Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
I’m butting in here so forgive. My thought is that the scenario in your first paragraph is unfortunate but “less unfortunate” than the state superseding parental authority. It feeds the stereotype of the overweening conservative parent bludgeoning their unfortunate child about lifestyle choices, and overlooks the the possibility that maybe–just maybe–the much more common parental role is in guiding the young about these choices.
Good observation. And the reality is that parents always have the ability to teach their children what they want, although there’s no guarantee that the state won’t try to teach them otherwise.
I think that people who value a diversity of viewpoints should welcome parental instruction, and be wary of centralized moral teaching when it runs contrary to a significant fraction of the population.
Of course, that presents a problem when years institutionalized erosion have underminded our sense of what it means to be an American. Modern education has created an awful vacuum.
I think we all understand that’s your opinion, but I don’t think I’m the only one who doesn’t think you’ve made a particularly good case for it. The main difference seems to be that you now accept the arguments that were being made in the past about homosexuality and don’t seem to recognize the similarities with the trans arguments being made now. I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to why you would do that, in your particular case. There are many possibilities, but I have no way of knowing which – if any – apply to you.
I don’t agree with you, but perhaps it’s just that I’m not thinking of the same examples you are. Would you be good enough to give me a few examples of the parallels that I am accepting in the case of homosexuality by rejecting in the case of the trans movement? Perhaps we will then understand each other better.
@Henry Racette
That hurts my feelings. I take what you write seriously. I get that you don’t like my jokes but I try to build on what you write.
That isn’t correct Namill. Homosexuals animals and people do have babies and they often want babies. There have been more than a few homosexuals who got married and made some babies but didn’t enjoy heterosexual sex all that much. It’s depressing but it happens and evolution doesn’t care about your happiness. That’s why I’m so fascinated by genetic engineering.
https://ricochet.com/969656/plomin-murray-and-why-genetics-are-so-important-a-book-review-and-some-commentary/
I don’t know about spending any time trying to do a wider dissertation, but one thing I started thinking about right after my previous comment, was that your assertion that the underlying… bases?… for saying homosexuality and trans are different, doesn’t really hold up. (As a side note, I don’t know what bisexuality really has to do with it either, at least not as some kind of separate state of being.) For example, I don’t see that it makes sense to differentiate between the biological/genetic/whatever “mistake” of homosexuality and the “mistake” of whatever transgenderism actually exists. As I mentioned earlier, no man can think he is/should be/whatever really a woman, because no man knows what it IS to be a woman. The most anyone can know is that what they ARE, “doesn’t feel right.” Which, as I mentioned before, is more of a definition of a mental illness, than anything else. And that’s also what homosexuality was considered to be, before we – or some of us, anyway – got “re-educated.” But that the “re-education” was done, or at least attempted, doesn’t mean that it was correct, even if some/many people accepted it.
The homosexual advocacy groups in the past had plenty of “unreasonable, unacceptable, and bullying behavior” too but many people seem to have forgotten about that.
Add to that, the similarity of tactics that were used to “gain acceptance” for homosexuality, which are being used again now for trans. There were school programs teaching children about anal sex and stuff, opposite-dressing, etc. Now it’s stuff like “drag queen story hour” and repeating school courses about “alternate lifestyles” and the rest, again. It seems you’ve been claiming that these really aren’t the same at all, but I don’t think you’re succeeding, and I’m probably not alone in that assessment.
Obviously I’m talking about the regular case, where the participants make their regular sexual choices, assuming the environment present over millions of years, to make a point.
Of course there are variations.
Or they drive a Miata.
I think homosexuals that breed aren’t all that unusual. I know it’s very hard to get data on that but that’s my impression.
Or for the ladies, a Subaru.
That’s just a survey.
It could easily be social; folks feel they have to make up for their gay cousin.
The parallel isn’t between homosexuality and transgenderism. Rather, it’s between homosexuality and gender dysphoria. Those are both feelings that I am perfectly willing to believe are real.
The transgenderism movement builds on the foundation of gender dysphoria to concoct a lot of nonsense about mutability and fluidity of sex, multiplicity of sexual identities, etc. That is the movement to which I object. The handful of people who experience true gender dysphoria have their own problems, but are no more impactful on me than any other emotionally or psychologically disturbed cohort. It’s only when people demand that I profess belief in their nonsense, or when laws get changed to comport with their mistaken beliefs, that I object. Many groups do that occasionally, but it’s the essence of the trans movement.
