NC Democrats cry foul as GOP jams them up on defining what a woman is (06-26-2025--Hour1)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to ThePeteKalinerShow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] So, Democrats up in Raleigh in the state legislature, they very much wanted to vote for House Bill 805, which would, the short title of this legislation was Prevent Sexual Exploitation of Women and Minors.

[00:00:48] But they would not vote for it because it defined what a woman is. Well, and men too, and mothers and fathers. And then there was also stuff about not, you know, getting access to porn in the school libraries. And they were, they didn't like that. They think you should be able to have your kid exposed to that sort of stuff.

[00:01:12] And they didn't like the fact that, you know, people would be able to look up what school libraries may be stocking on the shelves. They wanted that restricted only to parents or guardians of students at every particular school. So this way, nobody outside of the PTA, basically, would be able to see the kinds of books that the libraries are offering.

[00:01:35] But other than that, they were like, we are for this bill. Now, the Republicans, for their part, they too engaged in some political mechanisms here or machinations, I should say. They did. Well, it's not quite. You may have heard this term gut and replace.

[00:01:58] And I don't like the term mainly for marketing and branding purposes. I prefer gut and stuff just sounds funnier and better. And it's the same thing where, you know, let in on the legislative calendar, the House and the Senate, they run their own bills. They debate them, they pass them and they have to meet a deadline. And then all of the bills from the House have to have crossed over to the Senate and all the Senate bills have to have crossed over to the House.

[00:02:24] They call that crossover. And so there's and that's already passed. That was like a month or so ago. And then the idea is that nothing after that crossover deadline can move through because otherwise, you know, you would have a legislative session that never ends. Unlike our current legislative calendar, where sometimes the calendar never ends. So the crossover deadline is meant to restrain legislative sessions, the length of the sessions.

[00:02:52] And so what for decades the legislature has done is any bill that has crossed over and the other chamber now wants to do something else, but they didn't make the crossover. They will they will gut an existing bill and then they will stuff something else into it.

[00:03:14] This is how I believe it was the. The regulation and inspections of abortion clinics in North Carolina. That's how that bill passed. It was a motorcycle safety bill. It had come over from maybe from the House over to the Senate or vice versa. It doesn't matter. It was a motorcycle safety bill.

[00:03:35] And then they they stuffed a bunch of rules on inspecting abortion clinics because under Democrat administrations, they really weren't interested in inspecting abortion clinics to see if they met like bare minimum standards of, for example, veterinarians clinics.

[00:03:56] They had a higher they had a higher they had a higher inspection regime and standard for for vets than they did for abortion centers. And so when the Republicans came along, they were like, yeah, you know what? We're going to make sure these are actually like hygienic facilities. Outrage ensued. The left called them all sort of called this legislation, all sorts of disgusting, grotesque names because that's what they do.

[00:04:23] And they're very, you know, focused on anatomy and genitalia for some reason. I don't know if that I'm not sure if that comes with like when you sign up to be a Democrat, like that's like they give you a rule book or something and they give you all of these arguments and the vocabulary to make things, you know, gross. But anyway, so that that was an example. But you don't necessarily have to gut the legislation in order to stuff it right. You know, it's not required.

[00:04:54] So that's what the Republicans did with House Bill 805. They didn't gut the prevention of sexual exploitation of women and minors. They did not gut that part of it. They kept it. They just added stuff to it. So the Democrats were in favor initially of the original bill. Preventing the sexual exploitation of women and minors.

[00:05:18] And I have the bill and it it it went from about, I don't know, four pages to eight pages. So it's a very like there's a lot of additional legislation that they that they stuffed in here. But under the bill, this is aimed at preventing online porn that is using underage models or performers. They got to get consent.

[00:05:47] They have to prove that they're over the age of 18. They got age verification obligations. You have to have explicit written evidence of consent for each act of sexual activity in which the individual engaged during the creation of the pornographic image. This also gets at the revenge porn stuff. It gets at my wife and I, we were on a road trip recently and we were listening to I think his name is Jordan Harbinger.

