The gay rights movement is undoing its best work

But since Obergefell? As many of us saw our goals largely completed and moved on, the far left filled the void. The movement is now rhetorically as much about race and gender as it is about sexual orientation (“intersectionality”), prefers alternatives to marriage to marriage equality, sees white men as “problematic,” masculinity as toxic, gender as fluid, and race as fundamental. They have no desire to seem “virtually normal”; they are contemptuous of “respectability politics” — which means most politics outside the left. Above all, they have advocated transgenderism, an ideology that goes far beyond recognizing the dignity and humanity and civil equality of trans people into a critique of gender, masculinity, femininity, and heterosexuality. “Live and let live” became: “If you don’t believe gender is nonbinary, you’re a bigot.” I would be shocked if this sudden lurch in the message didn’t in some way negatively affect some straight people’s views of gays.

The left’s indifference to religious freedom — see the question of Masterpiece Cakeshop — has also taken a toll. So have the PC bromides of the LGBTQRSTUV reformulation. It’s a clearly ideological construct, and so it tends to feed ideological polarization, rather than unwind it. The gay-rights movement achieved its biggest gains when we worked against polarization, reached out across the spectrum, emphasized the human rather than the political, and did the key, hard educational work in our families, schools, churches, and neighborhoods. Too many seem eager to forget those lessons.