X is for Exasperate with Bryan Lynn with Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
Hey everyone, welcome to the A to Z of Sex with me Dr Lori Beth Bisbey. I’m a psychologist and accredited advanced gender, sex, and relationship diversity therapist, a sex and intimacy coach. And I have spent the last 35 years helping people to create and maintain incredible relationships that contain sizzling sex and without shame. We are working our way through the erotic alphabet one letter at a time. And this week the letter is x and x is for exasperated. Yes, I know that’s not appropriate spelling, but you try finding loads of things for the letter X. And joining me today is Barry Lynn, Barry Lynn has been on the show before but to refresh your memory. He is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. He’s a member of the Supreme Court bar. And he’s written several books and done lots of other interesting things that we’ll talk about. But his new book is the only one he’s actually satisfied with. And his new book is a memoir. So I’m welcoming you to the show. It’s lovely to have you.
Barry Lynn:
It’s great to be back here. It really is. This is the only book, it’s actually three books. There was a high school student who came up to me after I had a party. He said, Mr. Lynn, I want to do what you do when I get out of school. And I looked at him and I said, What is it you think I do? And he said, I think you get paid to piss people off. And of course, it fits in so well with this.
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey:
And so you named the book paid to piss people off. And it’s true, isn’t it?
Barry Lynn:
Yes, I’ve done a lot of that. I mean, I like to think that it’s an important part of what activists need to do to get attention to their cause, to use the rules of government against government. I’m not an anarchist. But I sure think most of what government does, is detrimental to who human beings are. And nothing so much as in the world’s realms of religion, and of course, sexuality.
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey:
So this is I mean, apropos given what’s going on in the world, that we are now in an incredible battleground around sexuality and gender again. But one that now the pressure of the craziness, in my view is coming from both the left and the right. It’s now gotten really crazy on the left, and it’s always been really crazy on the right. So you have some longevity in this. What do you think about what’s going on?
Barry Lynn:
I think that it is true that there’s craziness on the left and the right. But I have to say, I think the real the super craziness is still on the right here. And when it came to pornography, which is something we talked about when I was on the show last time. There is there’s some interesting criticisms from left wing feminists. I don’t deny that they’re feminists. I just think they’re wrong about this. Maybe we can talk about that. But most of the efforts to censor material now is coming from the extreme right? Absolutely. Perhaps your listeners heard of a, an incident in the state of Florida just a couple of weeks ago where a woman was forced to resign her job as a teacher because she sewed sixth graders a photograph of Michelangelo’s statue of David. Yeah, now, that was so bizarre. But I remember back in 25 years ago or so, when I was following the pornography commission set up under the Ronald Reagan administration, that I walked into a room one day and they were having a debate here these government officials having a debate about whether Michelangelo’s David was in fact pornographic because you couldn’t see the penis
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
tThe absurdity of that and the hypocrisy of that so it’s okay. If we sexualized women, it’s always okay if we sexualized women, um, but to see the penis not in a state of arousal not in a not in even relationship to anybody merely as a portion of the anatomy. Exactly, pornographic.
Barry Lynn:
The two people on that commission of 13 people, the two people who were most convinced there was pornographic. One of them was a Catholic priest, who turned out according to a number of journalists and the state attorney general in New York, he appeared errantly was paying young men, not children to stay with him in his hotel room. He was later asked to leave New York. And he served a lot of the rest of his time, I guess, talking to cows in India, and the other was Dr. James Dobson. James Dobson may be known to some of your listeners. He started out as a commentator on CBS Radio, and he gave parental advice. And you know, some of it wasn’t too terrible. But then he turned to a very, very dark side, he started railing against the Playboy philosophy. He started the the lobbying group, probably the most homophobic, anti sex, anti common sense lobbying group in the United States. And he too, was just, he was really upset. James Dobson came up to me one day in a restaurant about a year after I’ve traveled around the country, watching this pornography commission. He came up to me in a restaurant, he said, you know, Barry, I hate everything you stand for, but But I tell you, you destroyed all the good work we tried to do. And you know, there wasn’t any good work. And to the extent that they even listen to at the time, kind of the occasional feminist critique of pornography, they didn’t understand it. They took nothing from it. And it was just terrible. There were four women on the commission, three of whom dissented from its conclusions. And that was kind of a surprise, because most people thought, Oh, they’re women. They will be horrified by all of this. One was, she had been a former editor at Cosmopolitan magazine. And then, at the time of the commission, she was the editor of Woman’s Day. One day, since I traveled around with them, there’s a there’s a wonderful feminist writer in New York. And she and I kind of dogged them around and we went to Houston, Texas.
They went on to go on a field trip of porn stores.
