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Why is support for LGBT rights on the wane in Canada?

Trans-activist bullies have hijacked and undermined the fight for gay rights.

Meghan Murphy

Topics Identity Politics World

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Justin Trudeau may have missed the memo, but Canadians are moving on from trans obsession. A poll published by Ipsos, a day before the start of Pride Month, found that Canadian support for ‘LGBTQ2 visibility’ is on the decline.

At first glance, this might seem surprising. The West has been very successful on the acceptance front – gay rights went mainstream decades ago and related phobias fell out of fashion. In Canada, diversity has been embraced. Pride, perhaps once a marginalised movement, has become a fun party for all, rather than a necessary statement of visibility, allowing gay people to be proud, rather than ashamed, of their sexuality.

While the LGB has been lumped in with the ‘T’, it seems the public is not going along with this marketing scheme. The Ipsos poll shows that support for gay rights, such as same-sex marriage and adoption, remains high, while enthusiasm for trans rights is beginning to wane. And no wonder. In the past decade, we have seen a shift from ‘Love is love’ to beating already progressive people over the head with a pink-and-blue baseball bat.

The gay-rights movement was successful because it made sense. Demanding equal rights made sense in terms of allowing same-sex couples to marry. Working to prevent homophobic violence made sense because gays and lesbians really were targeted on account of their sexualities and appearances. The phrase ‘Born this way’ made a certain amount of sense as a means to normalise homosexuality and encourage acceptance, whether or not it was completely accurate.

Transgenderism is a different beast, but activists saw an opportunity to glue the T to the LGB, thereby reviving a largely settled matter. The problem is that gay-rights slogans, arguments and demands lose all meaning when applied to transgenderism. And people who would usually be eager to accept and include minority groups are beginning to catch on to that. Rather than trans rights being an extension of the gay-rights movement, it has been a destructive force.

Men who like to wear women’s clothes and women who hate the trappings of femininity are, of course, already equal in Canada. What trans-rights activists want is not ‘equality’. Rather, they want an army of Yes men and women to grant them god-like status. The trans movement isn’t a fight for safety or human rights. It is a cult that demands nothing less than unwavering devotion.

People can get behind ‘acceptance’ as a generally good concept. But they don’t like nonsensical things being shoved down their throats at every turn. And trans ideology has become as inescapable as it is absurd, appearing everywhere from schools to sports to beer cans.

As the T began to wear on people, it started to drag the LGB down with it. The Ipsos poll found that support for ‘openly lesbian, gay and bisexual athletes in sports teams [was] down 11 points from 2021’. A third of respondents said they wanted to see more ‘LGBTQ2 characters on screen’, down 10 percentage points from 2021. Only 49 per cent of Canadians surveyed supported people ‘being open about their sexual orientation or gender identity’.

Speaking to Global News, one trans activist teacher called Annie Ohana blamed the results on an ‘aggressive campaign targeting the LGBTQ2 community’. What she is referring to is in fact both more specific and more rational. People don’t want kids being taught that they can change sex. They don’t want men in girls’ changing rooms. They don’t like seeing males winning athletic competitions in the female category. They don’t understand why drag queens need to read stories to their kids. What people like Ohana fail to realise is that continually insisting a hate campaign exists where there is none is no longer working to bring people on board.

Canadians can see that the T isn’t marginalised, but rather promoted at every opportunity, by corporations, politicians, the media and institutions alike. Parents in particular know all too well that so-called trans kids are not bullied, but celebrated at school. Meanwhile, the rest of the kids are subject to relentless ‘education’ about gender identities and ‘pronouns’. The female athletes or CEOs once celebrated as pioneers have been replaced by men attempting ‘femininity’ in ways both foreign and offensive to most actual women.

Canadians have become sick of a religion they don’t subscribe to being imposed on them by the government, the media and other institutions. They are emboldened to start pushing back.

I see it online and hear it in conversations with the regular folks of the world. Unlike the ‘diverse, inclusive and equitable’, I do engage with a wide variety of people in my life, and they are angry at being excluded from the conversation. Those who were once afraid to attend public events about the harms of gender-identity ideology are now showing up. Not only are they unafraid, but they’re also proud to make their views known. You will no longer see a social-media post announcing ‘transwomen are women’ without a string of responses pushing back. The actually diverse people I speak to, from around the world and from varying backgrounds, think the trans trend is insanity and ask me ‘What the hell is going on in Canada?’. Now, it seems Canadians have awoken from their long slumber to say the same.

What once may have been politely accommodated in an effort to ‘be nice’ no longer feels like a harmless gesture of compassion. It feels like an ‘or else’. And no one likes a bully, no matter how many colourful flags he’s wearing.

Meghan Murphy is a Canadian writer and host of The Same Drugs. Find more of her work at meghanmurphy.ca.

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Topics Identity Politics World

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