This is a reminder is that 10% of anything this kickstarter makes will go to the Mormon Church and thus, towards *directly* backing and promoting hateful homophobia and transphobia.
Sorry but the fact he's directly involved with that church means a win for him personally is the same as a win for those bigots he actively promotes and supports.
Thanks for the heads-up about Kickstarter. I did not know that.
As for the types of bigotry you mentioned — heterosexism is the larger issue. Homophobia is a subset. Gay people also face the challenge of being erased by transgenderism.
It's very possible that the word heterosexism refuses to be used by dominant cultures because it would make prejudice against gay folk be seen as just as important as sexism and racism. The 'gay panic' defense has been used quite a few times in courts. Using the word homophobia plays into that by making it seem reasonable to believe that people have an innate fear of gay people, as if they're spiders or high places. If one looks at the historical discourse of racism in America, the same fear-mongering was used to promote it. The dominant narrative is that white women are at great risk of being sexually assaulted by black men. Yet, no one refers to racism as blackophobia. No one calls sexism femaleophobia. Anti-Jewish propaganda also dehumanized Jews to make them seem frightening, yet people use an -ism for prejudice against them also.
It's not politically correct for a gay person to object to being lumped in with transgenderism but they are not the same. In fact, on one level transgendered people have more in common with heterosexuals. Homosexuals like their sex (and therefore the sex of their bodies). Heterosexuals and the transgendered prefer the bodies of the sex they are not (biologically).
It's true that homosexuality was once listed as a mental disorder by the APA via their DSM. That was (belatedly) removed due to the definitiveness of Hooker's 1950s research that was the first undertaken without a polluted sample (gay men who were mentally ill being chosen as the sample). It was the first research to demonstrate, with complete clarity, that sanity has nothing to do with being heterosexual or not. It has not been discredited and never will be because the finding is fact.
Transgenderism is a different matter. It persisted longer in the DSM because some psychologists believe that the only way it can be rectified is with major genitalia/breast surgery and medications (hormones) — if not also plastic surgeries. The argument is that transgenderism, at least prior to these interventions, is a disordered state — because the individual is so profoundly unhappy that the very strong interventions must be undertaken to restore full mental adjustment. So, transgenderism, according to that view, has two states. The pre-intervention/pre-operative state is disordered and the post-intervention/post-operative state is not.
All of this has no relationship to homosexuality. So, the removal of transgenderism from the DSM is bound to be more controversial. Transgender policy is bound to be more controversial, not just due to the dramatic nature of the interventions (and their timing, I.e. childhood) but also due to the wide variety when it comes to what transgendered individuals feel they need. Some are unhappy until they have sex reassignment surgery, implants, facial plastic surgery, hormones, et cetera. Others are satisfied with life without sex reassignment surgery but with hormones and possibly some plastic surgeries and implants.
Gay people have been lumped in with the transgendered for a number of reasons but they are very different — just as different as heterosexuals are from the transgendered and from homosexuals. It is not politically correct to say that. What is politically correct is to get behind the ever-expanding acronym and say nothing, including when a slur (the q word) is used recklessly as a label for homosexuals. Martina Navratilova, the highly-accomplished tennis player, is condemned by Margaret Court — another highly-accomplished tennis player — for being gay. Martina Navratilova is also condemned by some people for alleged 'transphobia'. Navratilova opposes the inclusion of transgendered people in women's tennis. Court opposes the inclusion of lesbians in women's tennis.
Court's opposition has no rational justification. That view is backed by Hooker's definitive research and plenty of research that has followed. One study even found a slight increase in good parenting outcomes for lesbian parents, versus hetero parents and two men.
Navratilova's arguments about transgenderism in sports are more rational than the opposition's. I don't agree with some who claim that the concept of biological sex is bigoted. It's a basic scientific fact. Humans are sexually dimorphic (male and female). There is some blurring (such as XXY people and differences in how hormones are handled by specific bodies) but the basic fact of biological sex in humans is irrefutable.
The difference between Court and Navratilova when it comes to sports participation illustrates the existence of the crucial gap between homosexuality and transgenderism, even though some will try to shout down anyone who says so (as a Forbes author did recently). It illustrates the fact that a gay person does not have to automatically back every political stance a transgendered person has and vice-versa. And yet, political correctness demands that inclusion in the expanding acronym means total subservience to the 'community' — a monolithic political entity in which the differences between the people within it is mostly erased. Anyone who doesn't agree with the conflation is seen as being against community. What really matters is having facts and sound logic behind one's stances. That aforementioned Forbes article attacking Navratilova and science itself is appalling to me.
