“New polling data shows that support for LGBTQ rights is dropping precipitously in Canada”, writes Adam Zivo in the National Post, “and while many queer activists will inevitably blame the far right for this development, the fact is that they themselves helped sabotage their own public support.”
The article continues:
Their abrasiveness and militancy has alienated the public, and though a strategic shift is needed, I fear that community leaders will fail to understand this until it is too late.
According to this year’s edition of the Ipsos LGBTQ+ Pride Report, which polled adults in 26 countries, support for queer rights has decreased across the globe since 2021. Several metrics suggest that the starkest changes occurred in Canada.
This year, only 49 per cent of Canadian respondents believed that people should be open about their orientation or gender identity (down 12 points from 2021), while support for LGBTQ people publicly kissing or holding hands fell to 40 per cent (down 8 points). Fewer Canadians want to see openly gay or bisexual athletes (50 per cent, down 11 points) or more LGBTQ characters on screens (34 per cent, down 10 points).
Decreases in the popularity of groups supposedly protected by activists happen so predictably that I have concluded it is what the activists, consciously or unconsciously, wish to see. It gives them something to do.
As with the race relations or any other ‘protest industry’, progress and tolerance are the enemies of cushy sinecures.
I don’t think many people know what the hell “queer rights” are. Most people I know, of all generations, are extremely tolerant of gays and lesbians. However, while they may have sympathy for those addled unfortunates who reject their own bodies, there is very little tolerance for the tranny wing of the LGBTW(hatevs) movement or indeed any of those who ‘identify’ to the right of the ‘B’. The gays and lesbians of my acquaintance seem to feel the same.
And it must have been 25 years ago that a gay colleague dismissed Pride as: “Pointless and dull, for fetishists and exhibitionists”.
What a lot of folks miss about the “activists” is this: If they succeed in making things work…? They’re out of a job, and all that sweet, sweet lucre goes away.
So, what’s the incentive for them to make it all better? There isn’t one, so they actually do better by doing worse, and pissing more people off.
Doesn’t matter what the cause is, if you look at it through unblinkered eyes, you suddenly see this. Race, LGBTWTFBBQ, whatever… It’s all the same. They can’t let the outrage machine run down and stop. Notice what happened with “RACE!!!” here in the US about the time Obama got elected. It suddenly dawned on a lot of people that they’d be out of their sweet jobs if people started getting along, and the racial bullshit damped down the way it was headed… Sooooo… What to do? What to do?
What they did is all around us. The LGBTWTFBBQ types are doing the same thing, and it’ll wind up with similar end states.
My guess is that it’ll take a few more years of the divisive bullshit, but that the activists are finally going to gin up enough outrage and hatred for something like Yugoslavia’s dissolution to happen. There will be Srebrenica-analog mass graves of the “troubled minorities”, because you can’t take over a society by violence when you’re only 3% or 12% of the demographic slice. The majority will wake up, resist, you’ll try to make a fight of it… And, the numbers will work against you.
It’s insanity, on the face of it. The activists have perverse incentives to keep on doubling down, again and again… Which they’ve done. The end state will likely show most of the “allies” and “activists” of the proper color fading back into the larger demographic, acting like they had nothing to do with it, and condemning all the “bad people” who made it happen.
All while never recognizing their own role in it.
Admitting record numbers of immigrants from countries that are dominantly anti-LGBTQ might have something to do with it. That too is an own goal of the governing party.
I think the cause is really the trans issue, and specifically biological men invading women’s spaces and sports. And most strongly, the attempt to interfere with confused kids with totally inappropriate medical interventions. It is a bridge too far for most people who want their daughters and mothers and wives to be able to use the bathroom without some dude shaving in there, and most people think trans women in sports is just simply unfair and who think cutting the junk or breasts off confused young people, or poisoning them with powerful largely untested drugs is quite simply child abuse. Adult? Do what you want.
And I think that is despite the fact that most people don’t really have a problem with a bloke making himself look like a girl or even cutting off his junk, even if it makes them a bit uncomfortable, as long as the situation is clear if s?he is getting picked up on a date.
