A few years ago as I was strolling through Fantasyland during “Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party”, a young boy around age eight or nine complimented me on my Fix-It Felix costume.
Gary, I’m sobbing reading your essay. I’m sad for what you are having to endure and the hate I know you will get for speaking out this way. I’m sad that a company I’ve long respected has taken such a horrifying turn. I’m sad that LGB rights and positioning in society have been co-opted and eclipsed by this movement. I am
sad that my beautiful teenage girl fell prey to this four years ago and that I am called hateful and transphobic for not affirming something I believe is dangerous and divisive. I am sad that she will likely cut her breasts off as soon as she is out of our house. I am sad that the political party I’ve spent my life supporting is now encouraging healthy young bodies to be pumped full of drugs to stop normal development and fast track them to permanent surgeries. I’m sad women’s sports will no longer be women’s sports.
I celebrated when gay marriage became legal. I never thought that we would end up here. Thank you so much for writing this. It’s everything I think and feel as a female, a parent, a GenXer, a human. I will be forever grateful for you speaking out.
Thank you for writing this. It's stories like yours that compel me to speak out. My heart is breaking for you and other families going through this. I hope everything works out for you. <3
I’m sobbing too—because it’s pathetic how little the author thinks about his own value. He’s fine with the government pushing bills that serve to ostracize him and other LGBT just to gain votes.
It has EVERYTHING to do with gay people. The bill SPECIFICALLY says "sexual orientation." Why is that gay people exist something unsuitable for 3rd graders while that straight people exist is completely suitable?
Heterosexuality is a "sexual orientation." This bill is not about gay people. It's about prohibiting age-inappropriate discussions in classrooms in Florida, and also provides for parental notifications. You really think this kind of thing should be discussed with those below 8 y/o?
I'm gay, but I don't think this kind of thing belongs in elementary school or kindergarten. And no, the bill doesn't require everyone to pretend that gay people don't exist. Rather it's to prevent making sexual orientation of any kind into classroom materials taught to young children.
With all kindness possible, I don't think you really understand the bill.
The genuinely sad part is that, well...this outcome was more or less predicted. I'm not going to name teams or anything, but it is important that everyone—EVERYONE—reflect on why that prediction came true, and what led to accurate foresight. It's not easy to confront. It's gut-wrenching, even. But it is necessary. And things are only going to get worse, because the only way to stop it at this point will require deeply awful and forceful intervention.
The root of the issue is this: human beings are born with powerful instincts but only a general sense of identity. Formation of that identity requires active setting of norms. And, here's the bad part: setting of norms requires pushback against deviations from that norm. Without norms, children cannot form properly. Agency, identity, and discipline all take time to develop. Without that, there is no "terra firma" from which to explore.
And so: while a simple, surface take on gay marriage seems obvious in a philosophically liberal culture—of course we should allow it, how else can we claim we're for individual freedom? The problem is we do so at the cost of shattering two critically important norms, namely sexual identity and the familial purpose of marriage. Marriage isn't about love. It never has been. It's not a romantic expression. Marriage is about family. Love is a necessary ingredient of course, make no mistake, but it is subordinate to the purpose of building stable, forming families for children.
Yes, it really is all about the children. By shattering those two norms, what have we done? We have tacitly endorsed the notion that these things are not centrally important (which they are) or more essential than our individual desires. We are now beginning to reap the costs of that mistake. I think we all know this, deep in our hearts.
Again, I don't want to get into team-ball here. But we have a situation where one team is in rebellion against human nature and reality itself—and always has been—and another team that has long forgotten how to communicate moral issues outside the context of religion. To be fair, it is in fact extremely difficult to do so, since religion is the most ancient social technology and so far the only successful method of forming a shared moral system in a society. Nonetheless, it is a necessary communication skill in a world where the "terra firma" of shared moral values have already been eliminated. Seeing a pattern?
So, what is the end result? For me, ideally? As a society we need to learn how to tolerate without endorsement, and do so without malice. This requires compromise on all sides. I don't know how to get there. But at the end of the day, a working society takes priority, and children are the foundation of that society.
Attempting to normalize the outlier: Citing rare outliers in an effort to normalize them to win support for one's stance
Blacks law says its better to let 10 guilty men go free than to imprison 1 innocent person. It however does not argue that we should let all guilty go free just to be sure no one is ever wrongfully imprisoned.
It's just like Romeo and Juliet. Human history is absolutely full of folks who wanted to marry someone their parents didn't approve of. How is it different if it's same-sex? And why does someone in third-grade or younger need to be discussing this with a teacher?
I'm a gay guy who came out in 1979. No, my parents weren't happy, but they accepted me over time, and have become incredibly supportive ever since.
Life presents obstacles to us all. Properly handled, they make us stronger. Teaching seven-year-olds about gender ideology isn't going to make anyone's path easier.
What a dumb response. Do you think a 7 year old doesn’t know anything about sex and sexual identity? Do you think not being able to talk about questions that the child may have is HELPING?
Careful... I know you mean that towards Christians but Muslims, a protected group among the Left, is far harsher about dealing with homosexuality than Christians are.
The law is to vague is the excuse because arguing that grooming should be allowed doesn't go over well with the majority. Teachers need only say "Let's talk to your parents about that". Reminder, they are in school to learn, not for therapy.
Isn't it interesting that your child thought to ask this? Why would a five year old care about such things? They should be doing five year old things. They have enough to figure out.
There is something wrong when kids are more worried about these things than Santa Clause and other childish things.
Thank you for saying so very well everything I have been thinking and feeling for a while. It's time we regrouped with those of us who feel the same, and restore some sanity.
I'm a gay man who came out in 1979, and actually lived during the tail end of discrimination against gays. This Florida bill in no way discriminates against gays at all, and frankly I'd love to see this idea implemented nation-wide.
I don't have kids, but if I did, I wouldn't want them, at the age 7 or younger, to be indoctrinated into any particular sexual more by a school teacher. This is a job for parents.
I also agree with Gary's take that the opposition to this bill is indeed homophobic. I truly worry that all the gay kids are being persuaded that they're really the "wrong" sex and need this complicated medical intervention. No!!!! Let kids be kids. A certain amount of confusion is part of growing up. If they want to transition to another sex, let them do so as adults. I think it's highly immoral to let kids do this. Indeed, it risks irreversible damage.
AMEN! Finally someone with common sense and willing to speak the truth. This "religion" (cult in my opinion) has got to go. All of this is so utterly insane and I can't understand how educated people can't see through the glitter bomb to realize that children and teens are being harmed.
Gary, I greatly admire your courage to speak out. You will be mobbed, demoted, fired, called a Nazi, a bigot, etc... You do not deserve this, but it will happen. 20 years ago conservatives who opposing gay marriage were called the same names, and some were fired for their beliefs (Brandon Eich among others). You may not like being in our deplorable company, but we welcome you regardless.
You draw a distinction between gay marriage acceptance and gender identity wokeness, but to us conservatives, they are expressions of the same error. Once you accept the logic of the sexual revolution (men & women are essentially the same and individual autonomy is the highest good), there's no stopping the train. You get no-fault divorce, out of wedlock births, gay acceptance and marriage, polygamy & polyamory, eventually gender identity lunacy, and we can already see pedophilia on the horizon. You imagine an ability to freeze liberalism in the nice 2010's, pro-gay state, but that's not how liberalism works. It seeks to liberate, from class, religion, race, sex, sexual orientation, age, and now even biology. Because if it stops "liberating", liberalism no longer has a purpose. It is an ideology of change, not stasis. It is conservatives who “stand athwart history, yelling Stop!", which is what you're doing in this letter.
You asked people to honestly consider your opinions as a gay man being offended by the LGBTQXYZ alphabet soup. I'm asking you to honestly consider the opinions of those conservatives that you have disagreed with, how the things you promoted may be largely responsible for birthing our current gender insanity. While that means you share the responsibility, it also means you have a unique ability to be part of the solution. This letter is part of that solution, and that is incredibly courageous. Criticizing an enemy is easy; criticizing a friend requires courage.
Again, I have the highest respect for what you're doing. You do not deserve the hate, the ostracism, the bigotry that will be directed at you. If you end up setting up a GoFundMe (unless GoFundMe refuses you for wrong-think), I would contribute to it. You have real courage. That is rare today (maybe it always has been) and should be supported.
I don't know how you can say that acceptance of gays and gay marriage has directly led to this gender insanity? Being LGB is about who one loves (sexual attraction)....not how one feels based on stereotypes. I've never met a LGB yet who is taking cross sex hormones or looking to surgically alter their body to mimic the opposite sex. I'm at least glad that you respect what is being said here....because it's the truth. Many of us who refer to ourselves as Democrats (left of center/moderate) are appalled that our party has capitulated to this nonsense.
