Culture & Identity

Support for LGBT Acceptance Drops, Say Activists Who Can’t See How They’re Responsible

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GLAAD (formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) reports that:

While the past several decades have yielded remarkable progress for the LGBTQ community in the United States, acceptance of LGBTQ people is slipping, and discrimination is increasing, in the face of attacks, bias, and erasure by the Trump administration. This is the first time the Accelerating Acceptance report has shown a drop in acceptance for LGBTQ people.

Even if you accept GLAAD’s finding of a drop in acceptance, here’s an alternative explanation to “Erasure by the Trump administration,” whatever Trump is Hitler hysteria that’s supposed to invoke. How about this: Forcing religiously conservative (but NEVER Muslim) small business owners to craft creative expressions for same-sex weddings seems to many Americans who are willing to live and let live as, well, ugly authoritarianism. Or that the federal government decreeing that public schools make restrooms and locker rooms open to use based on gender identity rather than anatomy seems to many who are OK with same-sex marriage to be an ill considered overstep.

And then there’s this.

The LGBT activist movement has squandered a great deal of goodwill. Blaming Donald Trump won’t restore it.

More. Andrew Sullivan has similar thoughts:

The mainstream media has no other explanation than, well, Trump, and a culture more tolerant of intolerance. That may well be part of it. But no one seems to notice the profound shift in the tone and substance of advocacy for gay equality in recent years, and the radicalization of the movement’s ideology and rhetoric. That is also surely having an impact. …

As many of us saw our goals largely completed and moved on, the far left filled the void. … “Live and let live” became: “If you don’t believe gender is nonbinary, you’re a bigot.” I would be shocked if this sudden lurch in the message didn’t in some way negatively affect some straight people’s views of gays.

The left’s indifference to religious freedom — see the question of Masterpiece Cakeshop— has also taken a toll. So have the PC bromides of the LGBTQRSTUV reformulation.

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Guy Benson on Being a Gay Conservative

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Guy Benson says:

I’m really proud of this video & was so pleased to be invited to contribute to the ‘Prager U’ juggernaut. In this short monologue, I discuss being a right-leaning member of the LGBT community, reject the narrow-minded & limiting tyranny of identity politics, and celebrate genuine progress. Please take less than five minutes to watch it and consider my points. You don’t have to agree with everything — and that’s okay! Thanks…

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Heresy: Men and Women Are Different

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Andrew Sullivan writes:

Is the fact that the vast majority of construction workers are male and the huge majority of nurses are female a function of sexism or nature? Is male sexual aggression and horniness a function of patriarchy or testosterone? …

My suspicion is that it’s more about nature than about society, and one reason I believe this (apart from all the data) is I because I’m gay. I live in a sexual and romantic world without women, where no patriarchy could definitionally exist, a subculture with hookups and relationships and marriages and every conceivable form of sexual desire that straight men and women experience as well. And you know what you find? That men behave no differently in sexual matters when there are no women involved at all. In fact, remove women, and you see male sexuality unleashed more fully, as men would naturally express it, if they could get away with it.

And this:

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‘Tolerance’ Excludes Gay Republicans

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Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity: The Pre-Puberty Conundrum

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James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose recently wrote in Areo magazine:

It is significant that some studies have found that gender identity and sexual orientation are almost perfectly confounded in teenagers who do not yet possess the mature brain or the experience necessary to distinguish between these. There are serious ethical problems with having this decision [receiving surgery and/or taking hormones which permanently alter their bodies] made for them by well-meaning adults. Given that most cases of gender dysphoria in children resolve after puberty, often with the realization that the child is gay or lesbian, transitioning children is difficult to justify ethically.

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Annals of Intersectionality

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For the progressive LGBQT+ movement, any issue on the left is now a LGBTQ+ issue. which is part of the ethos of intersectionality that only a racist, sexist, classist, transphobe would dare to object to.

Among recent examples:


For a different view of net neutrality:

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Obviously, it’s an issue that well-meaning people can disagree about, except if you do, you’re a racist, sexist, classist, transphobe.

Another example:

As the Blade reports:

Laura Durso, vice president of LGBT research and communications for the Center for American Progress, said the package “will have massively negative implications for LGBTQ people” especially as a result of ending the individual mandate for health care.

The advantages/disadvantages of ending the individual mandate that Americans must buy expensive Obamacare policies or pay a tax penalty is also a matter that’s debatable, except when it isn’t.

And this:

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has projected the package would add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over the course of 10 years, or as much as $2.2 trillion. As a result, the national debt — which is now $20.6 trillion — would double by 2027.

There is room for argument over whether the bill will stimulate economic growth to compensate for lower rates, but progressive groups were silent on the debt issue while under the sainted Obama the national debt grew by about $9 trillion, or an increase of 86%.

The point is not to convince those on the left that net neutrality, the individual mandate or letting people save and invest more of their own money is good or bad, it’s to point out that for those in leadership positions within the LGBTQ+ activist movement, to take the wrong side of these issues is to be ant-gay and, well you know the rest of the litany.

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