Jul 4, 2025 ~ Andrew Sullivan, 'How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost Its Way'
"But this huge increase in funding was no longer primarily about gay, lesbian and transgender civil rights, because almost all had already been won. It was instead about a new and radical gender revolution. Focused on ending what activists saw as the oppression of the sex binary, which some critical gender and queer theorists associated with 'white supremacy,' they aimed to dissolve natural distinctions between men and women in society, to replace biological sex with 'gender identity' in the law and culture, and to redefine homosexuality, in the process, not as a neutral fact of the human condition but as a liberating ideological 'queerness' meant to subvert and 'queer' language, culture and society in myriad different ways."
"The words 'gay' and 'lesbian' all but disappeared. L.G.B.T. became L.G.B.T.Q., then L.G.B.T.Q.+, and more letters and characters kept being added: L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ or 2S.L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ (to include intersex, asexual people and two-spirit Indigenous people). The plus sign referred to a seemingly infinite number of new niche identities, and, by some counts, more than 70 new 'genders.'"
"But this new ideology, I believed, was different. Like many gays and lesbians — and a majority of everybody else — I simply didn’t buy it. I didn’t and don’t believe that being a man or a woman has nothing to do with biology. My sexual orientation is based on a biological distinction between men and women: I’m attracted to the former and not to the latter. And now I was supposed to believe the difference didn’t exist?"
"But abolishing the sex binary for the entire society? That’s a whole other thing entirely. And madness, I believe. What if I redefined what it is to be heterosexual and imposed it on straight people? Or changed what it means to be a man or a woman, for that matter? Then it ceases to be accommodation of a minority and becomes a societywide revolution — an overreach that would soon lead to a potent and sane backlash, against not just trans people, but gay men and lesbians as well."
"But in the wake of victory, L.G.B.T.Q.+ groups reneged on that pledge. They demanded the entire society change in a fundamental way so that the sex binary no longer counted. Elementary school children were taught that being a boy or a girl might not have anything to do with their bodies, and that their parents had merely guessed whether they were a boy or a girl when they were born. In fact, sex was no longer to be recognized at birth — it was now merely assigned, penciled in. We got new terms like 'chest-feeding' for 'breastfeeding' and 'birthing parent' for 'mother.'"
"A key leader of this movement, Chase Strangio, informed us that 'a penis is not a male body part. It’s just an unusual body part for a woman.' We all were suddenly expected to announce our pronouns as if everyone didn’t already know. Then neopronouns — xe/xem! — were added. The movement came up with a mantra: 'TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN. TRANS MEN ARE MEN.' It was not an argument, nor a proposition to be explored or debated. It was a theological command. In all caps."
"You can bring up your children however you like, we promised. We will leave you alone. We will leave your children alone. So what did the gender revolutionaries go and do? They focused almost entirely on children and minors. Partly because the adult issues had been resolved or close to it, and partly because true cultural revolutions start with the young, it meant overhauling the education not only of children with gender dysphoria, but of every other kid as well."
"Kids all over the country were affected. Your children were taught in elementary school that being a boy or a girl was something they could choose and change at will. Your daughter found herself running against a trans girl (i.e., a biological male) in athletics. Children in elementary school got to pick pronouns, and some children socially transitioned at school without their parents’ knowledge or permission."
"And then most radical of all: gender-affirming care for minors, which can lead to irreversible sex changes for children. The 'care' included off-label 'blockers' to arrest puberty, almost always followed with cross-sex hormones."
"But I wonder how I might have responded if someone in authority — a parent or a teacher or a doctor — had suggested that my difference and occasional anxiety was because I was, in fact, a girl. That my body was irrelevant, and that I could choose to be the opposite sex before puberty and all my confusions would disappear. I just don’t know what I would have said or done, to be honest. And how do today’s parents, teachers and doctors know for sure that a 10-year-old child isn’t, well, like me, and really is trans? How can they know for sure that the gender dysphoria isn’t instead a manifestation of being gay or lesbian and wanting to change it? How do they know for sure there isn’t another complicating personal or psychological factor? I was told not to worry. A child had to demonstrate a “persistent, consistent and insistent” trans identity for years even to be considered for medical intervention. But this, I found out, was no longer true."
"As soon as a kid said he or she was the opposite sex, further counseling and mental health exploration was deemed problematic, because it amounted to transphobic conversion therapy, we were told. When I said that seemed crazy, and that surely we needed more safeguards, I was sternly told, 'Children know who they are.' But do they? When they are between 9 and 13? I sure didn’t. Does any parent really believe this? Solid long-term data on how many children who transition but decide later it was a mistake is hard to find, in large part because the procedures are relatively new and the studies often have very poor follow-up. But without a doubt, there are some. They are walking around today, testifying in courts and legislatures, opining all over the web, telling similar stories of rushed judgments, minimal safeguards, inadequate gate-keeping and agonizing regret that as children they made irreversible decisions they could not meaningfully consent to. I have met many. They break your heart. And so many of the gender-dysphoric kids are gay and lesbian."
"And a fix for gender dysphoria for gay and lesbian kids can be puberty itself, as it was for me and many of my gay male friends. We were also told, repeatedly, that transitioning children was drastic, but the alternative could be that they would commit suicide. We often ask parents, ‘Would you rather have a dead son than a live daughter?’" But now we find out that was never true.
"One concern is specific for boys who transition to girls in early puberty. 'If you’ve never had an orgasm pre-surgery, and then your puberty’s blocked, it’s very difficult to achieve that afterwards,' a pioneering trans surgeon, Dr. Marci Bowers, has said. Research on this is minimal, and so caution is necessary in jumping to conclusions. But I ask myself: If there is a risk that some people will be denied sexual pleasure for their entire lives because they transitioned very early, is it worth it? And how can a child understand what giving up orgasms for life might mean when he hasn’t experienced a single one? The obvious answer is that he can’t, and it’s profoundly unethical to put him in that situation. And who exactly is looking out for these kids? Certainly not the L.G.B.T.Q. organizations."
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