A field trip on a bus, we actually sat on a bus. And we go into a couple of easy’s, or sleazy places. I mean, these are not the kind of sex shops defined in United States, shopping malls now, you know, where the bright lights, dildos all lined up on the basis of color and size. These, these are places where there’s water running down the floor. So we get to the third one, which is possibly the worst. And at the time in the United States, this is before there were DVDs. If you want to pornography, he had to go to adult theater or you had to go to one of these adult stores. So we went in and bought tokens at the time you took a little toke, and you put it in some porn, and there were buddy booths, where you could watch with your friends, or perhaps watch and do something else. So here I am with Alan Levine, and the chairman of the porn commission, a man named Henry Hudson, who now regrettably, is actually a federal judge in the United States.
Barry Lynn:
Yeah. So we’re watching two gay men wearing green monster masks, having a sexual encounter. So Henry says to me, so Barry, when you testified before us, you said all of these images, all of this material has messages. What’s What do you think the message is here? And I looked at Henry and I said, Try it, you might like it. And Ellen was hard pressed at the time to refrain from laughing because she had already turned sour. And there was a there was a psychiatrist from Columbia University. And I had had lunch with her a week before. She interviewed and did studies both of her rape victims and a rapist. And at toward the end of this conversation, she said, you know, Barry, I have never seen in my clinical practice, a single rapist who was a rapist because of pornography. And you know, but these are the things that people and I’ve commission did not want to talk about. They thought if you found and I think And most of the anti porn forces around the world think of you find the worst as single worst image you could possibly find. That will convince people that every bit of sexually explicit material is menacing and dangerous to everyone.
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
Well, and it’s unfortunate because people don’t understand that. There’s just no evidence that this is true. And in fact, if anything, this, pornography sometimes acts as a kind of release valve for people. They also don’t know how to read research. So that’s my other bugbear of mine. Bear is most definitely the one that says they believe that a relationship is causation which is always, which is always given me a problem. Relationship they don’t understand. Like, if you look at things like they’ll say there’s a relationship between violent pornography and rapists. Yep. Rapist like violent sex, so they want more pornography, that’s more likely to be the relationship, then the violent pornography causes the rapists.
Barry Lynn:
Absolutely. And I think the, the evidence that you’re talking about is really overwhelming. I mean, there’s nobody, even people who say 20 years ago when this meese commission was floating around, even the people who found what they initially claimed was some kind of connection between violence in cinema, pornography and R rated movies. By the time the commission got done, examining it, critiquing, mixing up messing up the research that these people did, they started to kind of flip out and they went, there was a big article in the Washington Post newspaper about how their own evidence had been misused by the porn commission. I remember I was on a Good Morning America show with a woman from New York who was the leader of something called Women Against pornography. And she went on about this as it causes rape, and I said, Look, it doesn’t cause rape. If here’s what it might be. It’s not a recipe book for rape. It might be just a recipe book for masturbation. Then the host of the show at the end, I said, you know, I probably shouldn’t have said masturbation. And she said, we’ll get a lot of mail about that. And no, but just shouldn’t get all it’s it’s the religious right has so captured these issues, they spend literally millions and millions of dollars, not just on their favorite candidates, but also trying to suppress this material. I mentioned a few minutes ago that I liked to use the instruments of government against government. I’m not I’m not an anarchist. But this year, a lot. I don’t like when the pornography Commission was established, they set certain rules. And one of those dopiest from the perspective of history, is they said, We’re not going to ever comment on our work until we’re finished with the process, which gave me like, a whole year where I could go out and criticize everything they said. And then when they go to talk to Henry Hudson are members of the pornography commission. There was a we have no comment on that. We’re waiting. So one time they were having a discussion about the prospect of having a total national ban on sex toys. So I heard about that. I was there and I saw I called a couple of people who were most friendly to non censorship and immediate I said Well here they are they’re considering I’m old ban on sex toys. And so the new The Washington Post the next day head born Commission considers sex toy ban. Needless to say, it did that idea did not come to fruition,
Barry Lynn
but there are still laws that there are laws. Next choice in the United Absolutely, there are several states like Utah you can now Nevada you can have a sex toy. So prostitution is legal in Nevada. Sex choice or not, right?But it’s the whole thing. When we think about sex, we think about it as a culture in the worst and dumbest possible ways. I don’t know if you knew is one and Annie sprinkle who was in a lot. Oh, yeah. Oh, Amy, and she, she, she passed out a little thing, during I don’t think they invited her to testify. But she passed out this leaflet. That said, I think pornography sometimes is bad for people. Sometimes it’s good for people. Sometimes it hurts people’s most times it doesn’t. But she said, openly and honestly, you have to look at this from the perspective of how it affects people. Good, bad, and otherwise. And I think that’s kind of what I think I was interviewed by somebody last week. And it’s a How can you as a minister, how can you defend pornography, I said, because I recognize as a difference between morality and legality. And thank you may not, I may not like every pornographic image, but I’m not the measure of that. I think the standard for, you know, we have this obtuse definition of pornography, United States, but the community standard that should matter is the community that consists of you and your bedroom, that’s it, you go beyond that, and you’re starting to intrude dramatically on the right of people to be and do do what they want, and just see what they want.
