This hysteria behind this CBS News "story," "LGBTQ Americans and the 2024 Election: 'I don't feel welcome here,' will generate, as it is derived from, misinformation and willful ignorance seems depths of misunderstanding.
The “LGBTQ” community represented here by CBS is not the lesbian and gay community.
We’re still waiting for THOSE POLLS of lesbians and gay men. We have been disappeared into a goulash of identities, many having nothing to do with us.
In the 90's, as Chicanos were being disappeared into Hispanic, Latino, and then Latinx [which most Latinos through polls reject, but white nonprofits don't care].
Same was done to the lesbians and gays
Up until the 90's, the institutional mass media, as led by the New York Times mostly, referred to us, in print, as "homosexual men" and "homosexual women." The Advocate Magazine branded itself uniquely on its masthead as a "gay news magazine." Most local gay media branded itself as "gay."
Our fights were for style guideline changes from the institutional media, which sets the standard for local media, and refer to us as lesbians and gays; and for the Advocate to call itself a "gay and lesbian news magazine."
We faced resistance from both fronts.
When a competing, national news magazine emerged to compete with the Advocate, OutWeek, a magazine I wrote for, called itself a "lesbian and gay newsmagazine." The Advocate flipped and followed suit.
The style guidelines in the major media changed, and we were called what we called ourselves - lesbians and gays.
It seems now all too brief, because soon I remember chatting with gay friends about the "LGB" usage being widely employed. Who demanded this, and where was it coming from?
To my knowledge, no one made a fuss.
In 2019, I penned a blog entitled, "Are We All Queer Now?" where I wondered if these were reactionary trends, like we see in feminism, meant to erode gains we were making through erasure.
When Gallup reported a few years ago and Pew revealed that the now “LGBTQ” community had grown significantly in population, defying longstanding historical trends, and that it’s the “fastest growing” group in the US, actual reporting dug deep into the raw data, and complaints [eg, Herzog, Sullivan, Greenwald].
It was easy to see the factor accounting for this reported rise were self-identified BISEXUALS.
But, wait: there’s more. Those self-identified bisexuals polled also admitted to being in LONGTERM HETEROSEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS.
This is skewed data from a “community” manufactured by the nonprofit industrial complex and sold on campaign brochures.
Worse, just as my peers were asking back in the 90's, what do we really have in common with those bisexuals to make them part of this community?
Wouldn't anyone have a problem with raw data from the wide "Hispanic" community, which encompasses Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, when their interest is: how is the Chicano community doing in the US?
Apparently, in fact ... no one has a problem, because that too is being sold to us, erasing an important US demographic.
I learned firsthand that too many on the left came very, very late to gay liberation. Unfortunately, I've not come across a definitive study of how much of the left were antagonists and the degree of changes, but plenty of self-adulatory record exists how they've "come around" and glossing over their non-history with us. You weren’t there in the 70’s when we were getting arrested, losing our jobs, homes, children; nor in the 80’s when we were dying ... and losing our jobs, homes, children; not even much of the 90’s when you were still saying "marriage is between one man and one woman."
The first presidential vote I was qualified to cast was for Dr. Lenora Fulani in 1988. She was alone in advocating for lesbian and gay rights, demanding funding into AIDS research, and universal health care for all. There was no other presidential candidate saying this. She was a unicorn.
You'd think today, the whole left was with Dr. Fulani, and that's a lie.
By the time their old organizations pretended to embrace this struggle and this community, it had become something else - with those bisexual heterosexuals … and trans advocacy (which I do NOT mean to disparage here, and which neither the Gallup or Pew polls included) in tow.
That's why this CBS News story can be swallowed as credible.
Easily, 99% of the white gay men I know, personally, intimately, and through social media, are Trump voters. While I don’t know any Black gay Trump voters, among those I know, many favor some of his expressed “policies.” Remember, Black icon and activist, Muhammad Ali endorsed Ronald Reagan twice. But these Black men I know mostly didn’t vote because they had problems with both candidates (I got nowhere pushing the Jill Stein option). They don't feel unsafe. While I dread the incoming administration, they're relieved.
But I have no data because we aren't polled, but I would love some.
Maybe one day, y’all will actually talk to us. Until then, this hysterical story is fakery.
