The TQ+ Threat To LGB RightsThe return to the narrative of gays as queers, freaks, and child-obsessed is dangerous.
Governor Kathy Hochul has a decision to make by June 12. The New York State legislature recently tackled the vital, pressing issue of whether the terms “mother” and “father” are cruel and oppressive. They concluded that these terms are indeed transphobic and need to be replaced in law by “gestating parent” and “non-gestating parent.” “Paternity” is also bigoted and axed. Among the Democrats, the vote was, natch, a few shy of unanimous. And let’s not kid ourselves: Hochul’s signature is inevitable. On all questions gay and trans, the Dems are now entirely controlled by trans and “queer” extremists. Now take a look at this week’s Senate hearings on sex changes for children. Again, the Dems were unanimous, and their position utterly unchanged: the “safety” and “effectiveness” of transing children is beyond any dispute; no one but Republican bigots oppose it; and any problems can be dealt with retroactively by malpractice suits. (The only slight concession to reality was an end to the lie that transing children was the only way to stop them killing themselves. But no apology for the lie, of course. Or for the human wreckage the lie caused.) The Cass Review never happened. Affirmation-only guidelines never existed. Gays and lesbians and feminists and liberals who oppose transing children and defend the fact of the sex binary? Senators Sanders, Markey, and Baldwin don’t seem to know we even exist. Unsurprising. MS NOW, to take one example, has never had a single guest who’s been critical of child sex changes. The Cass Review, when it has even been mentioned, has been instantly dismissed. The gay and lesbian press, such as it is, reports on all this as a trans genocide in full swing. That’s where we are in gay and lesbian world this Pride month. Queer as fuck. About a year ago, I wrote an op-ed for the NYT warning that the queer takeover of what’s left of the gay and lesbian rights movement was hurting support for gay causes. I expected a huge backlash, but received a huge private thank you from gays and lesbians on the street in Ptown and throughout the reader comments. I asked for a debate among gays and Democrats. But a year later, no debate has happened outside social media tweet-storms, no gay or lesbian institution or public official has said a word, and the policies — profoundly unpopular, rooted in critical gender and queer theory — are hegemonic. Which is why it is only appropriate that Mamdani put out a Pride statement this week referring solely to “queer and trans people,” excising LGBs from the movement we built. Mamdani described all gays and lesbians with a word, “queer”, chosen by only 6 percent of us in a recent survey. (Check Google Trends to see how rarely the word was even a search item until the 2020s.) They even took Stonewall from us. Rachel Maddow called it “a riot by trans people.” Try and find a single one in the photos of that night in 1969. Now ask any gay under 40 who Frank Kameny was. No clue. The rigid refusal to compromise on this radicalization — they also changed the Pride flag to insert mandatory references to TQ+, the discredited BLM themes, and “brown people” — is merely a part of re-writing the narrative back to the 1970s, before AIDS and gay integration. There is little attempt to engage the straight majority with reason anymore — or even gays and lesbians queasy at these new mandates — just an impulse to provoke, condemn, or cancel them. I suspect the queers are so insulated they don’t even realize that this is what they have been effectively saying to Joe Public for a decade now. Remember when they told you that gay and lesbian people were just like everyone else, and just wanted to be left alone? Scrap that. We’re actually queers who believe marriage is a “fundamentally violent institution” and that the sex binary is a white supremacist fiction. Now we’ve gotten marriage, we will indoctrinate your kids in queer and gender theory, fire you if you don’t repeat our pronouns, force girls to shower next to boys in locker rooms, give irreversible sex changes to minors, and insist that “a penis is not a male body part. It’s just an unusual body part for a woman.” And, after a few years of this kind of messaging, and no pushback from regular gays and lesbians … guess what? Support for marriage equality from the center and center-right is nosediving. Gallup shows a decline from 71 percent to 65 percent support for gay marriage among all Americans in just three years. Among Independents, support has dropped by six points in four years, from 73 to 67 percent; and among Republicans by 18 points, from 55 percent in 2022 to just 37 percent today — setting us back 20 years. On the morality of same-sex relations, the drops are more acute: down 10 points among Indies and 21 points among Republicans. As someone who played a part in bringing those Republicans and moderates around to gay marriage, it’s distressing to see what the queer overreach has done — especially in red states. We’re told that this is all about “hate”. Really? The same polls that show growing opposition to men in women’s sports, and against the transing/sterilization/mutilation of children with gender dysphoria, also show huge support for civil rights protections for trans adults. But the distinction between adults and children, like the one between men and women, doesn’t exist for the Democrats. The only mention of “transgender” in the 2024 Dem autopsy was to note how Trump’s ad on the issue was “very effective” … no shit. But the response is to keep giving Trump ever more ammunition! Within the gay and lesbian world, the policing of even mild dissent is oppressive. Express skepticism and you’ll be instantly accused of “pulling up the ladder” after you; or “throwing trans people under the bus”; or of being a “pick-me” gay who wants his rights but denies them to trans people. But when you ask them what civil right we are saying should be given gay people but denied trans people, they come up empty. Because there isn’t one. I want every trans person to have every civil right a