Barry Lynn:
It’s really difficult because the censorship is so bad at this point, that and I think I mentioned this before, like, because it says to foster in an effort to protect children, and that’s often the thing that’s used when we’re going to protect children. You know, I have to say that in my my experience, working in this field, including working in family court for over 30 years as an expert, lots of pedophiles actually do things like look at clothing catalogs, like they can get stimulated by, you know, going to the sea and watching the children at the seaside or, or the pool, they don’t necessarily need pornography, and the pornography that they access is not the pornography that’s available to the general public. I mean, it’s not the pornography that gets ends up getting censored. It’s their own specialist pornography, and it’s, you know, onto the table. And so it’s not what you’re going to see on your pay per view. website, or the old days on the DVDs, right. And so I found myself in the position of an expert often saying to people, I am not the morality police. My job is not to say whether or not it’s a good thing that this woman is a porn actress. It’s not my job, right? view isn’t my own views are if she’s not coerced, and she’s happy doing what she’s doing more power to you, but it’s not my job. My job where there’s children involved, is to make sure that the boundaries are good, so that there is no harm or neglect. That’s my job. Exactly. Ancestor, foster man, that all of the educational stuff. I mean, I’m still constantly censored for educational stuff right here. In fact, we’re more censored than the pornography is. Right.
Speaking of censorship, I attempted to take an advertisement out on Twitter now controlled by Elon, I am in favor of free speech, Musk. Yes. I tried to take it out. I submitted the ad and had the title of the book paid to piss people off. About an hour later, I received a note saying that I could not advertise because of inappropriate content. Now,
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
what the hell is inappropriate?
Barry Lynn:
The word piss. Oh my God. Now see, 1972 There was a great comedian in the United States named George Carlin. Yes, George Carlin did a routine called seven dirty words. And guess what? His was one of them. So and then I thought, okay, so they don’t want to take an ad. Then they took down my posting that use the same word, and I decided not to fight it because I called a couple of people up and it’s it just just add to your publicity that you’ve been banned by Twitter.
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
Yeah. Well, so I very, I mean, you know, George Carlin’s routine the seven seven words you can’t say on television was one of my favorite routines. I grew up on that I pass that on. We could all say it word for word because we learned it when we were you know, teenagers. But it’s, it’s amazing to me, I have never managed successfully to take out an ad on Twitter or on Facebook. I have because they look at what I do and it says Six in what a fencer me there. You know, I’ve tried and I just gave up. What I, I know people who have looked at this for the industry, and for the sex education industry for the sex industry, as well as for the adult entertainment industry. And actually social media as a means for getting the word out for us, or driving traffic or customers is useless. So we have to use our own websites, and we have to use our search engine optimization because otherwise people won’t find us. I have a television show that I’m on. You know, it’s we’re about to the second season is coming out sometime in the next month and a half. It’s called Open House, the great sex experiment. That’s a television show on Channel Four in the United Kingdom. So one of the terrestrial channels, and I have had, I have had posts taken down on every single social media site, because it says sex experiment, the great sex.
