Back in the day, all we were fighting for was the right to be left the hell alone. Today, a whole posse of hangers-on have attached themselves to the gay rights cause and want not to be left the hell alone, but to force Americans to accept them. Why and when did this happen?
I recalled before how when I was President of the Gay Student Association back in the 1980's, we had a "social" every Tuesday night, and had a bar where we served beer. Everyone had a good time and it was a lot of fun. I went back, 20 years later, and the building had been transformed into the Lesbian, Gay, Trangender, & Queer Studies Program, and saw a bunch of people sitting around talking, deadly seriously, about what should have been a lot of fun - or at least what was. A lot of gay, but not a lot of happy.
They have studies in "Queer theory" and act like it is a serious academic study that can lead to useful employment down the road. I doubt it, unless we create fake jobs for such graduates by forcing companies to have a "Queer compliance office" or some such. But those are not real jobs, nor are they a productive use of a life.
As I noted before, we changed the name to the "Gay & Lesbian Student Association" because the Lesbians accused us of excluding them, because they weren't "gay" but "lesbian". That morphed into the "Lesbian & Gay Student Alliance" because they said we beastly men were taking advantage of them by listing ourselves first. And you wonder why the left has so much trouble making progress on anything. Left to their own devices (sorry, pun) they self-destruct.
Of course, re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic didn't accomplish much - the Lesbians still refused to come to our socials, free beer or not (and given how cheap Lesbians are, you would think....) We were different groups of people and had little or nothing in common, and what's more there was an animosity between the groups. There were some man-hating lesbians, to be sure, and there were gays who detested lesbians as well. It is like the rift between hispanics and blacks - a grand canyon of a divide, actually.
But of course, it didn't end there - other letters started to be added to the alphabet. There were the bisexuals, the "queers" (which I still don't quite understand what that encompasses) and now transgender people. Again, these are all disparate groups of people who have little or nothing in common.
What's worse is that some of these groups want things that others object to or don't care about. Gay marriage was never a hot button issue with me - most of the rights of marriage can be contracted for with wills, beneficiary designations, powers of attorney, joint tenancy with right of survivorship, and so on. Sure, it would be nice to have the option of Social Security survivors' benefits - and the tax consequences of an IRA for unmarried people can be severe (paying taxes on the entire amount, all at once,which means you lose 1/3 or more right up front). But I always felt that pushing an agenda into other people's faces was asking for trouble.
Then came the lesbians and their damn wedding cakes. In a number of celebrated cases some lesbians sought out Christian bakers or wedding photographers or florists, in order to "force" them to cater to their wedding, in order to create a court case and piss everyone off. Mission accomplished. These Christian wedding service providers - like some town clerks who refused to issue marriage licenses - were all-too-happy to martyr themselves for the "cause" - and make a little money on the side as Christian talk-show fodder and go-fund-me recipients.
Somewhere along the way, we went from an agenda of being left the hell alone to an agenda of in your face, motherfucker, and if you don't like it, I'm suing!
Then came the transgender thing. This has become a style fad, which is dangerous. Parents in trendy coastal cities are allowing their children to choose their gender because it is the kicky new thing to do, and makes them special snowflakes and the darling of cocktail party conversation. The poor kids have no idea what is going on, as most kids don't, at age 5 or so.
What's more, some folks are asking - no, demanding - that they be called by a particular pronoun, and if you don't say the right word, you get sued. One "person" sued Nike for a million bucks because they called him/her by the wrong pronoun. A teacher is fired for calling a student by the wrong pronoun - which the Principal says is a fate worse than death!
This is just insanity.
And speaking of insanity, there seems to be a lot of it in the transgender world, which leads credence to the idea that "gender dysphoria" may be a mental illness and not a mistake by God in handing out the genitals. The poster-person for the transgender movement is former Pvt. Bradly Manning, who betrayed his country by handing over a trove of secret documents to the Russians - many of which were used against Hillary Clinton in the last election. Gee, thanks, pal!
Manning is clearly unhinged. When asked to testify about the case, he refused, arguing that since he already testified about the matter, it was unnecessary. Years in jail for contempt of court, over nothing, other than to nail one's self to the cross to become a martyr. They're calling Manning a "transgender hero" - but if that's a hero, I'll take a pass on heroics. Manning is a coward, plain and simple - and a traitor. And crazy as a loon.
