This is a clever graphic I saw two or three times on Facebook.
This speaks to the ever-increasing consternation of conservatives over the ever-increasing number of sexual minorities and non-traditional sexual identities. First it was the gays — which were illegal in almost all states only some 50 years ago. Once their existence became more-or-less acknowledged, then it was their temerity in wanting to get married! Once that was settled, at least legally, then there were trangenders! And sexual identity health support! When will this woke-madness end?, the conservatives rant. (It will go to Florida to die, says the state’s governor. What exactly does he mean by that, hmm?)
Anyway the answer is: these minorities have been with us all along. Throughout human history. Some societies have acknowledged them in one way or another; others have not. It is the tendency of those in the US we call conservatives to see the world as binary, black and white, good and evil, male and female, and ignore all the exceptions and gradations and variations in between. As society ‘progresses,’ and bigger problems like slavery and infant mortality have been resolved, subtler issues like these come to society’s attention. As the world population grows, previously isolated cultures come increasingly into contact with each other, as global culture inevitably expands, people from once monocultural ‘bubbles’ become aware of people different from themselves, including sexual minorities. But they’ve been there all along.
This gradual progressive trend of society guarantees that conservatives will always have something to be upset about, even genuinely scared of.
Example:
NY Times, 16 Apr 2023: How a Campaign Against Transgender Rights Mobilized Conservatives, subtitled “Defeated on same-sex marriage, the religious right went searching for an issue that would re-energize supporters and donors. The campaign that followed has stunned political leaders across the spectrum.”
The key here is the deliberate search for a new issue to mobilize the base of conservative alarm. The article opens:
When the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage nearly eight years ago, social conservatives were set adrift.
The ruling stripped them of an issue they had used to galvanize rank-and-file supporters and big donors. And it left them searching for a cause that — like opposing gay marriage — would rally the base and raise the movement’s profile on the national stage.
“We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about,” said Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group. “And we threw everything at the wall.”
What has stuck, somewhat unexpectedly, is the issue of transgender identity, particularly among young people. Today, the effort to restrict transgender rights has supplanted same-sex marriage as an animating issue for social conservatives at a pace that has stunned political leaders across the spectrum. It has reinvigorated a network of conservative groups, increased fund-raising and set the agenda in school boards and state legislatures.
“We threw everything at the wall.” They’re *searching* for issues to rally conservative voters, rather than addressing real problems (which conservatives tend to deny exist).
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Similarly,
Washington Post, E.J. Dionne Jr., 16 Apr 2023: Opinion | Gun absolutists don’t trust democracy because they know they’re losing
That the Republican Party is now wholly owned by the gun lobby was witnessed not only by the eagerness of Pence, Trump and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson to pander in person at the gathering [the National Rifle Association convention in Indianapolis] self-described as “14 acres of guns & gear.” Other would-be 2024 GOP nominees — among them, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) — felt obligated to bow before the gun worshipers by video.
The nonsense floated in Indianapolis — based on the idea that our national addiction to high-powered weaponry has nothing to do with America’s unique mass shooting problem — speaks to a deep ailment in our democracy. It has both partisan and (perverse) philosophical roots.
Democracy itself:
A particularly dramatic example of how opposition to gun regulation is increasingly linked to efforts to undermine democracy itself: the Tennessee House Republicans’ recent vote to expel two duly elected legislators for protesting against the body’s inaction on guns after the Nashville school massacre.
Concluding, and referring to another mass shooting just yesterday,
With Americans increasingly angry over mass shootings — the latest outrage came Saturday with the killing of four at a teen’s birthday party in Alabama — the era of gun absolutism could finally be over, if the popular will on guns is allowed to prevail. But this depends on defending the democracy that so many, at the Indianapolis gathering and in Tennessee, deeply mistrust.
