50 Shades of Gay: How Activists Hijacked A Community

In This Follow Up To "Ashamed of Pride", We Dive Into The Timeline of The Rapid Ouster of the Average Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals From Their Own Community

Once upon a time—more like 60 years ago—the gay rights movement consisted of one simple plea: “Leave us alone.” That was the ask. Just the opportunity to exist without ending up in a ditch or on the evening news. Maybe to hold hands without catching a brick from a passing car. You know, the little things. American Gays and Lesbians didn’t want special treatment. The general idea was to blend in with society, become just another neighbor, just another coworker, maybe just another friend.

Then came the level-up: “We’d like to get married.” Not only for the cake and the Instagram honeymoons—but for the tax benefits and other perks. Love is love, we said, and eventually, the overwhelming majority of America got on board. Eventually, even most of the pearl-clutching church ladies rolled their eyes, mumbled, and confessed their love of Rupauls Drag Race. In 2015, following a Supreme Court Ruling, Gay Marriage was legalized throughout the United States. For a brief, relieving moment, it felt like we were there.

But before the wedding bells could start ringing, the movement underwent a complete wardrobe change: Scene Two - “Bake the Cake or Else.” Legal equality was old hat overnight—on to unanimous approval. This is when most Traditional Gays and Lesbians started heading for the emergency exit. A Christian baker said no to a gay wedding cake, and suddenly we had a Supreme Court sequel no one asked for. This ruling didn’t go they way the activists hoped, but that didn’t slow them down. What started as a quest for tolerance turned into a conquest for conformity: Celebrate us—or else. Disagree on religious grounds? Congratulations, bigot. See you in court.

In 2016 Target stores brought us the Men in Womens Restrooms saga. According to trans activists, simply claiming to “identify as” a woman now came with a key to any and all womens spaces. Questioning that became tantamount to literal violence, or so we were told. The rest of the country was told to shut up and accept Mr.Stranger peeing standing up beside young girls. Why? Because he’s wearing eyeshadow and a skirt. They rejected biology and substituted it with “vibes” and “feelings”, and “advanced biology”. The once sacred, and cherish gay art of Throwing Shade was replaced with the sanctimonious bleating of the misgendered and perpetually offended.

Act Six: Drag Queens For Kids. What was once beloved, alcohol and drug induced, adult, nightlife entertainment was transformed into a scantily clad Childcare Sideshow. Grown men in stilettos, fishnets, and nipple tassels drop into splits in front of five-year-olds after a telling of the three little pigs, while mommy makes it rain twenty-dollar bills. Somewhere between RuPaul and “The Giving Tree” things clearly fell off the rails. The audience almost always consists of young white mothers and their non-consenting children, desperate to show Instagram and Blue Sky how inclusive and tolerant they are. You also notice, rarely a father in sight.

And then—God help us—the Acronym exploded faster than you could say “multi-colored autism”. LGBT became LGBTQ. Then it became LGBTQ+. Then we squeezed in a few more letters, making it LGBTQIA+. In Canada, for reasons no one else understands, a number and extra letter cut in line, becoming 2SLGBTQIA+. Terms like “nonbinary,” “genderfluid,” “gender-queer,” and “two-spirit” started popping up in American media like Grindr messages during a Mormon Convention. It stopped being a community and became a Cult of Labels, each more obscure, ridiculous, and self-important than the last. When Gays and Lesbians seek clarity, we receive the labels hate criminal and oppressor, no better than those “Cis-het devils”.

Then came the Pronoun Gestapo. No longer was it enough to be kind, or even supportive—you must adhere to ever-evolving mandated speech or risk complete social annihilation. One slip of the tongue, one mistaken “she” instead of “xe” or “xim,” and you’re a bigot, a relic, a danger to society, and headed to Human Resources. The same people who demand respect weaponize public opinion like a scalpel, carving reputations apart in the name of “Trans Rights”. For those of us who came of age when being called “homo” was basically a term of endearment, this new era felt less like liberation and more like A Big Gay North Korea. At least in the old days, we knew who the “enemy” was. Today, if we participate in conversation at the local Drag Brunch, we risk being called a “pick me” for a political party we don’t belong to or “self-loathing” for not subscribing to their worldview.

Finally —the one that shattered the fourth wall into a million, tiny, queer little pieces—was the move on kids. “We’re Coming For Your Children,” they literally declared, with all the subtlety of The San Francisco Gay Mens Choir. Suddenly, schools were handing out chest binders like bagged lunches, hiding transitions from parents, and calling children by their adopted queer names. So-called Doctors and Pediatricians lob off boys genitals and girls breasts because mommy claims they have an affinity for the toys or clothes associated with the opposite sex. Tomboy girls have been rendered nearly extinct. Young boys who appreciate the feminine, gay or not, are all being renamed and pumped with estrogen. Sane fathers lose custody for refusing to play along with delusional, trendy moms. What started as adult liberation mutated into a full frontal assault on children, with the institutionalized erasure of Traditional Gays and Lesbians as a byproduct.

Somewhere along the way, “Please don’t kill us” became “Your son is a daughter.” Traditional Gays and Lesbians, the ones who fought, marched, and lost their lives in the right to simply live in peace, have been deemed “problematic gatekeepers”. The community people like us spent centuries underground building and actually liberating has been almost completely destroyed in less than a decade. Not by us, but by those who care nothing for what came before, and even less for what comes after.

The straight majority—that overwhelming faction of everyday Americans who were finally warming up to us—are now backing away. Not because they hate gays and lesbians, but because they fear they cant trust us. The line they were promised would never be crossed hasn’t just been crossed, it’s been trampled with willful malice. What used to be a request for tolerance has been twisted into a demand for obedience. Pronouns, gender identity in schools, hormone therapy for children—it all came at them like a freight train with no brakes. Suddenly, the ones who once said, “Live and let live,” are wondering if maybe there wasn’t more to that “slippery slope”. We told them there was no slope, then the entire community faceplanted at the bottom of it in ten years. We insisted Gay Marriage wouldn’t lead to men in lingerie reading to toddlers or little girls getting double mastectomies. From their perspective, we lied. So they recoil. And honestly who can blame them?

Still, there’s time before we average Gays, Lesbians, and Bisexuals need rush back into the closet and bar the door. We have a unique opportunity to stand up—again—and be the difference. We’ve been here before. We’ve had to separate ourselves from predators, terrorists, the attention-hungry and the unstable. We’ve striven to be seen as human, not threats to society. Unfortunately, due to our inability or refusal to police our own community, we may have to do it all over again. We need to redraw the line between ourselves and Crazy-Town, speak the truth when it’s uncomfortable, and remind the world that being gay doesn’t mean embracing crazy. Its time to get to work.

This is a follow-up to “Ashamed of Pride” published earlier this month.