So...a liberal asked a question on a sub i frequent asking what the climate around homosexuality was in the 2000s and how it compared to the 2020s with the trans rights issue.
I feel uniquely situated to really discuss this from a unique perspective, as I was a conservative in the 2000s who was anti homosexuality, and I shifted with the country on the issue. If you guys recall, I didn't become a liberal until 2012, so my opinions in the 2000s are different than old timey liberals on the issue who just...dont seem to understand the right.
So...not gonna lie, I didn't even know what homosexuality was until around high school when I went to Christian school. I guess I was accused of being it back in middle school due to my relative lack of interest in women, but didn't think much of it. In high school though, I was taught it was an abomination against god explicitly forbidden in the Bible, and that it was a potential gateway to all kinds of sexual deviance and "sins" that Christians oppose. Like, one day you're doing it in the butt, the next you're doing it to children, see sodom and gomorrah, that sort of thing.
As such, Christians took a strong moral stance against it at the time. Again, with the right, everything is seen through the lens of Christianity and its moral edicts. And most opposition to it was driven by that. I guess people could say that there were functionalist reasons to oppose it, like people having fewer babies if they didn't marry the other sex, other reasons like STDs, a lot of my christian school environment still believed homosexuality was associated with the AIDS crisis, for example (it wasn't, at least no more than promiscuous heterosexual behavior, which they also opposed). But mostly? Yeah. They opposed it simply because of their christian worldview.
I remember when brokeback mountain came out and people thought it was this huge thing because it had a gay sex scene in it. Christians acted like it was glorifying moral degeneracy or whatever. And it was a target of fun.
While I'm not gay, I cant imagine growing up gay being particularly accepted in the 2000s well. Kids were ruthless. If they even THINK there's a chance youre remotely gay, they will mercilessly make fun of you for it, and I was one of those kids who because I had a rather delayed interest in women, well, yeah it made me a constant target of the kinds of teenage harassment you sometimes get on this subject. And before people ask, since slurs came up in the discussion that sparked this, yeah, people used "that slur" against literally anyone and anything for any reason. My christian school didnt allow swear words for obvious reasons, and even opposed "christian swear words", but surprisingly, you could just f bomb each other like its south park every 5 seconds and no one cared.
As far as how the left was perceived, it was strawmanned into being the stereotype of being the SJW i criticize today. You know, hyper militant and evangelical, and I remember religion teacher who was the pastor of the church i went to school at would go on rants about the "paradox of tolerance" and that for all of the tolerance they preach, they genuinely hate christians. I keep saying it, but SJW crap JUST MAKES THE RIGHT DOUBLE DOWN. Like, they expect the left to be obnoxiously over the top and militant in their defense of "sin" and see persecution from them as welcome. It's why the right fights so hard. As they see it, if they do not remain the dominant cultural force, that the christians will be persecuted. So that's part of their reason for being so aggressive in the culture war. It's about protecting themselves and their values from a militant left that won't tolerate them and hates them. Sadly, the modern left falls into this trap all of the time...
However, back during that time period, the actual SJW left barely existed. I wont' say they didn't exist at all. Rush limbaugh made fun of them, called them "feminazis", etc. But yeah the actual left was far more moderate. And as I matured and went to college, I kind of realized that the christian right was wrong on A LOT of things. In my first semester, my english class had us read the laramie project. It kind of exposed me to a variation of right wing politics that I wasnt aware of in my christian bubble. I mean, my school always had this "love the sinner, hate the sin" mentality of separating the person from the act. Rather, a lot of the westboro types with their "god hates slurs" thing ended up taking things a lot further, and got a lot more personal and hateful, making the left seem like the sane and reasonable ones in comparison.
I mean, that's the thing about culture wars, the more extreme and unhinged side loses. The sane side that can actually appeal to people where they're at seems to win. ANd we we shifted from the more conservative early 2000s to the more liberal late 2000s, the zeitgeist shifted, and I seemed to be part of a mass awakening on the subject where I realized opposing it was a bad thing.
The fact was, Jesus was supposed to embody love, and all of the commandments were supposed to boil down to loving your neighbor. How was what westboro was doing "loving?" It kind of soured me on the subject somewhat.
