LGBT rights opposition



LGBT rights opposition is opposition to or criticism of existing or proposed legal rights or social privileges for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. It is sometimes distinct from homophobia and transphobia.

On homosexuality

 * To talk about the "rights" of someone who has chosen to rebel against responsible living is nonsense. It is simply not true that all human beings have the same rights.
 * Anita Bryant, The Anita Bryant Story (1977), p. 38.


 * There is an effort in some countries to manipulate the Church by gaining the often well-intentioned support of her pastors with a view to changing civil-statutes and laws. This is done in order to conform to these pressure groups' concept that homosexuality is at least a completely harmless, if not an entirely good, thing. Even when the practice of homosexuality may seriously threaten the lives and well-being of a large number of people, its advocates remain undeterred and refuse to consider the magnitude of the risks involved.The Church can never be so callous. It is true that her clear position cannot be revised by pressure from civil legislation or the trend of the moment. But she is really concerned about the many who are not represented by the pro-homosexual movement and about those who may have been tempted to believe its deceitful propaganda. She is also aware that the view that homosexual activity is equivalent to, or as acceptable as, the sexual expression of conjugal love has a direct impact on society's understanding of the nature and rights of the family and puts them in jeopardy.
 * Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons (1986), §9.


 * It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, more subtle and hidden, perhaps, intent upon exploiting human rights themselves against man and against the family.
 * Pope John Paul II, Memory and Identity (2005), p. 12.

On transgender

 * [Social Justice Campaigners] decided instead to push vigorously on trans: to pick up the hardest part of the whole question ('I am who I say I am and you can't prove otherwise') and run with it: 'Trans lives matter'; 'Some people are trans. Get over it'. Everywhere, with a wearying predictability, the people who always complain about every aspect of the patriarchal, hegemonic, cis-supremacist, homophobic, institutionally racist, sexist state, decided to run with the trans issue. They specifically claimed that yes, if a man said he was a woman and didn't do anything about it, then yes he was a woman and it was transphobic to suggest otherwise.
 * Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds (2019), p 246.


 * [L]esbians and radical feminists who object to the idea that identification should grant biological men an all-access pass to women’s rights and safe spaces are openly derided as “TERFs” all over social media.
 * Abigail Schrier, Irreversible Damage (2020)


 * Transgender activism purports that biological sex and "gender" are non-binary fluid constructs.
 * Gad Saad, The Parasitic Mind (2020), p. 69


 * Some trans activists are just as creative as their rejection of reality. Two popular YouTube trans activists (Riley J. Dennis and Zinnia Jones) have proclaimed that it is "cisgender" for people to restrict their mating preferences to "cisnormative" individuals; or in other words, heterosexuality is bigoted. It would seem that my my marriage is transphobic because I never considered a transgendered individual as a prospective wife.
 * Gad Saad, The Parasitic Mind (2020), p. 108


 * One of the primary objectives of trans sports activists is to normalize their theory of gender fluidity as settled fact. They sometimes resort to ruthless tactics in order to chill discourse that pushes back against their dogmas. They have de-platformed speakers, such as outspoken feminist Meghan Murphy. They have mobbed opponents on social media and, often successfully, demanded that their accounts be blocked (it helps that platforms like Twitter and Facebook are sympathetic to gender ideology). They have organized campaigns to cripple or end the careers of pre-eminent sexologists, including Dr. Kenneth Zucker, former director of the Gender Identity Clinic at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. And they have ensure that trans activists constitute an influential presence on committees tasked with providing gender identity guidelines in education, jurisprudence, social services, and yes, sport. They label anyone in the media who opposes their claims as "transphobic." Observant readers will have noticed that, in the last few years, the mainstream media have lost heart for engagement on this front and have largely ceded the field to the gender theorists.
 * Linda Blade & Barbara Kay, Unsporting: How Trans Activism and Science Denial are Destroying Sport (2021), pp. 16, 17


 * This powerful new [transactivist] lobby far outnumbers the trans people it claims to speak for. And it serves their interests very poorly. Its ideological focus means it seeks to silence anyone who does not support gender self-identification – which includes many post operative transsexuals, who are under no illusion as to how much bodies matter. It also ignores other possible solutions to problems faced by trans people – research into the causes and treatment of gender dysphoria, for instance, or adding unisex facilities alongside single sex ones. Its overreach is likely to provoke a backlash that will harm ordinary trans people, who simply want safety and social acceptance. When the general public finally realises what is being demanded, the blame may not land with the activists, where it belongs.
 * Helen Joyce, Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality (2021), pp. 5, 6
 * [...] as gender clinics have come under activists' sway, the treatment they offer has taken an ideological turn. Instead of advising parents to watch and wait with sympathy and kindness, they now work on the assumption that childhood gender dysphoria destines someone to trans adulthood. They recommend immediate 'social transition' – a change of name, pronouns and presentation – followed successively by drugs to block puberty, cross-sex hormones and surgery, often while the patient is still in their teens. This treatment pathway is a fast track to sexual dysfunction and sterility in adulthood.
 * Helen Joyce, Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality (2021), p. 7


 * No one is transgender ... To use names and pronouns that contradict the person’s God-given identity is to speak falsely.
 * Bishop Michael Francis Burbidge, as quoted in "'No one is transgender' declares U.S. bishop in new diocesan catechetical aid", LifeSiteNews (23 August 2021)


