Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "The 'LGBTQ' Threat to Gay Rights" with Prof. Ronan McCrea

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"The 'LGBTQ' Threat to Gay Rights" with Prof. Ronan McCrea · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a Humans! Welcome to the Safe Space for dangerous ideas. Here's an uncomfortable question
• 0:10
  for you. Could the gains of the gay rights movement over the past few decades be reversed
• 0:18
  in coming decades? By the Christian right, by changing attitudes of conservative migrant
• 0:25
  communities by the gay rights as strategy at the moment of hitching itself to an unpopular
• 0:32
  LGBT QIA plus ideology that many people are more suspicious of than they were of the original
• 0:39
  requests of the gay rights activists. Ronan McCray has written a book about this. He's
• 0:44
  a professor of Constitution on European law at University College London. He lectures
• 0:48
  on the relationship between religion and law. He's a former barrister, a lawyer for the refugee
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  legal centre and an assistant to a judge in the European Court of Justice. His new book
• 0:59
  is called The End of the Gay Rights Revolution. How hubris and overreach threatened gay freedom.
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  I hope you enjoy as much as I did. Ronan McCray.
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  What's interesting, I think, or maybe striking for the way that you frame gay rights is that you
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  don't really regard the ascendancy and the success of the gay rights revolution as being
• 1:29
  something that we should analyse outside of the context of all of the other social changes
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  that were happening in the 1960s through to the 1980s. You have this funny comparison
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  with Estonian liberation and gay rights liberation. Do you want to make that case?
• 1:46
  Yeah, sure. One of the core points to the book is that we have to see gay rights as basically
• 1:52
  an incidental side effect of wider changes. As I say, it's like Estonian independence. Estonians
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  had to fight hard for a lot of heroes. They had to push. But Estonian independence movement
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  was getting nowhere unless the USSR had declined and fallen apart. Similarly, the gay rights
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  movement really was a downstream effect of the fact that in the 60s, 70s onwards straight
• 2:21
  people gave themselves a lot more freedom. There we had co-habitation, contraception, abortion,
• 2:27
  no fault divorce. Over those few decades, the straight people established for themselves
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  a choice, an individual as based paradigm, and then they had to be pushed to apply that
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  to gay people. A gay marriage made zero sense in 1950 or 1960 when marriage for a straight
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  people was life long and about supporting children. But once marriage became about helping
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  individual straight people realize themselves and have the best support and the nice relationships
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  they had, it would then like to do gay people. With all of those things, it was basically
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  that the claims that brought gay rights to fruition, which was people should the right
• 3:12
  to run their own love lives. There are no rules. Those claims actually were basically
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  given were endorsed by straight people first. So the task of the gay rights movement was
• 3:23
  not to tell straight people gay rights are wonderful or gay people and gay sex and gay
• 3:30
  wear of sexuality is wonderful. It's actually just to say, look, the rules are freedom
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  and choice. Give us the freedom and choice. And I go to the book to address the history.
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  We start with decriminalization. Look at the arguments made across the Western world
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  for decriminalization. It wasn't gay as good. It was people of the right to run their own
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  sex lives. And it was sort of interrupt, but it was also based on the selling point that
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  you don't have to change anything. You being the broader society. You've already made
• 4:03
  all of these changes for yourselves. You've decided to redefine marriage by introducing
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  no fault divorce. You've decided to change the morease around sexuality in order to accept
• 4:14
  permissive promiscuity if you wish. And therefore, all we're asking for is the same things
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  that you've given yourself and you don't have to, we're not going to ask you to do anything
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  other than not discriminate against us. Yeah, we just need a tiny tweak. You've got
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  the paradigm is there and we just need a minor adjustment to apply it to us. We're not
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  to say, man, there's always tension because there were right from the start, radical people
• 4:39
  in the generates movement who thought as just part of a movement to overthrow all, overthrow
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  all establishments, institutions and stuff. But, you know, over time, particularly in the
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  90s and 2000s when the gay rights movement had big success, those became marginal voices
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  because, I mean, it's kind of natural. If you think of it, you have to be a pretty rebellious
• 5:01
  person to be out in 1970. So the move with Archie did have quite a strong radical movement.
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  By the 1990s, it's a bit easier, more kind of mainstream oriented people will come out.
