Another (!) brilliant article in the New York Times - How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized, and Lost Its Way

[ProfesoraLou]

How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized, and Lost Its Way

If the New York Times was captured (and I really thought it was), it has broken free.

This is rational, balanced and personal. Really important writing.

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/gay-lesbian-trans-rights.html

Sullivan: 'Trans people should be protected from discrimination but the whole premise legitimising the existence of trans people is delusional'

Cant have it both ways…

@AliasGrace47 Incidentally, it seems quite a few romantasy authors are Mormons. Stephanie Meyer is obvs the prime example of this. I wonder if such strict restriction of books sometimes causes a strong reaction in the opposite direction later?

There's an odd cultural thing here that's difficult to explain. Mormon authors are very prolific but you find them overwhelmingly in genre fiction - Brandon Sanderson is the other big beast here.

My observation is that an awful lot of romantasy, or even just current romance, is mostly smut. But smut isn't what everyone wants, and Deseret Book, the offical LDS Church publishing company, even has its own stable of female authors who produce "clean" romance novels. Apparently they're quite successful. There's a market for it.

Thank you, that's interesting. I'm aware of the wider Mormon/fantasy connection. I've become quite interested in Mormonism & forums for both current & former Mormons mention this. Orson Scott Card is another.

Tbf though, some of the female authors producing the smut are Mormon . Rebecca Yaros, for one: not sure HOW smutty her books are, but they were bad enough for a girl on the Utah website to claim she developed something akin to 'porn addiction' from them.

Stephanie Meyer I wouldn't place as smutty, though there is ofc sex in Twilight. My issue w her books is the abusive dynamic they fetishise between Bella & Edward, which ofc went on to inspire EL James....

This Substack post suggests that Mormon female authors are drawn to romance YA bc YA is allowed to explore sexuality more than Mormon leaders would let them to in adult fiction.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=workwife.substack.com/p/smut-city-central&ved=2ahUKEwi2rYq71q-PAxVrWUEAHQ95O68QFnoECH0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw2bcGFO9TDAnTA8TUlWuaj1

Ugh, posted twice, sorry!

This Mormon aithor (or possibly ex Mormon) says that 'spicy' romance is very popular among Mormon women, though she seems to mean reading it rather than writing it.

Incidentally, one of my favourite authors as a child was a Mormon : Jessica Day George, who wrote mainly about dragons. At 7, I thought all Mormon ladies had to live in plural marriages (blame the Daily Mail's promotion of the TV show 3 Wives, 1 Husband) so I remember thinking 'Poor lady, what an awful time she must have if her husband has 2 other wives' 🤣

The only explicitly Mormon fiction I've read in recent years was a historical novel about J. Golden Kimball, a church leader famous in his old age for his humorous sermons, but who had a really interesting biography - he'd been a literal cowboy in his youth, then he was sent to do missionary work in the Deep South where Mormon missionaries were being targeted for murder by the Klan. It probably helped that he was handy with a gun.

Elder Kimball has an odd folk hero status in the LDS community, but hardly anyone else has ever heard of him. He's one of those historical figures who you could make a really good film about.

That does sound like a good story- will look it up.

BTW, this was the author's post I meant to link.

https://exponentii.org/blog/can-spicy-romance-books-unite-mormon-and-ex-mormon-women/

Oh posted twice again, something odd is going on...

Yes, "Uncle Golden" stories have become part of Utah folklore, and I'm sure there are generations of young Latter-day Saints who are surprised to discover that he was a real person.

I assume that I'm vaguely related to him, but since his father was an enthusiastic polygamist and he had 70 siblings, that's not saying much.

Yup, this is what I find too with regard for the reasons for objecting being all over the place. There was a group protesting locally to me a while ago, and if you looked at their website, some of the things they objected to were worth complaining about, others were silly, and of course the latter undermined the former. They also didn't have a strong understanding of the system for reviewing library acquisitions which would have helped them a lot.

