In a recent “Gay Pride” parade in New York City on June 24, in front of children, the bawdy adult revelers in garish costumes and various stages of undress, chanted, “Were here; were queer. We’re coming for your children.” Not to be outdone, Admiral Rachel L. Levine, Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a biological male who lives life as a transwoman, announced on “her” twitter page that a month of Gay Pride celebrations will not do. She called on people to rally round her to make it “a summer of Pride.”
What is going on here? “A big part of the mission of mainstream media,” notes Alexander Riley, Senior Fellow, The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI), “is to remind you endlessly of how important it is that we have a Pride Month. And one of the reasons we need it is that American society is so dreadfully hateful toward LGBTQ people.”
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the nation, asserts that for marginalized people in their “community” there is an unprecedented level of bigotry and oppression. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) echoes that remark.
But do the facts bear this out? Dr. Riley, a professor of sociology at Bucknell University, provides some of answers in the “Rising Tide of Pride” in the June 28 issue of the online journal The American Mind.
One DHS official blamed the 2023 Nashville school shooting as serving to promote copycat attacks. But unpack the speaker’s logic. The Nashville shooter was “a self-identified trans person against [my emphasis] a conservative Christian school. . . An attack by an LGBTQ-identified person against non-LGBTQ conservative Christians is thus presented as evidence of an increased threat to…LGBTQ people.”
HRC specializes in providing anecdotal evidence on discrimination and intolerance they see around us. But scratch the surface of HRC’s reporting, as Dr. Riley has done. “All one finds is a list of states that have asserted that biological men are prohibited from using women’s public restrooms; or moved to ensure that only biological girls and women participate in school sporting activity designated for biological girls and women; or refused to cater to activist demands that people use pronouns demanded by trans people even if they are demonstrably inconsistent with biological sex; or acted to prevent public schools from bringing trans pornographers to perform their sex club dance acts for students. This effort by states to protect the rights and safety of girls, women, and young students—and not, say, any evidence of greater violence against homosexuals and trans people—is what HRC is telling the public constitutes a ‘real, tangible, and dangerous’ threat to LGBTQ people.”
Dr. Riley also peruses the FBI’s hate crime data. In 2021 nearly 2,000 crimes “were committed that might fit the LGBTQ profile.” Are 2000 attacks against LGBTQ persons a “tidal wave”? Around 24,000,000 persons identify LGBTQ types. “So 2,000 crimes against a population of that size gives odds of around 1 in 12,000 that such a crime will happen to you.” He supplies this comparative insight. “All Americans face a 1 in 93 lifetime risk of dying in an automobile accident.”
So, less than 1% of the population. Watching today’s media and entertainment products one would think the number at least 33%.