Barry Lynn:
We had a an interesting kerfluffle I guess it was worldwide over a website called only fans. Yes, fans, of course, is generally has a lot of adult performers. And during the COVID time I, I don’t know many of the current, you know, adult film actresses, but I used to know many of them. And there was an effort by credit card companies not to take any kind of yes, it irritated me. But the comedian’s that used it, they said, you know, Barry, you ought to do tell some story. So I applied, you have to fill out a form. And again, the title, they wouldn’t touch it. Yeah, there is a wonderful, I hope it’s streaming everywhere, including Scotland and Britain. called Money shot. And it’s about a porn hub, which is a great, yes, I’ve seen it. Yeah. And I assumed, frankly, when I watched it, that it would be one of these Oh, it’s terrible on the thing is horrible. It had these wonderful adult actresses that, including ones that by conventional standards are not beautiful people know what they’re talking about how important it is. And they did toward the end of the thing, probably last 90 minutes. Toward the end, they said, you know, we can’t find much evidence of anybody being coerced into performing
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
and vary so much with that, because they really tried to make the slant of the show about you know, it’s ultimately they had this one woman who kept saying everything is coercive. And I was looking at the larger woman, the curvy woman is the one you’re talking about. I can’t remember her name, but she won awards. Right. And, and she was like, does it do I look like I’m easily coerced? Right, exactly. What I find so frustrating about a lot of this is that and that was the left wing having an issue with it. That wasn’t the right wing, the left, the left wings issue is that let me make sure I’m getting this correct. All porn, although it’s kind of its kind of slant. Now. It used to be all porn is inherently coercive, right? Because it devalues women. However, there’s a new slant to it. Queer porn is acceptable. Yes, but anything that might have any kind of a heterosexual bent. Li not, which, unlike so really, you think you get a right to control people’s desires? Like I’m trying to expand people’s horizons. I’m not telling people who are heterosexual that they don’t get to desire what they desire. But apparently, you can’t choose that desire because it’s inculcated into you. Because of the the how you’re brought up culturally, which I find actually quite offensive. Yeah, it is. People believe that people with brains can’t actually be construct some of that.
Barry Lynn
The the two things you just mentioned. One is the issue of children. The pornography commission had in his very first meeting is one of these FBI agents who made his entire career out of biting smart. But he did concede that pedophiles generally when you look at their collections, they almost always have a copper tone advertisement, you know, for the sunscreen. Yeah, the one with the girl with the dog pulling down partially. And if that turns you on, man, you can’t predict that you cannot make a distinction you cannot draw on science to help you define what is going to to bother people, and why, but anybody with any sexual interest at all, is certainly going to be bothered by some of what exists in the realm of pornography.
Absolutely. Yeah. And, and I worked at the time
for the American Civil Liberties Union. And I really worked hard to to be their point person against this pornography suppression. And I did think that there was one thing in American law that ought to be extended. And that is the concept of sexual privacy. I think if you have, for example, a an underage person, or a person who was coerced into making pornography, that you that that individual should have a right under American law to go make his or her case and then have something happen because of it. And the ACLU at the time, kind of didn’t know that. I didn’t want to do that. And I understand why. Because the ACLU and I agree with them. You don’t want to restrict minors access to abortion services to contraception on the basis of their age alone. I do understand that. But this is very different. The ACLU at the time, actually supported some laws in the state of New York, that prohibited in Trojan on privacy caused by let’s say, the director at the time of the ACLU is a guy named Ira Glasser. So let’s say Ira Glasser, they put up a picture of him on a billboard in Times Square next to some product he doesn’t want, implying that he saw the taking his commercial advantage, and to doing that, and I said, this is very similar to the kind of thing I was suggesting. And another thing that comes up in the movie in money shop, is the fact that credit card use for things like dial up porn, if that still exists.
If you there was a congressman, very conservative congressman for Virginia name Bliley Congressman Bly was a huge supporter of mine, when I was trying to prohibit them curtailing cigarette advertisements. And I, you know, I went in to his office once and I said, you know, this is first amendment we have, it works best when it’s seamless, when it covers everybody. And when you cannot use the argument, a chill, a child might see a cigarette billboard and start smoking. Nobody ever thought that was a primary issue is starting to smuggle nobody ever including the most liberal consumer advocates in the United States. But um, but I did think that that was important and and I said, Why don’t you tell the Italian the anti foreign people, we’re going to restrict this vote we’re going to require credit cards and and the right wing groups came back as we can’t do that. There was somebody might steal their father’s credit card. Yes, there might be it would not be perfect. But if you simply want to, because at the time, you could literally call from one state to another state. You I’m having a little construction done here. I’m gonna like do well, okay, wait, we don’t hear you hear it. So.But, but they rejected that. And of course, nothing changed. I mean, nothing changed.
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
So what’s interesting to me is that people don’t seem to be able to understand that what I might want censored, you don’t want censored and then if we’re going to have free speech, then I have to be able to say, okay, they’re not censoring me, but they’re they’re also not censoring you, they don’t seem to be able to get that idea that that that the danger remains, who is making the decisions on what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. And now we have to see do you see in the United States in Florida, where of the banned books, there was one band that was a book on on Hanukkah? That was pretty much it was just a book of Jewish practice. And another one was that was a book on colors, which I cannot figure out for the life of me. Why they banned it. It was just this is rare. This is right, but they banned it. No. So that we’ve got that level of idiocy. In some states, we’ve got the law in Nevada that says you can’t have any sex toys. But in Texas, you can have six you can have six dildos, but no more.