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  They have an agenda of things like employment protections, relationship recognition, gay
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  marriage, that kind of stuff. Then we get into the book is that mid 2010s, that's mainly
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  done and dusted. The norm is disengaged from the movement again and it becomes more radical,
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  which I see is a problem in itself, but also a big problem because the big trends, the kind
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  of equivalent of collapse of the USSR, the trends that drove the success of the gay rights revolution
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  and the straight sexual revolution, individualism, feminism, secularization, all of those are
• 5:53
  losing force. So the forces that drove the success of gay rights are weakening at the very
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  time the gay rights movement has been opening its demands and asking for more and that I think
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  is a particularly risky combination. And is the gay rights movement up in its demands and asking
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  for more or is it expanding its remit and including, you know, you talk about the transition of the
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  gay rights movement into the LGBTQIA plus community, so to speak, and the liability inherent in
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  asking the rest of the population to sign on to what seems like an indefinite and rather vague
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  upending of a lot of traditions that they hold dear, which doesn't seem consistent with the
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  original pitch, which was you keep on doing the same things that you're always doing, let us do
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  them as well. Sure, yeah, because I think, yeah, there's two ways, up to demands in terms of
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  having a home, want of pride and flags. Someone has been a liberal too, you know, mandatory or
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  semi-mandatory ally groups at work in cases in the UK, US, have people have been punished for
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  out of work statements that against homosexuality, things like that. That was one. Yes, that's right.
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  Yeah, there's another, there's another anecdote along those lines which comes up in Australia all
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  the time, which is should athletes have to wear pride jerseys when they're on the field, and you've
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  got quite a lot of South Pacific Islander players who are fantastic, you know, rugby players, for
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  example, and they may be deeply Christian, which is quite commonplace in Tonga or Fiji, where they
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  might come or some hour. And so all of a sudden, they're being expected as part of their job to
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  wear a rainbow flag on their jersey when they have, it has nothing to do with it, and they're regarded
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  as being full of hate, because they don't necessarily want to have to. And it has been the same
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  issue in Europe with soccer players, mainly with them background, and some African Christian
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  background too, who haven't wanted to wear a rainbow stuff. And actually, this is just
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  true. I mean, the gay rights movement with the right to be left alone was our key claim. Our
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  kischem was off for employment was, you don't have to prove what I do, just don't fire me.
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  Let me do what I want in my own time. And we like organizations like Human Rights Campaign
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  in the US, Stonewall in the UK, which were probably the equivalent in Australia, have really
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  undermined that by saying, out of, out of work, anti-gay statements can lead to disciplinary
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  consequences. Your employee, your personal life is your business, your employer needs to support
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  you and cheer you on. And first, it's kind of, it's kind of needy, it's kind of, please.
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  Well, needy is a polite way of putting it running. I mean, authoritarian or like, you know,
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  Stalinist would be another. There's definitely authoritarian bit. I mean, who wants their employer
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  in their private life? Nobody really, no real liberal. But also like, Walmart, tell me you love me.
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  Even if Walmart mowed the words, we love you. They don't, because Walmart wasn't back in
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  gay rights in 1975. If you want to know whether Walmart loves you, because it puts a rainbow flag
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  on its social media profile in the United States and the UK and Australia, why don't you go and
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  check what their social media profile has in Saudi Arabia or, you know, in the UAE. And when
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  they put a pride flag up in the UAE version of their website, then I'll believe it. Then it's
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  true love. But I mean, also, it's so short, it strikes me as so short-sighted to think that
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  you're always going to be on the winning side. And so you should expand your demands, you know,
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  so much that you want employers and co-workers to all be meddling around in what you're
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  personally tweeting. And we need to make sure that everybody is on the same page as us.
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  As if you can be guaranteed that in perpetuity, those kinds of intrusions are always going to
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  work in your favor. I mean, you know, tomorrow, it might be, you know, the mood might swing,
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  and people will be pouring over your LGBT QAA plus tweets and punishing you for those.
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  And it goes from a kind of risky bet to madness when you consider this is a population that is
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  3 to 4% tiny minority everywhere. Everywhere in the world gave people a tiny minority. And
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  it's a population that has been 99% of history being persecuted and hated by almost everybody.
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  So the idea that I like 15 years of success means you don't need to worry about that anymore.
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  You'll always be on the winning side. You can try out the liberal principles that got you
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  is complete, is madness. It's this kind of end of history delusion that you think,
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  oh, history always moves in this one way. And therefore, the last 20 years, or 15 or 20 years
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  of success that we've had, represent an irreversible change. I mean, get back to it. We were also
• 11:03
  saying that the expansion of the agenda in terms of LGBT QAA plus. And so that goes back to the
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  early days where there was real radicalism in the early days, the air rights movement. But also,
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  if you look at it, the main gay rights groups in the West all said until around 20 mid 2010s
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  that good luck to the trans rights movement, but it's not our movement. And they said that for
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  global reasons. First, your door instances where the calls don't fully align. The trans rights
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  movement actually in the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights actually had to
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  had a lot of success getting marriage rights and employment protections before gay people got them.
