It's on the rocks, but its tentacles are still throughout K-12 education. Although normal sane people had a win with the recent SCOTUS ruling in favor of Montgomery county parents being allowed to opt out of LGBTQ+ themed books in public education.... LGBTQ+ ideology and influence is in MANY "normal seeming" children, middle-grade, and YA books. These books are promoted heavily and go on to win awards.
My sister-in-law is married to a woman, and it's even an interracial marriage. They are both Gen X and they steer clear from current PRIDE nonsense. They don't have rainbows anything or purple hair. They don't center their lives or conversation around their sexual orientation. They vote Republican and love their 2nd amendment right.
And that right there is the core of the success of gay rights. Gays showed the wider society that they are normal people. Once society realized that gays who parade around in leather chaps (and nothing else) are a tiny minority, and that most gays in fact mow their lawns, pay their bills, go to work, and otherwise participate in all the same minutiae of life that everyone else does, attitudes softened and gays were (mostly) accepted. It is not the difference that bothers people as much as the performative overtness of it all. That the trans and other movements did not realize this and instead went hell-bent-for-leather down a performative path is exactly why there has been such a backlash. I know a trans woman who thought about it for years before transitioning as is about as normal a woman as you can imagine. Anyone who didn't know her before she transitioned would never guess she is trans. We haven't talked about it, but I would be completely unsurprised to learn she's as horrified by all the odd activism as straights and gays are.
We can fault mainstream media and contemporary culture for their overt performativeness nonsense. Because it was the media (news, magazines, Hollywood) that celebrated these mentally ill people on letting their freak flag fly in everyone else's faces. The tolerance of the 90's and 00's was mistook for praise and now we have a younger generation itching for praise, so if that means castrating oneself or dancing on stage in the almost nude in front of preschoolers, so be it.
Ironically, the embrace of every trans related fetish has demonstrated to many that their fears about open acceptance of the gay community leading to demands to accept wider sexual "perversion" were perhaps not that far off the mark. The LGBTetc. community has in the trans community, the same problem that the heterosexual community has with polygamy whether from old line Mormons or Islam. Some social arrangements individuals might choose are simply bad for the wider society and should not be condoned.
Ironically, both communities face this same problem far more immediately today because of the LGBT community's pushing of the naive idea that the definition of marriage should be based on people who love each other being allowed to marry without any other considerations. That was always a foolish idea as it opened the door not just to gay marriage but to child marriage, incestuous marriage and polygamous marriage. Individuals have many freedoms in this world...but society as a whole also has the freedom to set limits on behavior that will be socially accepted and promoted, socially disapproved but tolerated or outright banned.
The LGBTetc. community has a choice to make. Reject the perversions coming from the far Left and trans activists...or risk a restoration of a wider societal rejection of all non heterosexual relationships. Personally, from seeing how Islam treats women and marriages and the turmoil created by the trans community...it might be wise to leave marriage as a religious arrangement not recognized by the state at all but use civil union contracts for all legal "marriages" using the definition of two consenting adults not related genetically close than third cousins. This would allow individuals and communities to have whatever "marriages" they like but not require the rest of society to recognize these "relationships" with only the civil unions recognized by the state as having the force of law.
Similarly, the entire concept of Pride celebrations has always seemed like a bad idea to me. Pride is recognized as one of the deadly sins and is known to lead to many problems in society and life. Pride is NOT the same thing as self respect. It seems to me that while Pride events originally were seeking self respect, they have now deviated into the sinful aspects and narcissistic aspects of pride the sin. In that form, do not be surprised if such events lose public support and respect. The LGBTetc. community has a rather narrow window to correct course before society imposes a correction they may not like.
Over the last few years, I have noticed that old-school Lesbians and Gays were being disinvited from attending Pride events including parades, all over the world. And there has been lots of other rumblings of discontent from groups like Gays Against Groomers.
The vanguard of the Alphabet movement is now TQ+ and other assorted eccentrics and paraphiliacs. Many representatives have told me that they loathe LGB and previous generations. But they "forbid" LGB from daring to "separate" from TQ+. They think they need the political cover, I guess.
