Mission Creep

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Walter Olson notes that “Climate change [is] listed as an LGBTQ issue, because in coalition politics every issue is every other issue.”

A piece from earlier this year at Huffington Post makes similar claims.

Passing legislation to require employers to provide paid family leave is also an LGBT issue, according to a Washington Blade opinion column.

Every progressive issue is now an LGBT issue, probably because the gay civil rights agenda has largely been achieved in the U.S. (leaving only transgender issues and exacting punishment on conservative Christian small businesses), and activists always need a cause.

12 Comments for “Mission Creep”

  1. posted by Jorge on

    Every progressive issue is now an LGBT issue

    That’s okay, so is every conservative issue.
    ….
    ….
    ….
    ….
    And they’re much more fun.

  2. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Every progressive issue is now an LGBT issue, probably because the gay civil rights agenda has largely been achieved in the U.S. …

    It is inevitable, I suppose, that as gays and lesbians come into the mainstream of American life as a result of the gains we’ve made over the last 50 years, that gays and lesbians will increasingly focus on issues of concern to the mainstream as well as issues that affect gays and lesbians alone. I don’t see anything wrong with that shift. It seems to me both inevitable and a positive sign that we may be coming closer to the “social inclusion beyond ideological rigidity” that IGF supposedly fosters.

    Not every gay and lesbian in our country should be expected to maintain LCR’s laser-focus on issues exclusive to gays and lesbians (e.g. the five issues listed on LCR’s Issues page: limited government, a strong national defense, confident foreign policy, low taxes, and personal responsibility and individual liberty), and it is also inevitable that as the need for laser-focus decreases divergence of opinion among gays and lesbians is likely to become more evident. That, too, seems to me to be a sign that we may be coming closer to “social inclusion beyond ideological rigidity”.

    … leaving only transgender issues …

    Stephen’s implacable hostility toward transgendered Americans has been very evident during the last year or so (see “Too Trendy?”, Stephen H. Miller, July 11, 2017, and a dozen other recent examples) but his views are not shared by more mainstream homocons, such as LCR. Like it or not, transgendered Americans come in all political flavors, as do gays and lesbians, and it is not reasonable to expect transgender issues to be ignored by gays and lesbians of any political orientation.

    Disagreement over methods and goals in this respect is inevitable, but gays and lesbians are not going to throw transgendered Americans under the bus, particularly when conservative Christians and their political allies are using transgendered Americans as a hammer to roll back the gains gays and lesbians have made during the last fifty years.

    … and exacting punishment on conservative Christian small businesses …

    If and when conservative advocacy for religious exemption to public accommodations laws extends beyond advocacy for targeted government-sanctioned discrimination against gays and lesbians, and gays and lesbians alone, we might have something to discuss. Don’t hold your breath.

  3. posted by Tj 3rd on

    Wait, did Congress pass civil rights protection for LGBT, and I didn’t hear anything about it? Oh, Stephen is just walking on hyperbolic, hypocritical street.

    Yes, since LGBT people don’t live on planet earth, I can see why they would not care about the environmental. Oh, yeah. We do live on planet earth.

  4. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Speaking of creeps, it fascinates me that Australia’s social conservatives are marshalling the old, tired lies about same-sex marriage that were deployed unsuccessfully in the United States. No mission creep there, anyway.

    • posted by JohnInCA on

      Hush now. We’re not supposed to remember or notice why LGBT folk are aligned with progressive/liberal/whatever partisans here and abroad, we’re just supposed to be angry about it.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      And tired old tactics to cook the books, too, including deviating from standard Australian practice and setting up the plebiscite to underrepresent younger, pro-equality Australian voters:

      We know from the privately-conducted surveys that younger people are far more likely to support same-sex equality an older Australians.

      And this time they may be even more poorly represented than in 1997. Many don’t know how to post letters, many more don’t know where to find them.

      Best practice as normally applied by the ABS, even in the hugely representative census, is to give a greater weight to the under-represented responses and a lesser weight to the over-represented ones.

      But the Bureau can’t do it. It’s been ordered not to..

      Conservative political parties are wonderful worldwide, are they not?

      • posted by Jorge on

        No more wonderful than liberal exit pollsters.

        • posted by Tj 3rd on

          I’m not sure what Jorge means, a common problem with his posts.

          However, an exit poll is generally done by randomly selecting people who have already voted. The goal isn’t to impact the election, but to understand the results.

          • posted by Jorge on

            I was really tired and stated the opposite of what I was looking for.

            ……….

            The gay news has been quiet lately. Or smothered.

  5. posted by tj 3 on

    Do you know what an exit poll is?

    • posted by Kosh III on

      Give him a minute or two to check with Fox News before answering.

  6. posted by Dave S. on

    Total lack of introspection here. “LGBT” is itself mission creep. It is an invention. It harms LGB people and LGB civil rights – which, contrary to your assertion, have not been achieved. The reason why ENDA is not law today is precisely because our organizations were co-opted by trans activism and now place that as a higher priority than LGB civil rights.

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