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  And that was a good move. They had to separate themselves from gay people and say,
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  just accommodate us. But also until the mid 2010s, all other movements were clear that it's just too
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  risky. We have large amounts of opposition. We're looking for these employment protections,
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  marriage rights. We won't get them if we kind of expand our agenda. But now they've gone not
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  just to LGBT, but LGBTQ plus. They've gone back. I mean, the plus is the most concerning thing,
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  really, because the opponents of gay rights always say, these people want you to change everything
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  that you value. And we have been making that case for them because if your movement has ambitions
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  that are so ongoing and so limitless, that it requires a mathematical symbol plus
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  to represent what the gay rights, the LGBTQ plus center of New York calls plus represents,
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  they say, genders and sexual orientations that language cannot yet describe.
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  So if your political agenda is so wide that needs a symbol to represent
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  sexual orientations and gender identity, the language cannot just describe.
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  You are maximizing your opposition. You are telling moderate straight people, accommodating us
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  means you have to change everything. Effectively, there's going to blank check to
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  throw out all established norms. For a minority of three to four percent, that is absolute
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  political madness. It's incredible, isn't it, to imagine trying to sell that from first principles
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  instead of having evolved to it over the course of decades. A minority coming to a more powerful
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  group of people and saying, can you sign onto our agenda and the more powerful group of people
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  say, all right, what's your agenda? And they go, well, we've got these bullet points, but also
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  then we've got an ellipsis and then infinity. And the majority is like, yeah, the majority is like,
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  wait, what are we signing up to? We don't know exactly. But in the future, there may be things
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  that language cannot yet describe that we want you on board with us for. The majority would be like,
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  wait, what get this guy out of here? What are we talking about?
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  It's a package deal. Take it all or none. You're either in favor of
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  bilateral nails, participating in sports or your homophobic. And I think the idea behind
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  that is that you can leverage popular issues like gay marriage and say, well, we want to be
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  homophobic. So fine. More likely, I think people will end up saying, they will end more likely to end
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  up reconsidering their support for core gay issues than they are to put aside their concerns about
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  things like sports, which they already are doing to some degree. I'm sorry for the history thing
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  that like just how could a movement of three to four percent of people do that? And the only
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  reason is if they believe in that end of history thinking, they believe that their victories are
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  truly irreversible. And, you know, but the war in Ukraine with the rise of Viktor Orbán and
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  Vladimir Putin and Sundry other developments in the world, we all know history didn't end in the 1990s.
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  But somehow for some reason in the gay movement rights movement, this end of history thinking is
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  lumbering on in zombie form. And it's really causing us to to maximize the chances that we're
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  going to lose what we have. Because historically, if we get, if we hold half what we have now in
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  50 years time, we'll be doing better than gay people, still be doing better than gay people did
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  for 99 percent of human history. We got to recognize how exceptional what we have now is and how
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  lucky we would have you to hold on to it. Our task is to hold on to things, not to keep pushing
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  further and further and further. That will sound like defeatism to people who feel like the status
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  quo is still intolerable for transgender people who are routinely demeaned and mocked and
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  derided and in subtle ways every single day made to feel like second class citizens,
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  you know, tormented by the president of the United States and so on. Why not say,
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  yes, there's probably a cost to this, but principles matter and unity matters and solidarity matters.
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  And we're not going to throw the our weaker partners under the bus just so that we can greedily
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  hoard our personal gains. Well, I'd say first, we should remember them half the world,
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  there's been no gay rights there yet anyway, but even putting that aside. Do you think to
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  remember is that the current arrangement of making it all a package deal isn't working for trans rights
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  either. Their numbers have been going backwards, actually worse than gay rights numbers have been
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  declined. And you mean the amount of support for trans people? Or the number of trans people?
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  Sorry, exactly. The numbers in terms of percentage of people. And actually it's not even the
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  extra new things they've been looking for, the increase of self-IG or sports, things like that.
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  Things that you in the UK and the US think that you used to have majority support. Now,
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  their number, those numbers are dropping. So making it all a package deal doesn't definitely
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  doesn't work for the gay rights movement because it expands, it creates new enemies we didn't have.
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  But for trans rights movement neither, it's not for me, I'm not trans to tell the trans rights
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  movement what to do, but I suspect that the most successful, the highest likelihood for success
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  for them is if they can pitch to the straight cisgender majority and say, look, we don't need to
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  change everything, we just need a tweak. In the same way gay people would make the same pitch.
