The Right Wing Just Wanted Me to Marry a Man. The Left Wing Is Coming for My Genitals.

Both sides want to convert gay people — and we must fight back.

“Wait! I only want to affirm you!” (generated by ChatGPT)

I grew up in the Deep South, where the danger was always supposed to come from the right. If you were gay, you learned early to keep it quiet. You blended in. Your best gay friend was your beard and you pretended it was normal. You prayed no one asked too many questions.

When Ellen came out, it felt like a seismic shift — least, that’s what the national media said. But in Birmingham, where I lived, it was considered so controversial the local ABC affiliate refused to air the episode. So we rented out the Boutwell Auditorium and came together as a community to watch it. That was the moment it felt like maybe things were starting to change.

And for a while, they did. We won marriage equality. We lived more freely. The religious right started to look more like a relic than a threat.

But now, at 55, I look around and realize something I never expected: we’re losing again. The language is different. The symbols have changed. But the message is the same — stop being gay. And this time, it’s the so-called progressives leading the charge.

They’ve traded pulpits for gender clinics, swapping hellfire sermons for pseudoscientific scripts. Instead of preaching repression, they now peddle surgical “authenticity,” urging kids to excise healthy body parts to fit a fleeting sense of self.

I’ve seen it happen with my friends’ kids — kids who would have just grown up gay or gender nonconforming are now being swept into a system that sees their difference as a medical problem to fix.

This is just a new form of the same old lie.

The Old Battle: Right-Wing Conversion and Control

When people talk about “conversion therapy,” they usually think of electroshock treatments and fire-and-brimstone preachers. But for many of us, it was quieter than that. It was the silence in the room when you brought up your best friend one too many times. It was the way people at church prayed for you, like you had cancer. It was being told that love had conditions.

I never went to an official ex-gay program, but I didn’t need to. The entire culture was one. The message was clear: you could be anything you wanted — as long as it was straight. And if you couldn’t be straight, you should at least fake it well enough to make your family comfortable.

There were support groups, radio hosts, even political platforms built around the idea that homosexuality was brokenness. That it could be corrected through God, therapy, or willpower. I remember watching people I loved try to become something they weren’t — marrying the opposite sex, repressing their instincts, dying inside just to stay respectable.

What we didn’t call it back then — but should have — is coercion. It was a culture so saturated with shame that only silence could save you.

And for a time, we fought back. We marched. We sued. We made noise until the world had to listen. And it worked. We made it through.

What I never expected was that I’d have to fight that same battle all over again — this time wearing a rainbow flag.

The New Battle: Left-Wing Gender Ideology as Gay Erasure

Today, the pressure doesn’t come from Bible verses or purity rings. It comes from therapists, school counselors, and TikTok influencers. It’s wrapped in the language of inclusion and care, but the result is the same: if you’re a little too gender nonconforming, the world has a fix for you.

We used to worry that gay kids were being shamed into silence. Now, they’re being fast-tracked into medical transition.

What’s happening to gender-nonconforming children — especially lesbians and effeminate boys — is not liberation. It’s erasure. These kids aren’t being told, “You’re perfect just the way you are.” They’re being told, “If you don’t feel like the stereotypes for your sex, maybe you’re in the wrong body.”

Instead of learning to love themselves, they’re learning to disappear.

I’ve watched it unfold in real time: parents blindsided by schools socially transitioning their children behind their backs. Girls being encouraged to bind their breasts before they even understand what it means to have a body. Boys being told that liking makeup or dolls might mean they need puberty blockers. These aren’t isolated incidents. This is a system.

A system that insists it’s “affirming” — but only if you agree with it. A system that punishes hesitation, pathologizes dissent, and calls it all progress.

The right wing tried to convert us through shame and denial. The left wing is doing it through affirmation and scalpel. One called it sin. The other calls it identity. Both end with the same result: fewer gay people.

Two Wings, One Goal – No Gay People

For all their differences, the right and the left seem to agree on one thing: a world without gay people would be preferable.

The right wanted to repress us — keep us quiet, get us married off, and pray the feelings away. The left wants to remake us — into something else entirely. Trans. Nonbinary. Anything but lesbian or gay.

It’s the same destination by a different road. Instead of shame, it’s surgery. Instead of conversion therapy, it’s gender affirmation. But the message is the same: You’re not meant to be who you are.

What breaks my heart is knowing that the kids being swept into this ideology are the same ones who would’ve grown up to be gay adults. Sissy boys. Tomboy girls. Just like we were. Kids who needed time, space, and a little breathing room — not a new label and a lifelong medical path.

What we used to call childhood gender nonconformity is now being treated as a symptom to diagnose. And if you don’t go along with it? You’re the bigot. You’re the danger. You’re the one with the problem.

I spent my youth running from people who thought I was broken. Now I watch a new generation being broken in the name of love.

And while I know some of my friends in Birmingham — the ones with trans-identifying kids — don’t know what to do, I also know they’re listening. At a Violent Femmes concert last fall, a friend-of-a-friend pulled me aside and said quietly, “They’re reading what you write. And it’s helping.” Not all of them say it out loud. Some think I’ve lost my mind. Some think I’ve become a bigot. But most of them, I believe, know I do this out of love.

Reclaiming Our Movement: The Betrayal of GLAAD and HRC

Growing up, GLAAD and HRC were beacons, fighting for our rights and dignity. Now, they chase corporate clout and celebrity endorsements, sidelining the LGB community they were meant to serve. GLAAD, once a media watchdog, ignores the medicalization of gender-nonconforming youth. HRC’s broad LGBTQ+ focus drowns out lesbian, gay, and bisexual voices, with endorsements that alienate their core community. By silencing dissent and pushing a one-size-fits-all narrative, they contribute to our erasure.

I didn’t fight decades for visibility to see our gains undone. We must reclaim our movement, supporting spaces where gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth can embrace their identities without coercion. This isn’t division — it’s unity to protect the next generation from new harms. Let’s challenge institutions that lost their way and ensure love, in all its forms, endures.