using the contact form on the website or by sending us a note, at comments at secularleft.us. Our theme music is dank and nasty, composed using Amplify Studio.

[40:02] Music.