An ignore feature is more civil than announcing who you ignore.
But Ricochet isn’t interested in civility or they’d have an ignore feature.
Explain then why there are so many more homosexuals now than ever before. No one was ever stopped from being homosexual before, and there still is quite a stigma for many homosexuals, but agitprop by the TV and movie industry has made being homosexual cool. It’s so cool in fact that my daughter (14) tells me that she is the only girl of all her friends who doesn’t claim to be homosexual. It’s likely not much different for boys. This is not an indication that homosexuality is innate, it’s proof positive that in the “nurture vs. nature scheme,” that homosexuality is in fact a nurtured status rather than natural.
Indeed, the homosexual advocacy did the same thing, and in some areas still does. Maybe it’s less obvious now, at least where you live, but I still don’t see it being significantly different. Maybe it seems more “mainstream” now because you’ve decided to accept it, but that’s not the same thing.
Why less unfortunate? The state already steps in where parents are abusive or neglectful. Those are unfortunate circumstances, should the State still not intervene?
Of course it is. I’m not assuming malice on the part of the parents who do this to their gay children. Their intentions are good, it’s their actions which are damaging.
Sorry to hurt your feelings, Henry. You embrace a radicalism that neither appeals to me nor interests me, yet with which I often nonetheless disagree. I also find your misanthropy tiresome. It’s more pleasant for me to ignore most of it.
As regards this:
While I agree with that as far as it goes, I’d add another, and much more common, destructive practice: casual sex outside of marriage. I think that is the single greatest harm done by the feminist movement, and more destructive to society — because of its frequency — than all of the other things you mentioned.
Having said all that, the Castaigne Skip comment was me poking fun at you and at those who call for an ignore feature. In fact, I read your comments.
I don’t know that there are. But, of course, when it’s no longer seriously stigmatized, more people will be willing to be visible about their homosexuality. That isn’t the same as saying that more people are homosexual, merely that more people are willing to be seen as such.
I forgot to ask before, but then why isn’t this post titled “A Letter to My Homosexual Friends?”
What’s the difference?
That would require more typing.
Gay means homosexual. It can also be read as male homosexual, with lesbian being the counterpart. But it’s commonly understood to simply mean homosexual, as in Gay Rights Movement.
Since I actually would like the post to be read by gays of either sex, and since the word “homosexual” is sometimes interpreted as hostile to homosexuals, it seemed to make more sense to lead with a title that is less likely to repel potential readers. I think I sacrificed neither readability nor integrity in doing so.
See below.
Mothers and sisters showed higher rates of fertility. Make of it what you will.
Yes. People talk about the huge drop off in church attendance over the last 20-40 years, and part of that is reality. But part of it is people admitting that they are not church-goers, where a generation ago a lot of people who only went to church for weddings and funerals wouldn’t want to admit to a survey-taker that they were not doing their religious duty. People who hadn’t stepped into a church or opened a Bible in decades might still call themselves a Christian even though they followed no Christian practices. Today there isn’t the stigma of being non-religious so more people have come out of that closet.
This is key. IF the sin of homosexuality is sodomy, the normalizing sodomy in hetero relationships is key to the acceptance of homosexuality.
Sodomy was being presented as an option to teen girls to stay virgins while still allowing boyfriends to have “sex” with them. It was promoted by Cosmo, Teen Vogue, and Dear Abby (or whoever that the dirty old lady was who talked sex education to teens).
If the populace is conditioned to view sodomy as a normal and good expression of sex, then people will be far less resistant to homosexuality.
Sodomy is not good.
Sodomy and gender dysphoria.
But shouldn’t we let the mentally ill and other people who shouldn’t breed still live their lives?
There’s a huge difference between ignoring and promoting. We are promoting, not ignoring. What do you think Pride Month is?
Not only are we promoting homosexuality, but CRT openly denigrates heterosexuality. That’s not healthy for civilization.
Prude month is of course a bad thing because it is based on stupid identity politics but I am not too worried about a lack of heterosexuality. We got enough people.
I just don’t see the harm. I’m more worried about the usage of economic fallacies than eccentric uses of phalluses..