gay person has — and they do! What I disagree with is a new, hard-left, genderqueer political agenda — which has nothing to do with gays and lesbians at all, except that it actually endangers LG children with gender dysphoria, and threatens women’s rights as well. I don’t have the slightest problem with people calling themselves queer and innovating whatever lifestyles they want. God bless them. I simply have a problem saying that 6 percent should define and brand the other 94 percent of relative normies. Yes, some truly ugly forces have seized on this own-goal by the queers to ramp up real hatred of gays and trans people. That’s vile. But the right didn’t invent men-in-women’s-sports or sex changes for children. They just responded to these things being imposed on them by fiat. They were growing more tolerant before the queer onslaught. The last GOP convention dropped opposition to marriage equality; Trump himself has said he’s “fine” with gay marriage; he appointed an openly gay married man with children as treasury secretary; his first Supreme Court pick, Neil Gorsuch, wrote the majority opinion for Bostock that secured employment rights for both gays and trans people. What more do you want? YMCA at every rally? Homoerotic AI images of Trump? An army of gays working for Trump? You got ‘em! And the Gallup nosedive began under Biden and Levine, not Trump. What the queers are doing, in other words, is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Which, one suspects, is what they really yearn for. Marriage equality was a huge blow to the queer left. They hated the idea that gay men and women could just be normies, primarily interested in getting on with their lives, marriages, jobs, and children once their civil rights were settled. Where’s the edgy radicalism in that? What are activists gonna do if that happens? Get a life? A truly terrifying prospect for those clinging to adolescent revolt in their 40s. And so, for the first time since 2015, I genuinely fear for the future of marriage equality. Our rights are vulnerable without broad public support. And that support was based on a moderate approach and universal language, with conservative as well as liberal variations. Replace that moderation, persuasion, and live-and-let-live ethos with a hectoring, radical, genderqueer revolution? We could lose everything. And we are beginning to. Dismiss my arguments if you want. The queers and Dems certainly do. But I did the actual work of persuading and engaging people for a couple of lonely, exhausting decades. I learned something from it. And what I learned suggests we are making a terrible mistake; and if we don’t correct soon, and drastically, the 1950s will beckon again. They’ll be calling us queers again. Because we just gave them permission. (Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a paid subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: a pod with Ben Rhodes on the Iran War and Israel’s influence; reader dissents over Dr Biden and Talarico; more reader discussion on several topics including AI; nine notable quotes from the week in news; 16 pieces on Substack we recommend on a variety of subjects; a Mental Health Break of medieval Daft Punk; a gorgeous window from Stockholm; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!) From a new paid subscriber:
New On The Dishcast: Ben Rhodes
Ben is a writer and political adviser. He served as a deputy national security advisor and speechwriter to Obama for both terms. He’s currently a co-host of “Pod Save the World,” a contributing opinion writer for the NYT, and a contributor for MS NOW. He’s the author of After the Fall and The World as It Is, and his new book is All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches. We avoided saying anything that might upset the Ellisons. Enjoy! Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on AIPAC opposing the JCPOA, and our latest catastrophe in the Middle East. That link also takes you to listener comments on last week’s pod about George Washington. I also respond to readers on the implications of AI, learned helplessness, Talarico, and the fucking “Progress” flag. Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Tiffany Jenkins on privacy in a liberal democracy, Daniel McCarthy on conservatism, John Gray on Trump’s new world, Bob Wright on the evolutionary force of AI, Stephen Grosz on the struggles of love, David Thomson on cinema history, James Verini on Ukraine, John O’Sullivan on Hungary, and Robby George on all our disagreements. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com. Dissents Of The WeekOn my piece last week criticizing Dr Biden and James Talarico, a reader writes:
She helped give us Trump and is still lying about it. So, er, no. No slack, just accountability. Another reader wants me to cut Talarico some slack:
Except Talarico is directing them straight to Judith Butler and Robin DiAngelo. And he’s giving the impression that Christianity believes in collective guilt and structural racism, and holds the sex binary as a white supremacist lie. I don’t doubt he’s a sincere and nice guy. But he’s a woke-left authoritarian as well. Could not vote for him. Gotta draw the line somewhere and calling women “people with uteruses” is a line. More dissents are over on the pod page. As always, please keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com. And follow more Dish debate in my Notes feed. In The ‘StacksThis is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as the handwringing over Platner, two woke controversies in the UK, and the MJ biopic. Examples:
Here’s a list of the substacks we recommend in general — call it a blogroll. If you have any suggestions for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com. The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday at 11.59 pm (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that in your entry and we will give you a free month subscription. Contest archive is here. Happy sleuthing! The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. Here’s an entry from last week’s contest:
See you next Friday.
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