Ep. 284: This is Everything: LGBTQ+ Acceptance

Support for same-sex marriage in America just dropped six points since 2022 — and Zach wants to know why. In this week's solo episode, he digs into a recent Gallup poll showing acceptance falling from 71% to 65%, even as LGBTQ+ identification among Gen Z and millennials continues to climb. It's a contradiction that's been sitting with him, and he works through it out loud.

The conversation ranges from anti-gay laws spreading across parts of Africa, to Budapest's pride parade defying a hostile government, to the swelling wave of anti-trans legislation moving through U.S. statehouses. Zach pushes back hard on the argument that trans people living authentically has any impact on anyone else's life, and reflects on why the disappearance of DEI commitments across companies and institutions worries him.

He also gets personal — recounting what it was like coming out to his father in his early twenties (and the six months of silence that followed), and to his mother, whose first questions revealed just how little exposure she'd had to LGBTQ+ people. Zach compares that to how differently a coming-out conversation might go today, using his cousin's transgender child as an example of a much more accepting generation of parents.

The episode closes on something more intimate: why Zach, despite 27+ years with his husband, still isn't fully comfortable holding hands in public — a hesitation rooted in something he witnessed growing up in Miami. It's an honest look at the gap between wanting full visibility and knowing when it doesn't feel safe.

Zach also hosts Listen Up Girl, a daily LGBTQ+ news podcast, and The Gay Bit, a weekly Friday dose of campy commentary — both available wherever you listen to this show.

 

Podcast song by SIXFOOT 5: https://www.sixfoot5prod.com

Apple: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/sixfoot-5/1551774977

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5rHMzoU0G0fLhaBsrQiOOY?si=laSZ5hiKTYubJJyhrzf2JQ

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