They’re Redefining “Biological Truth.” Here’s Why It’s Dangerous.

This week on Queer 101, Hugh the Historian and I are back — and whew. It’s been a heavy one.

We’re breaking down a wave of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ legislation, including Louisiana’s so‑called “Restoring Biological Truth Act” (HB 578) and what it actually means when lawmakers try to legally define sex as “observed at birth” and erase the word gender from state statutes.

Because let’s be clear:
 When you remove gender from the law, you’re not just playing with language — you’re dismantling protections for transgender people.

We also talk about Mississippi’s upcoming July 1 policy requiring law enforcement to report people to ICE if their ID doesn’t match their sex assigned at birth. That’s not random. That’s not accidental. Hugh and I unpack how trans rights and immigration enforcement are being deliberately linked — and how that impacts constitutional freedoms like speech, travel, protest, and assembly.

This episode connects a lot of dots:

• Anti-trans laws in Louisiana and Mississippi
• Anti-DEI policies and access to documents
• ICE reporting requirements
• The history of gender policing in America
• How immigration systems have long been used to enforce ideas about “productivity” and reproduction
• Why free speech and protest rights are increasingly under pressure

Like I said, it’s pretty heavy, y’all

BUT because we always try to leave you with some light, we close with good news:
Time’s 100 Most Influential People list includes Shannon Minter, Hillary Knight, and Alan Cumming — reminders that queer and trans excellence continues, even in difficult moments.

This conversation isn’t just about trans rights.
 It’s about civil rights.
 It’s about free speech.
 It’s about who gets to exist safely and openly in this country.

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed by the headlines, this episode is for you. We break it down, connect the history, and remind you why staying informed matters.

And let us know how YOU are feeling. We love to hear from you.

Follow us at:

• @peppermint247
• @hughoryan
• @pridehousemedia

Write to us at:

• questions@queer101podcast.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hey y'all, welcome to Queer 101.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

I'm Peppermint and I'm doing the historian, and we're here to bring you all things queer history that you didn't learn in school.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

This is a podcast where we dive deep into queer culture, books, and a queer experience, past, present, and future. From the history that shaped us to the culture that keeps us thriving, we have got it all covered.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Grab a seat and let's turn a light on queer history because these stories demand to be heard and must be celebrated.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Welcome to Queer 101. Class is now in action. Hey y'all, welcome back to Queer 101, the podcast where we talk about any and everything under the sun, including queer art, queer culture, queer literature, and whatever the hell we want. I'm Peppermint.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

And I'm Hugh the Historian.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

That's right. And uh listen, Hugh, here we are again, a week later. And you know, we're just coming out of the I I don't know about you, but I'm just waking up from my own stupor from the past couple of weeks. It's been really heavy. And I hope every single day to see the sunrise, to see the birds tweeting, and and hopefully a day free of anti-trans and anti-LGBT good legislation. But that isn't quite the way we've gotten it because here we are again. Um it's becoming easier and easier uh to to know and see how Gilead came about in the handmaid's tale. Because here we are, which I just I just started watching the um the sort of sequel series. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jericho, what's it called?

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Jericho, Jezebel, it starts with a J. Oh my god, I can't think of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Oh, I can't remember either, but whatever. I don't really love it that much, but we'll see. Anyway, anyway, here we are. Here we are a week later. We got a new state every single every single week. Seems to be uh discriminating against trans folks, uh having some kind of anti-trans LGBT or anti-LGBTQ headlines. Kansas, Colorado, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi now.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Oh, Mississippi, goddamn indeed. It is just looking shitty out there. I like you. I've been waking up hoping for a sunrise and news of Trump's death, and it's like instead we get more rain and terrible bills. What what is the Louisiana one called? Restoring Biological Truth Act?

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Yes, HB 578, and it it really, I mean, it starts with this, and it really is only possible, well, it's it's it's basically sort of the the gen the generic bill or effort to to sort of um cut all of the like connective tissue between gender identity and freedom of speech. And and which is also freedom of expression. Like you can dress however you want. That's considered speech, obviously, even though it's not literally speaking. Uh and and so they're basically saying we want you to respect your own um, you know, respect the the natural body that you were born into, and you know, uh respect your own gender. So Restoring Biological Truth Act, uh, and opponent.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

