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A Letter to My Gay Friends
June is widely recognized as “Pride Month,” and I’m sure we’ll see lots of reminders of that over the next few weeks. Most people aren’t aware that the Pride movement was inspired by, and is in part to commemorate, a specific series of events, the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969.
Like members of many other minority groups in American history, homosexual men and women faced discrimination, both legal and cultural, that was overcome only slowly and often at great personal cost. But it was overcome: today people who experience same-sex attraction have the same rights as heterosexuals and enjoy widespread public acceptance.
While the acronym “LGBT” (often with additional letters appended) is now ubiquitous, some in the gay community recognize, correctly I think, a problem with the inclusion of gender identity (trans, etc.) in what has traditionally been a gay rights movement. While the LGB movement sought equality and acceptance, the trans movement attempts to demand more than that and does so in ways that many people reasonably find objectionable.
Many of us don’t want to be told what to say, what pronouns to use, that our daughters must compete against biological males in sporting events, and share locker rooms with them in school. We also reject the seemingly nonsensical notion that we should pretend a boy is a girl simply because the boy declares that he is a girl. We resent the myriad circumlocutions increasingly required to avoid recognizing simple sexual reality: such nonsense as calling mothers “birthing people,” for example.
Beyond that, the trans movement is fundamentally hostile to the notion of basic human sexuality, and in particular of womanhood. It represents the final denial that men and women are different in important ways, in favor of a fictitious equivalence that, predictably, tends to serve men well at the expense of women.
I think there is a growing awareness among some in the gay community that there will be pushback against the increasingly extreme and unacceptable demands of the trans movement, and that, to the extent the gay movement is seen as inextricably bound to the trans movement, that pushback may undermine and threaten legitimate gains made by gay rights activists. It’s perfectly reasonable to encourage tolerance and understanding of people who are different; it isn’t reasonable to demand professions of belief and unacceptable accommodations (e.g., in athletics) based on a fanciful reimagining of human sexuality.
I think it would be prudent to begin to question whether being strongly allied with the so-called “trans” movement is in anyone’s best interests.
Published in Culture
People may not know, but the Stonewall Riots were (allegedly) led by Drag Queens, not by straight passing gay men. Iow by those of us who were most obviously different, who didn’t have the option of passing when facing adversity. And to some extent those are still the people who significantly define/create public gay space, so that it’s available to all of us.
The whole point of that space is to include marginalised sexual minorities, not exclude them without good reason.
So you may have your issues with trans people – which is fine, talk it over with them is my advice rather than just about them – but isolating them from the rest of the LGBTQI+ whatever mob is not going to fly with most of us.
Especially if it comes wrapped in a “nice set of equal rights you got there, pity if something happened to them because you’re associated with trans people” package with a “gay oppression is over, no need to talk about this any more” bow on the top.
Zafar, thanks for your comment. I appreciate your thoughts on the matter.
Let me address your final comment first. There is a difference between warning people and threatening people. I’m not alone in thinking that the trans movement, which is in my opinion deeply misguided, overly aggressive, and harmful, is going to do harm to the established gay rights movement. That isn’t a threat, merely an observation that I think the gay rights movement should take into account.
As for the cross dressers, transvestites, and drag queens, you’re absolutely right: they have been present from the beginning of the gay rights movement. But they are not the modern trans movement. Transvestite men have never insisted that I pretend they are women.
Crossdressing is a fetish. That’s fine: there are lots of fetishes. If the trans movement were content to describe itself as a fetish, I’d be OK with it. But that’s not what it’s doing.
@zafar above me pretty much spoke well on this. But we should also consider that no organized group has done more to legally advance the trans movement than the ACLU. And it should be less than a secret that the ACLU–headed by a gay man–has been focused on gay rights in the last decade or so over and above its traditional areas of concern. Since I’m straight, I get that it’s very possible for straight people to view the trans movement as a bridge too far for the gay rights movement when in fact they’re the same. It’s not going to change.
As an aside, it’s a little publicized matter that Stonewall was as much of an anti-mafia protest as anything else. The mafia totally controlled the gay bar scene in NYC then, and, needless to say, took advantage of that by ridiculous prices, watered-down booze, and exploitation of customers.
