In a Washington Blade column, Mark Lee points out that Gay groups taking on gun issues could backfire:
Do gay activists and organizations run the risk of fracturing equality efforts and the continuing support among constituents for their work by engaging on other political issues, especially when many potential topics enjoy much less than universal, or even broad, support?
Well, yes. But they see their mission as enlisting LGBT brigades to fight for the progressive agenda.
Also on the activists front, the Washington Post reports that LGBT-friendly Asheville feels the impact of the ‘bathroom bill’ boycotts. Gay-owned and gay-friendly businesses in North Carolina are feeling the pain in places that are overwhelmingly liberal like Asheville, and in Charlotte where the transgender-inclusive bill was passed (triggering the state legislature to overturn it and decree that for public schools and government buildings people must use restrooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificates—leading to the calls to boycott businesses in the state).
If you’re gay or gay-supportive, it’s probably the gay and gay-supportive businesses for whom you’d be a likely customer. Those are the ones you’re now being told to boycott so as to punish North Carolina, in a collective-guilt sense.
Activism can be necessary and productive in the fight for civil rights and equality before the law. It can also be, and increasingly seems to be, about signaling self-righteousness and political correctness.
Relatedly, Cathy Young on feminist male-bashing:
Male faults are stated as sweeping condemnations; objecting to such generalizations is taken as a sign of complicity. Meanwhile, similar indictments of women would be considered grossly misogynistic.
This gender antagonism does nothing to advance the unfinished business of equality. If anything, the fixation on men behaving badly is a distraction from more fundamental issues, such as changes in the workplace to promote work-life balance.
It’s all about one-upping each other on the ideological purity scale.
More. Black Lives Matter Toronto staged a sit-in during the city’s Pride march, halting the procession for 30 minutes before organizers signed a list of demands, including “A commitment to increase representation among Pride Toronto staffing/hiring, prioritizing black trans women” among others, and, more ominously, “Removal of police floats in the pride marches/parades.”
Global News reports that despite the pledge to “purge the parade of police marchers,” that “Officers will still be present to enforce security at future parades.”
Via The Star, “Police also wouldn’t be allowed to have booths at future Pride celebrations, if the demands are met.” Inclusion!
Furthermore. Via Walter Olson:
If you thought blackmailing gays was a thing of the past, you didn’t reckon with BLM. … It so typifies 2016 that the ones to shut down a gay pride parade would be on the Left, and that no one would tell them off.
And from James Kirchick:
Gay groups honored Black Lives Matter with prominent roles at their pride events, and Black Lives Matter returned the favor by hijacking those events to further their own anti-cop agendas. Condemning the police as an inherently racist, homophobic institution is not only false and counterproductive, it denigrates the many LGBT officers whose participation in these festivities would be annulled if the activists got their way.
Take back Gay Pride from the left-progressive haters, in NYC and Toronto!