However, among the massive straight community, a blowback is brewing, even though many are in denial. I would not be surprised to see all the "advances" like gay marriage being swept away. Given some privileges, the community abused them and went to extremes.
A large fraction of Antifa arrests consist of trans activists. A large fraction of the recent mass shooters have identified as trans. All kinds of trans paramilitary groups, like Rainbow Reload, are forming and training.
Gays achieved amazing civil rights results across the developed democracies in the short span of a few decades - an amazing achievement.
Gays' mistake over the last few years has been in not confronting the radicals - trans radicals, BLM, ... - that took over far too many pride parades, organizations, ...
And gays really dishonoured their debt of honour to lesbians - who gave political support and cared for victims of the AIDS Plague - when they didn't support them from attacks by the trans radicals and woke left.
Surprising it took so long for gays to notice they were trans-ing the gay away. Now seems like a good time to reexplore the old concern about whether pedophilia is more common among homosexuals. Seems like pushing the gay and trans agenda on children was the very next bit of "progress" that activists decided was important after marriage rights.
This kind of stuff seems to have lit the fuse on what might be the demise of the entire alphabet soup of nonsense.
As I have mentioned to many, it does not matter if they personally agree with it, or not, or support it or not. Everyone is going to go down with the ship. The storm clouds are gathering.
Thanks for saying that universities are behind the times. For anyone remotely well read, the silliness STILL churning out of uni administration (and many faculty colleagues) about gender stuff is simply embarrassing. I think there are very few true ideologues -- which is good, I guess, though I could even have a certain amount of respect for a true ideologue for sticking to their guns.
What has been incredibly disillusioning is figuring out how many dummies there are. People who have spent their professional lives at universities -- as faculty or in administration -- who don't read regularly and widely. It's been like one of those tests where you run a dye through a system and see where it goes: almost everyone who turned fanatically pink and blue is a numbskull, and it turns out there are so so so so so so so many of them.
It's on the rocks, but its tentacles are still throughout K-12 education. Although normal sane people had a win with the recent SCOTUS ruling in favor of Montgomery county parents being allowed to opt out of LGBTQ+ themed books in public education.... LGBTQ+ ideology and influence is in MANY "normal seeming" children, middle-grade, and YA books. These books are promoted heavily and go on to win awards.
My sister-in-law is married to a woman, and it's even an interracial marriage. They are both Gen X and they steer clear from current PRIDE nonsense. They don't have rainbows anything or purple hair. They don't center their lives or conversation around their sexual orientation. They vote Republican and love their 2nd amendment right.
And that right there is the core of the success of gay rights. Gays showed the wider society that they are normal people. Once society realized that gays who parade around in leather chaps (and nothing else) are a tiny minority, and that most gays in fact mow their lawns, pay their bills, go to work, and otherwise participate in all the same minutiae of life that everyone else does, attitudes softened and gays were (mostly) accepted. It is not the difference that bothers people as much as the performative overtness of it all. That the trans and other movements did not realize this and instead went hell-bent-for-leather down a performative path is exactly why there has been such a backlash. I know a trans woman who thought about it for years before transitioning as is about as normal a woman as you can imagine. Anyone who didn't know her before she transitioned would never guess she is trans. We haven't talked about it, but I would be completely unsurprised to learn she's as horrified by all the odd activism as straights and gays are.
We can fault mainstream media and contemporary culture for their overt performativeness nonsense. Because it was the media (news, magazines, Hollywood) that celebrated these mentally ill people on letting their freak flag fly in everyone else's faces. The tolerance of the 90's and 00's was mistook for praise and now we have a younger generation itching for praise, so if that means castrating oneself or dancing on stage in the almost nude in front of preschoolers, so be it.
Ironically, the embrace of every trans related fetish has demonstrated to many that their fears about open acceptance of the gay community leading to demands to accept wider sexual "perversion" were perhaps not that far off the mark. The LGBTetc. community has in the trans community, the same problem that the heterosexual community has with polygamy whether from old line Mormons or Islam. Some social arrangements individuals might choose are simply bad for the wider society and should not be condoned.