I'm assuming that so then bans glasses and coloring your hair and getting tattoos, and if they're gonna insist on the that's exactly what it does, but only if you're trans. Only if you're trans.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Uh yeah. Proponents are uh opponents are describing the bill as it's basically uh effectively erasing trans people from state law, which it does. And it's kind of a step B, it's a the trans vers trans-specific version of the anti-DEI laws and policies that they were using to limit funding, cut off access to insurance, uh, cut off how um discrimination, non-discrimination protections like housing and job security, all these different things. And the bill would define sex throughout Louisiana State as uh basic basically as an individual's biological sex, either male or female, as observed clinically at birth. Um you know, and and they also have removal of gender, which is again kind of in line with all of the anti-DEI policies that they had. Removal of gender, uh, and it basically removes the term gender, gender identity, any of that stuff from state statutes, laws, protections, all that stuff, and replaces it with sex. And so it it because it knows that gender is they're realizing that gender, even though people, many people kind of use gender and sex interchangeably, and while they are related, they are not necessarily, they are not the same thing. Sex describes sort of biological characteristics and you know, like your genitalia, your your your sort of chromosomes, biological characteristics, and gender is all of the social characteristics that come with man, woman, sexy man, fat woman, this person, tall man, trans man, whatever, um, and all of the things that you have to do, manly, masculine, those are all things that we think about sex and gender sex particularly. Um, but it's not sex is actually a biological thing. Anyway, and so you know, going back and instead of having gender on your marker or gender on your birth birth certificate or gender on your um driver's license, it would be sex, which it was a long time ago. Somebody, I think, in an attempt to feel um not more inclusive, but just more evolved, um started repla started using gender in a like sort of in an umbrella sort of way, I think.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's you know, we're seeing this that this attack on documents. I mean, you were talking about it a couple of weeks ago, how that makes so many other things impossible, right? That this like removing trans people's access to accurate documents makes it impossible to drive, impossible to keep your job, impossible to get your licenses. And now in Mississippi, the change that they're doing, the new addition is that as of July 1st, if your ID does not match your sex at birth, again, that that sex at birth that's now being stuck on everything, the cops are required to report you to ICE. It's horrific. All of it is horrific, but it really shows you the way in which like Trump is treating ICE as his like private personal police force that they are being used to do whatever he wants them to do. Uh and and I think for a lot of people, um, this is yet again another another instance of the the far right kind of like linking arms, the anti-immigration forces with the anti-trans forces, uh, all sort of coming together in in a terrible way.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

I hope that that what you said is that it's a clear example of me, because it's not new. This is exactly word for word, verbatim, what I was saying several months ago when they at the beginning of the year, when they uh actually it was at the very end of the year when they um sort of enhanced this uh the directive of ICE to not only and you know ICE operates within the country, but board the border security is literally the borders of the country. So it's so strange that like that ICE needs to be operating within people at schools and playgrounds, but we know that it's not about border security, but they are saying, you know, they they used immigration um to attach and attack trans people initially. And so they before they were saying violent rapists and criminals and drug dealers. Then they were like violent rapists and criminals and drug dealers who are also just here illegally, even if they haven't been doing drugs and being raping. And then they're just saying, actually, just undocumented immigrants. Now it's just immigrants. Now then it was if you look like an immigrant, and they're you know, because they they actually said to ICE, you can go out and racially profile, go out and find people who look Hispanic, whether they are or not, and it'll come out in the wash. Obviously, that's when the numbers of people that they were detaining, American citizens and people who are not even immigrants necessarily, were s being detained by ICE. And then to furthermore, especially because there were many trans people who got arrested at the same time or detained or even deported um by ICE, uh, they they s they sort of enhanced and widened that scope to include people whose documents just don't match whether they're it's their citizenship document or not. And they were, I guess it's under the guise of we're doing such a good job of deporting people that illegal immigrants who are all drug dealers and rapists are probably gonna try to change their sex to evade being caught. So now we need to go after trans people too. Wink wink. And so they swept us up in that. Um and and you know, trans issues and immigration issues are the only two issues that they need to, if they can erase every right that trans people have and every right specific to the trans community and every right that immigrants have specific to the immigration uh issue, if they can erase all those things, all of our constitutional rights are out the window. Because that is your right to freedom of speech and protest, it's your right to uh assemble, it's your right to travel, it's your right to express the way you want, like freedom of um of ex like gender affirming care, uh gender expression, wearing the clothes you want, uh being trans and expressing that, which is what they're trying to tell you is illegal now. You can't do uh in Louisiana, uh that's freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is one of the is one of the most important the the right to marry someone of an opposite of a different um race, like interracial marriage, that's considered freedom of speech and freedom of privacy. They all go under the same constitutional protections. And so getting rid of freedom of speech for one group means getting rid of freedom of the rights to privacy for another. And I don't think that people understand that.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