Hank, sorry, but you have to count me out of this one. I do not consider the normalization of homosexuality to have been a good thing. I do not think that homosexual people have a “right” to engage in sodomy. I disagree with the idea that there are “gay rights.” I find this to be a fundamental misconception of the very idea of “rights,” as the category in question is based entirely on behavior.
Homosexual people do have the same rights as the rest of us — to vote, own property, speak freely, and the like. But I reject the idea that there is a “right” to homosexual sodomy. This was the holding of a SCOTUS majority as recently as the Bowers v. Hardwick case in 1986.
It is depressing to find myself in a minority on this point, even among self-identified conservatives.
In my view, the fundamental underlying arguments of modern feminism, the pro-homosexuality movement, and the trans movement are identical. The application is different, but the concept is the same, I think. In all cases, it is a rejection of traditional marriage and traditional family. So I dissent. Pointlessly, it seems.
I’m pretty much libertarian on sexual practices, and I accept that homosexuality is really a thing. It’s a common enough thing that I wouldn’t describe it as a significant emotional or psychological abnormality. Unlike, say, gender dysphoria.
I know that there are a lot of people who see it otherwise, but that’s a very different discussion than the contrast between tolerating a sexual preference and being compelled to participate in a sexual fantasy.
And yes, I think that ship has sailed for those of you who see it otherwise. Unless the trans movement does enough damage to cause a refocusing on fundamental issues of homosexual rights – and I hope it does not — I don’t expect the status quo to change.
This is all well and good. But what does it have to do with the practical realities of today’s living? You dissent and that’s fine. Yet somehow it seems irrelevant for practical purposes. With all respect, it seems that you’re fighting the last war.
Watered-down booze? That’s unconscionable!
Yeah… I’ve been under the impression Black History month and Pride month occupied all 12 months.
I believe that the trans movement’s aggressive, and so far pretty successful, program of promoting their goals into our public schools is pernicious.
Here’s more on that:
https://themobmuseum.org/blog/the-gay-rights-movement-and-the-mob-stonewall-50/
But I think it’s over-reach to make it about the mafia. Gay bars were run by the mafia because they were illegal, not the other way round. And it wasn’t the mafia raiding the bar and arresting people – that was the police.
Just wondering, are you basing that on the old myth that homosexuality accounts for 10% or more of the population?
Well, as you said, it was illegal. Isn’t that the polices’ job then?
Looking at our history, there’s a pattern of trying to get the least obviously different part of our community to discard or distance from the parts which are more obviously different, and which make other people most uneasy or uncomfortable.
If you stay in the closet you’ll be okay, it’s those people who keep coming out that will cause a massive reaction.
If you ‘look normal’ you’ll be okay, it’s those flaming queens and cross
dessertsdressers that will cause a massive reaction.If you settle for domestic partnerships you’ll be okay, it’s those people pushing for marriage equality that will cause a massive reaction.
These attempted ‘bargains’ miss the point.
Gay people shouldn’t have equal rights because they are gay, gay people should have equal rights because they are human beings.
And all progress for gay rights has come because of the efforts of these discomforting people. Because, imho, they focused on the core issue (human rights and human equality) rather than on appeasing people or trying to ensure that nobody felt uncomfortable. Progress didn’t come from corrupt bargains.
I don’t ‘get’ the trans thing – but I don’t need to get it to believe they deserve equal rights because they are human beings, and that denying any such group their rights so broadly (eg so not for committing crimes against others) undermines everybody else’s surety of rights as well.
Arguably it was.
When is it legitimate to resist the police?
I would be curious what our law enforcement people had to say about that in this specific circumstance.
If sodomy is illegal for everyone, that’s equal rights.
If everyone has the right to marry someone of the opposite gender, that’s equal rights.
For that matter, if it’s illegal for all men to dress as women, that’s equal rights too.
And so on.
There is no more reason to consider modern trans to be part of “our community” than there is to consider pedophilia, bestiality, or prostitution part of that community. Simply adding “T” to “LGB” doesn’t make it somehow compelling or legitimate, or create a common interest.