Ironically, both communities face this same problem far more immediately today because of the LGBT community's pushing of the naive idea that the definition of marriage should be based on people who love each other being allowed to marry without any other considerations. That was always a foolish idea as it opened the door not just to gay marriage but to child marriage, incestuous marriage and polygamous marriage. Individuals have many freedoms in this world...but society as a whole also has the freedom to set limits on behavior that will be socially accepted and promoted, socially disapproved but tolerated or outright banned.
The LGBTetc. community has a choice to make. Reject the perversions coming from the far Left and trans activists...or risk a restoration of a wider societal rejection of all non heterosexual relationships. Personally, from seeing how Islam treats women and marriages and the turmoil created by the trans community...it might be wise to leave marriage as a religious arrangement not recognized by the state at all but use civil union contracts for all legal "marriages" using the definition of two consenting adults not related genetically close than third cousins. This would allow individuals and communities to have whatever "marriages" they like but not require the rest of society to recognize these "relationships" with only the civil unions recognized by the state as having the force of law.
Similarly, the entire concept of Pride celebrations has always seemed like a bad idea to me. Pride is recognized as one of the deadly sins and is known to lead to many problems in society and life. Pride is NOT the same thing as self respect. It seems to me that while Pride events originally were seeking self respect, they have now deviated into the sinful aspects and narcissistic aspects of pride the sin. In that form, do not be surprised if such events lose public support and respect. The LGBTetc. community has a rather narrow window to correct course before society imposes a correction they may not like.
Over the last few years, I have noticed that old-school Lesbians and Gays were being disinvited from attending Pride events including parades, all over the world. And there has been lots of other rumblings of discontent from groups like Gays Against Groomers.
The vanguard of the Alphabet movement is now TQ+ and other assorted eccentrics and paraphiliacs. Many representatives have told me that they loathe LGB and previous generations. But they "forbid" LGB from daring to "separate" from TQ+. They think they need the political cover, I guess.
However, among the massive straight community, a blowback is brewing, even though many are in denial. I would not be surprised to see all the "advances" like gay marriage being swept away. Given some privileges, the community abused them and went to extremes.
A large fraction of Antifa arrests consist of trans activists. A large fraction of the recent mass shooters have identified as trans. All kinds of trans paramilitary groups, like Rainbow Reload, are forming and training.
So, we will have to see what happens I guess.
Lots of LGB are also self-disinviting from Pride
Who could blame them? Things are changing and Pride is very different now.
Gays achieved amazing civil rights results across the developed democracies in the short span of a few decades - an amazing achievement.
Gays' mistake over the last few years has been in not confronting the radicals - trans radicals, BLM, ... - that took over far too many pride parades, organizations, ...
And gays really dishonoured their debt of honour to lesbians - who gave political support and cared for victims of the AIDS Plague - when they didn't support them from attacks by the trans radicals and woke left.
Surprising it took so long for gays to notice they were trans-ing the gay away. Now seems like a good time to reexplore the old concern about whether pedophilia is more common among homosexuals. Seems like pushing the gay and trans agenda on children was the very next bit of "progress" that activists decided was important after marriage rights.
This kind of stuff seems to have lit the fuse on what might be the demise of the entire alphabet soup of nonsense.
As I have mentioned to many, it does not matter if they personally agree with it, or not, or support it or not. Everyone is going to go down with the ship. The storm clouds are gathering.
That is my 2 cent prediction.
Thanks for saying that universities are behind the times. For anyone remotely well read, the silliness STILL churning out of uni administration (and many faculty colleagues) about gender stuff is simply embarrassing. I think there are very few true ideologues -- which is good, I guess, though I could even have a certain amount of respect for a true ideologue for sticking to their guns.
What has been incredibly disillusioning is figuring out how many dummies there are. People who have spent their professional lives at universities -- as faculty or in administration -- who don't read regularly and widely. It's been like one of those tests where you run a dye through a system and see where it goes: almost everyone who turned fanatically pink and blue is a numbskull, and it turns out there are so so so so so so so many of them.
Pride goeth before a fall. Pride is nothing to be proud of. I heard somewhere that the meek shall inherit the earth.
Loved the article; can't stand Neil Diamond