Gay Rights Groups Find Themselves at Odds Over the Future of Their Struggle

With Pride Month in full swing and LGBT rights at the forefront of some of the nation’s most tendentious cultural struggles, gay rights groups are suddenly at odds about just how far their struggle has come and how much further it needs to go.A prominent voice in the world of left-wing gay rights activists, the Human Rights Campaign, kicked off the debate this week when it declared a nationwide “state of emergency” for LGBT residents of the United States, the first time the organization has done so in its 40-year history. The organization cites what it calls an “unprecedented and dangerous spike in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year” that has created a “climate of fear, hostility, and discrimination” across the country.“The multiplying threats facing millions in our community are not just perceived — they are real, tangible and dangerous,” the chief executive of the group, Kelley Robinson, said in a statement accompanying the report. “In many cases they are resulting in violence against LGBTQ+ people, forcing families to uproot their lives and flee their homes in search of safer states, and triggering a tidal wave of increased homophobia and transphobia that puts the safety of each and every one of us at risk.”The assault on gay rights, according to the group, is emerging primarily from Florida, but has spread throughout the country in the form of legal restrictions on transgender health care and sports. The group says more than 75 such laws have been passed at the state level so far this year, twice the number that surfaced last year. Earlier, the Human Rights Campaign issued a “travel advisory” for the state of Florida, warning that recent laws and policies pose a risk to LGBT travelers and residents of the state.More conservative gay rights groups, though, are calling the report by the Human Rights Campaign and the subsequent widespread coverage of it in the national press a “PR stunt” that is “ignorantly detached from the incredible LGBT progress over the past decade.” The Log Cabin Republicans, one of the oldest conservative gay rights groups in the country, issued a statement urging the directors of the Human Rights Campaign to “read a history book.”Among the recent advances in the rights of LGBT Americans, the Log Cabin Republicans said, are bipartisan legislation codifying gay marriage, widespread and increasing public support for gay rights, and the presence and acceptance of openly LGBT Americans at the highest levels of government, entertainment, academia, and industry. The group accused the Human Rights Campaign of needlessly stoking fear in the gay community in order to raise money and justify its existence.“The HRC is destructively redefining support for the LGBT community around trans surgeries for minors, biological men competing in women’s sports, and sex and gender identity lessons in kindergarten,” the Log Cabin Republicans say. “While these issues can be emotional and complex, they in no way pose an unprecedented ‘state of emergency’ to the LGBT community, which has persevered through far worse.”From a public opinion perspective, LGBT Americans have indeed never had it better. Support for gay and lesbian relationships and marriage has been climbing since the 1990s and hit an all-time high this year, according to Gallup and other polling companies. There is also broad public support for anti-discrimination law protecting LGBT Americans.Where things get murkier is on the topic of transgender rights. Conservative attacks on big brands like Target and Bud Light for their attempts at transgender marketing — as well as public debates over transgender health care and sports — have backfired on those companies and appear to be taking a toll on public opinion. A recent Pew poll on the topic found that the number of Americans who believe sex is inherent at birth increased to 60 percent in May 2022 from 54 percent in 2017.A prominent right-leaning voice in the gay community, Brad Polumbo, a Based Politics co-founder, tells the Sun that warnings about a state of emergency for the LGBT community read almost as parody. The issues groups such as the Human Rights Campaign are worked up over — sports participation, say — are hardly life-or-death matters for most LGBT Americans, he says.“We can and should have a debate over the legislative and cultural pushback the LGBT movement is facing right now,” Mr. Polumbo says, “but we’ve still made tremendous progress, and rank alarmism and hysteria are not helpful.”

Gay Rights Groups Find Themselves at Odds Over the Future of Their Struggle

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