Life is hectic and the existence of the 24x7 news cycle only makes matters worse. There so many stories and so much information out that that it’s hard to digest. As a result, we all have a lot of information floating around in our heads. Some of it is useful, much of it less so (anyone want to discuss space elevators?), but it all pings around in our heads and, if you’re like me, occasionally two seemingly random pieces of info connect and “bingo,” a pattern emerges. That is the “origin story” of this topic. How the news coming out of Alberta “connected” with a warning given by President Dwight D. Eisenhower during his farewell address to the nation on January 17, 1961.
If you’ve been following recent news coming out of Alberta, you’ll know that Premier Danielle Smith plans to introduce legislation this fall to change policies affecting transgender and non-binary youth and adults. The changes include:
Requiring parental notification consent before a school may alter the name or pronouns of any child under age 15.
Banning puberty blockers and hormone therapies for children under 16 and top and bottom surgeries for minors aged 17 and under.
Transgender women will be banned from competing in women's sports leagues.
As one would expect, this has led to “condemnation from advocates for transgender youth and the wider LGBTQ community” but has the support of at least one parents'-rights group. The issue has even led Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada’s Conservative party to voice his support for Smith, stating “Liberal government and the media have demonized her for policies that would give parents more say over their kids.”
As I read these stories and watch activists make accusations of “genocide” and argue that preventing pre-teens from using hormone blockers will lead to mass suicides, I wonder at the purpose of these clearly exaggerated and wrong-headed statements? Why, if gay marriage was legalized in the US in 2015, and if same-sex adoption became legal in all fifty states in June of 2017, do activist organizations still bandy about the term “oppression?” Why, if Canadian hate crime data indicates that hate crimes occur at a rate less than that of murders, and that the US murder rate for trans people is less than half that of the general population, do activists still push the “trans genocide” myth?
Just as appending “gate” to the end of a scandal, in “honor” of Watergate, has become a method of indicating the severity of a scandal, so appending “Industrial Complex” to a business has become shorthand for a situation in which businesses have become so entwined in social/political systems that a “profit economy” has arisen that prioritizes the “complex” over the best interests of society or individuals. The term originated with Eisenhower’s farewell speech in which he warned:
…we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Eisenhower was almost prescient in given this warning and consequently the term is still in use today. In addition to the Military Industrial Complex, we now have the Prison Industrial Complex to explain mass incarceration, the Medical Industrial Complex to explain the conflict of interest between treating illness and selling medicine to sick people, and even a Wedding/Marriage Industrial Complex to explain the growing cost and extravagance of weddings to name just a few (I seem to recall the rule of thumb for wedding rings was one month’s salary. It’s now up to three). To this list we could no doubt add a Funeral-Industrial Complex as well (Perhaps the topic for another day). I would argue that much of the rhetoric coming from activists and politicians is due not to actual injustices or concern for trans kids, but to the existence and continual growth of what can only be termed the Activist-Industrial Complex which threatens to sacrifice the well-being of our youth to enrich the activists and their organizations.
I’m less interested in why the money is being donated than I am in the amount and its effect on society and politics. Associating donations to political or ideological beliefs is straightforward, at least for individuals. If the individuals in question are donating to LGBT issues (as is their right) they’re doing so because they support the cause if not the ideology behind it. I have more concern with companies as there’s more of a chance that other factors are at play (ex. the medical industrial complex, see Gilead Sciences for example).
That said, I will not be “following the money” here. Instead, I will be presenting some of the data that points to a growing corruption within the movement which, ideological flaws aside, has become more about raising money and providing activists with well-paying jobs than in combating any real dangers, if any can legitimately be said to exist in the Western world.
Note: If you are interested in “following the money,” or at least some of it, I recommend (Award-winning journalist and author and Pulitzer finalist Gerald Posner’s deep dive into the murky world of Transgender donations.
Are LGBT people “oppressed?”
It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact starting date of LGBT Rights movement, but the Gay Liberation movement is generally considered to have emerged in the late 1960s having been inspired by other social movements of the time including Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation. Since its origins the movements fight for equality and recognition of basic human rights has resulted in many victories including:
2003 - In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down sodomy laws in fourteen states, making consensual homosexual sex legal throughout the country
2010 - The "Don't ask, don't tell" law which forbade homosexual people from serving openly in the United States military, was repealed permitting gays and lesbians to serve without fear of being discharged because of their sexual orientation.