I find the dark romance thing interesting. A couple of the people I work with, one a rather young womnan, the other a clueless man, were talking about the American banning books recently, and she complained that the book she wanted to read had been banned - no book sellers would sell it, not even Amazon. I pressed her on what she really meant by banned, because there is really no mechanism for a ban like she was talking about. And for all private book sellers to refuse to stock it at all is really unusual. The male member of the conversation was very disparaging of the possibility that any library would contain pornography.

When I looked into it it was dark romance, around the theme of child rape. So a smutty trauma book about two underage kids in love being repeatedly sexually assaulted - I don't think it's difficult to imagine where that would go.The reason, I suspect, that book sellers won't stock it is because they are afraid not only of public approbation, but because they are afraid of being accused of dealing in child pornography, which is in fact banned, as it ought to be.

I don't think either the young woman or the man in that conversation would be able to make the connection though. To them, the message that all books are ok and good is all they've taken in.

I've sometimes thought I'd be ok with another wife on the scene if she was into housework.

This post isn't even worth discussing. Gay rights has always been radical, throwing bricks at police so that they can't arrest you for breaking the law (being gay) is radical.

To not know this is unacceptable ignorance, let's not apologise for the homophobes.

You have put your finger on what bothered me about this article.
It doesn't address at all the extent to which trans activism has developed into a very violent mens' rights movement.

This has been a really interesting thread, I hadn't seen it before so I'm glad it was resurrected.

Something that hasn't been mentioned but has always occured to me as a theory about gay open relationships is that it could be about numbers as much as anything. Plenty of straight people struggle to find lasting love in a world where they have 95% of the population to choose from. Is it then surprising that gay people struggle when they only have 5%? I could well imagine that this would lead to a scenario where someone finds a companion who they love, but possibly aren't that attracted to or are sexually compatible with, and therefore decide to compromise on the relationship.

I can follow the logic of the arguments being made, but I do think they start from a rather idealised version of marriage. A quick peruse of Mumsnet will show how many men cheat, and how many women do so as well. That's before you get on to the women who happily carry on relationships with men they know to be married with children, and in many cases actively campaign for those marriages to end. I've known several in RL, so I wouldn't say that it's rare.

Promiscuity is undoubtedly higher amongst gay men, but there are plenty of straight swingers out there, just look at the leaks of data from Ashley Madison and Adult Friend Finder. Again I've known people in real life, male and female, who swing, so probably not as uncommon as people think (I should add here that I've only been married to one man, faithfully, so I don't know these people because I go out of my way to meet them).

The fact that 30-50% of gay men have open relationships may shock, but wherever divorce is allowed freely I believe there are similar rates of divorce, which given the numbers game, will mostly be amongst straight people. Is serial monogamy better than an open relationship?

The point I'm making is that if I accept marriage is an ideal to aspire to, and I do, given that we straights so often fail to live up to it, I don't see why gay men shouldn't be given the opportunity to fail at it too, certainly when it comes to civic marriage in a secular country. That's been my conclusion anyway.

I would say that I'm in the UK and a Protestant, which you may feel explains my differing conclusion.

ScholesPanda , I see what you mean...it should be noted though that surveys consistently show that there are more gay men than lesbians, and they also have more places to meet (no couples hunting for threesomes clogging up the apps, most bars not taken over by trans men and straight-partnered bisexuals as most lesbians bars
have been- I say this as a bisexual myself)

So while lesbians have a harder time meeting available partners, (most bi women only seriously date men) , they tend not to open their relationships, instead probably ending them if they are unhappy. This could be another reason for the highe divorce and dead bedroom rate, I think, tho the dead bedroom thing is a bit overblown as some couples are happy with less sex as they emotional connect in other ways.

It's a bit like how in the 80s gay rights campaigners sometimes argued that gay men were driven to promiscuity as they weren't accepted by society when they tried to form stable relationships. I think this probs played a role, but lesbians also suffered prejudice and still managed to generally stick to monogamy not promiscuity.

So I do have sympathy for these arguments, but overall I think the main cause is gay men not wanting to restrict their impulses the way they would probably have to if partnered w a woman.

I'm in a mainly US based Facebook Good Reads type group and the Americans are forever asking for books that are "spicey" or "no spice". It seems to be the standard term over there for sex references in a book.