[00:06:15] And he he had this whole interview with somebody about like the porn industry, porn hubs specifically, which is apparently just like trafficking. It's it's like a human trafficking hub. Um, and you have all of these, I guess, users upload stuff to the site and then other users will re will download those videos and then re upload them.

[00:06:39] And so it creates this constant, um, content populating of the, of the, the website. And then Pornhub will say stuff like, well, we didn't have anything to do with that. That's just user created content, you know?

[00:06:55] So now, uh, this bill is trying to get at some of these practices like online entity operators shall obtain all of the following from the user or entity seeking to publish the images. Okay. So that's talking about the platform, the website you're going to have to get, you are, you shall obtain. So there's no may. This is a mandate.

[00:07:20] You shall obtain written consent from each individual appearing in the image. And that consent has to also include the name, date of birth and signature of the individual. Proof that they are, um, over the age of 18. A statement that the consent is for also not just the acts, but also the distribution of the specific images.

[00:07:45] A statement that explains coerced consent and that the individual has the right, the right to withdraw their consent at any time. So if you are, you know, 19 years old, you do one of these videos or something, and then, you know, fast forward 10 years and you're like, I want this stuff taken down. Um, and you got to have a valid form of identification for each individual appearing in the images.

[00:08:14] That's on the, that's on the platform. An online entity operator. That's what they keep calling it. An online entity. Shall establish a procedure for removing a pornographic image from the online entity at the request of a person and designate one or more employees of the operator. So like a Pornhub employee would have to be responsible for handling requests for removal.

[00:08:42] An online operator shall display a prominently visible notice on the website or mobile app of the online entity that provides instructions on how to request the removal of those images. So on the homepage, you got to have a big banner or something up there. That's like, if you're on this site and you want to remove, you know, content that shows you here's where you click. And then the operator shall remove the pornographic image as quickly as possible.

[00:09:11] And in any event, not later than 72 hours after receiving the request. So you got three days to take it down. An online entity operator shall remove the image temporarily. If any question arises as to the consent of a performer, because there, this was, there was a big campaign. Again, this was from that podcast that we heard where a mom was looking for her daughter and she was being trafficked.

[00:09:41] And it was somebody who sent her a link and said, I found your daughter. She's on Pornhub. And this mom then launched a crusade against Pornhub because Pornhub would not, would not take down the images. And they were like, oh, sorry, that's just user generated content. We didn't publish it. We can't do anything. Here's a great idea.

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[00:11:17] So over at WRAL, in a piece by Paul Specht, Republicans in the state Senate passed a bill that would strictly define gender. Actually, it defines sex. I have the legislation right here. I have the bill. And like a whole section, actually, is on the definitions. It doesn't actually define gender. It defines gender identity.

[00:11:47] It says, And that is accurate. That is accurate. It defines biological sex. It defines a boy. In case any lefties are listening, that would be a minor human male. Male.

[00:12:14] It defines a father, which as a male parent. Female. It defines a girl. It defines male. It defines man. And it defines mother. And it defines woman. And again, in case any of our friends on the left do not know what a woman is, it is an adult human female.

[00:12:33] And a female is a term that, when used to refer to a natural person, means a person belonging at conception to the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing ova, or eggs. Okay? So now you know. Because I know there are a lot of people who aren't biologists, like, you know, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. And so now the North Carolina Republican lawmakers have helpfully provided these definitions for everybody.

[00:13:03] They're really doing all of us a service, because it seems like so many Americans have become confused about things that the human species has known since the very beginning of time. Okay. So this bill started off as a bill to prevent the exploitation of women and minors, which you may ask yourself, well, how would Democrats know that women are being exploited?

[00:13:29] Like, if you don't even know what a woman is, and you cannot define what a woman is, and then when someone defines what it is and you object to that definition, how could you be in support of a bill that seeks to eliminate the exploitation of women? It's all very confusing. This was a bipartisan bill, the targeting of the exploitation of women and children.

[00:13:58] It was initially bipartisan. Everybody supported it. But then it turned into, as Paul Specht calls it, a political minefield. How? For whom? For Democrats? Yes. For Democrats, it turned into a minefield, if you will, because they have become so insane on these topics. They cannot, will not, they refuse to define what a woman is, because they don't want to offend. They don't want to alienate their base.

