The Real Reason Why Gay Marriage Support is Collapsing

Just blaming trans activism blinds us to the real, sinister cause

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

Today, I want to take a look at the claim that trans activism has caused the recent backsliding in support for gay marriage in America. There is not much objective evidence to support or refute this claim in the real world so far. It is mainly a narrative, or a vibe, being spread around. There’s one clear problem with this narrative, however: a geographical mismatch in supposed cause and effect, just like with the backlash to trans activism in general. However, this mismatch is even clearer in the case of the backslide in gay marriage support: there is basically no backsliding among Democrats at all. This is basically all driven by Republicans. Given that all the greatest excesses of trans activism occurred in deep blue cities in blue states, if the backsliding in gay marriage support was due to the excesses of trans activism, you would expect it to occur mainly among Democrats, right? At least if it is organic backlash. The fact that all the backsliding has been among Republicans basically points to two possible explanations: that this is a case of inorganic backlash mediated by right-wing media, or the backsliding is actually caused by something unrelated to trans activism at all.

I think that, given the backsliding is almost entirely driven by Republicans, to understand what’s actually happening, we should have a look at recent changes in the right. The right has always had a strong authoritarian streak, but during the late 2000s and the 2010s, the libertarian faction of the Republican Party temporarily gained an upper hand, thanks to backlash against the Bush administration’s War on Terror and erosion of civil liberties. It is this libertarianism that caused quite a few Republicans to be OK with legal gay marriage, even if they thought that being gay was morally wrong. Use of government power to curtail ‘morally wrong’ behaviors was temporarily out of fashion on the right, thanks to libertarianism’s influence. Where conservative Republicans once thought that being gay was wrong so the state shouldn’t sanction it, by the mid-2010s more and more of them were thinking along the lines of, well, it doesn’t affect me, and I don’t think the government should put their thumb on the scale over it.

By the late 2010s, however, moves were afoot to roll back this newfound libertarianism on the right, from the widespread hyping of Patrick Deneen’s 2018 book Why Liberalism Failed, to the infamous French-Ahmari debate in 2019. By 2022, almost all of the right-aligned online influencers who denounced the woke left’s illiberalism just a few years earlier had turned against classical liberalism itself, and this was also the year Ron DeSantis launched his culture war campaign against Disney and other ‘woke corporations’. The rise of National Conservatism (NatCon), a deeply illiberal and undemocratic stand of right-wing politics, also happened around this time. As I unpacked it previously, the doctrine of NatCon can only be successfully implemented in a country like America if there was one standardized version of ‘Christianity’, which would inevitably have to be imposed by authoritarianism. Thus NatCon is basically one big justification for religiously driven illiberalism. Among those of us who were observing the right closely during this period, the coordinated campaign to denounce classical liberal values, and justify a wholesale move towards authoritarianism, was clearly on display.

I have long suspected that libertarianism’s staunch and uncompromising anti-war stance was what motivated a sustained campaign to roll back its influence in Republican circles, and I think recent events, especially the Iran War, have confirmed my suspicions. Many of the influencers who turned away from classical liberalism and embraced NatCon in the early 2020s are now staunch supporters of the Trump administration’s Iran War. In many ways, the fate of rights like gay marriage and the fate of the forever wars appear to be intrinsically linked. During the Bush-43 era, many of us, myself included, came to embrace gay marriage as part of a liberal-libertarian, live and let live agenda, that we embraced as an antidote to the ‘War on Terror’ and its associated authoritarianism. Right now, the reverse is happening: many of those who want to revive and continue the forever wars also have a socially reactionary and authoritarian agenda, and would be happy to see recent gains in freedom like gay marriage get reversed. At the root of all of this appears to be a battle over government control over our lives: we want less of it, and the reactionary elites want more of it, because it would benefit their war machine. It’s a full-blown conflict on the authoritarian-libertarian axis, basically.

With the decline in libertarianism, many Republicans became eager to shove their morality down other people’s throats once more. Many of them still believe that being gay is morally wrong, remember. In this new muscular culture war climate, many in the right are now looking forward to overturning Obergefell, and they have been particularly encouraged by the overturning of Roe v. Wade just a few years earlier. Thus the rapid decline in acceptance of gay marriage as settled law in Republican circles. And the backsliding is not just happening to gay marriage. The reverse in liberalization seen in gay and trans issues is also being seen in other issues. The right is not just anti-LGBT, it is becoming more authoritarian across the board. They are even trying to limit access to contraception, and mainstreaming ideas like taking away women’s right to vote nowadays. I’m sure the excesses of trans activism can’t be entirely responsible for the right essentially turning into the Party of Gilead at lightening speed.

None of this is a defense of the excesses of trans activism, something which I have often criticized in the past eight years. I stand by all of my previous criticisms in that regard. However, reaching for the lazy explanation to explain away an increasingly concerning phenomenon is basically burying our heads in the sand, and won’t be helpful in terms of defending our existing rights and freedoms. The bottom line is, given that a substantial number of people believe that being gay is wrong (a fact of life whether we like it or not), rights like gay marriage will only survive if society overall has a live and let live ethos. The erosion of libertarian influence thus inevitably leads to a decline in gay marriage support, and if it continues, it might even lead to the repeal of gay marriage one day. Of course the right is not the only party rejecting libertarianism and live and let live. The woke left’s attacks on free speech have long been one of the biggest targets of my criticism, and I have long maintained that, by trashing the unspoken social contract of live and let live, they are putting the future of LGBT rights in danger. However, we cannot continue to ignore, or make excuses for, the recent mutation in the DNA of the right. Rich and powerful people on the right want us to have a future with more war and less freedom. Those of us who believe in freedom must get serious about putting up a fight against these forces, before it is too late.

Originally published at https://taraella.substack.com.

***TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the book [TaraElla’s Political Theory of Everything](https://taraella.substack.com/p/taraellas-political-theory-of-everything) and the [Moral Libertarian book series](https://taraella.substack.com/p/the-moral-libertarian-perspective). She is also the author of her autobiography [The TaraElla Story](https://taraella.substack.com/p/the-taraella-story)*.