I didn't say that acceptance of gay marriage led to this. I said both are based in the same philosophy: individual autonomy.
Accepting that individual autonomy (particularly in the matter of human sexuality) is the highest good, that society has no business "regulating what you do with your body", it is effectively impossible to delineate any line of sexual or moral standard which may not be crossed.
If you doubt this, just ask yourself a simple question: how would you argue that there should be laws against any of the following: commercial surrogacy, polygamy, organ selling, 39-week abortion, consenting adult-teen sexual contact, legalizing heroin? While far away from sexual ethics, they share a common refrain with LGB & T politics: most of them collapse under the "my body -- my choice -- none of your business" philosophy of individual autonomy (just for clarity, I oppose all of them because I recognize the "common good" as higher than "individual autonomy").
That's the connection between the LGB and the T; both rely on the assumption that society has no business regulating your individual personal behavior. When conservatives tried to assert a "common good" based argument against gay marriage in the early 2000's, we were told we were sex-obsessed bigots who just wanted to "control how people loved." Gary is asserting the same type of argument here (as are you), and it won't work any better than it did for us, because Western society has fully accepted the "you have no say over what I do with my body" philosophy. And it's completely fair to point out that it was your party and your ideology that put the car on this road and has been hitting the gas for decades.
We conservatives lost the gay marriage debate in the 2000's because we failed to stand up to the sexual revolution of the 1960's. As pleased as I am that Gary and yourself and Bari Weiss and Nellie Bowles and others are waking up to the danger, you're fighting a losing battle, just like we were. You've already accepted the underlying assumptions.
WOW! I guess you'd be just fine with women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Being left of center doesn't mean we have no morals or no common sense just as right of center folks aren't all deplorable and hate the common good. I think most people fall somewhere in the center. The far left and far right are hurling insults and accusations (tainted with lies and half truths) and the majority of us are caught in the middle of this culture war and we just want peace, truth and common decency.
Lisa, you're still putting words in my mouth. I didn't say you had "no morals or standards". I said that the philosophy of maximal individual autonomy (which essentially all liberals champion) makes maintaining any form of objective societal moral standards extremely difficult or impossible.
You say you want "peace, harmony, and common decency". To you, "common decency" means not indoctrinating 7 year olds with gender ideology. To me "common decency" means not having Gay Pride Parades. Using the liberal framework of maximal individual autonomy, you can't defend your standard any more than I can defend mine. Your "peace, harmony, and common decency" is built on sand; you just don't realize it.
This is hardly original. The post-modernists have been celebrating the lack of objective truth since the 70's. It is the essence of the Sohab Amari / David French war going on among conservative intellectuals right now. If you really want to understand it, there's lots of people who can articulate it far better than I.
And what exactly is wrong with a pregnant women barefoot in the kitchen? Perhaps the pregnant women prefers being barefoot when anywhere inside the home. or is the being pregnant part that is the problem because it means you're not a career woman if your at home pregnant?
You claim to be in the middle caught between accusations and yet you categorize a pregnant women in the kitchen as somehow enslaving simply because it's something you view that way but you're view is not reflective of that of every women or even the majority.
Whether you like it or not acceptance of gay marriage was necessary for this as it moved the line, changed what was normal/acceptable in society. If we still viewed gays today the way we did before the gay marriage fight the support for the gender & trans insanity we are seeing would not be there as it would be too far just as pedophilia is still a step to far but won't be too far once the line is moved 1 maybe 2 more times.
Only %3-%4 of the population is not heterosexual. Within nature as well as the human race, homosexuality is NOT the norm. Doesn't mean gays shouldn't be allowed to live life like everyone else but it does mean they are the outliers and not the norm when it comes to sexual preference.
I disagree that there is an unbroken line between movements centered on individual autonomy such as gay marriage and the gender identity ideology. The latter varies precisely because it is NOT limited to an individual’s degree of freedom. Rather, it demands that everyone accept their subjective, internal beliefs and pretend that such beliefs are actually a fact. “I feel like a woman so YOU must act as though you believe that to be literally true. Now open the f***ing door to me that leads to your safe spaces, your sports, your healthcare, and even your language.”
I strongly agree that Gary has shown great courage with his thoughtful, clear, well-supported statement of position. Truly excellent.
A conservative who is required to pretend that a gay male co-worker "has a husband" is in exactly the same position as you are when you are required to affirm that a male co-worker in a dress "is a woman". You may see them as different, but that's only because you support one and not the other. To the one being coerced in each case, they feel the same.
Maximal individual autonomy will continue to drive us toward more "personally liberating" ideas until we rediscover some kind of "common good" understanding of ethics. Such an framework might be based on Aristotle; it almost certainly won't be Christian or -- Sohab Amari's delusions aside -- Catholic integralism. I would love to be wrong about this and the slide into lunacy abate at least long enough for my kids to live in a functional society, but the last 60 years don't give me much hope.
Next stop:
age of consent laws (12 year olds can consent to gender reassignment, why not to sex)
transhumanism ("I am a dragon, so you must treat me as a dragon!")
I know it sounds crazy. But most of what we're debating now would have sounded crazy as recently as Bostock.
I'll agree with you about a functional society....and how it's NOT right now! It's been careening out of control since the Clinton Era full throttled Reaganomics. I believe we are in end stage capitalism and we can't achieve civility or find common ground because the 1% (big pharma/silicon valley/wall street etc) are allowed to control the narrative. This whole "trans" issue is just another way for the 1% to make $$$ and control the narrative, but it's most evil because they are using the trusting nature of children and the hormonal angst of puberty to achieve a goal ($$$$ and control). I don't care one bit if some grown man wants to LARP around in woman face/clothes....as long as he doesn't insist he's actually a woman, doesn't invade my women only spaces and sports.
What's funny Lisa is that, with the exception of "when" things started careening out of control (you say the 90's, I say the 60's), I agree with absolutely everything you said in this post. It appears we agree about much after all.
It starts even before the 60's . It started in the 60's for you and in eth 90s for MLisa because of your age and not when things truly started to spiral downwards. For someone younger than MLIsa who is aware of what's happening they would argue it started in the 2010's. There have been waves to this that align with different generations which in turn determines to them when it started.
I chose the 60's simply to make the case here. In reality, I am with Patrick Deenen on this; the deification of individual was baked into liberalism at the Enlightenment. It starts with John Locke. but that's a whole other thread that I've written on elsewhere.
They are not the same, at all, both in scale and impact, but an adequate response is outside the scope of a comment section. Well wishes to our host Gary, and to you.
Perhaps reflect for a moment on the incontrovertible fact that gender ideology is a heterosexual male movement. The entire thing has been built by heterosexual men who want to cross dress in public and have us all pretend they are women. Men from all sides of the political spectrum.
They have been building this movement for 60/70 years, the same generations of men that had to be forced to permit women economic freedom, something you appear to still be angry about.
The heterosexual cross dressing men you are pissed with were doing it at home for a long long time, even in the pre 60s nirvana you hark back to. Women were stuck with these abusive men through legally enforceable economic dependency, again this seems to be something you support still.
The current surge in autistic boys now claiming to be lesbian and forming relationships with each other because women quite reasonably don't want to pander to them, are the heterosexual men that women in families you idealise would be forced to marry.
We are free of that abuse, thankfully.
I suggest you stop blaming women and gay men for the behavior of heterosexual men.
Heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by cross dressing "gave birth" (your words and a hideous way to put it) to the wholesale sanitisation of their autogynephilia under "identity".
Are you unable to face this fact? It seems like you are unwilling to, by lashing out at women and gay men.
As someone in the same category as the writer of this article, you place the responsibility on us. I place it on you. Why were the extra letters so successfully able to trojan its way in and parasitize the LGB movement when they have nothing in common at all? Who was it that lumped us together as being of the "same error"? Those that considered homosexual people to be less of a man or a woman... Insisting that certain actions and behaviors are exclusively male or female. Lumping us together as "queers"-- deviants acting outside our proper God-given gender roles, when it never had anything to do with gender at all.
We were forced into this alliance by both the opposition to gay rights *and* the gender opportunists, and now we are all suffering the consequences.
Had gay marriage passed decades ago, before the gender ideologists had such a strangle hold on the movement, I don't believe we would be in this situation now. All we wanted was to live and let live... To be able to give the partners we love the same support and rights that any other couple receives. Now we're stuck struggling against the gender ideologists who want to go far beyond individual rights into this postmodern hell of redefining language and forcing everyone to constantly affirm their delusions, because we were forced into an alliance we never wanted or asked for.
