As Vance pointed out, many just want to “be left the hell alone.”
Anderson Cooper chimed in Thursday on Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s recent claim that former President Donald Trump is likely to win the “normal gay guy vote.”
During a panel discussion on his show, “Anderson Cooper 360,” the CNN anchor said he was curious to know exactly where Vance would make a distinction between “normal” and “not normal” gay men.
“Because, again, they just want to be left the hell alone, and now you have all this crazy stuff on top of it.”
This Could Be the Most Important Video Gun Owners Watch All Year
Vance’s comments align with a growing sentiment among conservatives that the LGBTQ+ movement is being overshadowed by radical ideas, especially around youth gender transition.
You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
.
He contrasted this man with other members of the “crazy” broader LGBTQ+ community, especially transgender and nonbinary people. In August, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons took a public stand against sex-change surgeries for minors.
“I’m curious to know what the difference — where the line is between a ‘normal’ gay person and a ‘not normal’ gay person.”
He then suggested Vance may possibly draw the line at “anything related to drag,” before taking a cheeky dig at Trump.
Rogan echoed Vance’s concerns, highlighting that some in the gay community feel the push for gender transition surgeries implies that being gay isn’t acceptable.
Rogan noted, “Well, a lot of gay guys feel like the whole movement is homophobic, which is ironic…these kids would grow up just to be gay men, but instead, you’re getting them to convert their gender.”
Vance agreed, adding that he sees this push as a form of “pharmaceutical conversion therapy,” with Rogan jumping in to note the profitability of these procedures.
MORE NEWS:House Passes GOP Health Care Bill, Democrats Losing Obamacare Subsidy Fight [WATCH]
The discussion comes amidst a shifting landscape.
Network television shows like The Real World (1994), My So-Called Life (1994), and Will and Grace (1997) brought lesbian and gay people into American living rooms as friends and sympathetic characters.
Ohio Senator JD Vance, known for his outspoken conservative stance, made waves during a lengthy discussion on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
As reported by The Daily Caller, Vance, speaking openly about the current political climate, suggested that he and former President Donald Trump could appeal to what he calls the “normal gay guy” vote, simply because they stand against the extreme measures pushed by left-wing activists and support a live-and-let-live attitude.
After a recent appearance by Trump on the same podcast, Vance joined Rogan for a three-hour conversation.
Vance’s comment overlooked the staunchly anti-LGBTQ platform that Trump embraced during his first term ― something which many supporters of Vice President Kamala Harrisquickly pointed out on social media.
Advertisement
HuffPost Shopping's Best Finds
Newsletter Sign Up
Politics
Sign up for HuffPost's Politics email to get our top stories straight in your inbox.
Successfully Signed Up!
Realness delivered to your inbox
By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote because again, they just wanted to be left the hell alone,” he said, before suggesting implausibly that more high school graduates were identifying as transgender to boost their odds of getting into Ivy League colleges.
“At first I was like, ‘Oh, JD Vance thinks there’s normal gay people.’ So I guess that’s sort of progress,” Cooper, who is gay, said.
“Once legislation is turned around to support and to flaunt the abnormal,” Christian singer Anita Bryant told reporters on the eve of a successful 1977 referendum to retract gay civil rights in Miami, “rather than to protect the normal, then our nation is gone.” John Briggs, a Republican state senator from Orange County, California, agreed. “It’s fine for Donald Trump, but on a gay guy, that wouldn’t be considered normal.”
Vance made the questionable claim in a Thursday interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast in which he alluded to a gay friend who was a committed conservative.
As municipalities began to concede civil rights protections demanded by LGBTQ activists, the backlash was predictable: Heterosexual conservatives mobilized to take back normality. Homosexuality was “normal”: a natural, involuntary condition that required access to mainstream institutions, discipline, and responsibility—not special rights.
Like military service, legal marriage was not a new concept for many gays and lesbians who had been married or lived in long-term domestic partnerships.
These cases add fuel to the movement questioning the ethics and long-term impacts of child gender transitions.
With public sentiment shifting, Vance and Trump’s conservative stance may indeed find surprising allies in unexpected quarters. Following suit, European countries like the United Kingdom recently banned puberty blockers for children, indicating a collective reevaluation of “gender-affirming care.”
Meanwhile, the U.S.
Supreme Court is set to review a case on Tennessee’s restrictive law on child gender procedures, a decision likely to shape the direction of future legislation.
Several detransitioners, including Chloe Cole—who began transitioning as a teen but later reversed course—have filed lawsuits against medical providers involved in such procedures.
As conservative Catholic journalist Andrew Sullivan argued in this publication in 1989, gay marriage was the answer. It could be a gateway to normality and to specific rights like child custody, decriminalized sex, and financial security. The two delved into various hot-button issues, including child gender transitions—a topic that has sparked significant national debate.
MORE NEWS:House Democrats Go On Record to Protect Narco-Terrorist Networks From Trump [WATCH]
According to Vance, many gay men are not on board with the progressive agenda pushing for medical interventions like puberty blockers and surgeries for children.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote,” Vance told Rogan directly.
By the 1990s, it seemed possible. In 1978, Proposition 6, which would have made it illegal for any gay or lesbian person to teach in public schools, told “homosexuals” that California would not “accept you are normal people, because you are not normal people.”
Gay rights leaders convinced Californians to reject the Briggs Initiative, but less than five years later, the HIV/AIDS crisis ripped through gay male communities, reviving long-held prejudices about homosexuals as degenerate, undisciplined, and diseased.