Gary Powell: “Let’s make 2022 a special year of #NoThankYou to the LGBT+ lobby for betraying lesbian and gay people.”  

The new year will present the opportunity for a ratcheting-up and a sharpening-up of the campaign against homophobic gender ideology from within the gender-critical lesbian and gay community. There have been many successes to celebrate during 2021, but we still have a long way to go.

Recently I suggested in these pages that, although the “LGB” grouping is useful when we want to pool resources or join forces in the pursuit of common goals, what we really need now is the establishment of separate lesbian groups, gay men’s groups, and bisexual groups, that serve to best meet the specific emotional, social and political needs of the three different arms of our same-sex attracted constituency.

At the very least, our rejection of the LGBT+ label that gender ideologues insist on imposing on us, represents an important and decisive statement of our right to autonomy. Even though I feel that the replacement of “LGBT+” with “LGB” still does not go far enough, it is still certainly an enormous improvement and a distinct step in the right direction.

Perhaps this new year will usher in a determination to pay even greater attention to calling out the homophobic LGBT+ initialism, and to give greater political weight to exposing what that initialism actually means, how absurd it is, how invalid it is, and how harmful it is to the lesbian and gay community.

Below I share some thoughts about the ever-dilating LGBT+/ LGBTQIA+ letter-chain that has colonised the lesbian and gay rights movement, that has tried to redefine homosexuality out of existence, and that has created in its place a campaign that overwhelmingly centres notional heterosexuals. Below, I share some thoughts about this letter-chain and what it has become, as well as some thoughts about why the lesbian and gay community has been so ineffectual in preventing this takeover, and indeed why many members still actively and even aggressively collude in it.

Asserting the right to set up, or belong to, a group that consists exclusively of people who are members of the same minority group – or disadvantaged group – as oneself, is entirely a question of the right to assert appropriate boundaries. In that respect, there is a striking parallel between the assertion of political boundaries and the assertion of personal boundaries. In the case of both, the impediments to setting healthy and appropriate boundaries are strikingly similar.

The concept of personal boundaries is a simple one at the abstract level: asserting boundaries means saying “yes” to some things and “no” to other things. But essentially, it also means being willing to take action to align one’s “yesses” and “noes” with external reality in direct opposition to people who have crossed, or are attempting to cross, our important red lines.

This aggressive, expanding initialism has hijacked the lesbian and gay rights movement, added lots of people who are neither lesbian nor gay, redefined homosexuality out of existence, and is unashamedly using indoctrination and intimidation to persuade lesbian and gay people to campaign against their own interests.

Paradigmatic of the contempt for proper political boundaries are the deliberate assimilation, redefinition, and effective erasure of lesbian and gay people by the LGBT+ lobby: an amorphous and unrelenting demand-and-grievance machine, constructed and directed by self-rebranded gender-identity activists and charities that contort themselves horribly in order to follow the money or to follow the safe path of least resistance.

This aggressive, expanding initialism has hijacked the lesbian and gay rights movement, added lots of people who are neither lesbian nor gay, redefined homosexuality out of existence, and is unashamedly using indoctrination and intimidation to persuade lesbian and gay people to campaign against their own interests.

If the self-esteem of so many lesbian and gay people were not at such a low ebb – and this has been a very serious problem in our community for a long time – I do not believe that gender activists would have succeeded in turning so many lesbian and gay people into campaigners against their own rights and interests. This is a paradigm of internalised homophobia of the kind written about by Dr George Weinberg in the 1970s, who coined the term “homophobia”, and it is akin to the behaviour of self-oppressed and closeted gay adherents of fundamentalist religions, who are often driven by their guilt and self-contempt to be the most ardent fulminators against homosexuality.

In the lesbian and gay wing of the gender-critical movement, we are all pretty clear that homosexual attraction continues to mean same-sex attraction and not the “same-gender attraction” that the gender lobby insists we buy into and promote. We are also clear that the LGB of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual (sexual orientation) have nothing to do with the T+ (“gender identity” – and whatever else – see below). In order to enjoy the same right that every other discriminated-against minority group enjoys – to be permitted to meet and organise separately and on the basis of our shared minority characteristic alone, without fear of persecution and harassment – we must continue to assert a clear and firm boundary around our right to convene as same-sex attracted people.

For anyone who rejects the gender lobby’s preposterous redefinition of homosexuality, and who rejects its attempt to colonise and redefine the lesbian and gay rights movement in a way that is unambiguously homophobic, the suggestion that the LGB should detach from the T+ is not in dispute. After all, a decade ago, no one was challenging the right of same-sex attracted people not to have to cede our movement and identity to other, completely unrelated, and mostly abstract groups.

