(Daily Signal)—A major fissure within the LGBTQ+ movement burst into public view last week when Log Cabin Republicans abandoned transgender advocacy and the Human Rights Campaign condemned the move.
Log Cabin Republicans, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, voted to remove the “T” from its advocacy. Ross Hemminger, the group’s president, announced the move in a Townhall op-ed last week.
Hemminger noted that Log Cabin Republicans added the “T” to its mission in 2015, but he attacked the transgender movement for focusing “nearly all of their efforts” on minors, rather than consenting adults.
“They push schools to teach radical gender ideology; they want biological men in women’s sports regardless of the consequences; perhaps most offensively, they support gender reassignment treatments for minors, often without the knowledge or consent of the parents, knowing full well these treatments are mostly irreversible,” he added.
“That is why, after significant discussion with our membership, our Board of Directors voted to refine Log Cabin Republicans’ national advocacy focus to concentrate specifically on issues of sexual orientation and conservative values—in other words, we are an LGB advocacy organization, as our founders envisioned and as our moral center calls us to be,” Hemminger announced.
He said the decision does not mean Log Cabin Republicans will exclude members who identify as transgender, but that the organization will focus on “issues of sexual orientation.”
HRC Condemnation
The Human Rights Campaign, America’s largest LGBTQ+ activist group, condemned Log Cabin Republicans.
“It’s news to us that they ever pretended to care about the T,” Human Rights Campaign spokesman Delphine Luneau told LGBTQ Nation. “Splitting up the LGBTQ+ community and pitting us against each other is exactly what anti-equality forces want to see happen.”
Luneau argued that the LGBTQ+ movement should stick together because “all our freedoms are intertwined.”
Transgender Headwinds
While many LGBTQ+ organizations continue to treat sexual orientation and gender identity as inseparable, critics have argued that the rapid expansion of transgender activism has alienated gays and lesbians. Some critics also argue that the issues are at odds with one another.
A group of lesbians who opposed transgender ideology formed an organization called “Get the L Out” in 2018, claiming that transgender ideology “promotes the medical transition of lesbians and pushes harmful drugs and unnecessary medical procedures on lesbians’ healthy bodies.” The group claims that sex-rejecting procedures constitute “a form of misogynist medical abuse against lesbians.”
While this explicit framing may be rare, the claim that transgender activism encourages transition for young people who might otherwise identify as lesbian or gay is not. Glenna Goldis, the assistant attorney general overseeing fraud whom New York Attorney General Letitia James fired earlier this year, warned that young gays and lesbians might be tempted to accept a transgender identity in order to be straight.