And yes. We are needed as part of the solution, but continuing this rhetoric of gays being of the "same" breed, only pushes more gay people into the depths of the alphabet soup. We need gays to stand up against this if we are to be successful, and we can't expect them to do that if they continue to feel that the rights that they won are threatened if they dare dip their toe in the other side.
Thank you for writing this, Gary. Everything you've written matches the countless hours of research I have poured into this topic. I care deeply about this topic because my 14-year-old daughter is going through gender ideology, and from my perspective it's causing far more problems for her than it solves, even if she doesn't obtain top surgery when she's 18 as she's promised. Regardless, I appreciate your eloquence, bravery, and honesty. Thank you.
Thanks... I have been screaming about alphabet soup for 15+years and telling anyone that would listen that "trans" has no relation to us GLB-folks and we should NOT be lumped in with them, or rather, they should not be lumped in with us. It is heartening to see more gays speaking up about this and even some gay organizations-- for whom the big national organizations WANT the more letters they can cram in because it means more people to send them money...
I enjoyed this piece, it made me se things and think about it from a perspective I hadn't considered before. I shared it on twitter with a number of people because it's so well done.
Thank you so much for writing what I’ve been trying to articulate. I can’t get far enough from that rainbow flag and have practically gone back into the closet after being out for 40 years. We need more of this.
This is everything I have been feeling about this ideology, perfectly articulated in one place. Excellent work. Thank you for speaking out. You are an eloquent writer. Exceptional points and validation for your perspective.
So? When my daughter was in Pre-K, she asked questions about pregnancy and I answered in the best age-appropriate way I could. I told her she was put in my tummy for safe keeping until she could grow big enough to come out, like a seed that grows in the ground. She accepted that but at school she encountered a pregnant teacher and told her classmates that babies are kept in their mommy’s bellies to grow. The teacher pulled me aside and asked me to speak to her about it because some children are told the stork story. I happily obliged. It wasn’t my choice to decide for other parents how they should handle grown up topics for their children and I appreciated the teacher quietly respecting all of our differences.
Actually it’s true that the law is too vague . It just bans a teacher from instructing on sexual orientation or gender identity. It never once defines instruction. Anything a teacher says can be construed as instruction, and that’s the point. Keep it vague so schools and teachers get scared enough to block all mention of LGBT.
Your comment got me to go read the law itself. You are misrepresenting it, as is the original commenter on this thread. The law clearly states it specifically prohibits "classroom instruction" which any teacher should know means lessons taught to the whole class. "Classroom instruction" does not include answering a question like "can boys wear dresses?" asked in conversation. If a kid actually asked that during a class (as opposed to one-on-one) the teacher could easily say "that's not part of what we're learning right now, so you can ask me later." IOW, there is NO prohibition on teachers having independent conversations about these topics with children outside of formal instruction. It prohibits, specifically, "classroom instruction"—ie. instruction to the classroom full of kids. The point is to keep the gender *curriculum* out of K-3 classrooms.
The law also specifically carves out a protection for kids whose teachers have a reasonable (and defined by statute) belief they might be harmed by their parents. Here is how the law reads:
************
This subparagraph does not prohibit a
92 school district from adopting procedures that permit school
93 personnel to withhold such information from a parent if a
94 reasonably prudent person would believe that disclosure would
95 result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect, as those terms are
96 defined in s. 39.01.
************
And here's how it reads on the issue of instruction:
************
97 3. Classroom instruction by school personnel or third
98 parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur
99 in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age
100 appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in
101 accordance with state standards.
***********
Most of the rest of the law is concerned with prohibiting schools from hiding information about what kids are being taught or withholding information from parents about how their child is faring at school. None of that is nefarious or unreasonable.
Wow. You really do think everything is really about YOU. YOU want all sorts of people and all sorts of organization to conform to what YOU want. Well, it don't work that way, as they say.
"But we should first let him be a kid."
I run into this a lot. I find it comes from sincere people who were just not that mature when they were kids. And, in this case, as I've already said, you think it's all about YOU. I was a little kid, apparently a very self-aware little kid, who knew I was gay long before third grade. Sadly, this was quite a long time ago and it was made very, very clear to me that what I was was not acceptable. If someone had, instead, explained sexual orientation and, even better, said it was OK for me to be gay in third grade, grades three through college would have been very, very different.
While you bask in the attention you're getting from the likes of Rod Dreher, take some time to read his comments about trans people. You'll find lots and lots you agree with. Then take the time to go back and read what he thinks about you, a gay man. Maybe it'll open your eyes.
per the new philosophy, your gayness would not have been acceptable. You should have instead transitioned and become a girl. And pharmaceutical companies would have made a lot of money off of you, and this is important because we all need to do what is best for the pharmaceutical industry, no questions asked.
Sorry, but that's just nonsense. The assertion that gay people are being pushed into trans identities is absurd. In an environment where adults understand -- and teach -- that some kids are straight and some kids are gay and some kids are trans and even kids that seem like one thing can be another, there's no push into gender changing. Stop listening to the hysteria and, especially, stop listening to the nasty people whose solution to all of it is to tell kids nothing about it and punish anyone who does.
As for me, if someone had asked if I was a girl, I'd have said heck no. In fact, it's precisely anti-gay straight people who thought gay men wanted to be women. Many of them still can't figure it all out.
in our extended 'social scene' (people we sort of know or have one family in between) I know of 2 or 3 teens doing the transgender thing. It definitely IS being pushed on them today, whereas years ago it would not have been. Among the many problems: it's pushed on them long before they are really old enough to figure out exactly 'what' they are. There is no compelling need for teachers to discuss any aspect of any of this with elementary OR HS aged kids. And it does get into grooming territory, with adults teaching kids that they are bad if they are not receptive to abnormal sexual practices.
No compelling need to discuss how humans behave? No compelling reason to tell HS kids about romance/love/sex?
And you don't even believe it yourself. From the years before school even starts, society teaches kids -- and schools certainly do -- that boys and girls grow up to be men and women and marry and have their own little boys and girls. It's pervasive and comes from every direction. From nursery rhymes to every single Disney movie ever made to prom. You don't really long for the days when nothing was pushed on kids. You want something pushed on them, but just one thing: cis-gendered heterosexuality.
As for "grooming". Do not use that word. It's akin to blood libel. It's slander. It's vile. And to the extent that you think it means teaching kids about how to grow up, it applies to you as much as it does to any of the people you call "groomers".
this is at the crux of the issue: nothing was pushed on them. And you are correct, that the default then is what is *normal*--what enables society to go forward, which is normal heterosexuality. This does not mean that single people should be hated or oppressed (regardless of what they do behind closed doors). But it means that *normal* people do not want abnormal sexual practices proselytized to their children (edited to add: normal people ALSO do not want heterosexual sex proselytized to young children), and do not want their children groomed for sexual relationships (of any kind). And 99% of gay people understand these concepts. You are the 1% that is out of touch with reality. Grooming can of course be done by either gender to either gender--it's no blood libel, it's a reality that has been pervasive in many religious institutions, scouting, etc. It's the process of convincing a young, naive mind that it is normal to engage in abnormal sexual behavior, or that if the child is a 'good person', he/she will engage in abnormal sexual behavior. You know this of course. How odd that you so badly don't want to admit the grooming aspect of all this.
A key point that is well made above: let kids be kids. It is abnormal to preach *any* sexual preference/gender identity stuff to them. And adults with normal values (including the author) are not interested in discussing sexual preference/gender identity with children---but *groomers* are very much into these types of discussions...
Did you not pay attention to the author of this piece? He says he's in the minority of gay people. He says he disagrees with all the organizations.
I asked you to stop using the word "groom". It's slander. The grooming you mention in churches and the Boy Scouts is real grooming and is a crime (at least if your bishop bothers to turn you in). To apply it to gay people or trans people is blood libel. Bye.
For detailed stats on girls coming out as trans at exponentially high rates, read Irreversible Damage. Between 2016 and 2017, the number of gender surgeries for natal females in the US quadrupled; in the UK, the rates of gender dysphoria for teenage girls are up 4,400 percent over the previous decade. These surely have increased since then. My teenage daughter has no lesbian friends, they are all trans or non binary if they consider themselves part of the LGBTQ community. If you read the Detrans subreddit or follow detrans young women, you’ll see anecdotally that there are thousands of young women (and men) who are regretting their transitions and end up either declaring themselves homosexual or ending up being straight.
When people don't want to talk about actual numbers and want to scare people, they resort to percentage increases and speak in terms of multiples. They also exaggerate and, dare I say it, lie.
Quadrupling, when you start small, stays small. 4,400% sounds like a lot, but when the final number is in the three digits in a population of 35,000,000, it isn't so many, is it?