Barry Lynn
Well, yeah, gotta rest on Sundays. And I’m sure that’s the reason there is
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
probably like, but in Texas, you can’t get a woman can’t get health care now. No, of course. I mean, because it’s so frightening. But they have laws about dildos on the books. That’s important. It is
Barry Lynn
the censorship of material that is not at first blush, or even if you’re blushing five times anything sexual. I’ve been a big supporter of something called the Kurt Vonnegut Library and Museum, and it’s a marvelous, and during the foreign commission days, it was my only time the only time I met Kurt Vonnegut, but I think he, he to me, he started me reading. I mean, I love the cat’s cradle and some of the early books and I read them, and I finally got to meet him. And so they had a press conference, it was Kurt Vonnegut, myself and Betty Friedan who wrote The Feminine Mystique. And we all just, you know, properly dumped on the pornography commission and what it was doing, and that’s the kind of breadth I am sure Betty Friedan would not have gone into porn, it was a store and go, Oh, I like everything. That’s not the point. The point is, if you don’t like it, please don’t use children as the excuse for controlling what adults can see. In this book, I talk a lot about all these efforts to suppress things, ideas, images. And I said, you know, if everybody got their way, if everybody who said we shouldn’t have X or Y, or Z, we’d be relegated to sitting in darkened caves. And if they have any electricity, they would only have no and the pages would be blank. Judy Blume was is a great. Yes. She and I were on a panel one day, somewhere in the Caribbean. I’m sure it was the nice, nice place. So I said to her at one virginity. What’s the weirdest thing you ever heard about being censored? And she said, Oh, that’s easy. Mad Libs. Mad Libs is a series of books in the 60s and 70s. It had the framework of a story and then a lot of blanks. And so if you and then the person doing it would say to the audience, give me a noun. Give me an athlete.
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
Yeah. Yeah, it was great.
Barry Lynn
I said to Judy. So what was bad about that? And she said, nothing in the book, but they censored it because they didn’t think children could be safely allowed to insert words taught are well thought police.
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
You know, I mean, so So like when you say that I was born in 1963. So I was born in 1963. Judy blooms book, are you there? God, it’s me. Margaret was apropos for me, too, when those things were happening, like it was, you know, and it was the first book. So for those of you who don’t know, her book was about periods. Right. It was about it was about a young girl’s transformation into womanhood. And how scary that was and how bizarre that was, and all the changes that went with it. It was written for the young adult market. It was phenomenal for young girls who were reading it at the time, right? That was it was perfect. And it was censored. And it was it was centered because it had to do with periods. And we didn’t talk about periods. I contrast that right? with what’s going on in the Internet where everybody wants to have a period. Right. So and people don’t seem to have an understanding of what a period it is. Perhaps that’s because Judy Blume was censored, because we learned a lot there, right. But at the same time, we had Mad Libs. And that was a summer camp favorite that we had. We fought to have those. And we would go and that was the thing that the kids did for years and years and years. And yet you’re right. They were censored. Well, of course, we used to put all sorts of stuff in there that illustrated the fact that we didn’t understand how sex work, or anatomy works, because we had you know, we were too young, you know, and there was no information because sex education back then. Well, I guess it was better than now. I mean, we got anatomy and we got menstruation and we got procreation, and a little bit about diseases. And now, half of America doesn’t get anything. So I guess it was better. I don’t know. I thought it was pretty crappy. But
Barry Lynn
yeah, I think it was. They did a survey back in the early 70s, about whether they interviewed students who had just gotten out of high school. And they asked him, did you have a sex education course? And a vast number of people who had it? Didn’t know they had even been taught sex education because
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
they, why would they know?
Barry Lynn
In Florida, of course, the governor DeSantis has decided you can’t talk about menstruation there either.
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
I know, which is just ridiculous.
Barry Lynn
It’s a fear. It’s, it’s hard, I think for people to understand just how frightening the subject of sexuality the subject of alternative religious viewpoints that these things are so terrifying to people. There’s a book called Charlotte’s Web, which is a wonderful children’s book fabulous. And it’s been. It’s been censored many places, because it has talking animals in it. The lastIt could be but more importantly, there are no talking animals in the Bible. So one of my last and for invitations to be in the Fox News Channel. I wanted me to get up at five in the morning to talk to a guy who had drawn a series of cartoons called Veggie Tales, where vegetables act out Bible stories. And I think man we have his theory was if you as a parent, allow your child to watch any other cartoons other than VeggieTales, they will become atheist. What an amazing thing used to be that I didn’t, I went to seminary. I don’t remember how talking animals, bad talking. Vegetables. That’s okay. That shouldn’t be
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
the literal there’s the literal illness for me is the thing. The picking and choosing of literal illness. If you gotta be literal, do me a favor, be literal about the whole fucking thing. Excuse me, but that’s how I feel right? And I swear on this show, so it’s okay. But everybody can swear on this show. We don’t censor words. But you know, so if you’re gonna be literal, literal, but not the whole fucking book. I have read the whole fucking book. I was raised Jewish. I’m still Jewish, but I’m not observant. Because Jewish is an ethnicity. It’s not a religion. It’s also the name of the religion that Jews have is Judaism. Right? So you know, I’m actually ready. And I’ve read this subsequent books. And I’ve read the Christian books. You want to be literal, by all means, be fucking literal. None of this was ever meant to be literal. But if that’s what you’re going to do, do it, the whole hog, stop cherry picking what you’re going to be literal with? It drives me nuts. I’m like, Oh, you’re going here. And you’re saying we can’t do this. We’re over here. Like, where is the prohibition against abortion?
