Culture & Identity

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.

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When Political Violence Gets a Pass

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Ed Driscoll posts:

If you’re wondering why so few Democrats condemned Antifa’s Saturday attack on journalist Andy Ngo in Portland, in January of last year, the Washington Free Beacon reported “[Democratic Deputy Chair Keith] Ellison Posts Photo of Himself Posing With ‘Antifa’ Handbook, Says It Will ‘Strike Fear’ in Trump.”

Update:

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No Longer About Legal Equality

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He observes, quite accurately, that:

A culture that once preached individuality and personal freedom has become conformist and hectoring, its self-appointed queer commissars constantly policing the language and bringing pressure to bear on those who run afoul of their ever-evolving standards.

And, tellingly:

When I asked the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s leading gay-rights group, for statistics on the number of LGBTQ people annually denied employment, housing, or service at a hotel or restaurant due to their sexuality or gender identity, the group was unable to provide me with any. Most social movements are able to identify the extent of the problems they seek to address.

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More Myths

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Kwame Anthony Appiah writes:

>>Today, a new generation of political and social activists are inclined to speak of “allyship,” by which they typically mean an arrangement where prospective allies submit to the direction of the marginalized group, like deferential guests in someone else’s home. The vision here is remote from true coalition building, from a partnership of mutual respect, from a politics grounded in overlapping moral perceptions.<<
And again:

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Beyond Victimhood

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Andrew Sullivan writes: >>Those whose livelihoods are built on defending victims have an interest in sustaining a victim paradigm for gay America, in which they are the saviors. And victim narratives are comfortable. They allow us to avoid responsibility for our own problems, while transferring it to others. They evoke cheap but satisfying empathy. They seem to cast us as somehow noble for being “oppressed.” They actually provide status among today’s elites — and can help you advance your own career solely on the basis of your orientation if you want to go to college or get a job at a major corporation. I think it’s time to shuck off this narrative, because it is a crude simplification of the gay experience, because it is profoundly out of date, and because it focuses us on other people we cannot always change while ignoring things closer to home that we can. What we need now, I think, is a narrative more productive and constructive, less about the harm the world can do to us, and more about the good we can give back to the world.<<

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The New Culture Wars

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Transgenderism has transformed what used to be the fight for gay and lesbian legal equality. Now, it’s something very different.

Every time the old Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) was poised to pass Congress, activists and Democratic sponsors changed it so it couldn’t win majority support. First it was a bill to outlaw employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, and once that had enough Republican support to pass, it was changed to include gender identity, which didn’t. The Equality Act is ENDA on steroids, vastly expanding the scope of “public accommodations” to include creative-services providers (such as bakers and wedding photographers), gutting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and requiring that bio males who chose to “present” as female (no physical alteration required) be treated as women in all areas, including the right to compete as women in sporting competitions.

The GOP-led Senate won’t pass the Equality Act, and rightly so. But Democrats and LGBT progressive will say it’s because Republicans don’t oppose employment discrimination, as if it were the original ENDA.

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