Here's an example of an earlier, calm, rational study. Dramatic increases -- due to insurance expansion -- but still numbers in the hundreds for what your side continues to call "mutilation" (honestly, shouldn't you be ashamed?). https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/2673384 (these are virtually all ADULTS, of course)
I see nothing of this tsunami of trans girls, but maybe that's because the kids I know grew up in place where gay and trans aren't shiny and new anymore. But, for the sake of argument, let's say there is some strange phenomenon in which lesbian girls are being peer-pressured into trans identities, on what possible basis should discussion of sexual orientation be banned in schools???
Well as you mentioned…it’s not all about YOU, Bob. Puberty and adolescence is a confusing time for ALL of us. Your solution is to support irreversible medical mutation because that wasn’t YOUR experience? How very selfish.
Nowhere does Bob say he supports irreversible medical mutation for children in his post. This bill prohibits discussing sexual orientation, which includes gay and lesbian. it is not only about the trans issue.
The bill prohibits age-inappropriate discussion. It protects gay and even trans parents too. Because they get to decide how their children are learning about their own situations not a teacher who knows very little about them.
The bill mentions "age-appropriate" discussion, but gives no instruction and will not have any guidance until June of 2023 at the earliest. In the meantime, SILENCE or you face a lawsuit.
And gay parents do not get to decide. If I had kids, I'd want them to learn in school that same-sex couples existed. The bill bans them hearing about their own families.
If you had kids, Bob, you would properly be teaching them about ANY sort of sexuality when you, their parent, considered it appropriate to do so. It would also be your right, as mentor and protector of your child, to delegate your responsibility to others.
Whatever choice you made about when and how to teach your child about sexual orientation would be your own choice. Other parents have the right to make THEIR own choice.
Your choice about your own children does not bestow a prerogative to deprive other parents of their own parental prerogative, nor force to them to abdicate their responsibility to their own children.
I say this to you as one who was an orphan and ward of the state. The state must act in loco parentis when no private custody is in effect. Such action is always suboptimal and the state must not be allowed to usurp parental rights and responsibilities. Education is compulsory and teachers are agents of the state.
You have shared that you were precociously aware of your sexual orientation at the age of two. Surely you must realize that you were an extreme outlier; most such realizations go no further than preferences for various types of play and emulation of visible parental roles. These preferences and emulations, in the majority of instances, do not define mating preferences and erotic proclivities later in life. They are often suggestive of developmental trajectories, but they are not inevitably definitive.
As a loving parent, you would accept those infantile expressions and allow your child to explore them, as does any caring parent. You would do as you thought best. Your love for your child would guide your actions. You would protect your children according to your own principles and you would not welcome the actions of anyone who threatened the well being of your offspring.
Loving parents want their kids to grow up treating others with respect and kindness. YOU KNOW this isn't about teaching kids about SEX. It's teaching them about growing up and forming families and YOU KNOW it's already part of the curriculum.
I shared no such thing. I have no memories of anything from two years of age.
What nonsense. I do not support irreversible medical procedures ("mutation"? Really? Do you enjoy being insulting? Is it how God tells you to talk about people?). This bill isn't about surgery, it's about erasure. What I do support is leaving medical decisions to doctors, NOT to Greg Abbott or Ron DeSantis.
I have a lot of trouble understanding such a lack of critical thought, but I'm trying.
Do you not understand how being homosexual- an orientation observed across the animal kingdom- is very different than declaring oneself the opposite sex, no sex, or both sexes?
Do you just kneejerk assume that "trans is the new gay" and "they're just not being accepted," so for you, this is entirely emotional? What is it?
There is zero, and I repeat, zero evidence that "trans" is anything but a neo-religious identitarian ideology. How do you even *begin* to think it's anything like being gay???
Don't you *know* proto-gay kids are very often gender nonconforming- and often dysphoric about that fact, since society is pretty awful to gender nonconforming kids? (It's no accident society has rushed to affirm this recently. It's a huge relief to the homophobic).
Don't you understand that little gay kids just like you- especially effeminate gay boys- are those being subjected to this particularly brutal and insidious form of conversion therapy?
I'm not blind. I just care about people other than myself. Why don't you?
Sexual orientation and gender identity have always been tossed together. In an environment where both were persecuted and criminalized and punished, why wouldn't you expect an alliance? We face many of the same issues in employment, marriage, housing. And in the modern world, since the late 1800s, our struggles have been linked. And for someone asking why there's a connection, isn't it odd that you pivot immediately to pointing out that young LGB and T sometimes experience the same issues?
Before you raise the question of intellectual ability, perhaps you could explain why modern biology seems alien to you. Zero evidence of trans existence? Is this 1780?
And where did you get the idea I was an effeminate gay boy? When I was growing up, the prevailing assumption was that gay men wanted to be women. It never made any sense to little me. I managed to live through that ignorant time with an intact male identity. I'm quite certain that growing up today, even with trans issues being taught, would be INFIINITELY easier.
And while you're defending this law, why don't you opine on the TN version. It bans any discussion of sexual orientation or gender in all grades. And look at the laws the GOP is passing in other states. They really don't like you. Or me.
Depends on what you mean by "narrower". What you really want, I'm guessing, is to hide the existence of things you don't like. I can't imagine how that's a good thing, especially in all grades, as I mentioned.
You continue to be very obtuse about this, so I'll help you out here.
It is quite predictable that the LGB would suffer for the excesses of the TQ+. That's what the author is decrying in this article.
The gender identity movement attached itself to the gay rights movement, like a parasite, to begin pushing its aims of social engineering. And I mean that quite literally, considering how the strategizing spoke exactly of this: "attach the cause to...a modern cause which is seen as infallible...gay rights or racism" (this is part of the playbook). It's on organizations like GLAAD and Stonewall, who suddenly found themselves facing stagnation, after winning one of the biggest human rights campaigns in history, for accepting the cause of fighting for the next new vulnerable minority which came knocking, claiming itself to be, somehow, part of the movement for acceptance of same-sex attraction.
Again, that the pendulum would swing back so far and destroy gay rights is entirely predictable, and exactly why the author is alarmed and fighting against this movement, or at the very lease against the forced teaming of the LGB with the TQ, in a frantic attempt to preserve LGB gains when society predictably reacts against the insanity that is gender ideology.
I'm coming to realize that in the end it's actually an issue of conformists vs. nonconformists, and also in a sense of IQ and logical reasoning abilities. Conformists are intellectually hampered by their conformist impulses; and the intellectually impaired are, of course, logically impaired, and so liable to believe all manner of bad analogies.
Of course it's predictable. The same forces that hate T hate LGB. They always have. They lumped us all together back when they put us all in jail. They're lumping us all together now that they've figured out a "groomer" angle to call us all pedophiles again. We're hardly the only group the toxic right wing tries to divide after treating them like a monolith. Look at black America and the GOP. All of a sudden, they pretend to see differences between the descendants of slaves and more recent arrivals from the Caribbean and Africa.
The most predictable thing, though, it the lies. On that, there is remarkable consistency. Lies, lies, lies. They have so little respect for you that they can't tell you the truth, because people who understand the issue don't resort to "solutions" like erasing people.
Most people on the outside don't even understand that there's a difference due to the mainstream grouping of LGBTIA+, and mashing it all together into a confusing alphabet soup means gays can be used as a convenient meat shield as well as an unfortunate casualty for any legal attempts to fight back.
Calling it the "don't say gay" bill makes it easier to rile up anger and sympathy than calling it the "don't trans kids" bill.
And let's not pretend that gender ideology isn't increasingly erasing us by grouping orientation with identity... Insisting that same-sex attraction to certain sex-based biological characteristics doesn't really exist and that gay men must be open to "male" vaginas and lesbians to "female" penises. Labeling people that don't exhibit stereotypical gender behaviors as being outside the gender binary. The growing trend of people labeling themselves "queer" to be part of a movement to feel special and different, yet also be entirely cis and straight somehow...
Gary, I’m sobbing reading your essay. I’m sad for what you are having to endure and the hate I know you will get for speaking out this way. I’m sad that a company I’ve long respected has taken such a horrifying turn. I’m sad that LGB rights and positioning in society have been co-opted and eclipsed by this movement. I am
sad that my beautiful teenage girl fell prey to this four years ago and that I am called hateful and transphobic for not affirming something I believe is dangerous and divisive. I am sad that she will likely cut her breasts off as soon as she is out of our house. I am sad that the political party I’ve spent my life supporting is now encouraging healthy young bodies to be pumped full of drugs to stop normal development and fast track them to permanent surgeries. I’m sad women’s sports will no longer be women’s sports.
I celebrated when gay marriage became legal. I never thought that we would end up here. Thank you so much for writing this. It’s everything I think and feel as a female, a parent, a GenXer, a human. I will be forever grateful for you speaking out.