2012 – The US Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity prohibits discrimination in federally assisted housing programs.
2015 – In Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court rules preventing same-sex couples from marrying is unconstitutional, thereby legalizing it all 50 states.
2017 – The Supreme Court rules that both same-sex spouses can be listed on birth certificates making adoption by same-sex couples legal in all 50 states.
2020 - the United States Supreme Court rules that the 1964 Civil Rights Act could protect gay and transgender people from workplace discrimination.
While no one would argue that discrimination has been eradicated from society, it’s difficult to square the allegation that LGBT people are oppressed after reading through the list of rights that have been upheld.
Hasn’t the “battle” been won?
In the course of fighting for and winning these rights, the movement has been expanded on numerous occasions. While Bisexuals were active within the movement from the late 1960s, the “T” was not added to LGB until about 1988. Since then, the initialism has seen rapid expansion resulting in multiple variations including LGBT+, LGBTQ+, LGBTQIA+, and 2SLGBTQ+. Each new letter broadens the movement by including a new group which is demographically smaller than the previous one. Americans’ self-identifying as LGBT constitute 7.1% of the population. When broken out by initial, 4.0% of the population are Bisexual, 1.5% are Gay, 1.0% are Lesbians, 0.7% are Transgender and 0.3% are something else. As the victories mount it appears as though the search for more “victims” grows. Is this a fair assessment? If so, why is it happening?
An examination of topics using Google Trends provides some interesting insight. If we compare “gay marriage” (Red) and “Same-sex marriage” (Yellow), the primary goal of the movement before 2015, with “transgender” (Blue) the most recent focus of the movement we get the following graph:
Not surprisingly, both marriage terms dwarf “transgender” until sometime between 2015 and 2017. Drilling down provides more clarity.
Both marriage terms spike in June of 2015 when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage and then again in November of 2016 during the U.S. Presidential election. After these two events “marriage” begins to fall off and the three terms become much closer together. Once again, shortening the timeline is illuminating.
We can see, following the election and the marriage victory, “transgender,” with a few exceptions begins to be used more frequently than either marriage term, making the case that the movement, and the world, have moved onto the “battle” for Trans Rights. Why?
While no fight for equality is ever really over, the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling by the Supreme Court that legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States is as close to a complete victory as possible. Even steel manning the argument and conceding that some inequalities may still exist, a focus on “trans” issues would mean that the percentage of the population that the LGBT activists were “defending” would have dropped from the 7.1% that the LGBT population represents to 1.0% that transgender and “other” represent. One would expect that these victories combined with a much smaller “oppressed” group would lead to less funding but that’s just not the case. Between 2015, when the same sex ruling came down, and 2021 grants to LGBTQ organizations rose 42% (and a 202% increase since 2011). One can’t help but think The Weather Girls got the song title wrong, it’s not raining men, it’s raining money. Is it any wonder why accusations of “oppression” and “genocide” are so prevalent?
Conclusion
Things are not always what they seem. Activists, the media, and politicians are not above lying if it will advance their cause and so we are rarely given the full picture.
When examining the continued growth of the LGBT movement it’s important not to discount the existence of true believers in their two forms, those who rightfully argue that some discrimination still exists and those who believe refusal to use preferred pronouns is oppression, that denying life altering hormone blockers to children is genocide, and who equate requiring people to use the bathroom of their birth gender with white only water fountains of the Jim Crow era. However, the existence of these two groups can only provide part of the explanation for the on-going activities of LGBT activists. If the corruption of the Black Lives Movement, driven by the greed of its upper echelon, has taught us anything, it’s that activists and activist organizations today are largely driven by the money. You needn’t follow it; you just need to know it’s there. The Activist Industrial Complex has taken on a life of its own, transforming from a system that sought justice into one that seeks money. In the wake of a string of hard-fought victories activists were faced with a difficult choice, acknowledge they had won or expand the victim base and exaggerate the threats. Sadly, most of these organizations found it a lot easier to add a few letters to their initialism, expand the definition of “oppression,” and cry genocide, than to acknowledge victory and find real jobs.