No, I think you're absolutely right. And I think that this is uh what is what they are building, the machine that they are building in little pieces by little pieces is absolutely terrible. And I think that most people don't understand that like the the sort of like um uh entanglement of trans rights and immigration rights goes back like literally hundreds of years. There's this a fantastic book by Margot Kenneday called The Straight State, where she sort of analyzes how America as a government comes to think about gender and sexuality and gender identity. And one of the things she targets is that we think, you know, oh, the the military. There were all these bans on gay people in the military, trans people in the military. But long before that, the US government first really started thinking about what it means to be trans or what it means to have a body assigned a gender at sex or at birth, however you want to think about it, through immigration. Because our earliest immigration laws basically said uh before that we had some racial immigration, the Chinese Exclusion Act, but one of the earliest sets of laws were really around could you have an income? You were not accepted as an immigrant if you were assumed that you would not be able to support yourself when you got here. And what the government used that to think about, or what they how they applied it to queer people, is that they said, if you were coming in as a woman, but were not womanly enough to ever get married, well then you were gonna end up uh on welfare and you were gonna drain money from the state. If you were coming into the country as a man, but you weren't manly enough to get a good job, well then you were going to end up a ward of the state. And so long before we were ever thinking about queer people in the military, we were judging people's bodies and gender performances at immigration at Ellis Island and determining are you allowed into this country? And all of it sort of entangled again with capitalism and your ability to earn money for the state and your ability to present your gender and your body as appropriate. And that's back to like the late 1800s, early 1900s. So for people out there who are thinking about this as a new issue, just gonna say like this has been something the government has been doing in different ways at different times, but like for hundreds of years. So these issues have gone together forever. And I think that, like you said, I hope more people are seeing that they go together now.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Yeah, but we were able to bust that up because they weren't able to do that as effectively in the 80s and 90s. What started to happen is people started to get more quality. So between the 60s and then the 90s, the late 90s, early 2000s, it was probably in terms of this, if if they've been doing this all along, the best time to experience them not doing this would have been during the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s when civil rights were really, really making advances for women's rights were making advances, LGBT rights. It was the 60s, 70s, and 80s where gay rights, uh civil rights of people of color and women's rights, which are the three groups that they're that they're we're talking about here.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Um 1989 is when they finally declared that it was okay to come in as a gay person, that being gay was not a sociopathic personality disorder that should prevent your immigration.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Right. And I also want to talk beside that let's pause on the immigration piece for a second. The also um I don't want to leave out disabled people as well, uh, but those who who are also a group that might not be considered um assumed a good group of uh people to pull from when it comes to um making money for capitalism and being able to work, having a body that can work. Uh, but besides that, it's not even, it's also like the nationalist piece because what we were trying, what this country was trying to do is there was a right before that moment, between the 20s and well, like the late 1800s and late 40s, was a huge immigration uh rush into the country. You know, America really, really figured out what identity it was trying to have with this nationalist, let's bring everybody here and so bring us, you're tired, you're hungry, you're yearning to be free. But they th when they get through Ellis Island, the part that they weren't advertising, like you said, is you have to be able to work and produce. But besides that, they also wanted people that could reproduce, not only produce at work, but also people that could reproduce in the bedroom and have children who were born here who could who could also work. You know what I mean? And so that is another piece of the like cis, cisgender, heteronormative sort of like sort of nationalist view. And you know, that kind of lines up with what we're seeing now, you know, this clampdown on on and maybe it it always, I mean, of course, like reproductive access has been about the person's bodily autonomy and ability to make their own decisions and make their own choices for their own body medically. But from the state, it clearly is about we want people that just make babies that are that that that we think are that we think fit into the the boxes that look the way we want them to and that can work and that we can make it.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Good white babies for capitalism.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Yeah. And and the in terms of capitalism, we not only do we need workers, but we also need future bosses. And I think that's w in the uh back in the day, they were thinking probably more in those two. I would think, I would assume they were thinking in those two boxes. We need workers and slaves, and we need bosses. Because in a hundred years, who's gonna take my over my business or who's gonna have the family thing? You know what I mean? And so those were the two, those were the two sets of babies that they wanted. Obviously, having immigrant babies and black babies, you know, just like forcing enslaved people to reproduce, even with their own, you know, like siblings and you know, trying to like forcing people to have sex with each other so they could get pregnant and constantly keep out pumping babies was about having people to work in the fields perpetually. But then also they wanted white babies who could, you know, be the bosses of the future. But now it almost doesn't matter. I think that they just want bodies that you know, I don't think they know who they want.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Did you see Katie Miller, Stephen Miller's wife, who's you know, in the White House pushing for more teen pregnancies? I mean, the thing that I feel like in the 90s and early 2000s it was like everyone was against teen pregnancy, and now the complaint is not enough teens are getting pregnant. Uh it just shows you how no none of this stuff really matters at the end. You know, any of this morality or anything that they pretend or caring about kids, any of that. Really, it comes down to, like you said, it's like capitalism workers, the right kind of bodies, the right kind of um yeah, ability to to work for the state.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