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  But once you put them all together, you portray our movement as exactly what our opponents want
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  people to think. It's a movement, LGBTQ plus, it is a movement dedicated that requires the change
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  of all traditional norms. That's bad for gay rights and I say, it's bad for trans rights too.
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  Well, I mean, it's a point of, we don't know whether or not the variable that has undermined
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  the support for trans rights is it's being hitched to the LGBTQIA plus movement or whether the
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  relevant variable is the overreach that trans activists have insisted upon which would exist
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  in isolation, whether or not that were hitched to gay rights, right? I mean, the tweak that you say
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  that you think that they should be asking for is what people like Dana Bayer who is a ferociously
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  smart trans woman and activist in the states who's been on this show would say is like all of those
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  tweaks were effectively achieved. Like, I think it's boss stock, the Supreme Court decision in the
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  United States, which outlawed discrimination against trans people. So with the exception of a few
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  things to sort of sort of sort out at the edges, like who goes to what prison, you know, and who
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  competes in little league, the basic foundations of outlawing trans discrimination have been
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  achieved. Therefore, the strategic error would be the attempt by trans activists, though not by
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  a lot of trans people in my personal experience, but the trans activist lobby to push for a wholesale
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  evaluation of what gender is and asked the whole rest of society to announce their own preferred
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  genders and genuflex towards a new theory about human biology and sex. That presumably could have
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  happened whether or not the two movements were made. It may, it probably is both and it's probably
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  hard. I don't know. It's hard to do some very clever experiment or some seem to go to disaggregate
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  the two. But even like, so yeah, let's assume that you're right that actually the association with
• 20:02
  gay rights is a plus for the trans rights movement. Is it therefore a betrayal if the gay movement
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  does not stay in this coalition? So imagine, yeah, imagine the scenario, I guess, we'll think through
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  that it's a plus for the trans rights movement and it's a minus for the gay rights movement.
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  Is there a moral duty on the gay rights movement to stay in this coalition? Well, my point,
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  I, there's two reasons I think the reason actually one is there are some instances in which some
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  of the claims made in the name of trans rights are considered by at least a good chunk of gay people
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  as in for interfering with their interests. So I would say things like the interaction of self-id
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  and let's say, the right of lesbians to have, by largely female only spaces, the issue of
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  what we call youth gender medicine because many, I mean, the statistical show that 80% of
• 21:08
  young children who think they might be trans end up as gay cisgender adults. So there,
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  there are definitely instances where there are some tensions between the interests of gay people
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  and some of the claims made in the name of trans rights movement. So that's one reason.
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  And just to pick it, can I just drill into that for one second without
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  derailing you? I also think it's worth straight cis listeners to be aware of the fact that
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  there are a lot of gay males of a certain age who feel like the need to conform to a certain
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  stereotypical form of masculinity was very damaging to them when they were younger and that it's
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  wonderful that we now have a more capacious view of what masculinity can be which includes
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  campness and drag and not liking sports and all the kinds of things that we associate with
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  little camp gay boys but that the trans revolution allows those personality
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  trays to be interpreted as making the boy less than male and possibly a woman. And it actually
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  closes and narrows the definition of what it is okay to be as a man and occludes many male
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  experiences that are normal gay camp experiences and suddenly others them into this other category
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  and makes it harder for young gay males especially and young gay females. I'm sure who are
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  tomboy's and who don't conform to the normal stereotype of femininity to think of themselves as
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  legitimate members of that gender because all of a sudden well maybe they're not.
