Tolerance

The gay rights movement threatens to implode

In the UK and elsewhere in the West, lesbian and gay rights have largely been won. Over the past two decades, rights to adoption, marriage, military service and workplace protection from discrimination have become law. Social inequality is another matter, and acceptance of same-sex relationships is now less widespread than it was ten years ago. According to Ronan McCrea, the author of The End of the Gay Rights Revolution, this can be explained – at least in part – by the political overreach of the LGBTQ+ movement. Is McCrea self-hating, riddled with internalised homophobia? Could it be that the movement has demanded too much, over and above acceptance and tolerance? As the title suggests, the book is a critique of the overreach and demands of some of the more radical campaigns.

Why woke culture wants you to be fat

From our US edition

Americans are fat and getting fatter. “More than two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight or have obesity,” reports Heathline.com. The CDC (I actually trust them on this one) says that between 1999 and 2020, “obesity prevalence increased from 30.5 percent to 41.9 percent,” and severe obesity “increased from 4.7 percent to 9.2 percent.” And so, in the wake of woke, Old Navy and other clothing companies are (trying to) cash-in on our widening waistlines by disguising their latest capitalistic campaign as “inclusive sizing.” I gave up shopping for Lent. I made my return recently by perusing a Lands’ End catalog with my mother.

Glee gives us a lesson in wokeness

From our US edition

YouTube just sent me down a spiral rewatching old Glee clips. I was never a Glee fan per se, but it was one of a handful of shows I watched when my kids were in Peak Mode, old enough to be interesting as people but not yet old enough to realize I was not interesting. My kids are adults now; did TV help form them? It did. And what we all learned, and especially how we learned it, is a lesson on the failure of 2021 wokeness to achieve change and instead just piss people off. In 2021, Glee strikes me as influential. When it first aired, it was thought of as, at least in a suburban way, edgy. I’m sure eyes all across Brooklyn are rolling but they miss the point. Glee being suburban was the point.

glee