Are you willing to ‘stand with the LGBTQ+ community’?

Mike Starkey responds by saying that the question is incoherent, because the very concept of ‘the LGBTQ+ community’ is itself incoherent.

In general terms, the ‘acronym’ LGBTQ+ is too fluid and too diverse to be meaningful.  In the 1980s, the first three letters (LGB) sufficed.  Stonewall add the ‘T’ in 2015.  The versions of the acronym exist today, with LGBTQ+ being currently approved by Stonewall.  The ‘+’ stands for a growing number of additions.

But within the acronym lie many tensions and contradictions.

Lesbians are women who are attracted to other women.  But who gets to define what a ‘woman’ is?  Is it self-defined, or is it defined by non-negotiable biological characteristics.  This uncertainty feeds into disagreements about whether, for example, transwomen should be allowed to compete in women’s sport, or housed in women’s prisons, or permitted within traditionally single-sex spaces.

The term gay has, for many people, replaced the term ‘homosexual’, and is itself, in some circles, now less favoured than ‘queer’.  Understandings of what it means to live as gay vary from:

‘relationships that are ‘permanent, faithful and stable’ (in Canon Jeffrey John’s phrase), to the wild, colourful and rubbery options on display at Pride festivals and in apps such as Grindr.’

Trans has changed its meaning(s) significantly over the past 15 years.  According to Stonewall, these include:

‘transgender, transsexual, gender-queer (GQ), gender-fluid, non-binary, gender-variant, crossdresser, genderless, agender, nongender, third gender, bi-gender, trans man, trans woman, trans masculine, trans feminine and neutrois.’

Many of these variations may not be evident from a person’s appearance; they rely on feelings and self-identity.

While some regard the term queer as a slur, others accept it as a synonym for ‘gay’, while still others embrace it as a catch-all for the rejection of conventional sexual expression.

Then there is the +.  But who decides who goes into this category?  Does it include Minor Attracted Persons (paedophiles) and Zoophiles?  Are we expected to stand with them?  Who decides where the boundaries are?

LGBTQ+, then, is not a self-evidently coherent acronym.  There are many versions of it, usually adding to the total number of letters (12 or more).  Within each letter are further sub-groups and priorities, and there is often considerable tension between the various groups.

It is highly doubtful, then, whether there is (or can be) a LGBTQ+ community with a unified agenda.  Furthermore,

‘Those sympathetic to Stonewall [say] that gender-critical lesbians and gays who define themselves by biological sex, detransitioners who regret medical transition, desisters who call a halt before transition, and members of groups such as Living Out who describe themselves as same-sex attracted and called to celibacy, are all dupes of the far-right.’

These groups are rejected as motivated by transphobia:

‘This amounts to an allegation that some people are the wrong sort of gay, or the wrong sort of gender nonconforming, because they don’t toe the party line. Like all utopian movements, current Stonewall-defined orthodoxy tends to vilify and airbrush out those who don’t fit the narrative.’

So, if I’m expected to ‘stand with the LGBTQ+ community’:

‘does that mean standing with whatever the current majority opinion happens to be? Does it mean not standing with those who dissent and are ostracised for having different views, even if their views feel more compatible with my faith?’

[…]

‘I feel I’m being asked to bless en bloc a grouping that’s disparate and fluid, unboundaried and constantly expanding, unaccountable and internally contradictory, and whose wilder fringes shade off into lawless badlands.’

So it’s impossible to give an answer to the question,’Will you stand with the LBGTQ+ community?’, because the question itself is incoherent.