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  Yeah I mean one of the I think key aims of the gay rights movement has been to allow gay
• 23:01
  men and lesbians to say I am fully a man I am fully a woman and you don't the fact that I'm
• 23:08
  same sexist actor doesn't change that and there isn't that again yeah there's always grey areas in
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  this and you know I'm sure some trans activists would just dispute that account and say we're just
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  want to. I wouldn't be more relaxed by gender norms in general but there's definitely some scope
• 23:25
  for attention and in the idea that departing from traditional gender norms means you are not
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  you are some and some way less of the sex that you reward it. So I don't want to do I want to get
• 23:43
  you back on. I'm sorry I said the point yeah so I will quick you say that there is a sur there was
• 23:49
  a survey recently in the US of gays and lesbian people and they did say that they asked gays and
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  lesbians who do you feel a lot in common with a good bitch in common with or a lot. 51% said they've
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  had a good bitch or a lot in common with straight people only 31% said the same about trans people
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  and that's not say there's any hostility but it shows that the experiences are very different
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  and you know what I which leads my other point which is that sure the gay rights movement has
• 24:21
  many of the same enemies of the trans rights movement it has some overlapping there's definitely
• 24:27
  large overlaps but that's also to have many movements campaign to separate church and state about
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  feminist movements the pro-choice and abortion movement they all have some overlap with many of
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  the arguments that gay rights movement movement has they've had many of the same enemies that
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  doesn't mean that they are one in the same campaign and it doesn't mean they won't be destructive to
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  or refer to acquired gay people to hostage their campaign to the success of this other broader
• 24:58
  campaign they mean as I mentioned in the book it would be madness for feminists in Russia to say
• 25:04
  no one was right to that gay rights or in Iran where there is some degree of trans rights are
• 25:10
  recognized by the regime but to the death penalty from a sexuality it would be crazy to say to
• 25:15
  Iranian trans activists that they require them to say no trans rights to that gay rights because
• 25:24
  it's not like the mullahs would then say okay fair enough we'll start doing gay marriages they
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  will probably reconsider their commitment to the very limited to be trans rights they have that
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  recognized if that is interesting yeah Iran is like a petri dish where the the power rolls a
• 25:38
  flipped from what it is in the West isn't it where you know you get an example of where
• 25:44
  the LGBT QIA plus phenomenon if it existed would be one where the T is the one that already has
• 25:53
  the rights and is trying and the G and the L are trying to drag themselves out rather than the yeah
• 26:00
  rather than the other way around it's a strange because there's not that many even the
• 26:04
  movement racial equality has overlaps with the gay rights movement but nobody thinks we need to
• 26:09
  nod another B for a black to LGBTQ plus B you know and what are those what are those overlaps though
• 26:15
  don't strike me as as similar as trans and I mean trans and trans and gay they occupy the same
• 26:26
  universe because they play around with I guess the performance I was going to say the
• 26:34
  performativity of our gender but that's very sort of derasinating to homosexuality to think that
• 26:40
  it has something to do with performative gender it often doesn't to mean often you know there are
• 26:44
  lots of gay people who present as straight and don't have different gender characteristics from
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  the rest of the male population so yeah I guess what is it I mean what is the what is the steel man
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  the case for why trends and gay belong together more than gay and black rights do so I would see
• 27:06
  yeah the strongest case is that both gay people and trans people do depart from the behaviors
• 27:16
  expected of their birth sex in very significant ways yes right and they have both traditionally been
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  in most societies many societies been punished for that they will then they've been mocked etc so
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  I would think that is that's the reason that there is a real significant overlap they're not
• 27:36
  right they're saying you know them the overlap with other movements is it's a different right so
• 27:42
  the gay rights claim is an autonomy claim to be left alone now we've probably true of abortion rights
• 27:49
  but feminism I think it is quite actually there's a very big overlap because the reason women
• 27:56
  suffered in the past was that it was considered in some way immoral for a woman to do a quote Namsga
• 28:04
  to be to be a law engineer to be others like and actually that's one of the reasons that feminism
• 28:10
  was with the real fuels the gay rights movement because if a woman's choice of career shouldn't be
• 28:15
  constrained by her sex why should her choice of romantic partner yeah and you know you're asking
• 28:22
