Update: It's now up to eight, the number of businesses that have dropped advertizing on KRXQ. Details from GLAAD and The Advocate below the fold.
Update 2: Add AT&T and McDonnalds To The List -- details below the fold.
Full list of advertisers no longer advertising on KRXW:
• Chipotle
• Snapple
• Sonic
• Bank of America
• Verizon
• Carl's Jr (CKE Restaurants)
• Wells Fargo
• Nissan North America
• AT&T
• McDonalds
Update 3: Huffington Post writer Michael Rowe has new piece up entitled KRXQ Radio Hosts Have History of Obscenity Involving Children, Says FCC Report. (Note from Autumn: Just fixed the link to the Huff Post story -- the link now directs you to the correct story. Sorry for the incorrect link that was up before!) It's a "must read" piece for those following this story.
Btw, do you blenders know that we broke the original story here at The Blend with our piece On Transitioning Transgender Youth II - The Other Side Of The Coin? We were the first media outlet of any sort with a story up about the Rob, Arnie, and Dawn In The Morning's May 28th segment on TransYouth. I'm pretty proud of that.
Mila Pavlin has been FCC licensing courses under her belt, and she helped me understand a bit of the rules. So a wonderfully warm "h/t" and "thank you" to Mila for her help, but I get the blame for putting this piece together and recommending this course of action. :P
~~Autumn~~
 When discussing civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, I'm more than occasionally found referencing Bayard Rustin's take on what "our job" is as LGBT people and civil rights activists -- what that job entails:
"[T]he job of the gay community is not to deal with extremists who would castigate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us. The fact of the matter is that there is a small percentage of people in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual community. There is another small percentage who will never understand us. Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. That's our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment."
--Bayard Rustin, From Montgomery to Stonewall (1986)
I've modified Rustin's highlighted words in my own mind. What I believe Bayard Rustin would say now is something more to the effect of:
That's our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest anti-gay and anti-transgender sentiment.
 So, when Rob Williams and Arnie States, in the May 28th broadcast on transyouth, stated over the public airwaves of both Sacramento's KRXQ and Reno's KDOT (four excerpts from the broadcast in the clip)...
• "And, it's more of the political correct bull crap -- that you don't want to tell a kid he's a freak 'cause it might hurt his feelings. If my son -- God forbid -- if my son put on a pair of high heels, I would probably hit him with one of my shoes. I would throw a shoe at him because y'know what? Boys don't wear high heels."
• "...And, that's what happened in your example is that [the parents] didn't throw the shoe at [the children] when they had the opportunity."
• "The point is you don't allow the behavior -- you cure the cause."
• (citing supposed history of transgender people): "They told them snap out of it or you'll put a spear through your head -- and guess what did? They snapped out of it. Or, they joined the army. "
...the two shock jocks expressed anti-transgender sentiment that we need to control, much in the same way society controls racist, sexist, and anti-gay sentiments.
And, we need to do this not by stopping people from engaging in free speech, but in showing that free speech doesn't mean that one gets a free pass on everything one says -- one can, and one sometimes should, experience consequences from free speech.
Free speech means the government doesn't engage in censorship -- especially prior censorship -- but it means too that one may experience the economic or legal consequences for one's free speech. As the pulling out of advertisers from KRXQ because of the broadcast, speech can, and should, have consequences in broader society.
And by the way, Arnie and Rob (if you're reading this), I spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy, and it didn't cure me of being transgender. Joining the U.S. Army wouldn't have been effective either, I can tell you without self doubt at all.
I personally believe Rob Williams and Arnie States may have violated FCC regulations regarding speech on the May 28th broadcast of the Rob, Arnie, and Dawn In The Morning™ show -- the first segment on transgender youth. Per the FCC:
Programming Inciting "Imminent Lawless Action." The Supreme Court has held that the government may curtail speech if it is both: (1) intended to incite or produce "imminent lawless action;" and (2) likely to "incite or produce such action."
And under licensing rules, the broadcast wasn't in the "public interest":
ยง 73.24 Broadcast facilities; showing required. (j) That the public interest, convenience, and necessity will be served through the operation under the proposed assignment.
This said, SEC. 326. [47 U.S.C. 326] Censorship; Indecent Language states
Nothing in [47 U.S.C. 326] shall be understood or construed to give the Commission the power of censorship over the radio communications or signals transmitted by any radio station, and no regulation or condition shall be promulgated or fixed by the Commission which shall interfere with the right of free speech by means of radio communication.
But again, the right to free speech isn't absolute:
"Programming Inciting "Imminent Lawless Action." The Supreme Court has held that the government may curtail speech if it is both: (1) intended to incite or produce "imminent lawless action;" and (2) likely to "incite or produce such action."
And, one of the ways the FCC defines what's profane:
..."including language so grossly offensive to members of the public who actually hear it as to amount to a nuisance."
 So, I believe we're in a gray area. Although the speech wasn't laced with profanity, I honestly believe it was deeply profane; although I believe Rob and Arnie were advocating violence against transyouth, I'm not sure whether or not it would meet the FCC's requirement that this constitutes an imminent threat. However, forwarding complaints to the FCC would give the FCC the opportunity to decide if the speech was an incitement to violence.
The hosts of the radio show -- Rob Williams and Arnie States -- aren't apologizing; however, for their statements against transyouth. This leads me to believe they were inciting violence against transyouth, and are not apologetic about their violent language. These two keep throwing fuel on the fire, so I believe we must use all the tools we have to send Bayard Rustin's message about anti-gay (and anti-transgender) sentiment to these and all other broadcasters.
So since I believe that their broadcast on Friday, May 28th was least as potentially damaging to real transgender children -- children who in California are members of the protected class (under the legal definition of gender used in the California Civil Codes) -- as the religious right community believes obscene, indecent, or profane programming is potentially damaging to all children, I know I personally needed to file two complaints with the FCC.
So just as many of us first began writing advertisers to stop advertising on KRXQ because of the May 28th broadcast -- now a second response by our community to the May 28 broadcast by many of us will no doubt be complaints to the FCC. The complaints would be regarding how the May 28th broadcast incited violence against children because of gender -- specifically against gender variant children who's gender expression doesn't match their birth genitalia.
Below the fold, I walk you through the process of filing complaints with the FCC online. |
