Rich shitbags funding divisive propaganda to make the plebs fight each other and vote against their own interests.

Astroturfing.

Also, look up the genesis of the conservative media apparatus - specifically, Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, and how that whole thing came to be in the post-Nixon era. There’s a lot of context, and none of it was done in good faith. The intent was always to game social norms and leverage populist appeals to emotion into tribal ideologies (I.e. us-vs-them/ingroup-vs-outgroup). That’s ultimately the fundamental basis for conservatism.

These days, foreign influence operations (often based in authoritarian countries) aimed at increasing the polarization of a target population also play a major role.

Conditions have gotten worse and the ruling class has chosen a scapegoat to distract people from the ongoing class war.

You've gotten enough good answers that I think it okay to address a tangent.

Things are definitely at the point where christofascists, and other hate driven ideologies are getting louder.

But, and this is vitally important as to why the pushback is making it a matter of public discourse at the level you're asking about, there's more allies now than ever.

Be ready for old man talking here, and ignore if not interested. Disclaimer: I have arthritis, and it's easier to type gay than LGBTQ, so I'll be using the shorter word for that reason, not as an exclusion.

Back in the seventies and eighties, gay rights was a thing for mostly gay people. Before that it had been gaining minor support, and the eighties were when social restrictions started changing enough that gay people were allowed to have some degree of public awareness in both news and fiction.

I keep bringing it up in various places, but Billy Crystal played the first recurring openly gay character on television. That was in 1977, and ran until 1981. I don't think it can be said enough how huge that was in bringing awareness of gay people as just people was. That role brought gay into our homes and lives in a way nothing had before.

When something makes a group real to the majority, makes things stop being a dirty secret and just another part of life, you get kids growing up that are more open and accepting. As acceptance grew, so did the amount of people coming out.

As people came out, the straights realized that not only had they always known gay people, but they liked them, and even loved them for years, sometimes a lifetime. When that starts spreading, you have more people that are willing to support gay people and their rights as fellow humans.

Instead of being pariahs, gay people became part of life, part of our hearts. Eventually, more and more people that didn't have direct relationships with someone gay became allies, supporters.

However, the more gay people became a part of life, the more noise bigots made, in their own homes and in public. So, instead of it being a dirty little secret nobody talked about, that way of thinking got nastier and louder. Before, it wasn't something everyone would even know about until much later in life, but as the gay rights movement in the seventies started building up steam, you had more hatred being spewed as well. There had been before, but it was more likely to be handled with dismissive or contemptuous remarks rather than outright venom and bile in the open.

Now, us folks that were kids during the late 70s and early 80s didn't just accept gay folks. We would often defy elders that opposed gay rights or bad talked them. As time passed and we grew up, the segment of that generation that became allies tended to be more and more vocal in our support. By the nineties, my generation was moving into adulthood and willing to vote our conscience. We were willing to put our time and money into the cause. Sometimes, we'd put our bodies on the line when things got ugly.

Move forward to now, and you've got two or three generations actively and loudly opposing the bigots, and not just the gay people. The bigots are smaller in number, but have been pandered to by political groups around the world, so have more weight than their numbers should give them.

Mind you, the bigots also include people of every generation too. Don't imagine that there aren't kids even that spew the same kind of nastiness that's been used since before the 70s. But there's more in direct opposition to them, and plenty of passive dismissal of the bigotry. Bigotry is not a relic of the past, nor is it limited to older generations; some of the loudest and most obnoxious hatred gets spewed by younger adherents. But the seeming percentage of hate is lower in younger generations, and the seeming percentage of outright support is higher.

That puts us in the situation we're in, where hate has a bigger voice than it should, and love/acceptance has to shout louder to oppose it.

Because right wingers spent the past ten years repackaged the fear mongering about "The Gay Agenda" and call it woke instead.

Wedge issues.

Equal rights for

everyone

regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity are something that we, as a society, actually solved decades ago that aren’t even a question. They were brought back into public discourse by corrupt people that seek to keep us distracted while they rob us all blind. The two party system in the US (and any nation that uses a FPTP voting system that limits us to a MAXIMUM of two viable parties) is a HUGE reason why they still exist.