I don't think it was against teen pregnancy. I know that we saw a lot of those things. I think that was the left saying no teen pregnancy because we don't want people to be, you know, like uh, you know, having issues and all that. I think they were saying it was about abortion and controlling who could who could who could have an abortion or not. And so I think if abortion were not a topic or a hot topic as it is, then I think teen pregnancy would not have have been in the 90s as big of a talking point. Um, you know, because the teens were were having to choose between raising a baby or getting an abortion. And many of them were deciding to get an abortion because the push was, you know, it it could impact your your life in the future um and your career and all those things. So, you know, we don't want you to have to get an abortion if you're a teen, it's you know, um uh terrible to be in that situation, but um nevertheless, we want it to be available to everybody who needs it. And I think that that is what kicked off that conversation. So they want teens to get pregnant, they just don't want them to have abortions.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

I think it was also a time, you know, the the 90s is really the kind of the end of the period where the country as a whole was really pushing higher education as a role to or a mode to to promote whether you're on the left, on the right, that higher education was a good thing. Teen pregnancies prevented people getting higher education. Now it's part of this broader attack on higher education. You don't need to have a college degree, you need to have babies, you need to be back home in the kitchen, a trad wife, you know, and so I think we're we're just seeing all of that uh kind of knitting together. The the the right wing is coming together on so many different fronts, you know.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

It's wild that we um that, you know, I used to think of the country as like, oh, a place where you just America, you you come United States, I'll say. Um, you you you know come here and you live here, you're born here, whatever, and it's the home of the free and you can do what you want, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it really does seem, and I it makes sense, of course. You know, the government is a a collection of all of us and should represent all of us. But it is wild that the the government initiatives and propaganda and how they talk about and what they value, whether it's teen pregnancy or not, or working in women working in the workforce or not, um, is so directly connected to you know what the state wants, what the state as in the country wants as opposed to what we want as individuals. Um, we need more workers. Yeah, we need more workers. Let's do this. And you know, shame them for not working, and then, oh shoot, we don't want any more workers, you know. Tell them shame them for not staying at home. Well, honey, you're it's just mixed signals. Yeah, make them in the mind.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

It's like the legalizing all these new child labor laws. You're like, do you want the children in the mines? I guess you do, apparently, it turns out.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

I want to talk about the trans mom who fled to Cuba when it comes to immigration. Um, it was a super complicated case, but a teen woman from Utah, I'm sorry, a trans woman, not a teen woman from Utah, um, who, you know, was, I think already we were in trouble, you know. Um, Inessa Etherington and her partner uh took their 10-year-old to Cuba and uh was allegedly a disgruntled family member that they were gonna start gender-affirming care and surgery for their 10-year-old, um, which is not, I don't think, accurate. Um anyway, no one knows, but it seems like highly unlikely that given that Cuba would not perform gender-affirming care for this person. So that's not true. But anyway, uh it was all based on misinformation and prejudice and whipped up hysteria. Uh and they claim that the person that the child was kidnapped. Um, and so the US government flew a department of justice plane to bring the kid back, um, which is so wild, you know. Yeah. And and so it it is Who is that good for?