Thank you for writing this. It's stories like yours that compel me to speak out. My heart is breaking for you and other families going through this. I hope everything works out for you. <3
These comments help me to understand why I’m racked with emotion…excellent article because you have a brilliant perspective. Thank goodness for you!
I’m sobbing too—because it’s pathetic how little the author thinks about his own value. He’s fine with the government pushing bills that serve to ostracize him and other LGBT just to gain votes.
Read the bill. It has nothing to do with gay people specifically. And do you REALLY think these ideas are suitable for third-graders and younger?
It has EVERYTHING to do with gay people. The bill SPECIFICALLY says "sexual orientation." Why is that gay people exist something unsuitable for 3rd graders while that straight people exist is completely suitable?
Heterosexuality is a "sexual orientation." This bill is not about gay people. It's about prohibiting age-inappropriate discussions in classrooms in Florida, and also provides for parental notifications. You really think this kind of thing should be discussed with those below 8 y/o?
I'm gay, but I don't think this kind of thing belongs in elementary school or kindergarten. And no, the bill doesn't require everyone to pretend that gay people don't exist. Rather it's to prevent making sexual orientation of any kind into classroom materials taught to young children.
With all kindness possible, I don't think you really understand the bill.
Cheers!
The genuinely sad part is that, well...this outcome was more or less predicted. I'm not going to name teams or anything, but it is important that everyone—EVERYONE—reflect on why that prediction came true, and what led to accurate foresight. It's not easy to confront. It's gut-wrenching, even. But it is necessary. And things are only going to get worse, because the only way to stop it at this point will require deeply awful and forceful intervention.
The root of the issue is this: human beings are born with powerful instincts but only a general sense of identity. Formation of that identity requires active setting of norms. And, here's the bad part: setting of norms requires pushback against deviations from that norm. Without norms, children cannot form properly. Agency, identity, and discipline all take time to develop. Without that, there is no "terra firma" from which to explore.
And so: while a simple, surface take on gay marriage seems obvious in a philosophically liberal culture—of course we should allow it, how else can we claim we're for individual freedom? The problem is we do so at the cost of shattering two critically important norms, namely sexual identity and the familial purpose of marriage. Marriage isn't about love. It never has been. It's not a romantic expression. Marriage is about family. Love is a necessary ingredient of course, make no mistake, but it is subordinate to the purpose of building stable, forming families for children.
Yes, it really is all about the children. By shattering those two norms, what have we done? We have tacitly endorsed the notion that these things are not centrally important (which they are) or more essential than our individual desires. We are now beginning to reap the costs of that mistake. I think we all know this, deep in our hearts.
Again, I don't want to get into team-ball here. But we have a situation where one team is in rebellion against human nature and reality itself—and always has been—and another team that has long forgotten how to communicate moral issues outside the context of religion. To be fair, it is in fact extremely difficult to do so, since religion is the most ancient social technology and so far the only successful method of forming a shared moral system in a society. Nonetheless, it is a necessary communication skill in a world where the "terra firma" of shared moral values have already been eliminated. Seeing a pattern?
So, what is the end result? For me, ideally? As a society we need to learn how to tolerate without endorsement, and do so without malice. This requires compromise on all sides. I don't know how to get there. But at the end of the day, a working society takes priority, and children are the foundation of that society.
My 5 yr old JUST LAST NIGHT asked if a boy could marry a boy & if boys can dress like girls.
FL teachers are already complaining that they DONT KNOW if they can answer these questions WITHOUT GETTING SUED.
The law is TOO VAGUE.
Here’s one answer, “Johnny, that’s a great question to ask your parents.”
Maybe not for all kids.
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/mom-pleads-guilty-murder-8-year-old-boy-thought-be-n848741
Attempting to normalize the outlier: Citing rare outliers in an effort to normalize them to win support for one's stance
Blacks law says its better to let 10 guilty men go free than to imprison 1 innocent person. It however does not argue that we should let all guilty go free just to be sure no one is ever wrongfully imprisoned.
And if the parents are religious nuts and the boy wants to marry another boy when he grows up?
It's just like Romeo and Juliet. Human history is absolutely full of folks who wanted to marry someone their parents didn't approve of. How is it different if it's same-sex? And why does someone in third-grade or younger need to be discussing this with a teacher?
I'm a gay guy who came out in 1979. No, my parents weren't happy, but they accepted me over time, and have become incredibly supportive ever since.
Life presents obstacles to us all. Properly handled, they make us stronger. Teaching seven-year-olds about gender ideology isn't going to make anyone's path easier.
What a dumb response. Do you think a 7 year old doesn’t know anything about sex and sexual identity? Do you think not being able to talk about questions that the child may have is HELPING?
My lord…
"My lord.." says the commenter who just posted "What if the parents are religious nuts".
Careful... I know you mean that towards Christians but Muslims, a protected group among the Left, is far harsher about dealing with homosexuality than Christians are.
Is that also the answer to the kid who says, “It’s really weird that Tommy has two dads. Someone should beat him up.”
The law is to vague is the excuse because arguing that grooming should be allowed doesn't go over well with the majority. Teachers need only say "Let's talk to your parents about that". Reminder, they are in school to learn, not for therapy.
Isn't it interesting that your child thought to ask this? Why would a five year old care about such things? They should be doing five year old things. They have enough to figure out.
There is something wrong when kids are more worried about these things than Santa Clause and other childish things.
Thank you for saying so very well everything I have been thinking and feeling for a while. It's time we regrouped with those of us who feel the same, and restore some sanity.
I'm a gay man who came out in 1979, and actually lived during the tail end of discrimination against gays. This Florida bill in no way discriminates against gays at all, and frankly I'd love to see this idea implemented nation-wide.
I don't have kids, but if I did, I wouldn't want them, at the age 7 or younger, to be indoctrinated into any particular sexual more by a school teacher. This is a job for parents.
I also agree with Gary's take that the opposition to this bill is indeed homophobic. I truly worry that all the gay kids are being persuaded that they're really the "wrong" sex and need this complicated medical intervention. No!!!! Let kids be kids. A certain amount of confusion is part of growing up. If they want to transition to another sex, let them do so as adults. I think it's highly immoral to let kids do this. Indeed, it risks irreversible damage.
AMEN! Finally someone with common sense and willing to speak the truth. This "religion" (cult in my opinion) has got to go. All of this is so utterly insane and I can't understand how educated people can't see through the glitter bomb to realize that children and teens are being harmed.
Excellent analysis of this madness. Emperor has no clothes, everyone!
Wow! Thank you for going public.
Gary, I greatly admire your courage to speak out. You will be mobbed, demoted, fired, called a Nazi, a bigot, etc... You do not deserve this, but it will happen. 20 years ago conservatives who opposing gay marriage were called the same names, and some were fired for their beliefs (Brandon Eich among others). You may not like being in our deplorable company, but we welcome you regardless.
You draw a distinction between gay marriage acceptance and gender identity wokeness, but to us conservatives, they are expressions of the same error. Once you accept the logic of the sexual revolution (men & women are essentially the same and individual autonomy is the highest good), there's no stopping the train. You get no-fault divorce, out of wedlock births, gay acceptance and marriage, polygamy & polyamory, eventually gender identity lunacy, and we can already see pedophilia on the horizon. You imagine an ability to freeze liberalism in the nice 2010's, pro-gay state, but that's not how liberalism works. It seeks to liberate, from class, religion, race, sex, sexual orientation, age, and now even biology. Because if it stops "liberating", liberalism no longer has a purpose. It is an ideology of change, not stasis. It is conservatives who “stand athwart history, yelling Stop!", which is what you're doing in this letter.
You asked people to honestly consider your opinions as a gay man being offended by the LGBTQXYZ alphabet soup. I'm asking you to honestly consider the opinions of those conservatives that you have disagreed with, how the things you promoted may be largely responsible for birthing our current gender insanity. While that means you share the responsibility, it also means you have a unique ability to be part of the solution. This letter is part of that solution, and that is incredibly courageous. Criticizing an enemy is easy; criticizing a friend requires courage.
Again, I have the highest respect for what you're doing. You do not deserve the hate, the ostracism, the bigotry that will be directed at you. If you end up setting up a GoFundMe (unless GoFundMe refuses you for wrong-think), I would contribute to it. You have real courage. That is rare today (maybe it always has been) and should be supported.
I don't know how you can say that acceptance of gays and gay marriage has directly led to this gender insanity? Being LGB is about who one loves (sexual attraction)....not how one feels based on stereotypes. I've never met a LGB yet who is taking cross sex hormones or looking to surgically alter their body to mimic the opposite sex. I'm at least glad that you respect what is being said here....because it's the truth. Many of us who refer to ourselves as Democrats (left of center/moderate) are appalled that our party has capitulated to this nonsense.