 * Girls deserve equal opportunity to compete and achieve in sports. The Biden administration's reinterpretation of Title IX is a slap in the face to young women and girls, telling them their hard work, on-field achievements, and athletic futures do not matter. Title IX was designed to stop discrimination and ensure equal athletic opportunities for women. By allowing biological males to compete in girls' sports the Biden administration will be reversing 50 years of progress for women. H.R. 734, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023 strengthens the law's existing protections for women, ensures a level playing field for female athletes, and protects the law from the Biden administration's radical regulatory scheme.
 * U.S. House of Representatives, Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act (2023)


 * Call me old-fashioned, but if your activism permits men to hit women, and to deprive women of medals, and to humiliate women who’ve trained hard for sporting glory, then it’s not ‘progressive’ – it’s misogyny in woke drag.
 * Brendan O'Neill, "Giving a Green Light to Male Violence Against Women", Spiked Online (8 January 2024)

Quotes about LGBT opposition

 * Trans people are emblematic of wider, conceptual concerns about the autonomy of the individual in society. Their rejection of dominant, ancient and deep-seated ideas about the connection between biological characteristics and identity causes a dilemma for the nation state: whether to acknowledge and give credence to the individual’s assertion of their own identity in law and in culture; or to mandate that it, the state, is the final authority on identity, and to assert its power over the individual – by force if necessary. Attacking the very concept of trans people by imposing rigid and immutable definitions of sex and gender, as Orbán’s party has done, is the latest iteration of the way national governments embrace totalitarian ideology. After all, attacking trans people has been a part of fascist practice since the destruction of ’s Berlin  back in 1933 by Nazi youth brigades.
 * Shon Faye, Chapter Five


 * In an era of growing right-wing populism in the United States and the UK alike, accompanied by an alarming rise in visible street fascism, there is more need than ever for unity across the four different letters (as well as queer, asexual, intersex and other groups). It is in the interests of those who hate us all for us to be at war with one another.
 * Shon Faye, Chapter Six


 * Moral panics rely on an inherent paradox: that the rights of a small minority of the population wielding little institutional power are in fact a risk to the majority. This is achieved by inciting in the population a mixture of moral disgust and anxiety about contagion. The problem group may be small now, but they will grow. They will grow by encouraging confused young people to join. For sexual minorities, this narrative of recruitment lends itself to the language of seduction and abuse, which helps direct the moral disgust society feels at paedophilia on to an innocent group. It is a shameful but highly effective propaganda tool. Despite the obvious parallels and analogous struggles that trans people have had with the wider queer movement’s struggle for sexual liberation, the claim that trans people are not only actively different but substantially harmful to the LGB movement has been readily embraced and promoted by extreme political conservatives. This includes even politicians who would themselves traditionally oppose lesbian, gay and bisexual rights.
 * Shon Faye, Chapter Six


 * Even if a tiny proportion of LGB people are willing to team up with right-wing homophobes to oppose trans civil rights, it only takes a handful of committed LGB people wilfully perpetuating these negative narratives for them to become normalized. Such narratives are then taken up by political conservatives and far-right voices, whose ultimate goal is the dismantling of all LGBTQ+ rights because of their profound disgust for us all.
 * Shon Faye, Chapter Six


 * The simple moral case for resisting transphobia as a form of cruelty should be enough for anyone who has been similarly victimized by society (as cisgender lesbians, gay men and bisexual people have all been in one way or another) to stand with us in solidarity. Yet it should also be a matter of self-interest. The world in which trans people’s rights are restricted relies on narratives of dehumanization and myths of sexual predation. Restricting trans people’s rights relies on policing other people’s gendered appearance in toilets and changing rooms by arbitrating on who looks male or female enough, and by punishing deviation from rigid norms with intimidation and violence. It involves kids following the examples of adults and harassing their peers in the playground for being different. It relies on parents either beating into submission the child asserting their identity, or psychologically breaking them with conversion therapy. These traumatic experiences affect all ‘queers’, whether trans or cis. Advocating for them in any form for any letter will inevitably normalize their use against everyone judged queer. Politically, it is a gift to fascists at a time of growing far-right sentiment in Europe and North America alike.
 * Shon Faye, Chapter Six


 * Together, an LGBTQ+ coalition with class consciousness and anti-racism at its core must recover its radicalism and reaffirm its opposition to capitalism and patriarchy. Infighting and division are in the interests of our right-wing oppressors. Gay people and trans people have had to battle similar arguments about being ‘unnatural’: homophobia still often rests on the prejudice that the worthiest form of sexuality is that which is capable of reproduction. Transphobia, too, emanates from a prejudice that a person’s stated identity is more trustworthy if it reflects their ‘natural’ role in human reproduction. Similarly, cisgender women’s reproductive freedom is the first thing to be curbed by conservative regimes. Misogyny, homophobia and transphobia share much of the same DNA. To the patriarchy, we all do gender wrong.
 * Shon Faye, Chapter Six


 * The recent drive for religious exemptions is not born of a neutral concern with religious liberty, but is largely the product of resistance to recent gains in LGBT equality across the United States. The public and legislative debate around these bills has focused on LGBT people exercising their rights, and objections to same-sex marriage, same-sex parenting, same-sex relationships, and recognizing the gender identity of transgender individuals. Proponents of these exemptions have not incorporated protections that would ensure they are not used to discriminate against LGBT people at risk of discrimination.
 * ""All We Want Is Equality": Religious Exemptions and Discrimination against LGBT People in the United States", Human Rights Watch (19 February 2018)