  with tantas you applies to to to to to gay men too so I think there was a there actually I think
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  there might even be a bigger overlap with feminism than any other group but there is you know
• 28:33
  there's definitely interesting yeah let me just wrestle with that for a second so if you think
• 28:37
  about burning bras and controversies over women wearing pants instead of skirts in the office
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  and being entitled to not be the objects of sexual overtures in a workplace those are all
• 28:55
  requests basically for female biology to not require them to express their gender in a particular
• 29:05
  gendered way for us to ignore the performativity of gender and treat people
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  equally and that is the common thread between feminism and gay rights and also feminism and
• 29:20
  trans rights in that respect because it's about liberating us from the expectations of our
• 29:27
  biological sexual destiny in some way but you could imagine there being instead of
• 29:32
  there having been an LGBT or an LGBT movement it could have been an F LGBT or an F T
• 29:42
  I think there's slightly more tension so I think you're right there is a big overlap in both cases
• 29:47
  I mean yes so the the gay rights and feminism from both say there is no moral reason there's no
• 29:56
  immorality in people departing from traditional gender norms that's true to trans rights women says
• 30:02
  that's some degree too they kind of think but it's slightly different because the gay rights women
• 30:07
  as generally said it doesn't there is there is no further significance to the fact that I depart
• 30:12
  from this norm about who are attracted to the feminist movement said there is no further significance
• 30:19
  to me want it my my femaleness and me being a lawyer or an engineer or whatever it is the trans
• 30:24
  movement is also just I trans people should be allowed express their gender identity which I think
• 30:29
  is absolutely right and should not be marked or fired or anything but they don't quite say it
• 30:35
  is no relevance they're actually saying the departure my desire to depart from or the tension
• 30:42
  between my biological sex and my identity is such that actually we need to take action and change
• 30:49
  as society sees me so there is an overlap but there's probably more and some ways there's more
• 30:55
  differences between gay rights and trans rights campaigns and there is between the feminist campaign
• 30:59
  and the gay rights campaign now I think there's other issues with the feminine feminism because
• 31:05
  they recently I think we see growing trends within feminism that question the kind of anything
• 31:13
  goes approaches to sex that gay male gay men have embraced but that's different from the
• 31:19
  ideological underpinnings where I think the iteration to gay rights and trans rights there's some
• 31:26
  tension as well as large overlap the feminist movement to there's probably less tension on a very
• 31:31
  large overlap so yeah right and is your depiction of trans requests there or trans activist
• 31:39
  requests true of the traditional what we would have called transgender requests for sorry trans
• 31:48
  sexual requests for equality or is it only relevant to the new model of gender fluid non-binary
• 32:00
  gender is a spectrum sex is a spectrum ideology that has a reason in the past decade as a popular meme
• 32:10
  it's turning more I think it's more of a problem in relation to the more recent claims in relation to
• 32:16
  youth gender medicine um yeah sex is a spectrum for same sex attracted people obviously there's an
• 32:22
  issue around that um just uh just unpack that for people who aren't quite as in the weights
• 32:29
  oh sorry um well I mean if if people define themselves as being by as same sex attracted the idea
• 32:37
  that sex is all just a spectrum kind of underclots the idea of same sex attraction because if
• 32:46
  same sex attraction is important then sex is important and um you know sex not as in as in biological sex
• 32:53
  is it is important so for not for all gay people some maybe you'll do are happy with
• 32:57
  spectrums but I think for a good chunk of gay people they see themselves as
• 33:03
  attract did what defines them as gay is their attraction to the another biological sex
• 33:08
  and um and that's true straight people as well most straight women are straight because they're
• 33:14
  attracted to the male biology physiologically and to have a a biological female who has undergone
• 33:25
  no medical intervention announced that she's male because sex is a spectrum and gender is a fantasy
• 33:33
  that will make up anyway would not pass muster with most fully straight women unless they wanted to
• 33:40
  play around you know and be a bit by that's the way they would think about it they wouldn't be
• 33:45
  thinking oh yes this is definitely a man's vagina yeah but what the mean thing is because they
• 33:51
  is it I think the tension there's always some tension because yeah I said that the gay right
• 33:56
  woman has been by saying gender variance has no consequence for your status as a man a woman
• 34:02
  and the trans mooned even in the more limited campaigns that they previously had questions
• 34:07
  that a little bit look my main I I says that is most gay people because there are overlaps
• 34:15
  would rightly wish trans people well would rightly wish them not to have any discrimination
• 34:21
  employment never be insulted have the right to run their lives call themselves whatever
• 34:26
  namely want your all these be facilitated to a very large degree in their desire to live
• 34:32
  as in accordance with their gender identity but that has never meant it's that they are the same
• 34:40
  campaigns that this is like the overlap does not mean the same and you know just as
• 34:46
  feminists are entitled not to mortgage their success to the success of gay rights
• 34:52