The LGBT+ constituency, by the way, as defined by its own lobby group, is no longer even a minority group. Not since it added the plus sign. A US study carried out in 2011 by the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute entitled How many people are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender? concluded that 1.7% of US adults identified as lesbian or gay and 1.8% as bisexual. Those identifying as transgender were recorded at 0.3%.

A later study, dated 2016, by the same Williams Institute, indicated that the number of adult Americans who identified as transgender had increased to roughly 0.6%. Given the social contagion we are witnessing, combined with media and educational indoctrination, the 2021 transgender-identity figures are likely to be significantly higher still.

If we take the 2011 Williams Institute figures, we have an LGB and T population that amounts to roughly just over 3.5% of the general population.

But that is just the LGB population, added to the T constituency. The ever-expanding initialism has kept on adding letters to eventually become LGBTQIA+, often abbreviated to LGBT+. How much larger does the LGBT+ constituency become after you have added the “+” or the “QIA+”? And what do all those letters even mean? In my discombobulation, I turned to the dictionary for enlightenment:

“QIA stands for questioning/queer, intersex, and asexual. Dive into the meanings of these letters in the acronym.”

Let’s dive, then. But specifically into the definition offered of “questioning/ queer”:

“Questioning: when a person is exploring their sexuality, gender identity, and gender expression. Queer: this term can have various definitions but can be seen as an inclusive term or as a unique celebration of not molding to social norms.”

You therefore automatically become a notional member of the LGBT+ community if you are “exploring your gender expression”. As gender, if it means anything meaningful at all, can’t be anything other than a measure of the degree to which an individual conforms with traditional male or female stereotypes, any person who explores his or her identity and decides where they fall with regard to sex stereotypes, becomes by default a member of the “LGBT+ community”. Which, it could reasonably be argued, might now, as a result, contain every adolescent on the planet.

If “queer” includes the category of people into BDSM or another fetish, then a full 75% of the adult population suddenly becomes co-opted into the LGBT+ “community”. If that figure is even remotely accurate, it results in heterosexuals swamping the number of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people included in the LGBT+ initialism.

Now look at that execrable word “queer” that is associated in so many of our minds with the homophobic abuse and taunting we experienced in our adolescence and beyond. It is indeed a vague enough word to lend itself to “various definitions”. I’ve often seen it used to include people who have some kind of sexual fetish or other, regardless of whether they are heterosexual or same-sex attracted. I don’t care in the slightest what consenting adults do sexually and legally in the privacy of their own homes. However, I do care about lesbian and gay people being forced-teamed with any group outside the same-sex attracted constituency, as it is politically, socially, and therefore psychologically, very harmful to our community.

A 2017 survey carried out by the retailer Ann Summers of over 2,300 respondents revealed that 75% reported having a sexual fetish, with BDSM polling top place at 74%. If “queer” includes the category of people into BDSM or another fetish, then a full 75% of the adult population suddenly becomes co-opted into the LGBT+ “community”. If that figure is even remotely accurate, it results in heterosexuals swamping the number of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people included in the LGBT+ initialism.

At over 75% of the adult human population, the LGBT+ constituency is not a minority group any more. It is a majority group, and by a significant margin. Who is doing all the oppressing of this perpetually victimised LGBT+ majority, we may well ask ourselves?

But it gets even worse. The definition continues:

“LGBTQIA+ Meaning: To be inclusive to everyone, the LGBTQ full acronym has changed to add the plus at the end. This works to allow the acronym to cover new subsects of the community like [ally; pansexual/ omnisexual; androgynous; genderqueer; two-spirit; demisexual; polyamorous].”

It doesn’t even stop there. It is open season on lesbians and gay people as far as forced-teaming and swamping are concerned:

“While this works to cover some of the different initials in LGBTQIA+, it is far from an all-inclusive list. New terms can be added under the “umbrella” of the plus at the end of the acronym.”

So the LGBT+ constituency is expanded still further by the inclusion of even more heterosexual people – including those who like to have sexual and romantic relationships with more than one person at the same time, and even including “allies”. Who exactly are these “allies”? Back to the dictionary:

“Ally: A term for individuals that support and rally the cause even though they don’t identify within the community.”

Just how big would that “ally” addition make the LGBT+ “community” now – the community in which allies are still paradoxically included, even when they do not identify as actual members of that community? Well, in large parts of the world – the parts where they still imprison, flog, and execute people for homosexuality while the western LGBT+ lobby busies itself promoting compelled pronouns and the removal of women’s and girls’ protected spaces – the “allies” component would be very small. However, in the liberal West, the “allies” component would be very large.

We lesbian and gay people have been diluted, hijacked, redefined, censored, intimidated, and disappeared beyond recognition. How could this have happened to our political and social movement?

