U.S. support for LGBTQ+ rights is declining after decades of support. Here’s why

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It's declining because Republicans decided to declare open war on trans people. Why did they do it?
Because Republicans always need a minority to use as political foil and to instill fear and resentment into their voters.

This is negative polarization in action.

No conspiracy was involved. Or insofar as people claim to be part of one, they flatter themselves in order to advance a grift.

Everyone people on the Right hate began aggressively pushing Trans-inclusive stuff in their internal fights, with the result that left-wing orthodoxy became identified with it. Once it did, anyone who was hostile to the Left became hostile to it as well, unless they had preexisting positions which were strongly held.

I think it was you saying the future Republican party will be pro gay and lesbian but anti LGBT. While this may sound like an oxymoron, it makes perfect sense to me. A lot of people are tired of all the excessive TQ+ stuff. Some of the most vocal "TERFS" are lesbians.

Hell, if you asked me how I felt about the self identified "queer" community you'd probably get neutrality at best.

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Most people coming out against SSM or gays in general because of `trans issues have just been waiting for an excuse to voice or re-voice their bigotry as it has been very unacceptable to just be bigoted for no reason. But now they can just cite a tik tok concerning a facebook post about a kid identifying as a cat and using a litter box in school and how that means "they" are trying to force LGBTQ ideology down everyones throats.

In some cases, but I think a good number of people really do have a different reaction to "gay and lesbian" than to "LGBT."

Take Musk as an example, a day or two ago a gay person on Twitter asked him if he was cool with the gays specifically and his response was basically "yes, I think people are born that way, just try to still have kids." But then a few hours later he shared a scaremongering post about "LGBTQ+" ideology in schools. A lot of conservatives view gay and lesbian as fine but LGBT as problematic, as the latter is associated in their mind with an ideology and the former with an unchanging biological trait. I'm not saying this makes it right, but I think it's more complicated than "they've always hated us and always will."

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I think a lot of this is because the trans movements rhetoric has shifted from wanting equal civil rights in the form of things like anti discrimination laws or insurance companies covering sex changes, to trying to force other people to do things. Then there's all the bizarre pet issues like insisting biological sex isn't real, co ed bathrooms, effectively trying to get rid of women's sports, having a weird fixation on pre pubescent kids personally approving of their sexual identity. In the mid to late 10's it looked like they were going to go the way of the 2000's gay movement but now it's more like the more militant and eccentric 70's gay movement that alienated so many people.

The radicalization of the urban young professional class has bascially made any institution they dominate toxic to everyone outside the cultural milue. The problem is almost every major outlet, and every major organization- GLAAD, HRC, major pride groups- is urban. The same thing is true of the entertainment industry.

So the result is less that LGBT folks became far left or extreme, but that the social radiclization of the (largely white tbh) millenial college grads resulted in the takeover of "official representatives".

Trans stuff is actually a bit of a red herring. Why on earth is Palestine a leading environmental/Pro-choice issue? A lot of people already found themselves culturally repulsed by "LGBT" representatives and advocacy group ones generally before trans issues took off. Banning police/defense contractors/the military from Pride was already demonstrating the problem, and the BLM/pro-crime/open borders stuff was going to cause a lot of problems for the brand even absent any of the Trans fights.

The Trans stuff is particularly resonant because it involves blatant patronization by people who see it as a way to act as if they are better than you with "your fifth grade biology education." But just as it has been adopted by the right as its a uniquely potent method of attacking those types, those types adopted it because it was a potent way to patronize people, and for many that's what attracted them to social justice in the first place.

Tbf, defense contractors should be banned from society at large.