Identities and category errors

From The Queers Versus The Homosexuals by Andrew Sullivan.  The subheading is We are in a new era. And the erasure of gay men and lesbians is intensifying.

Do you remember the homosexual?

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? He was, for a period, a key figure in the conversation about gay rights. He was Will in “Will And Grace,” or Keith in “Six Feet Under,” or Cam in “Modern Family” — a normie-enough dude randomly distributed across the human population and country. Once invisible and closeted, the AIDS epidemic exposed him without mercy in every state in the country. With this unexpected visibility, and in the wake of hundreds of thousands of young corpses, the survivors built a movement that won every gay and lesbian the right to be free from discrimination and to marry and serve openly — and proudly — in the military.

It was the most speedily successful civil rights story in memory. Its case for equality was simple and clear: including us in existing institutions needn’t change anything in heterosexual life. “Live and let live” in equality and dignity was the idea. And the most powerful force behind this success was the emergence of so many ordinary gays and lesbians — of all races, religions, backgrounds, classes, and politics — who told their own story. America discovered what I had discovered the first time I went into a gay bar: these people were not the stereotypes I was told about. They were not some strange, alien tribe. They were just like every other human, part of our families and communities; and we cared about each other.

What would happen if and when we won the battle was always an open question. The question of transgender rights — associated with but very different from gay rights — remained unresolved. But in the new climate of acceptance, transgender people also became increasingly visible and accepted, and they too won a stunning victory in the Supreme Court. The Bostock decision in June 2020 gave those who identified as the opposite sex full civil rights protection. Yes, there were still skirmishes over cakes. But with equal rights, and growing toleration, it seemed as if we’d achieved a settlement that would allow us all — straight, gay, and trans — a chance to get on with our lives in freedom.

And now? Back in culture war hell.

If you read the MSM, you’ll be told this war is back because the GOP has, for cynical reasons, become an even more unhinged hate-machine, now dedicated once again to “targeting the freedom and dignity of queer people,” as one NYT columnist writes today. You will, in fact, almost never see a news story that isn’t premised on this idea. And it’s obviously true that some on the right have never really accepted gay equality and have jumped at a new opening to undo gay integration and dignity — and the rawness of some of the homophobia and transphobia out there right now is palpable. The resurrection of bathroom bills and the move to curtail the rights of trans adults are repulsive and dumb.

But when you examine the other issues at stake — public schools teaching the concepts of queer and gender theory to kindergartners on up, sex changes for children before puberty, the housing of biological males with women in prisons and rape shelters, and biological males competing with women in sports — you realize we are far beyond what the gay rights movement once stood for. It’s these initiatives from the far left that are new; and the backlash is quite obviously a reaction to the capture of the gay rights movement by queer social justice activists.

This originally caught my eye owing to the headline which would fall into the category of "Unexpected Headlines in My Time."

But there is an additional insight in what Sullivan is saying.  

I am accustomed to thinking about institutional capture when it comes to fanatical ideological movements and the culture wars.  

While it is not his main point, it is an important point and I have read and heard it expressed in may ways over the past few months but never in terms of institutional capture.

It’s these initiatives from the far left that are new; and the backlash is quite obviously a reaction to the capture of the gay rights movement by queer social justice activists.

The argument would be that LGBT is an institution (obviously not a governmental institution but certainly a semi-formalized institution until recently representing the interests of its members, primarily L and G interests.  

But then the LGBT institution was captured by the Trans movement and the associated ideologues.  Parties who did not share or wish to advance or protect the achievements of the LG part of the coalition.  

Is LGBT an institution?  I can see multiple arguments pro and con but I suspect the weight of the arguments falls on, yes, they are an institution.  I have thought of them more as movement and, certainly, at one time they were definitely a movement.  But they achieved their primary objectives.  What was left was less of a movement and more a residual of the institution and that is what has been captured.

An interesting way of thinking about it.