Shannon Minter On Trans Life And Politics
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
4.6 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 1 August 2025
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Shannon is a civil rights attorney, most notably as the lead counsel for same-sex couples in the landmark marriage case in California. He’s currently the legal director at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, where he is leading several federal court challenges to the trans military ban and other new federal policies targeting transgender people.
I’ve long tried to find an interlocutor on the new radical direction of trans activism and its hostile takeover of the gay rights movement. Shannon was the first to agree, and we got along great. In some areas, we strongly agree; in others, we strongly disagree; but we can talk and not hate each other. If we want to restore liberal democracy, this is the way.
For two clips of our convo — on the new “conversion therapy,” and how trans activists need to adopt persuasion as a tactic — head to our YouTube page.
Other topics: his “awesome” childhood in rural East Texas; hunting and fishing all the time; his Methodist church; his terrible adolescence with gender dysphoria; the evangelical teacher who mentored him; his unlikely path to practicing law; helping teens after conversion therapy; coming out as lesbian; becoming a trans man in his 30s; the “It Gets Better” project; gay Mormons; the ghetto approach of queer activism; the AIDS crisis; Virtually Normal; Bush and the Federal Marriage Amendment; Evan Wolfson; the California marriage case and Prop 8; Edie Windsor; when trans weddings were legal and gay ones weren’t; “nonbinary” and “genderfluid”; affirmation-only vs. watchful waiting; the suicide canard; Chase Strangio; autism; detransitioners; Tavistock; the Cass Review; puberty blockers; the Dutch Protocol; Johanna Olson-Kennedy and her closed clinic; Marci Bowers and lost orgasm; Rachel Levine’s politicization; fairness in sports; Sarah McBride; Shannon losing and regaining his religion; and moving back to his tiny hometown in Texas with his wife.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Scott Anderson on the Iranian Revolution, Jill Lepore on the history of the Constitution, Katie Herzog on drinking your way sober, and Johann Hari interviewing me. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to [email protected].
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Hi there. Welcome to another dishcast. I'm in a podcast studio for the first time because, as I mentioned before, I've had a construction project |
| 0:40.7 | happening right next to my little cottage in Provincetown that has been actually going on for |
| 0:44.4 | five years now and doesn't seem to make any progress in the winters but seem to get going into |
| 0:50.5 | summers. And last week, this buzz-sowing just got to such a point where I just couldn't risk |
| 0:55.8 | timing another podcast and having it. |
| 0:58.5 | But so this is the, I just give you a sense of what I've been dealing with for the last five summers. |
| 1:02.9 | Here we go. |
| 1:03.4 | This is, this is the sound that I hear every morning. |
| 1:06.9 | Music. morning. So that's been lovely to wake up to every morning for last few |
| 1:26.0 | and so I'm approaching a sort of somewhat nervous breakdown here, but I'm lucky to live here and lucky to be alive. |
| 1:33.9 | I know and I want to thank you all for subscribing because this is, in fact, we are right now celebrating the fifth anniversary of the weekly dish, which is kind of a staggering when I think about it. |
| 1:46.4 | It doesn't seem like five years. And actually, it's also the 25th anniversary of the dish, |
| 1:52.8 | which I started in 2000 as my little, I don't know, it was kind of an adventure back then |
| 1:58.1 | to try and talk right directly to readers. |
| 2:01.3 | And it's been an amazing time ever since. |
| 2:04.5 | We have coming up, Scott Anderson is going to talk about the Iranian Revolution, |
| 2:09.9 | an important new book in which we're going to talk about the seismic impact of that event |
| 2:14.9 | and what's still going on. |
| 2:16.7 | It's been an interesting revival of pre-Islamic |
| 2:19.2 | nationalism in Iran. And Yoan Hari, the great Johann, is coming on to talk a little about himself, |
| 2:26.3 | but mainly to turn the tables and do one of his occasional grilling interviews of me to leave with you for our summer break, |
| 2:36.4 | which is coming up in August for a couple of weeks, |
... |
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