I didn't say that acceptance of gay marriage led to this. I said both are based in the same philosophy: individual autonomy.
Accepting that individual autonomy (particularly in the matter of human sexuality) is the highest good, that society has no business "regulating what you do with your body", it is effectively impossible to delineate any line of sexual or moral standard which may not be crossed.
If you doubt this, just ask yourself a simple question: how would you argue that there should be laws against any of the following: commercial surrogacy, polygamy, organ selling, 39-week abortion, consenting adult-teen sexual contact, legalizing heroin? While far away from sexual ethics, they share a common refrain with LGB & T politics: most of them collapse under the "my body -- my choice -- none of your business" philosophy of individual autonomy (just for clarity, I oppose all of them because I recognize the "common good" as higher than "individual autonomy").
That's the connection between the LGB and the T; both rely on the assumption that society has no business regulating your individual personal behavior. When conservatives tried to assert a "common good" based argument against gay marriage in the early 2000's, we were told we were sex-obsessed bigots who just wanted to "control how people loved." Gary is asserting the same type of argument here (as are you), and it won't work any better than it did for us, because Western society has fully accepted the "you have no say over what I do with my body" philosophy. And it's completely fair to point out that it was your party and your ideology that put the car on this road and has been hitting the gas for decades.
We conservatives lost the gay marriage debate in the 2000's because we failed to stand up to the sexual revolution of the 1960's. As pleased as I am that Gary and yourself and Bari Weiss and Nellie Bowles and others are waking up to the danger, you're fighting a losing battle, just like we were. You've already accepted the underlying assumptions.
WOW! I guess you'd be just fine with women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Being left of center doesn't mean we have no morals or no common sense just as right of center folks aren't all deplorable and hate the common good. I think most people fall somewhere in the center. The far left and far right are hurling insults and accusations (tainted with lies and half truths) and the majority of us are caught in the middle of this culture war and we just want peace, truth and common decency.
Lisa, you're still putting words in my mouth. I didn't say you had "no morals or standards". I said that the philosophy of maximal individual autonomy (which essentially all liberals champion) makes maintaining any form of objective societal moral standards extremely difficult or impossible.
You say you want "peace, harmony, and common decency". To you, "common decency" means not indoctrinating 7 year olds with gender ideology. To me "common decency" means not having Gay Pride Parades. Using the liberal framework of maximal individual autonomy, you can't defend your standard any more than I can defend mine. Your "peace, harmony, and common decency" is built on sand; you just don't realize it.
This is hardly original. The post-modernists have been celebrating the lack of objective truth since the 70's. It is the essence of the Sohab Amari / David French war going on among conservative intellectuals right now. If you really want to understand it, there's lots of people who can articulate it far better than I.
Isn’t it such a coincidence that everything you believe about the world just must be “right” and everything else is just destroying the world?
And what exactly is wrong with a pregnant women barefoot in the kitchen? Perhaps the pregnant women prefers being barefoot when anywhere inside the home. or is the being pregnant part that is the problem because it means you're not a career woman if your at home pregnant?
You claim to be in the middle caught between accusations and yet you categorize a pregnant women in the kitchen as somehow enslaving simply because it's something you view that way but you're view is not reflective of that of every women or even the majority.
Whether you like it or not acceptance of gay marriage was necessary for this as it moved the line, changed what was normal/acceptable in society. If we still viewed gays today the way we did before the gay marriage fight the support for the gender & trans insanity we are seeing would not be there as it would be too far just as pedophilia is still a step to far but won't be too far once the line is moved 1 maybe 2 more times.
Only %3-%4 of the population is not heterosexual. Within nature as well as the human race, homosexuality is NOT the norm. Doesn't mean gays shouldn't be allowed to live life like everyone else but it does mean they are the outliers and not the norm when it comes to sexual preference.
I disagree that there is an unbroken line between movements centered on individual autonomy such as gay marriage and the gender identity ideology. The latter varies precisely because it is NOT limited to an individual’s degree of freedom. Rather, it demands that everyone accept their subjective, internal beliefs and pretend that such beliefs are actually a fact. “I feel like a woman so YOU must act as though you believe that to be literally true. Now open the f***ing door to me that leads to your safe spaces, your sports, your healthcare, and even your language.”
I strongly agree that Gary has shown great courage with his thoughtful, clear, well-supported statement of position. Truly excellent.
A conservative who is required to pretend that a gay male co-worker "has a husband" is in exactly the same position as you are when you are required to affirm that a male co-worker in a dress "is a woman". You may see them as different, but that's only because you support one and not the other. To the one being coerced in each case, they feel the same.
Maximal individual autonomy will continue to drive us toward more "personally liberating" ideas until we rediscover some kind of "common good" understanding of ethics. Such an framework might be based on Aristotle; it almost certainly won't be Christian or -- Sohab Amari's delusions aside -- Catholic integralism. I would love to be wrong about this and the slide into lunacy abate at least long enough for my kids to live in a functional society, but the last 60 years don't give me much hope.
Next stop:
age of consent laws (12 year olds can consent to gender reassignment, why not to sex)
transhumanism ("I am a dragon, so you must treat me as a dragon!")
I know it sounds crazy. But most of what we're debating now would have sounded crazy as recently as Bostock.
I'll agree with you about a functional society....and how it's NOT right now! It's been careening out of control since the Clinton Era full throttled Reaganomics. I believe we are in end stage capitalism and we can't achieve civility or find common ground because the 1% (big pharma/silicon valley/wall street etc) are allowed to control the narrative. This whole "trans" issue is just another way for the 1% to make $$$ and control the narrative, but it's most evil because they are using the trusting nature of children and the hormonal angst of puberty to achieve a goal ($$$$ and control). I don't care one bit if some grown man wants to LARP around in woman face/clothes....as long as he doesn't insist he's actually a woman, doesn't invade my women only spaces and sports.
What's funny Lisa is that, with the exception of "when" things started careening out of control (you say the 90's, I say the 60's), I agree with absolutely everything you said in this post. It appears we agree about much after all.
It starts even before the 60's . It started in the 60's for you and in eth 90s for MLisa because of your age and not when things truly started to spiral downwards. For someone younger than MLIsa who is aware of what's happening they would argue it started in the 2010's. There have been waves to this that align with different generations which in turn determines to them when it started.
I chose the 60's simply to make the case here. In reality, I am with Patrick Deenen on this; the deification of individual was baked into liberalism at the Enlightenment. It starts with John Locke. but that's a whole other thread that I've written on elsewhere.
They are not the same, at all, both in scale and impact, but an adequate response is outside the scope of a comment section. Well wishes to our host Gary, and to you.
Perhaps reflect for a moment on the incontrovertible fact that gender ideology is a heterosexual male movement. The entire thing has been built by heterosexual men who want to cross dress in public and have us all pretend they are women. Men from all sides of the political spectrum.
They have been building this movement for 60/70 years, the same generations of men that had to be forced to permit women economic freedom, something you appear to still be angry about.
The heterosexual cross dressing men you are pissed with were doing it at home for a long long time, even in the pre 60s nirvana you hark back to. Women were stuck with these abusive men through legally enforceable economic dependency, again this seems to be something you support still.
The current surge in autistic boys now claiming to be lesbian and forming relationships with each other because women quite reasonably don't want to pander to them, are the heterosexual men that women in families you idealise would be forced to marry.
We are free of that abuse, thankfully.
I suggest you stop blaming women and gay men for the behavior of heterosexual men.
Heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by cross dressing "gave birth" (your words and a hideous way to put it) to the wholesale sanitisation of their autogynephilia under "identity".
Are you unable to face this fact? It seems like you are unwilling to, by lashing out at women and gay men.
As someone in the same category as the writer of this article, you place the responsibility on us. I place it on you. Why were the extra letters so successfully able to trojan its way in and parasitize the LGB movement when they have nothing in common at all? Who was it that lumped us together as being of the "same error"? Those that considered homosexual people to be less of a man or a woman... Insisting that certain actions and behaviors are exclusively male or female. Lumping us together as "queers"-- deviants acting outside our proper God-given gender roles, when it never had anything to do with gender at all.
We were forced into this alliance by both the opposition to gay rights *and* the gender opportunists, and now we are all suffering the consequences.
Had gay marriage passed decades ago, before the gender ideologists had such a strangle hold on the movement, I don't believe we would be in this situation now. All we wanted was to live and let live... To be able to give the partners we love the same support and rights that any other couple receives. Now we're stuck struggling against the gender ideologists who want to go far beyond individual rights into this postmodern hell of redefining language and forcing everyone to constantly affirm their delusions, because we were forced into an alliance we never wanted or asked for.
And yes. We are needed as part of the solution, but continuing this rhetoric of gays being of the "same" breed, only pushes more gay people into the depths of the alphabet soup. We need gays to stand up against this if we are to be successful, and we can't expect them to do that if they continue to feel that the rights that they won are threatened if they dare dip their toe in the other side.
Thank you for writing this, Gary. Everything you've written matches the countless hours of research I have poured into this topic. I care deeply about this topic because my 14-year-old daughter is going through gender ideology, and from my perspective it's causing far more problems for her than it solves, even if she doesn't obtain top surgery when she's 18 as she's promised. Regardless, I appreciate your eloquence, bravery, and honesty. Thank you.
Thanks... I have been screaming about alphabet soup for 15+years and telling anyone that would listen that "trans" has no relation to us GLB-folks and we should NOT be lumped in with them, or rather, they should not be lumped in with us. It is heartening to see more gays speaking up about this and even some gay organizations-- for whom the big national organizations WANT the more letters they can cram in because it means more people to send them money...
I enjoyed this piece, it made me se things and think about it from a perspective I hadn't considered before. I shared it on twitter with a number of people because it's so well done.
Thank you so much for writing what I’ve been trying to articulate. I can’t get far enough from that rainbow flag and have practically gone back into the closet after being out for 40 years. We need more of this.
This is everything I have been feeling about this ideology, perfectly articulated in one place. Excellent work. Thank you for speaking out. You are an eloquent writer. Exceptional points and validation for your perspective.
And u don't speak for the gay nor our LGBTQ.communities.
My 5 yr old asked if a boy could marry a boy & if a boy can wear girls' clothes.
Florida teachers are already speaking out that THEY'RE SCARED of answering questions like these now.
The law is TOO VAGUE. U didn't look that much into the bill, did you?
Why can you not answer these questions for him?
So? When my daughter was in Pre-K, she asked questions about pregnancy and I answered in the best age-appropriate way I could. I told her she was put in my tummy for safe keeping until she could grow big enough to come out, like a seed that grows in the ground. She accepted that but at school she encountered a pregnant teacher and told her classmates that babies are kept in their mommy’s bellies to grow. The teacher pulled me aside and asked me to speak to her about it because some children are told the stork story. I happily obliged. It wasn’t my choice to decide for other parents how they should handle grown up topics for their children and I appreciated the teacher quietly respecting all of our differences.
Actually it’s true that the law is too vague . It just bans a teacher from instructing on sexual orientation or gender identity. It never once defines instruction. Anything a teacher says can be construed as instruction, and that’s the point. Keep it vague so schools and teachers get scared enough to block all mention of LGBT.
Your comment got me to go read the law itself. You are misrepresenting it, as is the original commenter on this thread. The law clearly states it specifically prohibits "classroom instruction" which any teacher should know means lessons taught to the whole class. "Classroom instruction" does not include answering a question like "can boys wear dresses?" asked in conversation. If a kid actually asked that during a class (as opposed to one-on-one) the teacher could easily say "that's not part of what we're learning right now, so you can ask me later." IOW, there is NO prohibition on teachers having independent conversations about these topics with children outside of formal instruction. It prohibits, specifically, "classroom instruction"—ie. instruction to the classroom full of kids. The point is to keep the gender *curriculum* out of K-3 classrooms.
The law also specifically carves out a protection for kids whose teachers have a reasonable (and defined by statute) belief they might be harmed by their parents. Here is how the law reads:
************
This subparagraph does not prohibit a
92 school district from adopting procedures that permit school
93 personnel to withhold such information from a parent if a
94 reasonably prudent person would believe that disclosure would
95 result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect, as those terms are
96 defined in s. 39.01.
************
And here's how it reads on the issue of instruction:
************
97 3. Classroom instruction by school personnel or third
98 parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur
99 in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age
100 appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in
101 accordance with state standards.
***********
Most of the rest of the law is concerned with prohibiting schools from hiding information about what kids are being taught or withholding information from parents about how their child is faring at school. None of that is nefarious or unreasonable.
Wow. Exceptionally well written. Cheers.
Wow. You really do think everything is really about YOU. YOU want all sorts of people and all sorts of organization to conform to what YOU want. Well, it don't work that way, as they say.
"But we should first let him be a kid."
I run into this a lot. I find it comes from sincere people who were just not that mature when they were kids. And, in this case, as I've already said, you think it's all about YOU. I was a little kid, apparently a very self-aware little kid, who knew I was gay long before third grade. Sadly, this was quite a long time ago and it was made very, very clear to me that what I was was not acceptable. If someone had, instead, explained sexual orientation and, even better, said it was OK for me to be gay in third grade, grades three through college would have been very, very different.
While you bask in the attention you're getting from the likes of Rod Dreher, take some time to read his comments about trans people. You'll find lots and lots you agree with. Then take the time to go back and read what he thinks about you, a gay man. Maybe it'll open your eyes.
per the new philosophy, your gayness would not have been acceptable. You should have instead transitioned and become a girl. And pharmaceutical companies would have made a lot of money off of you, and this is important because we all need to do what is best for the pharmaceutical industry, no questions asked.
Sorry, but that's just nonsense. The assertion that gay people are being pushed into trans identities is absurd. In an environment where adults understand -- and teach -- that some kids are straight and some kids are gay and some kids are trans and even kids that seem like one thing can be another, there's no push into gender changing. Stop listening to the hysteria and, especially, stop listening to the nasty people whose solution to all of it is to tell kids nothing about it and punish anyone who does.
As for me, if someone had asked if I was a girl, I'd have said heck no. In fact, it's precisely anti-gay straight people who thought gay men wanted to be women. Many of them still can't figure it all out.
in our extended 'social scene' (people we sort of know or have one family in between) I know of 2 or 3 teens doing the transgender thing. It definitely IS being pushed on them today, whereas years ago it would not have been. Among the many problems: it's pushed on them long before they are really old enough to figure out exactly 'what' they are. There is no compelling need for teachers to discuss any aspect of any of this with elementary OR HS aged kids. And it does get into grooming territory, with adults teaching kids that they are bad if they are not receptive to abnormal sexual practices.
No compelling need to discuss how humans behave? No compelling reason to tell HS kids about romance/love/sex?
And you don't even believe it yourself. From the years before school even starts, society teaches kids -- and schools certainly do -- that boys and girls grow up to be men and women and marry and have their own little boys and girls. It's pervasive and comes from every direction. From nursery rhymes to every single Disney movie ever made to prom. You don't really long for the days when nothing was pushed on kids. You want something pushed on them, but just one thing: cis-gendered heterosexuality.
As for "grooming". Do not use that word. It's akin to blood libel. It's slander. It's vile. And to the extent that you think it means teaching kids about how to grow up, it applies to you as much as it does to any of the people you call "groomers".
this is at the crux of the issue: nothing was pushed on them. And you are correct, that the default then is what is *normal*--what enables society to go forward, which is normal heterosexuality. This does not mean that single people should be hated or oppressed (regardless of what they do behind closed doors). But it means that *normal* people do not want abnormal sexual practices proselytized to their children (edited to add: normal people ALSO do not want heterosexual sex proselytized to young children), and do not want their children groomed for sexual relationships (of any kind). And 99% of gay people understand these concepts. You are the 1% that is out of touch with reality. Grooming can of course be done by either gender to either gender--it's no blood libel, it's a reality that has been pervasive in many religious institutions, scouting, etc. It's the process of convincing a young, naive mind that it is normal to engage in abnormal sexual behavior, or that if the child is a 'good person', he/she will engage in abnormal sexual behavior. You know this of course. How odd that you so badly don't want to admit the grooming aspect of all this.
A key point that is well made above: let kids be kids. It is abnormal to preach *any* sexual preference/gender identity stuff to them. And adults with normal values (including the author) are not interested in discussing sexual preference/gender identity with children---but *groomers* are very much into these types of discussions...
Did you not pay attention to the author of this piece? He says he's in the minority of gay people. He says he disagrees with all the organizations.
I asked you to stop using the word "groom". It's slander. The grooming you mention in churches and the Boy Scouts is real grooming and is a crime (at least if your bishop bothers to turn you in). To apply it to gay people or trans people is blood libel. Bye.
If you’re right, then where are the young lesbians? They are non existent in my daughter’s HS, now they are all identifying as trans.
How many, out of a class of how many, in a school of how many?
For detailed stats on girls coming out as trans at exponentially high rates, read Irreversible Damage. Between 2016 and 2017, the number of gender surgeries for natal females in the US quadrupled; in the UK, the rates of gender dysphoria for teenage girls are up 4,400 percent over the previous decade. These surely have increased since then. My teenage daughter has no lesbian friends, they are all trans or non binary if they consider themselves part of the LGBTQ community. If you read the Detrans subreddit or follow detrans young women, you’ll see anecdotally that there are thousands of young women (and men) who are regretting their transitions and end up either declaring themselves homosexual or ending up being straight.
When people don't want to talk about actual numbers and want to scare people, they resort to percentage increases and speak in terms of multiples. They also exaggerate and, dare I say it, lie.
Quadrupling, when you start small, stays small. 4,400% sounds like a lot, but when the final number is in the three digits in a population of 35,000,000, it isn't so many, is it?
Here's an example of an earlier, calm, rational study. Dramatic increases -- due to insurance expansion -- but still numbers in the hundreds for what your side continues to call "mutilation" (honestly, shouldn't you be ashamed?). https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/2673384 (these are virtually all ADULTS, of course)
I see nothing of this tsunami of trans girls, but maybe that's because the kids I know grew up in place where gay and trans aren't shiny and new anymore. But, for the sake of argument, let's say there is some strange phenomenon in which lesbian girls are being peer-pressured into trans identities, on what possible basis should discussion of sexual orientation be banned in schools???
Well as you mentioned…it’s not all about YOU, Bob. Puberty and adolescence is a confusing time for ALL of us. Your solution is to support irreversible medical mutation because that wasn’t YOUR experience? How very selfish.
Nowhere does Bob say he supports irreversible medical mutation for children in his post. This bill prohibits discussing sexual orientation, which includes gay and lesbian. it is not only about the trans issue.
The bill prohibits age-inappropriate discussion. It protects gay and even trans parents too. Because they get to decide how their children are learning about their own situations not a teacher who knows very little about them.
The bill mentions "age-appropriate" discussion, but gives no instruction and will not have any guidance until June of 2023 at the earliest. In the meantime, SILENCE or you face a lawsuit.
And gay parents do not get to decide. If I had kids, I'd want them to learn in school that same-sex couples existed. The bill bans them hearing about their own families.
If you had kids, Bob, you would properly be teaching them about ANY sort of sexuality when you, their parent, considered it appropriate to do so. It would also be your right, as mentor and protector of your child, to delegate your responsibility to others.
Whatever choice you made about when and how to teach your child about sexual orientation would be your own choice. Other parents have the right to make THEIR own choice.
Your choice about your own children does not bestow a prerogative to deprive other parents of their own parental prerogative, nor force to them to abdicate their responsibility to their own children.
I say this to you as one who was an orphan and ward of the state. The state must act in loco parentis when no private custody is in effect. Such action is always suboptimal and the state must not be allowed to usurp parental rights and responsibilities. Education is compulsory and teachers are agents of the state.
You have shared that you were precociously aware of your sexual orientation at the age of two. Surely you must realize that you were an extreme outlier; most such realizations go no further than preferences for various types of play and emulation of visible parental roles. These preferences and emulations, in the majority of instances, do not define mating preferences and erotic proclivities later in life. They are often suggestive of developmental trajectories, but they are not inevitably definitive.
As a loving parent, you would accept those infantile expressions and allow your child to explore them, as does any caring parent. You would do as you thought best. Your love for your child would guide your actions. You would protect your children according to your own principles and you would not welcome the actions of anyone who threatened the well being of your offspring.
Loving parents want their kids to grow up treating others with respect and kindness. YOU KNOW this isn't about teaching kids about SEX. It's teaching them about growing up and forming families and YOU KNOW it's already part of the curriculum.
I shared no such thing. I have no memories of anything from two years of age.
What nonsense. I do not support irreversible medical procedures ("mutation"? Really? Do you enjoy being insulting? Is it how God tells you to talk about people?). This bill isn't about surgery, it's about erasure. What I do support is leaving medical decisions to doctors, NOT to Greg Abbott or Ron DeSantis.
I have a lot of trouble understanding such a lack of critical thought, but I'm trying.
Do you not understand how being homosexual- an orientation observed across the animal kingdom- is very different than declaring oneself the opposite sex, no sex, or both sexes?
Do you just kneejerk assume that "trans is the new gay" and "they're just not being accepted," so for you, this is entirely emotional? What is it?
There is zero, and I repeat, zero evidence that "trans" is anything but a neo-religious identitarian ideology. How do you even *begin* to think it's anything like being gay???
Don't you *know* proto-gay kids are very often gender nonconforming- and often dysphoric about that fact, since society is pretty awful to gender nonconforming kids? (It's no accident society has rushed to affirm this recently. It's a huge relief to the homophobic).
Don't you understand that little gay kids just like you- especially effeminate gay boys- are those being subjected to this particularly brutal and insidious form of conversion therapy?
How can you be so blind?
I'm not blind. I just care about people other than myself. Why don't you?
Sexual orientation and gender identity have always been tossed together. In an environment where both were persecuted and criminalized and punished, why wouldn't you expect an alliance? We face many of the same issues in employment, marriage, housing. And in the modern world, since the late 1800s, our struggles have been linked. And for someone asking why there's a connection, isn't it odd that you pivot immediately to pointing out that young LGB and T sometimes experience the same issues?
Before you raise the question of intellectual ability, perhaps you could explain why modern biology seems alien to you. Zero evidence of trans existence? Is this 1780?
And where did you get the idea I was an effeminate gay boy? When I was growing up, the prevailing assumption was that gay men wanted to be women. It never made any sense to little me. I managed to live through that ignorant time with an intact male identity. I'm quite certain that growing up today, even with trans issues being taught, would be INFIINITELY easier.
And while you're defending this law, why don't you opine on the TN version. It bans any discussion of sexual orientation or gender in all grades. And look at the laws the GOP is passing in other states. They really don't like you. Or me.
Is it legitimate to hold the belief that the purpose of education is, in fact, narrower than we want to make it nowadays?
Depends on what you mean by "narrower". What you really want, I'm guessing, is to hide the existence of things you don't like. I can't imagine how that's a good thing, especially in all grades, as I mentioned.
You continue to be very obtuse about this, so I'll help you out here.
It is quite predictable that the LGB would suffer for the excesses of the TQ+. That's what the author is decrying in this article.
The gender identity movement attached itself to the gay rights movement, like a parasite, to begin pushing its aims of social engineering. And I mean that quite literally, considering how the strategizing spoke exactly of this: "attach the cause to...a modern cause which is seen as infallible...gay rights or racism" (this is part of the playbook). It's on organizations like GLAAD and Stonewall, who suddenly found themselves facing stagnation, after winning one of the biggest human rights campaigns in history, for accepting the cause of fighting for the next new vulnerable minority which came knocking, claiming itself to be, somehow, part of the movement for acceptance of same-sex attraction.
Again, that the pendulum would swing back so far and destroy gay rights is entirely predictable, and exactly why the author is alarmed and fighting against this movement, or at the very lease against the forced teaming of the LGB with the TQ, in a frantic attempt to preserve LGB gains when society predictably reacts against the insanity that is gender ideology.
I'm coming to realize that in the end it's actually an issue of conformists vs. nonconformists, and also in a sense of IQ and logical reasoning abilities. Conformists are intellectually hampered by their conformist impulses; and the intellectually impaired are, of course, logically impaired, and so liable to believe all manner of bad analogies.
Of course it's predictable. The same forces that hate T hate LGB. They always have. They lumped us all together back when they put us all in jail. They're lumping us all together now that they've figured out a "groomer" angle to call us all pedophiles again. We're hardly the only group the toxic right wing tries to divide after treating them like a monolith. Look at black America and the GOP. All of a sudden, they pretend to see differences between the descendants of slaves and more recent arrivals from the Caribbean and Africa.
The most predictable thing, though, it the lies. On that, there is remarkable consistency. Lies, lies, lies. They have so little respect for you that they can't tell you the truth, because people who understand the issue don't resort to "solutions" like erasing people.
If it's all the fault of T "parasites", why do the GOP laws attack gay people? And if LGB have "won", why are we being erased?
Most people on the outside don't even understand that there's a difference due to the mainstream grouping of LGBTIA+, and mashing it all together into a confusing alphabet soup means gays can be used as a convenient meat shield as well as an unfortunate casualty for any legal attempts to fight back.
Calling it the "don't say gay" bill makes it easier to rile up anger and sympathy than calling it the "don't trans kids" bill.
And let's not pretend that gender ideology isn't increasingly erasing us by grouping orientation with identity... Insisting that same-sex attraction to certain sex-based biological characteristics doesn't really exist and that gay men must be open to "male" vaginas and lesbians to "female" penises. Labeling people that don't exhibit stereotypical gender behaviors as being outside the gender binary. The growing trend of people labeling themselves "queer" to be part of a movement to feel special and different, yet also be entirely cis and straight somehow...
I haven't seen "gender ideology" pass a single law that works against gay people.
The GOP on the other hand...