Ultra-conservative members of the US political establishment have been openly opposing the LGBTQ agenda promoted by NGOs and authorities in recent years.
So how exactly do LGBTQ matters look in the United States, and how does US society react to this situation?
Gender Affirmation in the United States
Transgender matters have become a really hot topic in the United States, especially under the Biden administration, with efforts being made to allow children to change their gender at a fairly early age.
Last year Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine insisted that vulnerable “trans youth” should be supported and empowered rather than being limited in their access to "gender affirmation treatment in their state."
Levine, a trans woman who underwent sex reassignment surgery in 2014, also lashed out against the “substantial misinformation about gender-affirming care for transgender and gender-diverse individuals,” and called upon tech companies in the United States to combat this misinformation to create what she called a “healthier, cleaner information environment.”
The Biden administration’s efforts have been, however, called out by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who accused it of encouraging some children to alter their bodies through potentially irreversible surgery.
Former US Navy SEAL Chris Beck, who famously came out as transgender in 2013 before recanting his views nearly a decade later, likewise spoke out against transgenderism in the United States, especially among children.
To date, several US states have brought forth legislative proposals aimed at barring doctors from providing transgender healthcare to children and teenagers.
A range of other initiatives have also caused controversy.
Education in Drag
In 2015, a program was launched in the US in a bid to promote reading among children by mixing that with a dose of “diversity.”
Dubbed “Drag Queen Story Hour,” the program involved drag queens reading children’s books to pre-teens at public libraries.
These activities, held under the auspices of a program that has already gone international, attracted backlash from conservatives in the United States, with some events even being disrupted by angry right-wingers.
10 December 2022, 13:52 GMT
Meanwhile, a private school dean in Chicago came under fire last month after bragging on camera that he allowed an LGBTQ+ center in a classroom to talk with students about “queer sex” and to pass around “butt plugs and dildos.”
What Measure is a Pronoun?
In December 2022, a former teacher in Ohio filed a lawsuit against the school she used to work for over the circumstances of her resignation.
The plaintiff alleged that she, a devout Christian, had to quit for not following school norms regarding two students who asked her to use names aligned “with their new gender identities rather than their legal names."
Transgenderism on the Rise
A report released by a think tank at UCLA in June 2022 has revealed a significant increase in the number of young Americans identifying themselves as transgender, while the number of transgender adults “remained steady over time.”
The report, based on data from health surveys conducted in the US between 2017 and 2020, suggests that around 300,000 young people aged between 13 and 17 identify as transgender, comprising about 18 percent of the total “transgender-identified population” in the United States.