[00:14:27] They don't want to get called names. Whatever. Like, they cannot, and I'm sorry, but like, I am not going to be governed by the insane. I refuse. I refuse. Now, if you come to me and it's like, look, if you come to me and say, hey, my name is William, but I go by Bill. And then I will say, okay, Bill, because I'm not trying to be transgressive towards you. And that's not anything to do with gender identity.

[00:14:57] I'm trying not to offend. I'm a nice person. I'll be polite. You know, so if you go by a certain name, I will call you that name. I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. Because you're not governing me. Right?

[00:15:10] Now, if you tell me that you have to call me Bill and I mess up or something and I call you William, or maybe I refuse to call anybody Bill because I believe that the only Bill that could ever be named Bill was my father. And so I refuse to give anybody else that honorific. And so I'm going to call you William. And then if your response is, well, if you don't call me Bill, I'm going to penalize you somehow. I'm going to, like, make you lose your job.

[00:15:40] I'm going to give you a citation or something. If you're over in, like, Germany and the UK, like, you could, like, be thrown in jail. So that's the difference. It's that you don't get to govern me. Right? That's the bright line there. So a political minefield for Democrats, I would just add for Democrats because they've become insane on this issue.

[00:16:05] The state Senate passed a revised version of House Bill 805, which the House passed unanimously as an initiative to crack down on the exploitation of women and children. Senate Republicans added several proposals to the bill that critics, a.k.a. Democrats and media, but I repeat myself, derided as culture war issues intended to repel Democrats.

[00:16:29] Now, look, I will say, I never thought that we would have to define what a woman is in legislation. But thanks to the left, we now have to. Right? Y'all are the aggressors in the culture war. This is the response. This is the reaction. This is people saying, this is too far, lefties. And I know a lot of lefties are never told that you've gone too far.

[00:16:56] Because in the lefty world, you can never go too far. Everything is just forward. To quote the commie slogan, everything is just forward. Progress, right, towards the utopian vision of, you know, 100 million dead under communism. Like, that's the whole focus. So to the left, there is no too far. And so when you have this response, they can't believe, what?

[00:17:24] We're the moral and good ones here. We just care about people. And you obviously don't. So you must be Hitler. You know? A number of Democrats attempted to vote present on the bill. Rather than yes or no. You're actually not allowed to do that, though. We're going to get to this. I've got a bunch of audio. Listen to the entire, like, two-plus-hour debate on the Senate floor over all of this. So it started out as an anti-exploitation bill.

[00:17:55] And then some stuff got added into it. I'll tell you what got added into it, including the definitions of, you know, male, female, biological sex, and gender identity. That stuff gets added in there with a couple other provisions. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life. And our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video.

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[00:19:10] So the North Carolina Senate added a bunch of new provisions into an anti-women and minor exploitation bill, which also would have, like, huge daily penalties for, you know, these porn websites. Or if you're doing revenge porn or you're taking pictures or you're getting, you know, kids to send you pictures of themselves. And then you threaten to post it online and you blackmail them.

[00:19:38] So big fines and stuff for these website operators and that sort of stuff. And that had bipartisan support when it came out of the House. But when the Senate got a hold of it, they added some stuff. They added definitions. And WRAL's Paul Specht, he still can't... I don't know if he doesn't know that, you know, gender and sex are two different things, according to the left. Because he says define gender as two sexes.

[00:20:05] No, it's defining sex as male and female. Because that's accurate. That's all there are. There are only two. The bill also bars state prisons from using state taxpayer funds to pay for sex reassignment surgery for inmates. Requires transgender North Carolinians to use their original birth certificate in official transactions. I actually have the bill in front of me. I will go over those details.

[00:20:32] Allow public school students to request to be excused from any coarse material if they believe that material would, quote, impose a substantial burden on their religious beliefs. We have to be able to force this on the kids. I want you to skip and gallop through that rainbow balloon arch that we have set up in the hallway while wearing a rainbow tiara. You and tutu. And I'm not making this up.