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Is that good for the kid? Is that good for the government? Is that good for anyone? It's like a tremendous waste of money. It's terrifying, I'm sure, if you're that family, if you're that kid. It's like uh, you know, they're just being used like a pawn.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Absolutely. And it's so the I I think that w the the key piece here, I think the that um the piece that we don't want to overlook when it comes to you know, the trans community and the immigration community, and obviously everything from passports to uh citizenship and all these things are um connected and intertwined as we're starting to see. But the other piece to freedom of speech that is also going to be that like I think the third bastion that we're already starting to see become attacked is the right to assemble and protest. And you know, when we're upset with these laws, with these uh discriminatory practices, the thing that we see is that people m can't take to the streets. And we saw the reaction from ICE shooting and harming people, killing people in the streets. People were protesting, and they're trying very rigorously to sort of re remove the right to protest. You know, they're they're attacking the the protesting laws. And the easy the best way for them to do that, and the the the sort of most effective way for them to do that to where we got to the point where we are now with ICE was uh the student encampment protests that were happening across the country, uh protesting war and genocide and protesting the um uh investment by their universities and their tuition dollars into buying weapons that would do those things. And and so, but we were seeing them suddenly universities were take changing their sort of free speech policies that closely aligned with the constitutional rights that people have to free speech, and those things were also being um tightened and implemented uh by the federal government, as we were seeing. And there were laws and policies put in place and and proposals that were um put forth in Congress to limit people's acts ability to protest. And the way that they were doing that was if you are going to protest Israel, if you're going to protest on behalf of Palestine, then you must be listed as a terrorist, and if then you're protesting on behalf of terrorism, and so we're just gonna get rid of protesting altogether.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Even in New York City, you know, they passed a bill. The city council passed a bill earlier this year about you cannot protest within a certain distance of religious um institutions. And it was pointedly specifically because there were people who were using a synagogue to sell illegal land in the West Bank. And the protests were not aimed at the synagogue, they were aimed at the illegal sale of Palestinian lands, and yet they created a bill to ban protesting houses of worship, right? So it's not that the synagogue was being protested, but now the bill makes it impossible to protest at churches, at synagogues, which I mean, you look at the history of queer protests and how much of it has happened at institutions like the Catholic Church, right? All of that would now be illegal, everything that Act Up did in their church. So I think you're right. We're seeing these bills that are just like chipping away at all of our rights in different places, but it's all under the same umbrella targeting the same people, and yet it is going to take everyone's rights in the ends, and people who are not paying attention because they don't think it has to do with them are going to wake up, as you said at the start of this episode, in Gilead one morning.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Good grief. I know it's all overwhelming, but we want some good news. We want some good news there. Um is there any good news?

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Any good news at all?

SPEAKER_00 24:43

You can you let me know. I'm asking, I'm asking you.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Okay. One good thing I did hear about is that the Times most hundred influential people of 2026 contained three incredibly important queer advocates. These are Shannon Minter, who is now the director of the National Center for LGBTQ rights, incredible political thinker, strategist, writer. Shannon is someone who I have uh known peripherally for a very long time, and it is so exciting to see his work, which for I think so often was like really important inside the queer community, but did not get recognized by you know Time magazine. So fantastic to see him recognized. Hillary Knight, the captain of the Olympic Gold Medal US women's hockey team, also, you know, they deserve it for that, for the being the gold medal winners, but also how they handled that bullshit from Trump with the men's hockey team, and that bullshit from the men's hockey team with Trump. For that alone, I think Hillary Knight and the entire team deserves to be on Time's influential list. And of course, someone I think you know pretty well, Alan Cumming being recognized for his long career and decades of outspoken LGBTQ advocacy. Fantastic to see. I think it's great to see both people who we already know as actors, as famous people, people we don't know, like Shannon or Hillary, who's sort of like getting to be known now. It's great to see a place like Time magazine recognize these folks, recognize queer greatness and queer brilliance in this moment, particularly those of folks who are defending like trans rights like Shannon Minter. So that is my one little bit of good news for us this week.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Love it. I love to hear it. And listen, we uh appreciate all of our listeners as well. Uh go show those uh time out 100 or some time out, those time 100 out people um some love on their socials and even over on the time uh page so that they so that time can see um how much and how important these issues are to their readers and supporters. Um we speaking of supporters, we love all of you, our listeners, our viewers, um, and we we just really appreciate you uh yeah, drop us a comment.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

Let us know what's up with you, what's your good news of the week? If you have any, we're we're open to hear it. You can send us an email anytime. Questions at queer101podcast.com. They can also be comments. We're not exclusively soliciting questions. And we're so excited to see you back on Tuesday.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

That's right. Every single Tuesday you can find us wherever you get your favorite podcast, all that jazz, you know where it is. If you're watching us, make sure that you are following this page that you get a notification uh on YouTube every single week when we release a um a new episode. And this summer, uh, we have again, we have some fabulous things to announce with I think with Alstora um and our book club. But in addition to that, we also um I know that with Hugh's book launch and which is coming up right around the corner. Just a couple weeks, May 22nd. With with with Pride Um and a busy schedule. Uh, we may take a week or two off here now and there, but we'll let you know, we'll keep you posted for sure.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Um, yeah, you'll see us in the real world if you don't see us here.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

That's right. All right, y'all. We'll see you on the flip side. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

This podcast is part of Pride House Media, hosted by us, Peppermint and Cube, produced and edited by Josh Rosenspweig with original music composed by Mel Balavan.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

If you enjoyed this episode, then don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. And while you're there, leave us a rating and a review. It really helps others discover the show.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

You can stay connected and join the conversation by following us at Peppermint 247 or write to us at questions at queer101podcast.com.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Thank you for listening. And remember, our history is your history. Stay proud, stay curious, and we'll see you next time on Queer One One.