This is something I’ve been reflecting on and wanted to get others’ thoughts. I’m broadly supportive of LGBTQ+ rights and don’t mean this in a conspiratorial or hostile way—just trying to understand the cultural shifts.
After gay marriage was legalized in the U.S. (Obergefell, 2015), the public conversation very quickly pivoted to transgender rights—bathroom laws, pronouns, youth transition, etc. While trans people have always existed, it felt like the cultural spotlight suddenly shifted.
What I’ve noticed since then is that trans rights became the new frontline, and the heat of political backlash shifted away from LGB rights. Suddenly, conservatives who had previously fought gay marriage were saying things like: “I’m fine with gay couples—just not with kids taking hormones.”
It’s like LGB rights moved into the mainstream partly because something else took the spotlight.
So here’s the theory: the trans movement unintentionally became a “lightning rod”—absorbing the energy, outrage, and cultural tension that might otherwise have reignited fights over LGB rights. I’m not saying it was coordinated, but movements don’t need central planning to behave strategically. Sometimes momentum + aligned interests create a kind of tactical sequence.
I’m curious: does this framing make sense to you? Is it too cynical? Or is there something to the idea that the backlash shifted focus, and that shift helped normalize what used to be controversial?
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I think large advocacy organization like GLAAD had amassed a lot of money, political influence, and personal careers, and rather than throwing in the towel after Obergefell, pivoted to trans issues which were, especially a decade ago, seen as highly analogous to gay rights.
Honestly it seems to be creating the opposite situation. Where they’d mostly just forgotten that gay people were a thing to worry about, now we’re back in the light and with a few rights left in tact. I’ve been prepared for my marriage to be eliminated since trump took office
I think you have the cause and effect backwards. Conservatives lost the fight against gay marriage, so they went looking for a new scapegoat to blame for all of society’s problems.
And then parts of the queer community capitalized on that shift to shore up their tenuous position as “one of the good ones” and get in with the transphobes by throwing trans people under the bus.
OP, you have observed correctly but it’s not some grassroots cultural accident or bad timing. Evangelical Republicans gathered in a meeting and consciously decided to attack trans people because attacking gay people wasn’t working anymore
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/anti-trans-bathroom-debate-how-a-local-religious-right-faction-launched-a-national-movement-203248/
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/christian-right-tips-fight-transgender-rights-separate-t-lgb/
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/5/11592908/transgender-bathroom-laws-rights
In Canada, gay rights were normalized a generation ago. It was a dead issue until the trans panic starting leaking across the border from the US maybe two or three years ago.
You have the causation backwards. While we didn’t get OvH until 2015, support for gay marriage reached the tipping point of popularity years earlier. By 2016, gay hate was such a PR problem for the right that they had no choice but to drop it. It was clear that fighting gay acceptance was a losing battle which was costing far too much, but they still needed a moral scapegoat. So, they shifted focus onto a smaller minority who it’s still acceptable to hate.
Too much change for society until support had exhausted. LGB had been accepted but Trans were still. We try to push acceptance but we don’t consider a plan
I don’t think so. I remember when i was in school around the early 2010s gay rights was the big hotly debated topic. By the time i was in college in the late 2010s, being gay was seen as “no big deal” by most people.
I didn’t start seeing trans issue debates until after 2020.
Nothing coincidental or uncoordinated about it. Republicans are using trans rights as a wedge issue because trans people have less support than gay people. It’s like they were fighting a losing by battle on one front so they fell back to a new position to regroup and try a new type of attack. Once they claim victory against trans people, they’ll pivot back to attacking gay people and Obergefell will be toast, followed by Lawrence v. Texas. All part of the rapidly-being-implemented Project 2025.
And keep in mind that they continue to attack gay people. Right now it’s in the form of censoring and banning books with gay people in them at public schools, claiming they’re pornography. And attacking drag queens, a large percentage of whom are gay (but not trans). Drag queens don’t use women’s bathrooms nor do they compete in women’s sports, but the attacks against them are at least as vituperative as the attacks on trans women using sports and bathrooms as excuses.
Maybe they’re just trying a different angle to attack the LGBT+ community as a whole. I still don’t feel completely safe as a cishomo, and these shots that they’re taking at the trans community effect the LGBT+ community as a whole.
Yeah, this kinda makes sense to me. Trans people have always been more controversial to str8 society than cisgender gays, but it is only recently that trans people have become an actual “political issue.” In the past trans people were certainly oppressed and brutalized, but most ordinary people were unaware of their existence and or viewed it as irrelevant to their life.
I wish to make a spell that will make all cisgender people forget about the existence of trans people for a moment.. gimme a break goddammit! haha
I don’t think politicians really care about most of the issues they actually talk about, they just need something that is abstract to a large part of population they can throw the word “rights” behind. <Abstract thing> rights. The Republicans other the <abstract thing> and Democrats pretend they care about rights.
I’m really not sure why Democrats don’t talk about “workers’ rights” anymore. The only reason I can think of is everybody knows what workers need and what rights they want, so nobody can be vague about it.
No, I think you have it backwards. Homosexuality didn’t become more accepted because transphobia became a lightning rod, transphobia became a lightning rod because homosexuality became more accepted.
Conservatives saw that homophobia was a losing attitude, so they shifted focus.
I think you may be putting the cart before the horse here. Gay rights didn’t become more mainstream because trans rights took the heat off them… because conservatives saw the righting on the wall that gay rights were becoming mainstream, they pivoted to demonizing a smaller, still much less socially accepted group of people so they could still have a culture-war wedge issue to lean on.
That’s just what conservatives are saying, not their truth. They hate gay people just as much as they used to. Six state attorneys general just appealed to SCOTUS to overturn Obergerfell. Conservatives often try to legitimize their victimization of one group, by denying their hatred of another group.
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Yeah that’s the nature of political discourse with lobbying being a thing. Ever heard give an inch they’ll take a mile? That’s why politics is such a shit show. Lobbying orgs are created for some purpose and then when that is fulfilled they have to move to the next thing and increasingly move their views away from center. We see it with gun rights and abortion rights as well