The reason we still argue endlessly about these solved issues is that the two parties are so similar in their other policies that they have decided to highlight those issues (as if there’s even a debate about them) because the two parties align in lockstep behind the other issues. The super wealthy people at the top don’t want us talking about things that will cause ALL of us to stand up and demand improvements to our material conditions so they have their demagogues loudly trumpet the absolutely miniscule differences between them and the conservative parties to whip their voters into a frenzy in support of voting against their best interest.

Then, I have to fight with unwitting dupes in the comment section that have fallen victim to the marketing gimmick that the black female version of Reagan is “fighting for good” despite her being politically aligned with Reagan on virtually every issue other than identity politics.

I’m calling the DNC technique of wrapping Reaganomics in a friendly identity politics outer shell “woke-washing” because of how similar it is to “green-washing”.

Chomsky proved this conclusively.

It's not "all of a sudden". And it's not "the world". And it's not even "America". Rather, you're now consuming media that's exposing you to thoughts that have always been around, often on the fringes.

Remember, bigots have always existed, and polite bigots toe the line as much as they're forced to. They aren't going to disappear, ever. (That being said, we can make them less relevant and powerful.)

these things come up whenever the right wing needs a distraction. they have to keep finding new groups to blame society's ills on, so that conservatives don't realize it's their politics that lead to those.

whenever a group inevitably becomes too accepted (or at least not feared enough) to be a distraction, they move on to the next group. sometimes they bring an oldie back because that's fashion for you.

According to the GSS, only 10% of Americans reaponded "Agree" or "Strongly Agree" to the statement "Homosexuals should have the right to marry" in 1988 (first year the question was asked).

In 2004, it was 30%.

In 2022 it was 67%.

Also according to the GSS, 40 years ago a third of Americans thought homosexuals shouldn't have the right to speak.

We've made remarkable progress in a very short period.

The 1% needs to endlessly divide the working class against itself. It's an old game with new tricks.

Conservatives have been furious about that progress this whole time. They will never accept progress. If permitted, they will undo every bit of anti-bigotry progress made in the last 100 years and return us to a slave-based economy.

Conservatism is a deadly social cancer. It always has been.

Especially America? There are countries executing people for their sexual orientation.

Honestly a lot of it is just that trans people entered the popular consciousness and as the conversation started becoming mainstream a bunch of the already shit folks decided to capitalize on the deficit of people's understanding on the topic to smear and discredit progressive spaces as a whole.

It's all very vibes based on their side. They took a topic that has a lot of nuance and flattened it to take advantage of a view of the world that invents problems that feel true.

Like "There are trans rapists in women's prisons"... Out of the current 5000 trans people incarcerated in the US only 15 of them are currently in prisons that match their gender identity. The transition requirements are so high that there is no guarantee that being on estrogen for 10 years, full sterilization and bottom surgery is enough for a trans woman to meet the requirements.

Or

"Our lost lesbian sisters are getting sterilized in mass transitions to become trans men"... When hysterectomy isn't even a common gender affirming choice. Testosterone tends to halt menses so a lot of the time trans guys who want biological kids particularly can and do keep the bits and detransition (which just means a change in transition status not a full conversion to cisness) temporarily to meet that life goal if they see fit. Basically having fertility is a matter of going of testosterone for a couple of months.

But who is going to actually check this stuff. They know people won't.

It's so dumb, like of all the challenges facing us as a species now, THAT'S the shit that people are getting worked up about? Life on Earth for humanity is in the process of going through a set of major environmental changes that we're probably not ready for and is going to have catastrophic results for some... and there's people out there getting bent out of shape about pronouns and sexual orientation. We need to be doing alot more preparing for what's coming over the next few years and a lot less bitching about things that don't personally affect us. It seemed like we had made some big strides for awhile there, and that seemingly got erased within the past 8 years.

20 years ago we were killing people for being gay, 10 years ago that was the worst thing you could be, what are you on?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard

There are 8 billion people in the world. If 10,000 people on Xwitter are upset about something, it's statistically insignificant.

Because social media amplifies and incentivises minority, hateful views to make it seem like everyone is concerned about these things.

The reality is, it's the same small group of hateful idiots who are always in the spotlight.

In real life, even in small towns, people either don't care or they celebrate how far we've come as a society.

All the comments saying it's a distraction from how the working class is being oppressed by the owner class are right, but also...