[00:21:02] This was actual video that was posted. This is the kind of stuff that's going on in the schools. In the schools. And there are parents and students who do not want to participate in this. It would require school boards to post a list of books available in their schools. Require public schools to block students from borrowing certain books if instructed to do so by that student's parent. And so all of this is obviously outrageous. OK, here is State Senator Buck Newton.

[00:21:32] Who says that this was hotly debated. These additional provisions was debated in the committee, in a Senate committee. And then he goes on to explain why the bill is necessary. You know, you know, across the country, we all have to recognize that women are being systemically erased from our language.

[00:21:54] You know, whether it's changing words to pregnant from pregnant women to pregnant person or mother to a birthing parent. These are small changes, but send a very strong message to women. We want to send an equally strong message that women exist and they're supported here in North Carolina. And it's pretty simple. We cannot ignore the biological realities.

[00:22:21] And we believe our state laws should reflect that. At the federal level, President Trump has issued an executive order which restored the United States recognition of only two sexes, male and female. And it's time here in North Carolina for us to do the same. And that's exactly what we do here in this bill.

[00:22:42] Section one affirms that biological sex as truth and ensures that our state's regulations and policies are clear and certain about the biologically grounded definition of sex. Clearly states the definition of female, male, boy, girl, father, mother, man and woman. Right.

[00:23:03] So the bill would also extend the period under which people can sue medical providers for issues related to gender reassignment surgery for up to 10 years after a procedure was performed. So the statute of limitations is now 10 years. And I have this. I have this also highlighted in the legislation. I'm not really sure that this WRAL story.

[00:23:33] I'm not sure it's framed correctly. Senate Minority Leader Sidney Batch. We're going to hear from her as well. She accused Senate Republicans of hijacking the bill with culture war amendments. And this is one of the things that the left loves to do. And they get a free pass on it whenever they do it. They accuse the right of engaging in culture war issues.

[00:24:00] When the right is responding to the incursions made by the culture warriors. Right. These social justice warriors, these culture warriors from the left, they make incursions. They attack institutions. They attack vocabulary like birthing persons and such. Right. They make these incursions. And when the right says stop with this, we mounted defense.

[00:24:29] And now we're going to say, no, you know, a woman is a. Person who is born female. Like we're going to define this stuff because you guys are manipulating and corrupting the language in order to to make these different inroads. Under your, you know, Gramscian Marxist long march through the institutions. And so when the right pushes back, then it's oh, you're engaging in the culture war issues.

[00:24:57] No, we are engaging with you as you attacked in the culture war. Y'all did this. Y'all did this. And you think that you're justified in doing it and you're morally superior for doing it. But you're not. You are not.

[00:25:14] She suggested, Sidney Batch did, that Senate Republicans don't care about solving the issue of exploitation because they're turning a bill that previously had unanimous support into a party line fight over unrelated LGBTQ issues. Yes, they are. You are correct. They saw an opportunity to jam you guys up because you don't know what a woman is. Although you do know what a woman is because you say it all the time.

[00:25:43] You talk about how first woman ever to do fill in the blank. So we do. We know you know what a woman is. But we also know that you can't define it because politically among your base, you will be shunned. You'll be chastised for it. So, yes, Republicans see an opening to jam you up on this so you don't get to use it in your campaign commercials.

[00:26:06] You won't get to say I voted for a bill to crack down on online exploitation of women and minors. You won't get to say that. And your opponents, who will likely be Republicans, they will be able to say you voted against it. See, that's how this works. And it has worked for a very, very long time. And you Democrats have been doing it yourselves. I remember when you ran the North Carolina legislature, you did do it.

[00:26:31] So you can lament the game, but don't hate the plays. You know, she said, if we don't fix the bill, then we're sending a message to predators that we don't care about our children. And that's just a stupid argument. But she made it because they really don't have much else of an argument to make. But they did try some tactics. Yeah, they did try some tactics. We'll get to that in a minute. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events.

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[00:27:54] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. So I mentioned Sydney Batch, Democrat from Wake County. She criticized the inclusion, the additional language defining men, women, boys, girls. She opposed this and criticized the inclusion of these very elementary definitions in the Senate version of the bill.