That and liberals came off as more reasonable in the 2000s in the first place. When i encountered actual liberals in college, even gay ones, they were incredibly reasonable people. Maybe a little prickly in political discussions as they'd lampoon my views at the time, but to be fair, i kinda needed that. Like i remember when i stated my view on illegal immigration at the time, one of them handed me a piece of paper and said i should carry that at all times or be deported. Kinda remember that one now that we're in the trump era with all of his crazy BS. And honestly? If anything, anti homosexuality seemed to be poisoning the right. I kinda realized i had little to no reason to be against it other than my religion, and as such, I slowly shifted left on it.
And that's what the modern left doesn't understand. Like...you dont convince a single person by getting in their face or screaming at them or canceling them or punishing them for their views. you just make them double down, you kill them with kindness, ya know? You make the otherwise realize "gee, maybe we're the bad guys?" and they'll introspect and shift. What you dont do is get in a screaming match with them. The most effective arguments at making me pro homosexuality were basically stuff like lewis blacks "gay bandidos" routine where he made fun of this idea that gay people wanna have gay sex in front of other people and "destroy the american family". They dont, they wanna enjoy their lives.
And...eventually, when I reached a point where my worldview was shot to hell from all of these internal contradictions, the gay issue actually was a big moral issue that made me challenge christianity. It kind of made me confront the fact that the letter and word of the bible went up against the spirit of jesus' message. Like....the anti homosexuality movement is largely based on irrational hate, and many christians arent preaching love on this issue, they're preaching hate. And they're not behaving in ethical ways. But again, the actual stance of the bible itself was clear, it was explicitly forbidden in the Bible, so...what do I do? Well, ultimately, I rejected the Bible. BUt once I did that, I kinda realized I was in charge of my own moral truth all along and if no longer anchored to the bible, what was my morality based on? Wasn't it just my own preferences? And yeah, it was. but by this point I kinda realized that's what most people actually do anyway, and that if god existed, they wouldnt be aligned with this bible in a literal sense anyway. So on what do we base morality? As such, I switched to secular ethics, and in doing so, I just shifted my entire value system to the left and became pro homosexuality myself.
And that's how you convert people and win the culture war. You dont do it through this "paradox of intolerance" culture war crap, that just makes the right double down. Rather, the more gentle liberalism of the 2000s that was more live and let live did it.
But...as we know, since then, the left changed. SJWs became ascendant in 2016, and have been a dominant cultural force ever since, and as you know, I largely consider such a movement to be a disaster for the left. it just polarizes people, makes them dig down, and is confrontational. Let me say this, if I were a conservative in the 2020s opposing the SJWs on trans issues, i'd be banned from every forum, I'd laugh at liberal tears, and I'd be like F these guys. I really would.
And that's where I would say the difference is. I mean, I said recently I've been lurking trumper subs to see what they say, and you wanna know what they say on the trans thing? Basically that they rolled over on gay issues and now that they gave the left an inch, they're taking a mile and they gotta push back. So dont expect any "come to jesus" moments (or go away from jesus?) from the modern right. Because they're also not as weak as they were in the 2000s. They've become worse, and more ideologically convicted of their positions in the face of perceived persecution. The SJW left made them double down. And quite frankly, the right is in a "no more mister nice guy" mood with trump. They LIKE his rank authoritarianism. They think it's NEEDED to beat us. And they won't show us mercy.
Meanwhile, our left has changed. I mentioned how in the 2000s the F bomb was used liberally in school environments. Well, in the 2010s, it started being phased out, mainly because the SJWs decided to do a policing campaign to make it the new "N word" more or less. I remember getting banned from a subreddit when some guy posted the word in their post and there was debate and I basically said that the word had multiple meanings at that point, pointing to say, south park and how they used to to be a word for ###hole and used it to describe inconsiderate people. And yeah, the word was so overused, it kinda lost its punch for a while into the 2010s, until the weirdo moral policers came along and started having this zero tolerance crap against anything they deemed "hate", and of course the SJW reddit mod with their cheeto dust encrusted fingers banned me for daring to ahve a nuanced opinion, insisting that it's always bad and merely asserting a different opinion than theirs was ground for being banned. So...ya know what? F you, mod, F you.
