Religion

Anti-LGBTQ+ narratives are deployed by extremist groups with contrasting ideologies, from Jihadis to right-wing extremists and QAnon to Incels (involuntary celibates). Using these different movements as case studies, this article highlights the convergence of ideologically conflicting extremist organizations around antiqueer sentiment. Given the enhanced vulnerability of LGBTQ+ populations, fueled by politically charged rhetoric, this article makes an appeal for more research to explore and analyze narratives through a scholarly lens and link queer issues to current debates in the study of terrorism and political violence. Research should focus on the experiences of queer populations within conflicts abroad and experiences of domestic extremism in the United States. Without adequate attention given to the experiences of LGBTQ+ victims, it is impossible to develop protocols for trauma-informed care for vulnerable populations.

Twenty-five years ago, trans women (those transitioning from male to female) outnumbered trans men (transitioning from female to male) two to one. Today, those seeking hormonal treatment for gender dysphoria are trending younger and are primarily trans men.

Yet, Trump’s first executive order was titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The text of the order repeatedly states its intent is to protect women from “men (who) self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women … (which) attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety and well-being.”

If the majority of those seeking treatment for gender dysphoria today are primarily trans men (females transitioning to males), then why do women’s spaces need protecting? Nowhere in the executive order or in any of the various state legislative efforts claiming to protect women has there been any concern expressed for protecting men’s spaces from the trans men who will be entering them.

That’s because the language around protecting women is really about asserting dominance over the bodies of individuals classified as female at birth — whether they are cisgender or transgender. It’s about keeping the female body pure, normalizing bodily oppression and perpetuating rape culture.

The language used is also rooted in racism.

There is a reason those who study the rise of Christian nationalism in America emphasize its connection with white supremacy. The language around protecting women from predatory men has an unsavory history in the United States. It isn’t that long ago that Black men in America were lynched regularly, and far too often the reason given was to protect some white woman’s body.

Thiel makes it exceedingly clear that this movement should be viewed through the lens of religion, and we should oblige him. Only then can we understand its true aims. Here’s my take: This emerging tech cult admires religion for its rigid hierarchies. But unlike traditional conservative power structures where God sits atop the pyramid, these tech prophets place technology at the summit, with themselves as its high priests. Instead of divine authority flowing from God through patriarchal figures, authority flows from technology through its billionaire interpreters, who see themselves as humanity's saviors.

It’s a clever sleight of hand: by positioning technology as the ultimate authority, they position themselves – technology’s creators and controllers – as its earthly representatives. And by slowly melding their bodies with technology, they slouch toward some kind of high-tech transubstantiation in which they hope to rise above mortality and claim godlike powers.

As I have written before, this belief system maintains many elements of the conservative belief system that cognitive scientist George Lakoff calls “Strict Father Morality.” It includes familiar hierarchies: men above women, whites above other races, wealthy above poor, and employers above employees. But it adds new dimensions: the technologically enhanced above the unenhanced, the algorithmically optimized above the naturally evolved – and the trillionaires above the billionaires above the millionaires above everyone else.

The current Israeli war on Gaza continues a long history of attacks on and elimination of the Palestinian Christian community in Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank. Since 2007, the small but long-standing Christian community in Gaza has declined from three thousand to about one thousand living in the Strip today; in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the larger Palestinian Christian community of about 50,000 has faced a similar decline over the past few decades.

In large part, this population decline has been driven by the stresses of Israeli occupation, apartheid, and siege in Palestine and facilitated by the greater welcome extended by many Western countries to Christian as opposed to Muslim Palestinian emigrants.

However, as Ramzy Baroud points out, the elimination of the Palestinian Christian community is also convenient for Israel, as it “is keen to present the ‘conflict’ in Palestine as a religious one so that it could…brand itself as a beleaguered Jewish state amid a massive Muslim population in the Middle East.”

“The continued existence of Palestinian Christians,” notes Baroud, “does not factor nicely into this Israeli agenda.”

The LGBTQ movement—first the campaigners for gay and lesbian rights, and now for transgender rights—deserve credit for shaking up our thinking. They’ve made a compelling case that most of the old beliefs about gender were arbitrary taboos, trapping people in lives that confined them and made them miserable. Just as we’ve rejected stereotypes about how women or people of color were “meant” to live, we’re now confronting these stereotypes in turn.

However, every step forward provokes a backlash from those who benefit—or seek to benefit—from oppression. The Catholic church (and, sad to say, Richard Dawkins) are clinging to the notion that all the old beliefs about gender were fine as they were and nothing needs to be questioned or changed. They continue to insist that people should be compelled into roles determined at birth, with no regard for what those people want for themselves.