Support Drops as Gay Movement Becomes Trans Movement

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Andrew Sullivan on “The Gender-Theory Backlash” (second item in column):
For the first time, we’re seeing a sharp drop in tolerance of “LGBTQ” people among the younger generation. …

Or check this out: 62 percent of young men regarded themselves as “allies” of LGBTQ people in 2016; only 35 percent now say the same — a near-halving of support. Women “allies” have dropped from 65 to 52 percent. The turn began in the year that the Obama administration — with no public discussion or congressional support — imposed critical gender theory on America’s high schools, determining sex to be whatever a student says it is. The imposition of trans ideology by fiat on the entire country’s young — along with severe public stigma for those with even the slightest questions — was almost textbook left authoritarianism. Well meant, perhaps. But dictatorial.

Even GLAAD, the culture police for the gay left, concedes that the transformation of the gay-rights movement into a trans movement steeped in critical gender theory in the past few years is likely the reason: “The younger generation was coming in contact with more LBGTQ people, particularly individuals who are non-binary and don’t identify simply as lesbian or gay.” GLAAD of course blames Trump, and social media, and vows to crack down ever more firmly on those who aren’t fully onboard with its agenda. The last thing GLAAD would do is ask itself if it is actually exacerbating the problem, and that the redefinition of almost everyone’s sex and gender to accommodate less than 1 percent of the population is why this resistance is happening.
Here’s another reason for the drop in support in the U.K.:
Fully 52% of UK Muslims thought there should be a punishment for homosexuality. Compared with only 5% of the wider population. If one community is growing in size, and that community has 10 times the negative attitudes of the wider community, then it would ordinarily be thought inevitable that there will be some impact on the wider society’s attitudes towards the matter. Either because they influence the views of wider society or because as their proportion among the population increases so the representation of their views increases.

7 Comments for “Support Drops as Gay Movement Becomes Trans Movement”

  1. posted by Jorge on

    “The imposition of trans ideology by fiat on the entire country’s young — along with severe public stigma for those with even the slightest questions — was almost textbook left authoritarianism. Well meant, perhaps. But dictatorial.”

    And why is it that he points to the imposition of trans ideology and not that of gay ideology through semi-authoritarian means? I think it’s just as much about forcing that baker to make a wedding cake, if not more.

    For the record, I don’t agree with Sullivan on that immigration photo, either. People have been crossing the Rio Grande for decades. People decided to notice that now that two people died and happened to be photographed? Did people not know this happens? It’s about twenty years too late if you ask me. It was shallow emotional manipulation when we used slurs to refer to illegal border crossers, and it’s shallow emotional manipulation now. I’m not interested in falling for it.

  2. posted by Kosh III on

    Sullivan is no pioneer. Frak him!
    Should we be happy with gay improvement and throw the trans under the bus to protect ourselves?

    “The imposition of trans ideology by fiat”
    We had decades of straight folks and avowed “Christians” imposing their opinons by fiat.

    Total bs

    • posted by jimbo on

      Sullivan is no pioneer.

      Andrew Sullivan’s 1989 New Republic cover story, “The Case for Gay Marriage” https://newrepublic.com/article/79054/here-comes-the-groom

      Sullivan’s 1995 book “Virtually Normal” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtually_Normal, which argues in favor of same-sex marriage and an end to the military’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy.

      Should we be happy with gay improvement and throw the trans under the bus to protect ourselves?

      In his article, Sullivan wrote:

      “All of this is a disservice to transgender people, most of whom are very invested in the sexual and gender binary, not in hock to postmodern jargon, and who could simply make the argument that their brains appear to be of one gender and the rest of their bodies the other — and that they’d like to be treated with dignity and respect. Instead of demanding a redefining of everyone’s sex and gender following critical queer theory, what if activists simply asked for equal treatment for transgender people? I think that’s a persuasive argument, I passionately support it, and it would win if accompanied by the voices of trans people who are not on the extreme left and who can tell their stories and bring others along in a slow but durable and human way.”

  3. posted by Kosh III on

    Leonard Matlovich was a pioneer; he died the year before the Sullivan article of 1989.
    Harry Hay was a pioneer.

  4. posted by Mike King & David "TJ" Bauler on

    The gay couples in the early 1970s who actually fought against the ban on same-sex marriage were pioneers.

    The men and women and trans folk who protested police brutality and other injustices prior to Stonewall were pioneers. Heck the Stonewall rioters were pioneers

  5. posted by Kosh III on

    Yesterday we attended a wedding for two guys,
    A true PIONEER was there: Sister Soami Delux, a co-founder of Radical Faeries and of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

  6. posted by Throbert McGee on

    There are a couple of other possibilities that might explain it:

    (1) The “decline” being reported is not real, or if real, is less statistically significant than presented. GLAAD is massaging the numbers because GLAAD’s entire raisin detritus is to get LGBTQ people worried about homophobia/transphobia. Seriously, would it be in GLAAD’s interest to announce “After two years of Trump, support for LGBTQ rights remains as high as ever”? (I’m not sure that the numbers are fudged, but I’m sure that GLAAD would have a motive to fudge them.)

    (2) On the other hand, maybe the support really has declined. But one reason for this could be that in the past, people who were uncomfortable with homosexuality nevertheless declared themselves “allies” based on libertarian principles. They thought that gay sex was a sin, but they thought that government discrimination against gay people was a WORSE sin. Now that the legal battles have largely been won, these former allies feel less motivated to stay “loyal,” because they no longer perceive LGBTQ people as under siege.

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