  gay rights gay people are entitled to have a campaign for themselves and not to sacrifice it
• 34:58
  they can wish trans people well and there is a slight I'd say niggle with that in that
• 35:07
  having merged the movements about 10 years ago you know it's easier to get divorced
• 35:14
  it's like easy not to get together than to get divorced so you know because most of those
• 35:20
  movements did like Stonewall and human rights campaign merged 10 years ago they would have to do
• 35:26
  be kind of deemerging sensitively quietly over time I can see at the moment like when trans people
• 35:35
  feel under attack in the US and it wouldn't be a nice look to be publicly dumped by the LGB
• 35:44
  you don't release a press statement saying press release saying that we're no longer together
• 35:48
  you're on your own what you just so how do you do it you just stop taking on so many
• 35:55
  trans cases or you set up a trans unit within the charity within the nonprofit that can be spun
• 36:02
  off at a later date that handles trans things something like that I mean somehow but also because
• 36:08
  if the trans moving wants to keep asking for things like failed by D and the an approach to
• 36:15
  youth gender medicine that is kind of good concern good good number of gay people
• 36:21
  they can't really do that in the context of LGBTQ movement because it just it doesn't it doesn't
• 36:28
  represent it only cuts the interest of some of that coalition so I think they probably have to
• 36:33
  easel on the gender medicine points that they're making probably just stop intervening and
• 36:39
  think like sports where their the numbers are gone against them probably and then I say yeah
• 36:44
  established trans separate trans bodies within those organizations then just slowly wind down
• 36:51
  the association you can do it to not taking on certain kinds of work refocusing initially on
• 36:57
  unissues like employment housing discrimination that whether it's probably higher higher support
• 37:04
  and less less chance of clash with the interests of gay people so it should be done sensitively
• 37:10
  I mean because you know I think like most gay people I really sincerely wish
• 37:17
  trans people well and want them to live happy lives and it's you know for many people who have
• 37:25
  had gender dysphoria it's a truthful road and society is still whatever the laws have been
• 37:30
  is still an awesome great place so I wish them well but that's yeah against separate from saying
• 37:36
  our cause is your cause it's a package deal take it or leave it accommodating us means changing
• 37:42
  everything it's not working for anybody and it's not it's not no campaign has the duty to do that
• 37:49
  I mean no I'm not sure of any other groups are told that you must team with this other group
• 37:54
  because of some overlap and it's a disgrace if you don't I mean I'm I mean women I guess
• 37:59
  to somebody who haven't told that but I I don't think happened how did it happen Ronan why
• 38:04
  why are we here I mean you say that it's easier to knock it together than to get a divorce
• 38:10
  why did we get together so I think a couple of things happened first there's always been some
• 38:14
  overlap second mid 2010s gay rights organizations thought they couldn't lose and in the book which
• 38:22
  I go the end of the gay rights revolution I said at the history of how until that period the
• 38:28
  gay rights organizations were saying look we wish you well we can't touch this it's too risky
• 38:33
  but then when they had a run of success they lost their fear and they thought we can lose history's
• 38:38
  on our side I mean you always hear the campaigners say you're on the wrong side of history
• 38:43
  so they thought they couldn't lose and they thought we don't worry about the consequences
• 38:47
  of taking it on and then I don't I don't think it was conscious but it was also true that
• 38:52
  with the enactment of gay marriage across the west at the very time the gay rights organizations
• 39:00
  had got a lot more corporate money had a lot of funding a lot of employees well the guys
• 39:07
  up sink the sink clear up to an up to sink clear so you said it's hard to get as this is the
• 39:15
  quote it's hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understand
• 39:20
  and I'm my favorite quote so I cite it all the time and it's not like I don't think anyone was
• 39:24
  sin at least thinking how do I keep my money coming in but I imagine so consciously Pete you know
• 39:31
  you're sitting in a big gay rights organization big budget loads a corporate money coming in you've
• 39:36
  got gay marriage and you look around and think do we all go home do we cut our to we cut our staff
• 39:41
  by 90 percent and just do stuff on booting in schools or helping gaze in countries where there's
• 39:47
  been no gay rights advances as yes that's a tough ask for anybody I mean I don't know when I
• 39:52
  don't that situation if my salary was on the line maybe I would have may also would have talked
• 39:57
  well let's get into these new issues but it is the timing is remarkable and I thought I don't
• 40:03
  think it was cynical I just think people lost their fear and allowed themselves to believe things
• 40:10
  that kept them yeah and there was a sense of as you say we're on the right side of history the
• 40:15
  wind is at our back we're winning let's keep doing good and here's this other community that has
• 40:22
  always been by our side you know trans people always used gay bars as refuges as place of places
• 40:31
  of solidarity and safety let's do them a solid bring them into the tent and that's no downside
• 40:38
  there's no downside because and there's lots of upside because now we have something to send
• 40:42
  out to our corporate donors about why they should continue yeah funding us because we have more
• 40:47
  there are more battles to be one yes and then it's just to mean to me it's what it really it didn't
• 40:54