Barry Lynn
Yeah, that would be nowhere.
Dr Lor Beth Bisbey
That would be nowhere because actually, and in the Jewish part of these books, in certain circumstances, you’re required. Correct now, right now, was there misogyny in the Torah apps a fucking lewdly you know, got raped and she was single, he got married to a rapist. I mean, right there. It’s a beautiful example of fucked up is in the Bible, but it just drives me crazy that and I see the some of these preachers, and I think, Why can’t people think critically when they look at that, if this is the word of God, how come there are so many different Christian sects?
Barry Lynn
Yeah, I do is I still am invited to, you know, be in churches and give sermons and one of my favorite ones is called something like why Bible literalism and constitutional originalism are the worst ways to make policy in America? And, and it’s, it’s true, and it’s, it’s just shocking, to see the number of people who, as you say, cherry pick, and then they, that’s supposed to be everything in it. But you know, if you challenge somebody in a religious right, they, and they throw back some kind of Bible quote for you. You cannot change their mind. It doesn’t matter what it
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
doesn’t matter if you actually point out to them that they either got the quote wrong, or wrong part of the quote. My husband is, He was raised Baptist. And what he used to do with the pastors, and he left the faith, because because he saw the inconsistencies, and he’s the very right man, and he could chapter in verse at you. So they would quote something and he turned around and go, blah, blah, blah. And they, you know, so, you know, they’re embedded, there’s nothing you’re gonna say to change their mind, I think one of the things that we do wrong, is we attempt to change people’s minds in certain ways. When it’s coming from a place of belief, not and I don’t even want to say a place of faith, because I see faith is something different. Sure, when it’s coming from a place of belief, and it is a fixed belief. There is nothing I’m going to be able to do to shift that bar some very special psycho psychological therapy that they have to be willing to engage in, where, hey, you’re not going to shift the belief, what you what you can hope to do is say, okay, that’s your belief. And there’s some other things over here, and can we have room for the other things? Sure. That the mistake we make is we challenge their beliefs. And we, you know, we try and fight on the belief level that never works.
Barry Lynn
No, it’s so I can’t say never, I want to tell you one. One thing. One of the leaders of the anti choice in terms of reproductive care was a guy named The Reverend Robert shank, and Rob shank. I mean, if I had a nickel for every time I had a debate with him, we’d probably both be wealthy. And I learned I heard that he was changing his mind on some issues. And so I called him up. And I said, I interview people for this podcast most weeks. And I said, When you come on the pipe, tell me about your journey over, particularly over abortion. And it was he changed his mind totally. And he says on the podcast, I was in jail one day, and there was a woman in a cell not too far. She had four children. She was pregnant again. She was crying, she was wailing. I said, What’s wrong? She said, I can’t have another baby. And so I thought, what? And then at the end of the podcast, he apologizes to me, he just says, You’re right. I should have listened to you 30 years ago, but I didn’t. And then I said, Why don’t you learn that? Right, a little thing for my book. So he wrote this, I observed Barry Lynn, during the difficult dance between faith and Social Policy for three decades. Regretfully, mainly as his ideological nemesis, too late in life, I concluded that he was mostly right. And I was mostly wrong. This memoir helps me make up for lost time, and might even allow others to do the same. It’s a great story. It’s me. And it’s he is he’s very open. He now refers to some of the people that he used to work with his snake handlers. And, and he made the news right before the Democrats lost control of the House. They invited him to testify about something that he used to do, which he now repudiates. He used to hook up Supreme Court justices with wealthy Republican donors. He said, That was terrible. And he’s now you know, being pilloried, of course, by the right, but based on the evidence based on healing people,
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
I love that that, that he came to the conclusion based on the evidence, but what incenses me is that is not it is not above board. It’s not legal, it’s not acceptable. The judiciary is supposed to be separate. So anything that has politicians being hooked up, and money flowing towards them makes a mockery of the system. It just makes a complete mockery of this does. We’ve got some similar craziness going on here. You know, we’ve, oh, my God, I won’t, you know, we’ve got the situation with Boris Johnson and various other other MPs where you can see their behavior has been contrary to what the law said and their own rules. But one of the worst ones for me is suella Braverman and I mean, she will she’s our. Yeah, Foreign Secretary, is she will eat her views on immigration are petrifying. And one of the worst lines was she is a child of immigrants. Her parents would not be allowed in this country based on the view that she has now. And she says, and she thinks that That’s okay. And it’s just, it’s so offensive. It’s like, Where? Where is this? Do you think you have the population support? Well, they don’t have the population support. What they have is a system that allows them to do all of this between elections, where we know say,
Barry Lynn
it’s completely against what the system was supposed to be.
