The LGBTQ+ "Community" is Not a Community—It's a Collective

Resistance is futile

Progressive pride flags over Regent Street in London. Source: Gay Times

In honor of Pride Month, let’s talk a bit about the so-called “LGBTQ+” or “gay” community. It’s a community that you might think I am a part of, being a lesbian and all, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Even if I did consider myself a member, there are many who would tell me that I don’t belong. In fact, there are many who have told me just that. That’s because the gay community is not a community in any true sense of the word, but a political collective. This is why it has taken on such an ugly, authoritarian bend.

Case in point:

“Join in our explicitly political ceremony or you’re the bad guy!” is the message of pride today. And rest assured, they’d do this to Poilievre even if he happened to be gay. I know. I am regularly accused of homophobia. Once again—I’m a lesbian. I’ve been with my partner for 17 years. We’re going to get married. We’re going to have a baby together. But I am not welcome in the community even though my letter, “L,” traditionally leads the acronym (not in Canada, of course. Here, we start with “2S” for Two Spirit).

And no, it isn’t just a fringe minority who wouldn’t welcome me. It is the majority of the so-called “gay community.” But I’m not complaining about this for my own sake. I don’t want to be a part of what it has become. However, I do think it is important to describe what exactly it has become.

Same-sex attraction is supposed to be the one thing that all of us in the “community” have in common (let’s set aside “trans” for a minute, which came along to mess everything up and include a bunch of straight men). If you’re speaking of a “gay” community, well then it should be held together by the fact that its members are all gay. Other than that, as with other communities, we shouldn’t need to conform in any other way.

This is because a community is a collection of individuals, not drones. You don’t have to have anything else in common with the other members aside from the trait that makes you a part of that community. For example, perhaps you occupy a geographical community like a city. You’ll be very different in many ways from the other inhabitants, but what you all have in common is living in the same place. Or maybe you take part in a hobby and consider the other people who take part as a community of sorts as well. Again, your interest in the hobby is what grants you membership. You don’t need to have, for example, the same sexual orientation as everyone else to join.

But this is why the idea of the gay community is so misleading. It’s not about being gay. Today, it’s about being politically progressive, and radically so. That’s why gay people who don’t hold radically progressive beliefs are excommunicated. That’s also why straight people get to join the club by donning they/them pronouns, by dying their hair an unnatural color, or just by calling themselves “allies.”

This is why, for example, you end up with the “no cops at pride!” sentiment, especially after BLM rose to prominence and was taken up by the radical left. Does it matter if some police officers are gay? No. Does it matter that some gay people don’t agree? No. They just get the boot.

More recently, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party have been “banned from pride” by 14 of the province’s pride societies, showcasing that this is a mainstream “gay community” sentiment, not the ravings of some fringe element.

As if the conservatives were ever welcome in the first place! And why were they banned? Because Premier Smith doesn’t want children to be sterilized. Keep in mind, many of the children who are targeted for transition because of their gender non-conforming behavior would simply just grow up to be gay, like I did. That’s where we are at now. A Premier who wants to ensure that future gay adults get to grow up healthy and whole is banned from pride.

Once again, it’s obvious that pride and the “gay community” have nothing to do with being gay. Does it matter that many UCP party members and supporters are themselves gay? No, of course not. They have the wrong politics.

And that’s why the gay community can not in any sense be called a community. It is a collective. A collective acts and thinks as one. Individual identity does not matter. Sure, you get a lot of different labels to choose from. Gay. Lesbian. Bisexual. Trans. Non-binary. Two Spirit. Pansexual. Asexual. And on and on and on. And each one has a flag with slightly different stripes to go with it. But this is not individuality. These are just meaningless variations on the acceptable costume. This is colorful and garish window dressing over complete ideological conformity.

What you end up with is people decorated in different color stripes who all think the same—or who all need to at least pretend to think the same to keep their standing in the community. They must all utter the correct creeds, “trans women are women,” chief among them. But aside from this, you must also accept every other progressive cause and belief as a package deal. You must accept that “sex work is work,” you must support BLM, and you must be a queer for Palestine.

Don’t get me wrong, ideological conformity also exists on the right, obviously. There, you can just as easily fall into a collectivist mindset and buy a set of pre-packaged beliefs that save you from having to think very hard. But this fact only serves to further highlight the politically collectivist nature of the so-called gay community. Today, adopting the LGBT acronym and its variations is nothing but political signaling for the left.

This is why people who are actually homosexual, like myself and many people I know, can be considered traitors. How could you possibly be a traitor to a community joined together by a shared sexual orientation if you have that sexual orientation? You couldn’t. And that proves membership has nothing whatsoever to do with actually being gay.

To be a good collectivist, you have to hold the right beliefs and you have to act in accordance with them. If you don’t, then the collective will punish you harder than it punishes those in the outgroup. Often, it is those who the gay collective feels like it owns that end up on the receiving end of the worst treatment for them.

One of the best examples is the abuse faced by lesbians who don’t see trans-identified men as potential sexual partners. Hell, just women in general who refuse to see trans-identified men as women receive an endless torrent of vitriol because women are supposed to be more progressive and accepting. Whatever (wildly exaggerated) violence trans-identified men do face comes from other men, but it is for women who pose no physical risk to them that they reserve their most vicious abuse—because women are supposed to be on their side.

Consider, as well, how pride parades are often shut down by more radical elements in the “community,” like when BLM stalled Toronto Pride or, more recently, how the Winnipeg Pride Parade was blockaded by a mishmash of protestors with muddled racial and Pro-Palestine grievances.

You might think that this demonstrates how most gay community members are not that radical, seeing as it seems to be fringe groups impinging on the majority. And it’s true, I would say most of them are not. But, when this kind of thing happens, instead of being simply dismissed, it pulls the collective further and further left. Instead of telling these disruptive groups to “fuck off,” organizers always put on a great self-flagellating show of “meeting with” and “listening to” these groups. The rest of the collective just trudges along unthinkingly behind these leaders. They are incapable of dealing with these more radical elements, and so the whole movement just grows more and more politically radical.

Don’t believe me? May I remind you that, in 2005, the largest gay rights advocacy organization in Canada defended a pastor’s right to call homosexuality “perverse, self-centered and morally deprived.” This would now be called “hate speech,” and all of our “community leaders” would call for its criminalization. At the time, however, EGALE understood that our own rights and acceptance hinged on values like pluralism and free speech. Radical elements have always been a part of our movement, but they have not always dictated our mainstream views.

To be a part of the LGBTQ+ acronym today, you have to think, act, and speak in a certain ideologically aligned manner. You need to be a member of the political collective, not the community bound together by a minority sexual orientation. If not, then you’re out. This is how you get people like me, who live an openly gay life, being called homophobic. And it is how you get people who push the sterilization of kids who are disproportionately likely to grow up to be gay celebrated as wonderful allies.