  take kind of actually the tensions between the eras and trans like in some instances but also it
• 40:58
  didn't I don't need their realist how quickly things would turn because in 2015 nobody saw
• 41:04
  Donald Trump known saw the Ukraine war and people didn't realize that liberal democracy was not
• 41:10
  that stable as we thought it was and also that a lot of the demographic changes in you're in
• 41:19
  many countries in the west really hadn't made themselves felt yet and that's all that is changing
• 41:26
  what do you mean by the demographic changes in the west well I mean
• 41:33
  the reality is that particularly in Europe but most of the migration to Europe
• 41:40
  comes from or a lot a very large proportion of the migration to Europe comes from societies that
• 41:45
  are very very hostile to homosexuality and if you've an end of history of you you think oh well
• 41:51
  anybody who comes you know liberal modernity is so seductive that anyone exposed to it will
• 41:56
  immediately adopt it but that hasn't happened and you know as I say in the book if if a lot a lot of
• 42:05
  people from Alabama moved to Luxembourg attitudes towards going ownership in Luxembourg would change
• 42:11
  and if a lot of people from Sublime Africa and Pakistan Middle East come to European countries
• 42:20
  given that those places have very hostile attitudes to homosexuality it's going to have an impact
• 42:28
  there's also now with how we now have the data which shows that the second and third generations
• 42:37
  the children are of the immigrants are not actually becoming more liberal that's actually the
• 42:43
  opposite IEFOP IFOP a French polling organization a couple weeks ago showed there's amongst the
• 42:52
  French Muslim population and the youngest generation is the most conservative generation the
• 42:58
  generation born in France is more conservative than the generations born in places like Algeria and
• 43:04
  Morocco and look I'm not saying immigration policy it's not going to be decided for gay rights
• 43:08
  what I'm saying is the gay rights movement needs to prepare for the societies they're in and those
• 43:13
  societies are getting more conservative in France for the first time since polling began on the issue
• 43:20
  known for people who say homosexuality should be accepted is declining same in the US
• 43:28
  in Britain it was a very good book where I called sorry for a month's or and he was and
• 43:33
  you know he he's a British guy of Pakistani origin and he's very pro gay rights and he's a gay brother
• 43:38
  law who he loves and he but he said look I'm too honest a writer to say anything but the gap between
• 43:47
  mainstream British attitudes and British Muslim attitudes to my homosexuality is what
• 43:53
  he called dispiriting me wide and there are no reasons to think it's going to change and you know
• 43:59
  and it's not just you know it's not just Muslim Islam even places like Ukraine where a lot of
• 44:05
  Ukraine is a good Western Europe they're quite anti gay and sub-Saharan African Christians tend not
• 44:10
  to be to be quite conservative I mean with religious difference intermarriages less so it's probably
• 44:17
  more of a long term issue but you know it's just that Europe has is undergoing demographic change
• 44:24
  that is unprecedented and in peacetime and you know big changes bring big changes
• 44:33
  and there's a lot of good changes they come but also some of those changes are going to be bad
• 44:37
  and because socially considers various are sending a lot of people to Europe
• 44:43
  that's going to change things and no could it not yes and it would not be crazy to assume that the
• 44:50
  things that are most difficult to change in Western countries will be the things that have the
• 44:57
  deepest roots and the longest traditions and the things that are probably the easiest to see
• 45:02
  backtracking on are the most recent and novel wins and since gay rights is the most recent civil
• 45:11
  rights success it's quite vulnerable in a way that perhaps traditions of free speech or
• 45:18
  I don't know freedom of religion or other liberal precepts would not be and it is more of an
• 45:24
  ask which is really interesting because the world values survey shows that in terms of liberal
• 45:29
  democratic support for liberal democracy there's not much of a difference actually between the
• 45:35
  most Western countries and Muslim majority countries even on gender equality there's a gap
• 45:40
  is not that big it's on homosexuality that the biggest gap is the start in the book actually
• 45:46
  I think that stops most people in their tracks more than any other is that the most anti gay region
• 45:52
  in the UK is London by a long way and you know this London has a huge gay population it's generally
• 46:00
  been the liberal capital but it also is a very high migrant population so you know migration
• 46:06
  is complex there's lots of reasons for us and against it but it just does mean that particularly
• 46:13
  for gay rights societies are becoming less and less accommodating and less favorable so if the
• 46:22
  wins if gay rights are not a done deal that we can just sort of put on the shelf and park but
• 46:28
  something that needs to be re-articulated and re-defended with every generation or every decade
• 46:38
  the other people who need winning over if not new migrant communities are conservatives cultural
• 46:45
  conservatives you talk about what we should learn from Putin and Orban who you mentioned earlier
• 46:53
  and the trajectory of especially American Christian nationalism and conservatism and the
• 47:00
  transition from the secular conservatism of Amit Romney or you know that era or even a George H.W. Bush
• 47:10
  into this new ascendancy of a more Charlie Kirk end of liberalism getting back to family values
• 47:21
  vision of conservatism can you give us the lay of that land sure yeah so
• 47:27
  get a human as well if you've listened to this much of the episode then you must enjoy it
• 47:31
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