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
But they get away with it.
Barry Lynn
They do. And again, now here we have an ex president, who, you know, is about to be indicted, as we’re chatting here.
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
Today. Yes, he has to surrender today.
Barry Lynn
I think the thing that makes me craziest in dealing with these people who do not wish to change their mind. There was a woman, an anti feminist woman named Phyllis Schlafly, I’m surprised that even in America, a lot of people younger women don’t know who she was. I got
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
I remember Phyllis thought. I remember. I got told that they were doing the week that my show came out. At least, there was like, it was like a memorial thing, because it was an anniversary of hers. Right? And so it was juxtaposed. And I, I was interviewed for a newspaper, who would say that I was the very person that she would be against, and that I was single handedly getting rid of the Christian way of life. I just,
Barry Lynn
yep. We I had a dinner after doing a show down in Atlanta when she CNN, which of course, now is everywhere. But it used to just have kind of homegrown shows down in Atlanta if you wanted to be on it. And there was an extraordinary woman named Sandy Freeman. And she used to have three guests every night. And they don’t talk about this one issue. None of this. Okay, three and a half minutes. Let’s go.
So afterward Phyllis, and I and a woman who ran something called a committee to free Afghanistan. And that woman had a large purse and she used to carry soldier Fortune magazine with her. And I says that to scare away potential boyfriends and laughter. So fellas, this happens on television a lot. You have the debate, and then you know, you go out you have dinner. And it’s much more interesting what is said at dinner on Natella. So I said to her fellas, are there are there no principles at a no relationships and a marriage that you think ought to be open to everyone? Are you rigid about the men do this went? And she said, well, there might be some. But once you open that door, then all kinds. I said, Give me an example. She said men should take out the garbage. And I promise you grew up outside of Chicago. And I said, Well, when can I really didn’t know what she was talking about. I say men should take why is that? And she said because there might be animals out of the can. Animals. What escaped elephants, zoo monkeys, squirrels? I mean,
there might be recoding the raccoons. We want to you know what kind of animal lovers and we had a raccoon who was trapped in our attic. So I got one of these big have a heart traps. Yeah. We caught it. And then we drove on Saturday night, out on the parkway near outside of Washington to let it loose where it obviously had come from. We pull in. Police car comes right after us. We parked in the first parking lot. We open the trunk. We have our hands are on the have a heart trap. And a police officer who has his hand on his gun says What are you doing? So we’re leaving this raccoon out where it obviously came from? That’s a federal law. You cannot release an animal. I said we’re not trying to release a tiger. We’re trying to take this. You can’t do that. And if you argue, you know, I’ll arrest you. So we put the raccoon and the raccoon cage back in the trunk. We drove to the next place and he followed us and he followed us farther and farther and farther to we found a farm which we knew because our daughter’s riding horses at the time went to that farm, let out the wreck. But that’s raccoons are not there. If you mess with them or their babies, they get mad if you don’t, they are not. They are not a danger to humanity,
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
right. But the reason that men have to do it is because women are afraid of animals. I mean that that, of course, my mother would have said that my father takes the garbage out, my mother would say this, I believe my father to take the garbage out when he was alive, because she didn’t want to deal with the raccoons at the cans. Whoa. But that seemed perfectly she said we don’t trade off. He does things. And we had a groundhog. We had a groundhog that every year would come up and come by the deck anyway was creating havoc. So they hired somebody to come with the hammer, have a hard track, took the groundhog, you know, 30 miles away where it came from. And the same groundhog came back six times. And she was like, we’re not hiring anybody anymore. Because you know, they just feel like they’re getting a vacation. And then they come back.
