More broadly, what we have is two groups who have decided that working out differences within the rules and procedures of civil society doesn't work for them, and, thus, they have turned to mob rule and mob violence. And that kind of thing draws in all sorts of horrible people, the kind who are attracted to violence for its own sake. Mobs attacked speakers on college campuses, and now we have other mobs attacking those mobs. Those silencing mobs should have been quashed as soon as they appeared, but they weren't.

Gay rights was a matter of ethics, and sexual ethics could be debated -- and were. The problem with genderism is that it's a matter of ontology. The proponents of gender ideology are demanding that people participate actively, using the threat of legal or extralegal coercion, in what a huge number of people feel is an incorrect description of basic reality. I distinctly remember the moment when I realized the scope of that demand and the scope of the backlash it would almost invariably generate, especially when the apparatus of the state, i.e. public education, is being used to teach it to their kids.