The Human Rights Campaign, a powerful and well-funded left-wing advocacy group, declared a “national emergency” for “LGBTQ+” people this week. It comes as the institutional Left senses that its dominance over our societal mores faces a sudden and unexpected challenge from ordinary Americans.
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“LGBTQ+ Americans are living in a state of emergency. The multiplying threats facing millions in our community are not just perceived—they are real, tangible, and dangerous,” HRC’s president, Kelley Robinson, said in a press release.
By Jerrett Stepman
“In many cases, they are resulting in violence against LGBTQ+ people, forcing families to uproot their lives and flee their homes in search of safer states, and triggering a tidal wave of increased homophobia and transphobia that puts the safety of each and every one of us at risk.”
Just over two months ago, a person who was “identified” as transgender engaged in a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. The Human Rights Campaign had nothing to say about the targeting and killing of Christians in that case, despite a clear increase in attacks on churches in the past few years. Most of the media pivoted to explaining how a terrorist attack on Christians is really a threat to the LGBTQ+ community.
The Biden administration followed suit.
If the Human Rights Campaign is worried about violence, maybe it should say something about incidents like this:
The evidence that the group has produced to prove its case of an LGBTQ+ “national emergency” was that many states passed bans on so-called gender-affirming care for children, prohibited gender-neutral restrooms, and prevented biological males from competing in female sports.
Most of these laws are broadly popular.
That, of course, is the real crisis for the Human Rights Campaign.
Muslims joined Christians in opposing LGBTQ+ programs at a school district.
The “crisis” is that the American people will pass laws limiting the group’s demands on society and that the laws will be widely accepted.
Its declaration is obviously hyperbolic. However, it’s understandable why it’s in a moment of panic.
There’s been a noticeable vibe shift to begin this year’s “Pride Month”—the holiest of times in the secular Left’s liturgical calendar.
READ: Parents missed the LGBTQ agenda in school for decades
It’s clear that many Americans have become fed up with the insanity. They are fed up with the Rainbow Mafia dominating our society, and most of all, they are fed up with the extreme demands of the LGBTQ+ movement attempting to bend every institution to its will.
What was once a distinct counterculture in America has taken over to become the dominant strain of what’s defined as the public good. The Human Rights Campaign and its allies have browbeaten corporate America into submission—which was easy, given how higher education has conditioned upper-middle-class Americans to accept their values to begin with.
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But the LGBTQ+ movement got ahead of its skis. It assumed that the war had been won, the courts were on its side, and it could impose its version of the public good on society without restraint—shoving aside the old Christian ethos that used to dominate.
The countercultural Left, which always preaches about the open society and “tolerance,” is paradoxically and savagely intolerant of those who cling to the belief that there is an absolute truth and that some behaviors are inherently good or bad. As the Left gains power, it increasingly become totalitarian. Those who disagree are punished by law or subjected to woke struggle sessions.
Now, there’s resistance.
Perhaps it’s the complete departure from truth and endangering women and children that has stirred up the most opposition. Whatever the impetus, it does appear that something is changing as of late—and it certainly is late.
A “drag queen in every school” has replaced a “chicken in every pot” as the focus of the managerial ruling elite.
In response, fed-up Americans are using the power of the purse and democracy to short-circuit the Human Rights Campaign—one of the biggest drivers of corporate wokeness—and its political allies.
Stocks for major companies such as Anheuser-Busch and Target have been hit hard after embracing woke, LGBTQ+ promotional campaigns. It’s particularly impressive to see Target’s downturn. After all, this isn’t an inexpensive beer brand with countless—and mostly better—options on the market. It’s a major retail chain with a large and diverse shopping base.
READ: What Target has been doing quietly all along
Going woke hasn’t always meant that a company will go broke. With “environmental, social, and governance” (ESG) investments and in some cases government involvement, companies have been able, from time to time, to anger their customers, yet keep making money. But even those wells might dry up as red states begin the process of banning ESG rules for public pension funds.
It seems corporate America will back down after all.
Whereas “celebrating Pride” in the past came with minimal commitment and risk, Americans opposed to the new institutional moral paradigm are more relentlessly boycotting the brands that promote it. More importantly, they are passing laws and refusing to allow woke corporations and groups such as the Human Rights Campaign to decide what the rules of society are.
The cultural Left continues to have enormous institutional strength. For decades, all it has had to do is play the equivalent of a “prevent defense,” and it ultimately got its way.
Now, there is a real movement and momentum to circumvent that power. The Human Rights Campaign and its friends are trying to gin up as much hysteria as they can in the hope that they can mute that movement just enough to let it burn out.
The Right needs more than a few successful boycotts to “win.” To capitalize on this moment, it needs a governing agenda and leadership to play the long game and create lasting institutional and societal change.
That’s how we go from winning a few culture battles to winning the culture war.
Reprinted by permission from The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation.