The acronym 2SLGBTQ+IA stands for two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, androgynous, and asexual. The 2SLGBTQ+IA community is often described as seeking “rights and equality” for its members. What fair-minded person could object?
Increasingly, however, the community appears to want privileges and equity as well. These goals are diametrically opposed. Rights, such as freedom of speech, are universal and cannot properly be denied to anyone. Privileges, such as affirmative action, are special advantages extended to certain classes of people; they can be given and taken away, usually by government. Equality means the law treats everyone in the same manner, with no regard to their status; equity—as the political term is used now—means the law views some people as disadvantaged and treats them preferentially as a matter of social justice.
Factions within the 2SLGBTQ+IA movement are becoming more aggressive in demanding privileges and labeling anyone who objects as a “hater.” In doing so, the movement risks losing the dynamic that allowed it to grow in the first place: the goodwill of fair-minded people. This risk is especially high when the demands for privilege involve children or physical violence.
Consider some of the Pride month parades that occurred in June. Fox News reported, “Seattle Pride’s parade . . . sparked backlash over the inclusion of a fleet of nude male cyclists, whose genitalia was on full display to attendees, including families with children.” The Washington Times referred to another incident in the Seattle parade in which naked adult men cooled off in a public water fountain near young children. Videos of both were confirmed as true by fact-checking site Snopes. Nevertheless, the progressive congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and other prominent Democrats marched in the event, including Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell. The marching officials seem determinedly silent on these events, even though they threaten the hard-won equal rights that gays and lesbians fought for in the ’70s and ’80s.
The acclaimed journalist Glenn Greenwald explained this danger during an interview (approximately 3:20 minutes in):
The gay and lesbian movement was an important part of my life. It enabled me to be legally married and it was something I supported for a long time. The lynch pin of it was not only something I believe but most Americans ended up believing. There was a cultural consensus . . . based on the principle that adults have the right to live their lives in whatever way will bring them the most self-actualization and a healthy, decent society facilitates this freedom. . . . If you look at polling done in 2015, most Americans favored same-sex marriage, even young conservatives. People even had no problem with trans rights.
All of this has unraveled because the LGBTQ+IA2—or whatever acronym you prefer—has waged a war on that principle. There were people chanting in the streets [of New York City] “We’re coming for your children.” The San Francisco gay men’s chorus sang, “We’re coming for your children.” They are claiming you’re required to get certain trans-affirming treatment for your children if they identify as trans, even if you don’t want them to; you can be deemed guilty of child abuse and have your children taken away if you don’t. The whole movement has transformed from one of “We want to be left alone to live our lives” into “Now we want to control your lives too. We want to control the way they [your children] think and influence the way they grow up.”
This was once a marginalized community. . . . It didn’t have much power; it needed to hide; it was genuinely persecuted. Now it has every institution of power on its side . . . and it has become a bullying movement. The idea that “We are going out into the streets publicly in front of your kids, be fully naked, desexualize that nudity and you can’t do anything about it” is the mentality of a movement that believes . . . they are now sort of the majority, that they have the power. And they are using it in ways that are very self-destructive. (edited for grammatical and space considerations)
He is correct about the trans movement’s trying to usurp parental rights. Consider California Senate Bill 107, sometimes called the gender-affirming care bill. California invites minors and their families to come to the state for transition treatment if their home state restricts the practice. If the change of residence violates custody orders, the noncustodial parent need only request “gender-affirming care” for a minor to receive sanctuary rather than jail time. Nothing could reverse sympathy for 2SLGBTQ+IA faster than this.
Except, perhaps, open violence. Walgreen uses the term “bullying movement” in a literal manner. For example, a disillusioned ex-trans activist showed up at the New York City parade with a sign reading “Stop Female Erasure.” She was physically mobbed and abused. Such tactics are a death knell for the positive developments that emerged from the original gay and lesbian movements.
The trans narrative is ramping up. Perhaps the authorities and mainstream media see trans power as declining, which would diminish their own power. The trans agenda is being imposed on the most trivial behavior, such as using the wrong pronoun, as well as the most heinous acts, such as the murder of children. Here are just a few cases of trans violence, among many, that happened in less than one week in 2023.
March 27, Nashville, TN: Aiden Hale, who self-identified as transgender, fired 152 rounds within Covenant School, killing three staff members and three students. The Trans Resistance Network issued a sympathetic statement saying, “Hate has consequences,” and identifying Hale as a “second and more complex tragedy” of the shooting because he “felt he had no other effective way to be seen than to lash out by taking the life of others, and by consequence, himself.” Most media coverage downplayed the murdered children to dwell upon the victimhood of Hale. Authorities have refused to release the many journals and documents found in Hale’s home, claiming they were inflammatory.March 29, Richmond, VA: Two transgender activists were arrested for violently disrupting a pro-life event at Virginia Commonwealth University. According to Students for Life of America (SFLA), “The event was shut down, materials and equipment were damaged and stolen, and multiple SFLA staff and students were assaulted with Emergency Medical Services called to the scene.”March 31, Colorado Springs, CO: Transgender Lilly Whitworth was arrested for plotting a mass shooting after making threats to three schools and possessing the floorplans of at least one. In prison, Whitworth promised to complete the plan if bail was posted. The incident was largely ignored by the mainstream media.
Silence and denial are the worst possible strategies for events of which so much of the public is aware. If the 2SLGBTQ+IA movement keeps its current course, then it will crash.
When it does, I will be left with a question. Did we witness a double standard being embedded in the law or was it something worse—a gender caste system? Most likely, the answer will be a mixture of both.
A double standard is when an individual or group is treated with preference under a single set of laws that should apply equally to all. A caste system is when a population is divided into a hierarchy, with each category having distinct and often antagonistic “rights.” In other words, different laws for different categories of people, a “status society,” as Ludwig von Mises called it. In his book The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth, Mises described a status society as “constituted not of citizens with equal rights, but divided into ranks vested with different duties and prerogatives.”
The gender caste system and warfare have been promoted by a fashionable dynamic called “intersectionality.” The critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term, which she described as “a prism for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other.” In a sense, a person’s rank in the caste hierarchy is based on victim points; the more victim points, the higher a person’s rank and entitlements. A woman oppressed by patriarchy may have one point, for example; a black woman, also oppressed by racism, may have two; a black lesbian three . . . the list goes on. Those high up on the oppression scale often pull rank on those beneath them; for example, black feminists can tell white feminists to shut up in meetings because their white status makes their voices secondary. Currently, the transgendered seem to be at the apex of the hierarchy. Heterosexual white males are at the bottom.
An open caste system—rather than a hidden one based on money, for example—makes a travesty of deep-rooted American traditions. Nevertheless, the trans agenda has achieved real legal successes, and that is because the average person has deep compassion for victims. But compassion is running thin. And when compassion means harming children, when tolerance means empathizing with the murderers of children, then it is time to withdraw this compassion and demand justice instead—a single justice for all.