[00:28:22] And this bill was introduced to protect children originally. And women. And that was its intent. And women. It was actually introduced to protect our children, especially our sons, from being targeted, extorted and exploited online. What's a son? And that's what we came here to do. But what's before us now is not a bill that we agreed to or that the House by unanimous vote voted for. It's been hijacked, gutted and replaced with language that's not just unrelated, but dangerous.

[00:28:51] We are watching a crisis unfold. All right. So it was not gutted. And, you know, under this gut and stuff procedure, as I laid out earlier, and I got a tweet from Eric. It's a Pete tweet. He says, gut and stuff is so uncivilized, Pete. May I suggest purge and pack? I like it. Purge and pack. That's a good one, too.

[00:29:16] So the additional provisions that were put into this legislation, they're not unrelated. It's literally the same thing. Like you're talking about protecting women and children. And this puts into the law the definition of a woman and a boy and a girl, which the legislation refers to. So it's not completely unrelated. Sextortion is exploding in our state.

[00:29:45] A 600 percent increase in cases in just one year between 2021 and 2022. Teenage boys are being manipulated into sharing explicit images and then blackmailed. Some have taken their own lives. There are real kids, real families, and real consequences.

[00:30:07] The State Bureau of Investigations reported that nearly 19,000 cyber tips about extortion in North Carolina were reported in 2022, up from 2,500 six years prior. We received a clean bill from the House in 805 to address this. And rather than pass this clean bill to immediately address the crisis and to save more lives, the bill was modified without the consent of the House sponsors.

[00:30:36] When my Republican colleagues loaded this bill with culture war amendments, they didn't just distract from the problem. They made it impossible to solve. No, it's not impossible to solve. You can make a decision as to what's more important. Right. You can vote for the bill. You can do that. Even if it doesn't have everything in it that you like, you can still vote for a bill that has things in it you don't like. You can do that. But you don't want to do that. Right.

[00:31:06] You want a, quote, clean bill. So this way you can tout the fact that you supported this clean bill. You could say, look at me. I'm protecting women. I'm protecting young kids against sextortion, which is a real problem. No doubt about it. And so you have to weigh the options here. But before we get to a decision there, they went about a whole series of legislative maneuvers.

[00:31:33] She proposed first that the bill gets sent back to the rules committee. And if the Senate does not do so, she said that would send a message to the predators that the legislature does not care about protecting children. That attempt to send it back to the rules committee was ruled to be out of order under the Senate rules. So you can't do that. So then they tried something else. They were like, OK, well, how about we split the bill into two different parts?

[00:32:01] The part we like and the part we don't like. And this way we can vote against the part we don't like. And we could vote for the one we do. And that motion to divide the measure failed as well. Then they tried to postpone the bill until December 24th. Not sure why Christmas Eve was chosen as the day, but that's what they attempted. And that also failed. Because Democrats do not have a majority.

[00:32:32] You are legislating in a chamber that has a Republican supermajority. They don't need any of your votes. They don't need a single vote from you. Now, they're going to need a Democrat vote over in the House. Because the House sent you a version, the clean bill. You then added stuff to it, which means it has to go back to the House for their concurrence. They have to agree with what you've added. And maybe the House doesn't. Maybe they vote no on it.

[00:33:02] Maybe they want a veto-proof majority over in the House, too. They don't have the numbers, so they're going to have to peel away some Democrats. And who knows? Maybe they already have a Democrat or two lined up for that to override a potential veto. Or maybe they don't. Maybe they don't have a Democrat or two that are going to help them pass this. They'll still pass it. It's a majority Republican body. And then it goes to the governor. And then the governor, he'll have a decision to make. Does he veto this or not?

[00:33:31] Yeah, see, these are politically tricky questions for Democrats. That's what they don't like. That they're being jammed up by the Republican majorities. And if they don't vote for these things, then that will be used against them in their election campaigns. And Democrats do this to Republicans all the time. At the national level, at the state level, at the local level, they do it all the time. They'll stick poison pills inside of bills.

[00:33:59] So this way, Republicans won't vote for it. By the way, the postponement to Christmas Eve, that failed also. And then they tried to limit the access of school library books to only parents or guardians of students at the individual schools. That failed, too.

[00:34:35] Thank you.