The pipeline from 'gay marriage' to radical trans ideology

This is part of an ongoing series on the relationship between the campaign for redefining marriage and trans activism.

"The greater acceptance of trans people is a huge step forward for all of us," writes prominent gay marriage advocate Andrew Sullivan in a recent New York Times opinion piece. "But abolishing the sex binary for the entire society? That’s a whole other thing entirely. And madness, I believe."

So no, Mr. Sullivan: Despite your rosy-colored memories of an earlier, more civil era of gay activism, you have no right to be surprised by the excesses of the trans rights lobby.

Sullivan is hardly alone among fellow LGBT activists in thinking that the movement with which he once identified has gone too far.

But the trans radicals are not so different from the “mainstream” that now disavows them. In fact, these trans radicals use tactics pioneered and perfected during the fight to redefine marriage.

Imposed tolerance

As one who defended (and continue to defend) marriage between a man and a woman as good public policy, I can only say this: We tried to tell you.

Mr. Sullivan's 1996 book "Virtually Normal" presented gay marriage as a modest demand for "formal public equality" before the law, while rejecting the "political imposition of tolerance" and "the regulation of people's minds and actions."

Ten years after Obergefell finally made this "equality" the law of the land, Sullivan is scandalized to find that the newly ascendent trans wing has no intentions of stopping there:

Dissenters from gender ideology are routinely unfriended, shunned, and shamed. Almost all of the gay men, trans people, and lesbians who have confided in me that … they think that J.K. Rowling or Martina Navratilova have some good points, have said so sotto voce lest anyone overhear. That’s the extremely intolerant and illiberal atmosphere that now exists in the gay, lesbian, and transgender space. This little community used to champion all manner of expression or argument or speech, eccentrics and visionaries. Now it’s fearful, self-censored, and extremely uptight.

Sullivan may be surprised that people in the “LGBT space” suppress dissent within their own ranks, but I'm not.

A history of harassment

Remember Brendan Eich, who donated $1,000 to the pro-marriage Proposition 8 campaign in 2008? Gay activists did not have a rational conversation with him. They harassed him so much that he had to resign from the company that he founded.

“Marriage equality” activists published interactive maps showing names and addresses of Prop 8 donors so they could be systematically doxxed. Anti-Prop 8 protesters surrounded the Mormon temple in Los Angeles and beat people to the ground. In the years since Prop 8, many people have become fearful for their jobs if they say anything that could be construed as “hateful.”

Welcome to our world, Mr. Sullivan. Some of us have felt “fearful, self-censored, and extremely uptight” for some time.

Free speech foes

We share Sullivan's alarm at ACLU lawyer and trans activist Chase Strangio's reaction to a book criticizing childhood transition: “Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.”

But he loses us when he goes on to portray the gay rights movement as First Amendment champions. "If censorship was in the air, gay men and lesbians were the first to oppose it.”

That’s not how I remember it, Mr. Sullivan. Didn’t you know that gay activists pressured Amazon to remove books by authors like ex-gays Joe Dallas and therapist Joseph Nicolosi?

Maybe you forgot the time when the Log Cabin Republicans insisted that the pro-family group Mass Resistance be banned from a Conservative Political Action Conference meeting in 2018 because of its book “The Health Hazards of Homosexuality"?

I haven't forgotten. I wrote an article about the book and the controversy it sparked when it first came out in 2017. Amid the ubiquitous outcry, not one critic bothered to offer evidence countering even a single claim in the 600-page, meticulously footnoted book.

In 2020, gay activists succeeded in getting the book banned from Amazon, where it remains unavailable.

And so it is that much harder for people with same-sex attraction to access a resource providing accurate, albeit unpleasant, information about the medical and psychological risks associated with acting on those attractions. Is removing this book from the biggest book distributor in the world really a way of “treasuring” free speech?

RELATED: Gay marriage has a hidden cost — and children are paying the price

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Live and let live?

Mr. Sullivan writes, “The gay rights movement, especially in the marriage years, had long asked for simple liberal equality and mutual respect — live and let live . ... We will leave you alone."

Baker Jack Phillips would dispute the “live and let live” claim. He did not challenge the legal right of same-sex couples to wed; he just didn't want to bake a cake celebrating that union. So in 2012, activists dragged him to court.

When the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, another activist dragged him back into court for not baking a cake to celebrate his "transition." Phillips' nightmare didn’t come to an end until 2024.

A new version of 'homophobic'

Despite his misgivings about the radical trans agenda, in his article, Mr. Sullivan uses the word "transphobic" without a hint of irony. It is a word meant to cast any disagreement with trans ideology as "hate."

It is the direct successor to the word "homophobic," which similarly attempted to discredit our objections to gay marriage. We learned that “hate” was the only possible reason anyone would disagree with such obviously correct views.

I should know. I ended up on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate list for my unacceptable, intolerant views that prioritize children’s rights to their parents over adults’ rights to feel good about themselves.

And who invented the term “heteronormative,” the (supposedly erroneous) belief that heterosexuality is normal? (News flash: Heterosexuality is normal, in all mammal species.) Perhaps the same person who later came up with “gender affirming care” as a euphemism for drugs and surgeries performed on perfectly healthy, though confused, young people.

So no, Mr. Sullivan: Despite your rosy-colored memories of an earlier, more civil era of gay activism, you have no right to be surprised by the excesses of the trans rights lobby.

I implore you to rethink your presumptions. Your tactics laid the groundwork for the trans movement. If you are sincerely appalled by their tactics (and I hope you are), I would appreciate an apology. I bet Brendan Eich, Jack Phillips, and the Mormon Church would, too.

But I’m just getting started. My next column will describe how “gay-friendly” policies set the stage for “trans-friendly” policies.