The weird thing is, people just assume that I support this sort of craziness because I am gay. Sorry, but that's a whole tacked-on deal that they did - attaching themselves to our cause, as if to make their cause, ours. No, I am not in favor of parents being forced to accept transgender kindergarten teachers for their kids, or being forced to read books about gender dysphoria. This sort of crosses a line from education to indoctrination. If this kid is transgender or gay or whatever, he'll know it, let me tell you. And it is so much in the media today, they are well aware of it.
I was reading the wikipedia entry about Roy Cohn - the infamous and notorious attorney and "fixer" for sleazebag Joseph McCarthy and later on, sleazebag Donald Trump. Cohn was an odious personality, and claimed on this deathbed not to be gay. As Roger Stone (himself a piece of work and another closeted homosexual) put it, "Roy Cohn wasn't gay, he just liked having sex with men!"
And yet that didn't stop him from getting gays fired from the government. Nice piece of work, that Cohn.
Yet, Stone's claim - that Cohn wasn't gay, he just liked sex with men - is an interesting distinction - and perhaps a valid one. You see, most gay men (and women) are attracted sexually and emotionally to the same gender. You can argue it is right or wrong, but it is a very powerful attraction that cannot be sublimated, in most cases. It is not about gender identity or being "queer" - whatever the hell that is. It is not about being effeminate or masculine or wearing clothes of the opposite gender. It is not about wanting to mutilate your genitals to mimic an opposite gender. For gays, that sort of thing makes them cringe with terror.
Yet, this "transgender" thing has been tacked on to us, whether we like it or not. Politicans pander to the "LGBTQ community" as if we all lived in the same neighborhood and exchanged recipes over the backyard fence and shopped together at the Safeway. Such is not the case and the word "community" is freighted with fraudulent meaning. These "communities" that politicians talk about (or activists claim to be "organizing") are largely non-existent.
It is like this new acronym for "Black, Indigenous, and People of Color" or BIPOC. As I noted before, blacks and hispanics have a visceral hatred of one another, and what they have in common with Indians, I do not know. Did anyone ask them before lumping them together as BIPOC people - and labeling them? It is kind of rude to do that, without asking first. And I can bet no one asked, and I can bet the whole thing was dreamed up by some well-meaning liberal white person who wants to "relate" to "People of Color". By the way, doesn't "People of Color" include blacks and Indians? It seems the label is redundant. But maybe, like the lesbians, who didn't want to be lumped in with the gays, the blacks wanted out of this "people of color" thing as well.
Identity politics just don't work because people stubbornly refuse to cower down in their assigned cubbyholes. Bit of a problem, that.
So what's the point of all this? Well, for starters, something went horribly wrong when the gay student association stopped serving beer and became a field of study. Sexuality should be fun, not some dreary subject taught in school or part of a made-up field of academia. It reminds me of that Monty Python sketch, where the "Sex Ed" class comprises the professor demonstrating sex to the students, live. Since it is a required study course, the kids are bored as hell and don't pay attention. That sounds like the one sure way to take all the fun out of sex, for sure! And it sounds to me like these LBGTQ folks are doing a good job of it.
Sex and sexuality should not be some boring field of study!
The other aspect of it, is that we are seeking out smaller and smaller groups of sexual minorities to represent as "oppressed peoples" - and quite frankly, everyone is getting sick and tired of people claiming to be oppressed all the time, in the wealthiest country in the world. I mean, if you can't wear a dress to work, get over it. Consider yourself lucky to have a job, three hots, a squat and a cot. It's all I ever wanted out life - why do you get to have more?
People aren't going to like you, for one reason or another, so get over that. You may remind them of an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend or ex-spouse. You may have the same last name of someone who bullied them in high school. People will hate you for whatever reason, so just get used to that. The worst thing you can do is try to pass a law forcing people to accept you. Because not only will it not work, they will hate you twice as much as a result.
And thanks these transgender folks hitching themselves to my wagon, they will hate me as well. Go start your own movement! Leave ours the fuck alone.
UPDATE: A reader sends me a link to this video, which I had forgotten about. Seems the Pythons were decades ahead of their time!