Again, I think for most people, who you sleep with they don’t care much, what they do care is if you get up in their face about it. Then it goes from a lifestyle choice to a political issue, and a demand not just for tolerance but approval. And anyone who demands my approval just because they say so can fuck off.
The source of this I think is the Obergefell v. Hodges decision allowing gay people to get married. I celebrate that decision, but what it did is left a HUGE lobbying organization with nothing really to do anymore. So they have turned their sights on more and more obscure groups so keep the gravy flowing.
And even if your livelihood doesn’t depend on it, being outraged and feeling self righteous, and being in the know of the righteous few, are all very addictive feelings.
This is the ‘March of Dimes’ effect in action. Activists struggling to achieve what they see as a righteous social and political goal aren’t just in it for the goal, part of the satisfaction and the pleasure is the struggle. When one goal is reached, another must be found, some even-more-distant (ideally, unreachable) new target must be identified, in order that the struggle may continue.
I used the work with a gal who was one of the named plaintiffs in Obergefell, the lawsuit that ended up legalizing gay marriage in – what – 2016? She and her wife both marvelled at how quickly the movement moved on from their cause to newer and more-fashionable goals, and how soon they were discarded when it became clear that they weren’t interested in the next struggle.
llater,
llamas
Fancy that – me and Fraser Orr landing on the same point,at the same time. Wonders will never cease.
llater,
llamas
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-march-of-dimes-syndrome
And, apparently, we’re both of us late to the party. Thanks to correspondent Matt who e-mailed me the link showing that I’m once again a day late and a dollar short.
llater,
llamas
“What a lot of folks miss about the “activists” is this: If they succeed in making things work…? They’re out of a job, and all that sweet, sweet lucre goes away.”
Where is this money coming from? Is it basically tax payer’s money, misappropriated and misallocated by various governments? If it is then the solution to all this is laughably easy.
Yes, the Toronto rent a mob is world class in its ability to turn on a dime from the trans rights protest to guarding the pro Palestine encampments to the stop destroying the environment march.
All in the same afternoon.
Well, laughably simple, anyway. I’d have to see it accomplished before I called it ‘easy’.
And:
That reminds me of something i wrote previously on Samizdata:
If the Labour Party represents the interests of the poor, then it is in their interest that there are as many poor people as possible.
I think there is a bit more to it. When you build an an advocacy organization it is a useful thing — an organization, a donor list, people trained and with the right skills and so forth. So if the organization can be changed to pursue a different cause where the donor interest and staff interest largely overlap, it is a good thing — after all there are plenty of problems in the world that need solved. I have built organizations, and it is hard and expensive.
So if the gay marriage advocacy apparatus had shifted its interest into relieving the horrible discrimination that women or homosexuals suffer in many muslim countries, surely we would all applaud? Or if the civil rights movement which was so successful is securing the rights of black people had refocused its efforts on, for example, slavery in Africa, or the dreadful state of schools in poor districts that is so impactful on minorities, or had rather campaigned to fix the problem of fatherlessness that is so very toxic especially in black communities, surely we’d all be very happy and might actually write them a check.
So the problem is not that organizations last beyond their original purpose by taking on a new target, rather, it what they retarget onto.
Is why Labour hate grammar schools. Bright working class kids get a better education and are likely to end up middle class and voting for the Tories. Not applicable now obviously since the Conservatives have abandoned their original supporters.
I wonder what demographic has increased in Canada in recent years? Anyone? Justin?
Ordinary people were generally fine with “tolerance” which is why homosexuality was legalised in most Western Countries on the fundamental basis that “What two adults do in their own bedroom is their own business, not a police matter”. Seemed fair enough at the time.
Even civil partnerships and “Gay Marriage” were generally considered a reasonable approach (apart from the religious types who had holy texts to abide by), after all, if married straight people were to be unhappy, why shouldn’t that apply to Hte Gayers as well?
Where ordinary folks start to get angry is having sex offenders dressed in drag reading to infants or when sex education entails teaching pre-teens how to perform a blow job.
