Hey, it's Kai.

We dedicated the whole show this past Sunday to conversation about the eruption of bills

in state legislatures that target transgender people and trans youth in particular.

Scroll back one episode in your feed if you missed it.

But one important idea that came up is the way in which the religious right has worked

for decades to keep LGBT people arguing that we truly exist.

The movement has pushed one argument after another that, at root, says the same thing.

Queer people are the result of some condition, mental or social, that can be fixed or avoided.

Today's version of that argument is that kids are being, quote, indoctrinated or peer pressured

into questioning their gender identities and parents need more rights to protect their

kids from that danger.

It's the logic behind these bills, but there have been other arguments because the religious

right has been argument shopping for a long time, going all the way back to its foundation

as a political movement in the early 1970s.

We covered this history on our show back in 2017 when there was a wave of bills circulating

state legislatures that limited enforcement of new rights for LGBT people, marriage equality

and the like in order to protect religious freedom.

Mississippi passed an infamous law along these lines, a group of civil rights advocates

sued the state, and the ensuing debate revealed the real history behind all of the religious

rights arguments today.

Producer Jessica Miller covered that debate for our show in 2017.

Her story began in the Jackson, Mississippi office of a Presbyterian minister named

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