EZRA LEVANT | Billboard Chris details his global campaign against radical trans ideology
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Summary
Bill Billboard, perhaps the most successful political campaigner in North America, joins Ezra on The Ezra LeVant Show to discuss Donald Trump's executive order defending the rights of women and girls in things like sports and intimate places like change rooms.
Transcript
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Tonight, a feature interview with Billboard Chris Elston,
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perhaps the most successful political campaigner in North America.
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after he was sworn in as president the second time
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in things like sports, in intimate places like change rooms.
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He was pushing back against the tide of transgenderism,
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because women in those positions are often politically vulnerable.
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who had been training and competing her whole life
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to raise a criticism could mean losing her life's dream.
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And it's very difficult to push back against an organized bully,
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which is really what the transgender movement has become.
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Donald Trump took that battle away from millions of girls and women
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It was an important step forward, but it happened in part, I believe,
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by brave activists who spoke up before Trump made it easy to do so.
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And I think one of the entire world's strongest voices
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but who has taken his blunt, plain-spoken messages around the world,
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It's Chris Elston, better known as Billboard Chris.
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I mean it when I say Trump did the important executive order,
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but it was politically possible for him to do that
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in large part because of the groundwork that you and other activists did.
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I think this is the first successful pushback we've really had
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against much of the left's agenda for probably 60 years
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So in addition to defending women and girls in sports,
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which was he pulled federal funding from any hospital engaged
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cross-sex hormones, and surgeries being done on kids
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is that our kids are beautiful just as they are.
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I think you were actually arrested in Ireland, if I recall.
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The UK has also pulled back from some of the insanity.
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Their top court said there is such a thing as biological women.
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but ironically, some of the other places you've been to,
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where they look at all the scientific literature
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So they stopped giving kids puberty blockers there.
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and they stopped giving them the opposite sex hormones as well.
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However, they're going a bit backwards right now,
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where they're going to give these puberty blockers again
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They won't even have long-term information from it.
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I think the number one voice against this insanity
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She's also for the protection of women's spaces.
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about perhaps the UK's most famous living author,
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I think she's really helped move the needle there.
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She was basically drummed out of a job as a nurse
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I mean, good billboards are less than 10 words long
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to crystallize your message down to the essentials.
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and I see other people copying your sandwich boards too.
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I think that makes it tough for people to debate with you.
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and some of the reactions or criticisms they get.
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And so if people are a little unsure about what it means,
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And in the beginning of my campaign over five years ago,
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really nobody had any clue what puberty blockers were.
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but part of my campaign is I really want to get the men going
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it's women who are showing up at school board meetings
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And that sign is probably my most popular, I'd say.
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You know, there's another place where I think men
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and sometimes women are absent where they shouldn't be.
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or where their kids are participating in a sport
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not that there would be a good faith excuse to enter.
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And moms, you know, we hear the phrase grizzly mom.
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They say, oh, no, we're totally fine with this.
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So when you encourage dads to enter the debate,
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Men have actually lost custody of their children
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And you spoke to something very important there.
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that has ever existed in the history of mankind.
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And what the world says about you is unimportant.
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and start speaking up for these things that matter.
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where you've met with policymakers, very senior.
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But, and I think this is the source of your strength,
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you're at the exact opposite end of things as well.
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like give me an example of how would you describe it?
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or pedestrian, pedestrian street is what I'm saying.
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Tell me how you select where you go and what you do.
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And I'll just go into a busy part of a downtown core.
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People are just out casually relaxing, shopping.
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and I wait for someone to come up and speak to me.
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the thing that's really powerful about going there
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So they start having these conversations themselves.
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for a thousand other students at the university.
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you know, you're not making things more intense.
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There's no question you haven't been asked before.
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Someone who comes up to you with a clever quip,
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Often they realize they just have a slogan with no depth.
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And I don't know, I think you actually wind up talking
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If they're thinking about it, if they're angry about it,
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maybe you can break through and have a convert,
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an ideological convert, does that happen often?
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because they come into this thinking I'm some Nazi.
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How dare I say children cannot consent to puberty blockers?
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That's a right-wing fascist talking point, right?
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that there's no right or wrong way to be a girl or a boy,
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and we shouldn't put kids in some stereotypical box,
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I've created this moment of cognitive dissonance
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where they have two competing ideas going on in their head.
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You have to allow them to have this time to think.
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And if you're just continually shelling a person
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because sometimes I need to protect their identities.
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You know, and he would cover a range of topics.
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First of all, it says, hey, I'm ready to listen to you
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that there is a possibility I could change my mind
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You know, I actually bumped into him once in the wild
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some people wouldn't want to convince him he's wrong.
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But I think what you're doing is sort of a lost art,
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I've been arrested, I guess, three and a half times,
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put in jail twice in Vancouver in the beginning
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against five different Belgian authorities on that one.
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having conversations with those who want to have them.
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Hopefully I'll be able to raise some money in that
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But I have other more important things to fund right now.
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I can do a lot more than just stand on the street,
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Some people who can help with international media,
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it's really for me to continue this fight globally.
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you have very high level meetings with policymakers.
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you'll literally talk to anyone on the street for half an hour.
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You know, I mean, it's quite unusual what you do.
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when we interviewed someone in Markham, Ontario,
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I mean, I guess because there was some cognitive dissonance.
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I got a question for you about this same thing.
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That is the result of a sort of a luxury belief