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[–]puffball 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

and set the gay rights movement back centuries at this rate!

No, unfortunately not. While there have always been a minority who have seen LGB as the enemy, the vast majority of people never cared much either way. They'd parrot the party line, and if they'd been fed a lot of it, maybe they were a bit uncomfortable when aware of being in the company of LGB people. The real hate and vitriol, however, was limited.

This is why the broad reversal of public acceptance was possible. For the majority, people being LGB just wasn't something that affected their day-to-day life, and their aversion, if any, was in the abstract and mostly fueled by rhetoric based on "facts" that could not hold up even to a casual examination.

What the TRAs are doing now, however, affects the general public in many direct ways in both direct and indirect ways, with the bulk of the negatives not being immediately obvious, which is why we haven't seen more of a backlash yet. And they are doing all of this under the LGBTQ+ banner, which means that when the backlash comes, it will not target the TQ+ specifically.

Instead it will refer to the evils brought on the public by the "homosexual agenda" etc, since the old LGB-hating minority will most likely be the ones ready and able to lead the counterattack under the battlecry of "we told you so!".

Unlike the previous times they've lead the charge, this time much more of the general public will have a personal stake in the outcome, their own grudges to settle and feel that they previously tried "live and let live", and tried giving an inch, only to have LGBTQ+ advocating violence against them and coming for the whole arm.

Unless the LGB and its allies can successfully divorce themselves from the TQ+ in the minds of the general public, by separating from the TQ+ organizationally, publicly calling out and opposing the TQ+ insanity, and show how the LGB is at least as much of a victim of the TQ+ agenda as the general public, I fear that we will the ones who end up taking the brunt of the backlash, once it inevitably comes.

[–]PainfulTruthsMatter 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I fear that we will the ones who end up taking the brunt of the backlash, once it inevitably comes.

Yeah. There's a real and deserved backlash against TQ+, but there's the potential that religious conservatives will use that as momentum to also attack gay rights at the same time. Society as a whole didn't believe Trump could happen even though we saw the warning signs, it's the same thing really. We take for granted that as a society we've made massive advancements for the LGB community but we have to assume that those could just as easily come under assault at some point.