How the Gay Rights Agenda was Commandeered by Transgender Ideology

Andrew Sullivan points out that consequential decisions were made with regard to gay rights without his advice or consent.

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.

These activists, marinated in critical gender and queer theory, have picked several unnecessary fights and, especially since the convulsions of 2020, have pushed and pushed a woke revolution until a dangerous backlash was inevitable.

The core belief of critical queer theorists is that homosexuality is not a part of human nature because there is no such thing as human nature; and that everything is socially constructed, even the body. Because heterosexuality is the overwhelming norm, and homosexuality the exception, and because society is nothing but a complex of oppression, homosexuals are defined by their rejection of heteronormativity. To be queer is inherently to exist on the margins; to be odd, peculiar, weird, queer, hated, oppressed, and in revolt and rebellion. To be queer is to be dedicated to subversion, to mock conventions, to deconstruct language, to dismantle the human body, to defy “nature” and, above all, to liberate humankind from the prison of gender.

To be homosexual, in contrast, is merely to be attracted to the same sex, and gays and lesbians run the gamut of tastes, politics, backgrounds and religions. Some are conservative, some radical, some indifferent. Some gays are queers. But most aren’t. And queers now run what was once the gay rights movement. (For a longer, piercing reflection on the takeover, read historian Jamie Kirchick’s new essay in Liberties. For a discussion of the homophobia of the new queer activism, see Ben Appel’s excellent essay in Spiked.)

No one held a news conference and announced that from 2015 on, after Obergefell, the gay rights movement had changed its entire rationale. But they sure gave hints. The Human Rights Campaign, once a relatively moderate group, replaced “gay” and “lesbian” with the acronym “LGBTQ+” and expanded the word “queer” to describe anyone gay, lesbian, transgender, or even straight who defied heteronormativity. They changed the flag from a simple rainbow, to one that included some races (only black and brown — no Asians or whites) and transgender ideology. Their building in DC is festooned with a massive banner declaring their mission: “Black Lives Matter, Black Trans Lives Matter.” Their new head is a woman who calls herself “queer,” not lesbian.

Then they quietly changed the meaning of the word “gay” so that it no longer referred to same-sex attraction, but to same-gender attraction; and changed the word “men” to include people with vaginas and uteruses, and the word “women” to include people with dicks and balls. Checkmate for the gays! We are all now just bigots with “genital preferences,” just like the Christianist right used to claim. Just to add to the confusion, hundreds of new “genders” were adopted — because some teens on Tumblr once invented them and queer theorists loved them.

Go to The Weekly Dish to read Sullivan's full article.

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The Durham Report Should Destroy all Remaining Beliefs that Trump Colluded with Russia–But it Won’t

The Confirmation Bias is strong. Almost none of the millions of people who spent years convincing themselves that Donald Trump colluded with Russia is willing to read the 12-page Executive Summary of the Durham Report, which methodically dismantles their cherished world view. They would much rather ingest the soft-pedaled versions of the report offered by corporate media outlets that lavished themselves with awards for for engaging in journalism malpractice. I don't actually know all these millions of people, of course, but based on several conversations I've recently had with "True-Blue" people, they want to continue believing what they believe.

Those of us who have been following independent media (e.g., Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi) are not surprised by the conclusions of the 316-page Durham Report.

One more thing . . . at Racket News, Susan Schmidt summarizes the main points of the Durham Report. Here article is titled: "Eight Takeaways From the Durham Report" Perhaps the overall headline could have been "U.S. Intelligence Agencies Attempt to Tip the Election in Favor of Hillary Clinton, Whose Campaign Paid for and Received False Intelligence to Lead the Way." Something like that. Here are Schmidt's eight takeaways:

1. There was no valid predicate for the investigation, and the FBI knew it.

2. “There’s nothing to this, but we have to run it to ground.”

3. “It’s thin”; “There’s nothing to this.”

4. The Trump campaign investigation was premised on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence,” and U.S. intel agencies possessed no “actual evidence of collusion” when the probe began

5. Sensational stories published in the New York Times in February and March 2017 claiming Trump associates were in contact with Russian intelligence agents were false.

6. FBI Director James Comey pushed heavily for an investigation of Carter Page, starting in April 2016 when Page was a government witness in an espionage investigation of Russian diplomats in New York.

7. At the direction of the FBI, confidential human source Stefan Halper recorded lengthy conversations with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, in which each denied the campaign had any involvement with Russian officials.

8. Durham was highly critical of the FBI’s “startling and inexplicable failure” to investigate the so-called “Clinton Intelligence Plan.”

[More . . . ]

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Durham Report Findings Unsurprising to Those Who Have Had their Eyes Wide Open

The conclusions of the Durham report are not surprising to those of us who follow independent new media. For years, we've seen shoddy story after shoddy story revealing that the driving motivation of the two dominant flavors of corporate media is to serve as the PR Departments of the two dominant political parties. It has also long been clear (e.g., from the Twitter Files and the coverup regarding Hunter Biden's laptop) that the FBI & CIA are partisan organizations. Many people I know don't mind being played. They would rather think about short-term results than the long term damage that continues to be inflicted on American institutions. No matter who you prefer to be president, these revelations should be immensely disturbing.

