Civil Rights and Discrimination

Odds & Ends

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We’re seeing more indications that the smug, elitist, soft authoritarianism known colloquially as “woke” finally may be receding, leaving it its wake a legacy ranging from lost rights to freedom of speech and equal treatment under the law, to civil disasters, some deadly. Turns out, for instance, that replacing merit and ability as hiring and promotion metrics with identity group “equity” doesn’t work out so well.
But key constituencies on the left, including the LGBTQ+ progressives who dominant what was once the movement for gay and lesbian legal equality and social acceptance (what a quaint idea!), remain committed to the woke ideology in all its critical race and critical gender glory.

Maybe her primary goal should have been preparing the LAFD to fight fires. Adam Lehrer at The Scroll reports: >>In 2022,…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Wednesday, January 8, 2025


And this:


Added: GLAAD comes out full force against ending woke censorship at Facebook. The group has long favored silencing voices it disagrees with.

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The Side that’s Authoritarian Is Pretty Clear

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It’s well past time for LGBTQ+ activists to stop the lawfare against Jack Phillips, owner of the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Co., and trade their authoritarian (you will do what we say, deplorable) attitude for a more just and libertarian one (you have your beliefs, we have ours, and that’s fine).
From the Wall Street Journal editorial, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission acted with particular animus toward Phillips’ faith when ordering him to create a custom same-sex wedding cake:

[A]n attorney had called Mr. Phillips to request another custom cake, this one celebrating a gender transition. He also requested a second cake depicting Satan smoking marijuana. Mr. Phillips declined again on religious free-exercise grounds. The attorney then sued. This is the lawsuit the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed this week….

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What Contributions to ‘Big LGBTQ+’ Are Paying For

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In further evidence of how LGBTQ+ activists and ideologues are undermining the hard-fought victories that gay men and lesbians won, consider this. Charles M. Blow, a social justice columnist for the New York Times, argues that queerness is chosen and we should stop saying people are born with an innate sexuality. Here, he draws heavily on academic queer theory and gender studies academics.

Blow writes:

“Born this way,” as a slogan, was a tremendous cultural and political success. The problem is that it isn’t supported by science. The emerging scientific consensus is that sexual orientation isn’t purely genetic. A person’s genetic makeup and exposure to prenatal hormones may provide a propensity to queerness, but they aren’t determinative. …
But the time may have come to retire the phrase. It is not only unsupportable by science but also does not capture the full reality of queer experience and is unjust to some members of the queer community itself.

Is it any wonder that there is a growing backlash against “LGBTQ+” when queer ideologues are undermining the arguments that won equality for LGB people while, at the same time, they’re pushing gender-nonconforming kids onto the trans train?


Andrew Doyle on what the current version of LGBT+ activism has done to what was once the movement for gay and lesbian equality.


Not only is big LGBT+ activism wrong-headed and counter-productive, but thoroughly corrupt as well.

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Supreme Court Balances Anti-Discrimination Laws with Expressive Freedom Protections

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The Supreme Court rules in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis that the First Amendment bars Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees.
The majority ruling was based on First Amendment free speech grounds.
The progressive media, LGBTQ+ activist fundraising lobbies, and Democratic party politicos claim that the ruling is a frontal attack on LGBTQ+ rights and allows businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ clients. But the ruling does not permit businesses to refuse LGBTQ+ customers overall; it’s clearly targeted at allowing providers to refuse requests for services that involve the creation of explicit communications that violate the provider’s beliefs.
It is often necessary to balance conflicting rights. LGBTQ+ activists and Democratic party officials want to use the state to force small business owners to engage in expressive activity that violates their religious or otherwise deeply held beliefs. The court rightly told them to desist.
(Edited to clarify that the decision was based on freedom of speech, not religious freedom, grounds.)

Added:

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Intersectional Homophobia

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You hear this more and more, and not just on campuses, which largely birthed woke intersectional dogma, but in mainstream LGBTQ movement groups, such as GLAAD (discussed here) and HRC. Cis, gay, white men, increasingly, aren’t welcomed, or are expected to receive and accept abuse as penance for their privilege if they are employed or otherwise seek to be involved. Yet they continue to fund these same groups, as they always have.

From LGBAlliance USA, A Rainbow by Any Other Name: In Defense of “The Homosexual”:

One gay man’s story about how campus LGBTQ organizations have become places filled with regressive homophobia that will not allow advocacy based on same-sex orientation.

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