Key to the trans movement is the idea that men can become women and women can become men — or that either can become something that is neither. Those of us who consider that to be nonsense may nonetheless be wholly in favor of the legality and acceptance of homosexuality (as I am), and may be very tolerant of peculiar sexual fetishes and interests, while utterly rejecting the core concepts behind the bullying and anti-scientific gender identity movement.
Everything to do with sex isn’t automatically worthy of respect or acceptance, nor of inclusion into the gay rights movement.
I’m not saying they should be part of our community, I’m saying that they are. That is the reality of it – and it’s uncomfortable for many lesbians. All gay people don’t speak with one voice or one opinion on the trans thing – but wrt trans equality I think we would.
If they were arresting people in straight bars because they suspected the bars encouraged oral sex you might have a point.
That sounds like justification for something other than legalizing sodomy.
Also, “oral sex” is not the first definition of “sodomy” that turns up.
Oh, I know they are. I’m saying that the gay community would be wise to join other sensible people in questioning the trans movement people, because the trans movement is, unlike the gay movement, fundamentally wrong-minded and destructive, and should be opposed.
I could never understand why anyone would want to be proud of being homosexual. It is antithetical to the survival of the human race.
One shouldn’t confuse tolerating drag queens with forcing us to say they are women when they are not, encouraging those that deny that biological sex is real, approving injecting powerful hormones into children to “affirm” that they should be the other sex, or torturing our language to avoid giving them a pronoun they don’t like. We have had drag queens and cross dressers among us for a long time and society as a whole is growing more tolerant of everyone, but I’m sorry, you don’t get to reorder reality and then use force to make everyone else go along with it.
100%.
But that seems to contradict your position on homosexuality, which also amounts to “reorder reality and then use force to make everyone else go along with it.” Except that you’ve just been worn down or somehow conditioned or re-educated or something, to believe otherwise, in that situation. Whatever the actual means were, I don’t know, couldn’t guess, and doesn’t matter anyway. But I guess that means if we just wait long enough, you’ll be okay with transgenderism too. And might even make the exact same arguments that you make now regarding homosexuality.
“Homosexual people do have the same rights as the rest of us — to vote, own property, speak freely, and the like. But I reject the idea that there is a “right” to homosexual sodomy. This was the holding of a SCOTUS majority as recently as the Bowers v. Hardwick case in 1986.”
@ArizonaPatriot As a Gay man, I actually agree with your statement below. I just believe that gay men and women should not be prosecuted for acts between consenting adults. (we differ on policy, not on constitutional analysis) I believe the constitution allows states to outlaw gay behavior, but it would be bad policy and I’m glad the laws have changed. (I think that Supreme Court decision was actually Lawrence v. Texas).
“Homosexual people do have the same rights as the rest of us — to vote, own property, speak freely, and the like. But I reject the idea that there is a “right” to homosexual sodomy. This was the holding of a SCOTUS majority as recently as the Bowers v. Hardwick case in 1986.”
@henryracette and @zafar
What’s really weird is the LGBT movement says sexual attraction is immutable, but gender is totally changeable. The immutable one has no test or DNA markers and the one that is changeable and fluid has DNA markers in every cell. If you had DNA from a person you could tell if he was male or female, but not whether he was gay or straight.
No.
Homosexuality — same-sex attraction — is obviously real. I don’t have to profess anything I don’t believe, I don’t have to say that I think it’s “normal” sexuality (I don’t), or to use someone else’s preferred pronouns. I don’t have to pretend to believe something I don’t believe.
In contrast, I think the transgender movement is almost entirely balderdash, and I refuse to pretend otherwise. But that movement wishes to force me to use particular pronouns, wants me to pretend to agree with its gender identity nonsense, and wants to change the rules by which the sexes interact. That’s quite different from what the homosexual movement wanted.
In short, there’s a difference between tolerating a preference one doesn’t share and pretending to go along with a fiction one doesn’t believe.
Thank you, Chris. Nice comment.
Maybe not here – on Ricochet – at least not yet, but how often do you say or write “homosexual” elsewhere, such as when talking in public etc, rather than “gay?”
How is this different from going along with SSM if you don’t believe it can be a marriage?