From the National Review: "This was one of the dirtiest political tricks in American history. The damage it has done to American trust in the FBI and our intelligence agencies is incalculable."

Here is another straight-forward account from The National Review, a conservative leaning media outlet that vigorously opposed Donald Trump: "FBI Lacked ‘Any Actual Evidence of Collusion’ between Trump Campaign, Russia When Crossfire Hurricane Launched, Durham Finds":

The Department of Justice and the FBI did not have “any actual evidence of collusion” between Russian officials and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and began their Crossfire Hurricane probe of Trump’s campaign based on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” according to a report released on Monday by special prosecutor John Durham.

Durham scolded federal law enforcement and counter-intelligence officials for failing to “uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law” as part of their investigation.

He wrote that at least one FBI agent criminally fabricated language in an email that was used to obtain a FISA surveillance order. And he accused FBI leaders of displaying a “serious lack of analytical rigor” and relying significantly on “investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents,” referring to staffers and allies of Hillary Clinton, then the Democratic presidential nominee, whose campaign funded the Steele dossier through its law firm Perkins Coie.

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It’s Friday. It’s Time for Nellie Bowles to Discuss Gas Stoves at TGIF

It's Friday, which means Nellie Bowles is writing things like this at TGIF, at Free Press:

I thought banning gas stoves was a conspiracy theory? Now, hold on. I was told just in January of this year that the gas stove ban was a fake right-wing culture war thing.

NYT: “No One Is Coming for Your Gas Stove Anytime Soon”

Time: “How Gas Stoves Became the Latest Right-Wing Cause in the Culture Wars”

Salon: “Rumors of a gas stove ban ignite a right-wing culture war”

MSNBC: “No, the woke mob is not coming for your gas stove.”

AP News: “FACT FOCUS: Biden administration isn’t banning gas stoves”

The Washington Post: ​​“GOP thrusts gas stoves, Biden’s green agenda into the culture wars”

Which is why it’s so weird because just this week, New York state lawmakers banned gas stoves from all new construction. So it definitely does seem like Dems are coming for gas stoves, in that they just banned them in one of America’s most populous states.

There’s usually a slightly longer lag between when the mainstream press tells us something is a crazy lie and when the press says okay, fine, it’s not a lie, it’s actually true, and also it’s a good thing—so this is surprising. I’ll be over here huffing carbon oxides and vapors.

Continue ReadingIt’s Friday. It’s Time for Nellie Bowles to Discuss Gas Stoves at TGIF

The Annual Love-In with the White House and “Journalists”

Have you recently visited any of the left-leaning corporate media outlets to try to find one thing, anything, that they write that is critical of Joe Biden and Democrats? What are the odds that even your favorite politician can do no wrong for 2 1/2 years? But it happens over and over. With only a few notable exceptions (e.g., Tucker Carlson), it also happens on the right.

Well, it's time for those journalists to celebrate with the country's centers of power and you will never hear Glenn Greendald heap such scorn upon other human beings. It's because they are proudly abandoning their mission to be adversaries of the White House, not buddies seeking to get even more friendly. The net result is what you don't see: News accounts that **** badly on the White House. Here's an transcript from Glenn's Rumble show, System Update:

s repulsive as it is to watch corporate journalists make this pilgrimage to the White House that they make every year under the guise of the White House Correspondents Dinner, where they pretend to celebrate their commitment to press freedom and the important role they play in safeguarding our democracy, it actually is important to look at because it is one night where they let the mask drop and reveal who and what they really are. It's become kind of like the Oscars, in the sense that – in many senses, actually, but one important one is that it is not just one night, but many days leading up to it, where they have all kinds of parties that are the buzziest of the ones that they get to attend. But they also spend a lot of time before the event trying to justify to the American people why it is that these people who claim to be our watchdogs, the people who are safeguarding our basic rights, who are holding our government accountable, are instead dressing up like it's the Oscars, in gowns and tuxedos, and appearing with celebrities and the politicians they supposedly hold accountable at the gaudiest and sleaziest event you can possibly imagine held at the White House hosted by Joe Biden, the person whom they're supposed to be adversarially covering.

And so, in the days leading up to the event, they spend a lot of time trying to justify what it is that they're doing and within those justifications reside a great deal of insight into how they actually think. As I said, it's a mask-dropping event. They know what it makes them look like, but they do it anyway because they're so desperate for the self-importance that it provides. It's really why they do their job – to be around power or to be accepted by power, to feel as though they're part of the Royal Court – and so, it's way too valuable to their sense of purpose and self-identity to relinquish it, even though they know that it's one of the most revealing lights that ever get shined on them.

You can view the entire episode here, at Rumble.com

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