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DiscussionDemocrats embraced gender woo because they want cohesion, and that's why they won't let it go
This is an idea I've been thinking about a lot lately.
One of the things that seems vital to any effective social movement is the acceptance of a fantastic, easily-disprovable lie. The lie has to be smack at the center of the movement--the movement won't hold up if you let the lie go. It's much, much harder to get people to sacrifice en masse for something that doesn't have a fantastic lie at the center. Sometimes the lie is more benign (e.g., "liberty and justice for all"), but the more desperate the circumstances feel, the bigger and more insane the lie has to be to maintain cohesion.
Part 2, once the number of people willing to embrace the fantastic lie and sacrifice for the cause reaches a tipping point, is to force everyone else to embrace the lie--or else.
I think Dem politicians have envied the cohesion of the right for years now. As a Democrat myself, I have certainly envied it at times, though only because it's almost impossible to go up against when what you have is a loose coalition of people whose priorities are often mutually contradictory. But the right didn't have that cohesion until Reagan mated with the Christian Coalition in the '80s and gradually it became necessary for every Republican politician to embrace the lie.* I don't know if Democrats consciously recognize this, but gender gave them a really big lie--a desperate times-sized lie--with which to recruit true believers and flog the apostates. Of course they don't want to give that up.
*Note: It had always been socially necessary before then for American politicians to say they were Christians, but being an Easter and Christmas churchgoer who name-checked the Lord at funerals was plenty. You did not have to center god in your politics.
Westboro is still around. They just lost a lot of their pep when Fred Phelps died and Megan Phelps-Roeper left the cult and became a public speaker
Trans activists made a sign to harass lesbian and gay groups that was near identical to one of those created by the Westboro Baptist Church saying 'God hates...' and one of the current members of the WBC liked it. The WBC is on the same side as TRAs
Um, the church still exists and IS protesting allowing males to cheat in female sports. Interestingly, in the past a news article would describe what their signs said and here we are just told that they’re hateful.
https://www.aol.com/westboro-baptist-church-protest-over-035900910.html
I see, but I don't think they are so influential compared to the 2000s.
I also wonder what their signs said at the protest.
It still exists, and I wouldn't credit it with advancing gay rights by any means. They also protested the funerals of soldiers among other weird stuff.
And if they did protest trans people ,the trans people would still focus their hatred on us, and try to conflate us.
They were outside the gates of Arlington cemetery when we drove in for the burial of our family member, who was killed in Afghanistan, with their signs proclaiming that God had killed all the dead soldiers as a punishment for allowing gays.
I was spitting mad.
I'm sorry that happened to your family. How awful.