According to a 2021 YouGov poll, “Some 85% of Britons would be supportive if their family member came out as lesbian, gay or bisexual, while 71% would feel the same if the person said they were transgender or non-binary”. Therefore, in addition to all the heterosexuals who “question their gender”, who like to have more than one romantic or sexual relationship going at the same time, and who have some kind of fetish, we must now also include all these “allies” in the LGBT+ numbers. 

When we try to work out who is actually included in the LGBT+ constituency, we are certainly looking at a significant majority of the whole human population, of which the vast majority are indisputably heterosexual. We lesbian and gay people have been diluted, hijacked, redefined, censored, intimidated, and disappeared beyond recognition. How could this have happened to our political and social movement?

Furthermore, far too many members of our own lesbian and gay community have been brainwashed or browbeaten into behaving like Christmas turkeys that cheerlead, condone, and enforce the takeover of our community and movement by people outside our community with their own agenda. An agenda that is positively hostile to lesbian and gay rights.

Of course, the larger the LGBT+ grievance community becomes, the bigger the funding pool for LGBT+ charities and rebranded activists. And the more numerous those identifying as LGBT+ become, the greater is the power-shift towards the identitarian political agenda that seeks to tear down our cultural inheritance and foundational values – including those that led to better treatment and greater inclusion of lesbian and gay people as a result of a decades-long struggle in the West. The LGBT+ agenda is part and parcel of a movement that is antithetical to lesbian and gay rights, yet that falsely claims to be speaking and acting on our behalf.

To understand how our movement has come to be hijacked, we could do worse than to consider our own personal journeys towards self-acceptance and the setting of healthy interpersonal boundaries. One of the most crucial developmental insights I had as a young gay man entailed the setting of a solid boundary between my own self-acceptance as a gay man, and the homophobic environment whose messages I had internalised over many years at great cost to my emotional well-being and self-respect. I had to learn to say both an internalised and an externalised “no” to anti-gay messages, and this was a very important turning-point.

We are more malleable to manipulation and bullying at the hands of others when we are feeling insecure, frightened, guilty, or depressed. When we have been made to feel that we are not worth very much, and that our views, wishes, and feelings are unimportant, it is so much harder to assert firm and healthy boundaries that are predicated on the very concept of self-worth. The line of least resistance is simply to keep quiet and to do as we are told, and we may not have the energy or emotional resources to say “no” and assert good boundaries when we are feeling so low and undeserving.

A rare high point during my French A-level course at school was the exposure to existentialist literature, and an inspirational quotation from Sartre encouraged me to construct solid boundaries around the positive acceptance of my sexuality: “We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated rejection of that which others have made of us”. This maxim is one that could serve the lesbian and gay rights movement well as we profoundly reject the homophobic definitions and the political shackles that the LGBT+ lobby has imposed on us.

A defining characteristic of the LGBT+ lobby is its unwillingness to respect important social boundaries. Instead, it is motivated by a bullying paradigm of colonisation and appropriation, where the rights and boundaries of other people and groups are subordinated to the selfish interests of the LGBT+ lobby’s protagonists.

In order to set our important personal and political boundaries, we need courage. It can help us immensely to find our courage if we are part of a supportive and encouraging group with which we can closely identify, and that shares our aims and interests.

A defining characteristic of the LGBT+ lobby is its unwillingness to respect important social boundaries. Instead, it is motivated by a bullying paradigm of colonisation and appropriation, where the rights and boundaries of other people and groups are subordinated to the selfish interests of the LGBT+ lobby’s protagonists.

Its failure to stop the expansion or to heed objections has resulted in its transformation into a notional campaign that now includes a significant majority of the population, most of whom are in fact heterosexual, and into a campaign that harms children, women, gay people, and freedom of speech. It has turned itself into a toxic and sociopathic absurdity, and the more harm it causes, the more opposition it is generating against itself.

Let’s make 2022 a special year of #NoThankYou to the LGBT+ lobby for betraying lesbian and gay people. The Alphabet Absurdity has redefined homosexuality out of existence, and its expanding letter-string now represents a constituency that is overwhelmingly heterosexual, where the interests of lesbian and gay people compete with the promotion of straight “LGBT+ allies” and straight people with fetishes. As if that were not enough, the gender identity pushers expect lesbian and gay people, on pain of banishment, to comply with feigning sexual attraction towards members of the opposite sex who say they self-identify as transgender.  

Gender ideology has been able to exploit the low self-esteem of lesbian and gay people in order to capture and sabotage the historical lesbian and gay rights movement. That ever-expanding string of letters has proved to be a curse on the lesbian and gay community, and a curse on western society. As lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, we need to go back to basics and once again form the fundamental, distinct, and separate lesbian groups, gay men’s groups, and bisexual groups that we need in order to heal and to grow.

Gary Powell is a gay man and has been active in gay politics since 1980. He is the Research Fellow for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity at the Bow Group and the European Special Consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture.

Photo: Vladimir Vladimirov/iStock