But you know what? These guys are digging their own political graves. I dont expect the left to have the same success on trans issues any time soon. Because that authoritarian censor happy version of progressivism doesnt allow for nuance, it doesnt allow people to THINK. Like, seriously, you shift right wingers, like me, to the left, by planting a seed. You get them thinking about things, and then they start changing their opinions internally, questioning their beliefs as you provided them contradictory information, and then you let them go from there. And yeah, you can win on that front. The gay marriage battle was won by the religious freaks obsessed with it becoming a minority. The majority had been convinced that hey, this doesnt hurt anyone and its stupid to oppose it. And now the right is backlashing HARD, believing their entire worldview is under threat. And while I kinda believe that this backlash was inevitable, how successful it would be and its larger perceptions in society really depends on its opposition. I believe if the dems just continued the more 2000s era social liberalism of "live and let live" on the topic, the right would've imploded. The worst thing you can do is to feed into their persecution complex. It makes them dig in and fight, when in reality, you want them to think and lay down their intellectual arms in the confusion of their worldview contradicting itself. The modern left just makes that worldview stronger.
It doesn't help that the trans issue does have more nuance to it than the gay issue. With the gay issue it was largely just a matter of "should they be allowed to do it in the butt and get married?" With trans issues, there are issues over sex vs gender and biology, and the weird inclusivity narratives of the modern left insisting "trans women are real (biological) women" is just a statement that gets a lot of pushback. Requiring acceptance with pronouns, an active form of acceptance on the part of the right winger, is gonna get backlash if the right winger thinks that conforming to their identities and comfort levels is stupid. There are issues with performance and competitiveness in sports. I mean, it's not JUST live and let live. On the live and let live stuff, the left should lean into that, but in some ways this active, SJW led form of liberalism requires more than that, it requires society to ACTIVELY accept their ideas on gender identity and tries to persecute those who do not. And this causes the right to...again...dig in. And heck, it even alienates me. I understand where this brand of left wing politics is coming from, but it's kinda buying into that strawman the 2000s right had where the left wants to force their ideology on you and persecute you if you don't. ANd they are...doing that. And that's bad. Again, there's no room for growth and acceptance with these toxic dynamics. only polarization and both sides doubling down.
And that is what I would say the biggest difference between the 2000s and 2020s is. In the 2000s, the left was more laid back on the whole and focused on planting seeds that then shifted peoples' perspectives over time. The 2020s left is way too over the top confrontational and kinda fits the worst possible stereotypes the right has of the left that's possible. As such, I really dont think we're gonna go in the same direction over the next 20 years. Right now, the right is getting WORSE, they're WINNING the culture war now. The left F-ed up going down this SJW rabbit hole while the alt right went down their own. Everything is polarized, everything is inflexible, there's less room for nuance or room to grow, you're forced to take a side and once you do you're locked into that side's eco system in a toxic feedback loop that makes you increasingly more extreme. Ya know?
Really, I have to sound the alarm here. WE ARE LOSING BECAUSE OF THESE TOXIC PEOPLE ON OUR OWN SIDE. And I know a lot of people hate the fact that i punch left so much, but i kind of have to WHEN I SEE THE LARGER SUCCESS OF THE LEFT AS TIED TO DISAVOWING THESE PEOPLE. Like, I have to do the moderate "sister souljah" moment here to put these guys on the spot and disavow them. Because they're toxic to our movement.
I'm not saying we back down and are non confrontational on everything. I think as long as we frame such confrontation as protecting people from authoritarians on the right, that it's okay because then WE can claim to be the moral high ground and on the defensive. It's not that we wanna force people to accept our ideology. It's that TOLERANCE actually requires we TOLERATE people, even if we don't personally like them or their specific views.
And that's what we need to do with the right, we gotta kill them with kindness, we gotta tolerate them and their regressiveness. We gotta point out that they're the crazy and unhinged ones, not us. And that we just want people to live and let live and we dont wanna take away others' rights to believe and say what they want. Really, the worst thing we can do is to play into the right's persecution complex.
And that's why despite being the secular left wing culture warrior that I am, I am also explicitly anti woke. Because I think those people are hurting us, not helping us, and their extreme stances threaten the success of our entire movement. If we wanna help the trans community, we gotta understand what let to us making gay marriage legal in the 2010s. It was mostly convincing people to stop caring as they just wanted to live their lives. not getting in peoples' faces and morally policing them for "microaggressions" or whatever.
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