Matters got worse when the Tranny Delusion appeared out of nowhere and suddenly if parents object to a man with full tackle changing in front of their pre-pubescent daughters, they are called bigots, full of hate for trannies.
So yes, under those circumstances you can see why ordinary folks tolerance of the LGBT+ crowd has declined. Expect to see further declines year-on-year as the tranny delusion is pushed further down peoples throats.
Soon posts such as this (and the above comments) will be illegal in the United Kingdom.
I wish I could prevent the collapse of the United Kingdom into tyranny, into the criminalising of “non Woke” opinions – but I do not know how to do so.
I am very sorry indeed for having failed my country, for having failed liberty.
I opposed gay marriage because even at the time I suspected all the arguments about ‘we just want toleration’, ‘we want equal rights’, were not in a good faith, and that once they had gay marriage, the LGBTQ whatever movement would push further and further and further. Which is what exactly they did. It’s what had happened with civil rights and so as another leftist cause LGBTQ was always likely to head the same way.
”When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.”
I think the cause is really the trans issue…
– And there’s an additional factor that somewhat explains, “Why Canada?” Our governing Party and its leader have been ramming woke SJW concepts down our throats for eight years now with seeming impunity, hammering us with steadily-increasing “carbon” (among other) taxes in the sacred name of “global warming”, playing fast-and-loose with the law to punish “those people” they dislike and living like kings while splashing-around vast sums of tax money.
Latest polls strongly suggest that Canadians are sick of them; and it doesn’t really surprise me that all SJW causes are coming under an extremely skeptical magnifying glass here. But it’s two more years before they HAVE to call an election; and Canadians are quite able to forget it all; we’ve done it before.
The representation in the media thing is the same with all activist groups.
“We want more representation in the media!!!!”
Well, you’re 5% of the population, you’re in 50% of the media, you’re *over*-represented.
“IT’S NOT ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
You look at British media and you’d conclude that all UK families were multi-racial, yet at the same time black people are SCREAMING!!!!!! that there’s not enough black people on TV.
Queers for Palestine didn’t help either. When people tell you that they are the poor, put upon victims that everyone loves to hate, but that you should join them in their antisemitism, and their calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, even bleeding hearts go cold.
For sure the activists have a problem. Gay sex is no longer illegal, gay marriage is legal. Adoption is legal. So, great if you are gay or lesbian. The problem for activists is now the battle is won on all that then what next? For sure there is the matter of money and whilst that (as has been pointed out in this thread) is an issue what has to be remembered is “activists” aren’t just in it for the money. Well, some, maybe, but for a lot it is a vocation and “Doin’ good ain’t got no end…”* There are an awful lot of LGB people who really don’t like this absurd mission creep into 72 genders and all the absurdity that follows which, of course, undermines their position in society via association. As well as that I seriously don’t think the demonisation of people like J K Rowling endears the activists to many. Nor do “chick with dicks” holding banners saying, “Suck my trans-dick, you TERF cunt” helps them with anyone. LGBTQI+++ is not a coherent thing. And certainly some of the ideas from the TQI+++ rump are mind-bendingly sexist as well as being in utter denial of basic biology. When we have trannies with penises claiming to be lesbians no wonder there is a backlash. I am biologically male and like women. That makes me a heterosexual male. Until really quite recently for me to claim to be a lesbian would have been deemed absurd by everyone. Not even wrong but ludicrous. I wouldn’t have been tretaed by The Tavistock but in Bedlam.
*Guess where that quote comes from?
Llamas and others, re the “March of Dimes Syndrome”, according to the article linked to by Llamas, the March of Dimes, once Polio was eradicated (not in time to save my Mom from serious harm, btw. Tells you how old I am!), pivoted to prevention of birth defects!
That seems admirable, and a logical pivot.
Pity the LGB organizations couldn’t have pivoted to something other than the TQ+. It seems unfair to the MoD folks (Dimes, not Defence!) to label the Syndrome with their name.
More comments that soon will be illegal.