Of Radishes and Fences: My Substack response to Andrew Sullivan’s Obergefell lament

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This week’s piece which you can link to here and either subscribe to if you haven’t, or read if you have, is a response to conservative gay same-sex marriage advocate Andrew Sullivan, and his New York Times article lamenting the sexual revolution’s over-reach following the Obergefell ruling in the US a decade ago this past week.

In my post I posit that Andrew, in signing up for gay marriage, was signing up for more than he bargained for. I lament the radicalising over-reach, but show him how it was to be expected.

Here’s how I begin:

Dear Andrew,

Your recent lament in The New York Times, a decade on from the Obergefell ruling in the United States that legalised same sex marriage, is timely. Timely but naive.

As a gay man yourself, Andrew, you celebrated the court’s decision to grant equal relationship status to gay couples. In your article you list the achievements that have resulted from that momentous decision.

But as I read your piece, I realise that it is a full-blown lament. It is titled “How The Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost Its Way”.

And you observe, with an increasing concern that I share:

But a funny thing happened in the wake of these triumphs. Far from celebrating victory, defending the gains and staying vigilant but winding down as a movement that had achieved its core objectives — including the end of H.I.V. in the United States as an unstoppable plague — gay and lesbian rights groups did the opposite. Swayed by the broader liberal shift to the social justice left, they radicalized.

You then go on to list the ways in which the movement shifted in its focus (though I would argue that there was no shift), swept up the transgender ideology into its orbit, before seeking to impose change both from the top down (legislation) and the bottom up (education). Yet as you list these things, I wonder how you did not see it coming.

If you want to read on, head on over to Substack and subscribe.