Culture & Identity

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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