One of the things I’ve always understood about what is now generally called “the LGBTQ movement” (once known more simply as “gay rights”) was that it really wasn’t about fighting oppression, and that the claims of victimhood involved were largely fictitious. And I knew this because I actually knew gay people, none of whom were in the least bit oppressed or victimized, despite the fact that they lived in the heart of the Bible Belt. It is not necessary for me to cite examples, although i could name names of these friends and acquaintances who didn’t parade around proclaiming themselves to be oppressed victims because (a) there was no political advantage to be had by making such claims in the Deep South three or four decades ago, and (b) they weren’t victims in any meaningful sense of the word. It was not until the 1990s, really, that the gay rights movement began to get much traction in popular culture, probably as a result, on the one hand, of the AIDS epidemic creating a crisis atmosphere and, on the other hand, the Democratic Party trying to find political leverage against the “Religious Right.” Prior to the Clinton administration, really, most people had a basic libertarian attitude toward homosexuality — even if they did not approve of such behavior, they didn’t go snooping around trying to “out” people or otherwise make a big scene about it.

The suffix “-phobia” amounts to a diagnosis of mental illness, an accusation that one is motivated by irrational fear, and to inject this into public policy debates is evidence of the worst sort of bad faith. Never mind, of course, the fictional nature of the claims of “oppression” made by gay rights activists which, as I say, is my basic disagreement with the movement in general. Because the gay people I knew were not remotely in a situation of oppression comparable to, e.g., black people living under Jim Crow, I was not interested in any lectures about how their “rights” were allegedly being violated. The accusations of “ignorance,” “hate” and “homophobia” were just icing on this gigantic cake of obnoxious activism.