Barry Lynn
Sure. Like, it’s a little bit like sensors, I have frequently said, and I’m sure it’s one of these sensors or like the dog that comes up to your place, when you’re sitting out on a patio, and a dog comes up and you go, I’m sorry, I thought looks like it needs some fruit, I think I’ll give it a bite of my sandwich. And then do not be surprised. Because that dog just like sensors are going to come back the next day and the day after that, because they have an expectation. If you gave them something, or in the case of sensors, you got rid of something, they will never, ever be satisfied.
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
That’s a beautiful thing to end on. But before we do, and I want you to tell people where they can find the book where they can find you and your podcast, and I will put that it’ll end up in the notes as well. Yeah, um,
Barry Lynn
the easiest way to get this book is to go to bit is I have to spell this out. I never even heard B I T dot L EY, slash Barry Lynn book and it takes you to the publishers webpage where you can get a discount if you buy all three volumes. And I also do have a website called Barry w lin.com. And on it isn’t is that interview with the Reverend Rob shank an interview with Bill Baird, who is literally the creator of the concept of constitutional privacy. He’s in his 90s he is almost been scrubbed from the history books, including by some people on the left. But he and and there’s a bunch of and is a thing I did oh, I don’t know if I talked about this last time, but I was a they had a big retirement party for me when I retired. And three weeks later, I nearly died. I had a serious heart condition. I didn’t know I had it. And so I nearly died. But Louis black, the comedian, I was writing a little funny things on Facebook because although it was not a fun period of a month, buthe’s said it’s how you cope.
You wrote me Sunbury, I’m doing the show in Washington. Why don’t you come and at the end, just do a rant because he does these rants at the end of the shows. And I said look, you know, I’m not even sure it can speak because I lost my ability to speak. He said, I don’t care if you have to whisper it, just do it. And it was really and that’s up to and I sound like I sound like I don’t have much of a voice at the time because I didn’t but it was really eye opening. I have three lessons that I’d like to leave people with. If you care about a cause. You can never give up on it. If you no matter how controversial if you think you are right, you can never give up on it. Then you can never do these. This work on your own. You need the people that will support it. And finally you can never forget that there are real people in behind whatever cause it is that you’re trying to promote. It’s the reality. If you do, as I did, changes, the Vietnam Veterans got terrible treatment, including from the US government, and there was a way to make sure they could get VA benefits. And I worked in genuinely bipartisan way on this. But it wasn’t until a Native American guy called me one day, you’d see Mantella. He said, I have this terrible thing happened to me. And he described it, and it’s in the book, and he, he’s the real person. It wasn’t just theoretical. And no matter what you care about, if you care about sex workers and their right to organize, if you care about censorship, and why it’s bad under any circumstance, then you have to never forget that if you mess up, if you screw things up, it’s not just you lost something, people will get hurt those
Dr Lori Beth Bisbey
that is a perfect thing that I want to underscore for people. Because it’s what happens is that people do forget that a lot of particularly in any legal arena, a lot of things become intellectual debates. There’s a lot of intellectual debate about a lot of things that doesn’t actually look at the real person’s experience. And the one thing I would add to that is that remember that your viewpoint as valid as it is, is not the only one really going to do justice, to whatever the issue is. If we could learn tolerance, we could learn to respect what each other wants and treat each other the way we asked to be treated, not the way we think we shouldn’t be. On our own, I don’t treat you as I want to be treated, I should be treating you as you want to be treated. And you should treat his I want to be treated. A lot of this stuff would clear up if we did just that. Just the real people in the real stories. You got it. Thank you so much for joining me, guys again for listening. And next week. The letter is why, as always, if you have somebody you want to hear or a topic you want discussed, email me at Lori Beth Bisbey, Dr. Lori Beth bisbey.com. And I’m still running a monthly lottery you get 30 minutes of free time with me if your name is chosen, out of the basket of people who have written a review. This continues to be an issue. People still don’t like writing reviews. But it is actually really helpful. When people write podcast reviews. And when they write book reviews. If you write a book review, you’re welcome. I’m also usually have a few free sign books to give away. So that’s another thing that you could get if you write a review. If you have a single question you want answered, I cannot guarantee I will answer it on the show. But I’ll put it in my list of things for when I eventually do a q&a show. If it’s urgent, you can go on my shop at Dr. Lori Beth bisbey.com. And you can choose to have it answered by email or have it answered by video. Yes, there is a charge for this service. But I cannot tell you how many questions I get asked. I just if I could spend my entire time answering individual questions. So if you want something to do with your individual situation, please do purchase one of those and I’m happy to do it. If you’re patient and happy to wait just send me the question and it does go in a file and every few months I do a at least one or two q&a shows and you can get it there. Thanks for listening guys. Keep safe, have fun, and I’ll see you all next time.