There have always been bigots, small town small minded people who don't "know any gay people" but there was that one skinny boy in their class that didn't like sports so he was bullied until he left town at 18. And now, that generation of bigots is finally dying out. Not only due to age but due to an increased connection with the greater world. A small town bigot might not know any LGBT people personally but they are aware of their existence, due to television and the Internet. So quietly ignoring people who are different than you doesn't work anymore. And a dying animal fights harder than ever.

These death throes are useful to the owner class. But they are still dying out. And if we can exterminate capitalism and figure out a way to survive in a post-warmed globe, we might just see the end of (this particular type) of bigotry.

literally russian bot farms

So you see something that concerned 2% to 15% of the population use to hide in the closet and or we didn't talk about it or know.

Now people are done hiding. Which impacts tons of people who barely understand their anatomy let alone their wives. When school never taught intersex and gender despite it being a thing that was understood in science in the 60s and 70s. A lot of people are suddenly confronted with a reality they don't understand. When peoples bubbles are popped first comes rejection of thing then comes fear and anger. Issue is with 8 billion people there is constantly people learning about sexual orientation, gender, and sex.

Let's not even talk about the internalize confusion of you people either. This is just current existing people learning about this stuff today.

In my 36yr life it isn't any greater or lesser of a concern than it has been before, though I'm quick to think of the euphamism-treadmill as being constantly turning.

—To me It seems like sexuality is easy-pickings for politicians that don't want to write legislation that benefits the lower-classes. It's a big part of the "circuses" metaphor in the phrase "bread and circuses."

The US isn't any more concerned about sexual orientation now than any point in the past. Back in colonial times, it wouldn't have been safe to be anything other than straight with all the hyper religious colonists. They were even forcing their gender conformity and the straight sexual orientation on the Native Americans. Baron Friedrich von Steuben got a pass for being gay, probably because he was the one in charge of training the troops for Washington. 100 years ago, you could be killed on the street for being anything other than straight or denied jobs. The Lavender scare of the mid century brought this more to light. The AIDS crisis that started in the 80s and bled through into the 90s and 2000s as new medicines were being invented, further brought negative light to sexual orientations outside of straight. The cause of all of this attention to sexual orientation has been the religions brought over by colonists.

In recent years, sexual orientations outside of straight are finally being seen in a positive light with Lawrence v TX (2003) legalizing same-sex relationships and Hodges v Obergefell (2015) legalizing same-sex marriages. In Bostock v Clayton County (2020) legal protections against job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity were finally put into place over 70 years after the start of the Lavender Scare.

The attention to sexual orientation has always been part of North American history. It has just changed from acceptance with the Native American peoples to hate, death, and intolerance under the colonists, to a more accepting present day. With some of the positive news in recent years, it can be easy to forget (if you're surrounded by progressives in a blue state) that the hate of sexuality injected into North America in the 15th Century still has hold over large portions of the population today.

Do you perceive this as a brand new issue in human society?

All of a sudden? Where have you been the last 80-100 years?

The internet has given global voice to people that would otherwise only be able to bounce those ideas back and forth across the barbershop floor

The first gay board supervisor, a sort of deputy to the Mayor of San Francisco, was assassinated alongside that mayor in 1978.

Michelangelo writes passionately about how the church teaches all gayness is a sin in the start of the 16th century.

Leviticus of the Hebrew Torah found etched into three thousand year old stone calls for castration of homosexuals.

There is nothing sudden about this, OP.

Why are people so interested in defining themselves along sexual identity and orientation in relatively recent western culture?

Why now? Why is it so different from most of human existence?

Because we are no longer facing famine. The Green Revolution has made our relationship with food so secure we no longer define ourselves in relation to it.

Throughout most of history people are farmers or ranchers or shepherds or bakers or butchers or millers.

So, we climb the Biological hierarchy of needs looking for our next characteristic that needs fulfillment.

Because gay rights have more and more support so they decided to pick an easier target.

Identity politics resonates with brain dead public.

We got the government we deserve.

It's finally reaching such widespread acceptance that 1. Actual bigots are getting concerned they can't be bad people anymore and 2. Assorted people are getting tired of the discourse.

It's all about distraction. All of us seek entertainment because our lives are usually quite dull. So the media feeds us things to have opinions about. Politicians, big tech psychos, gender issues...

It's all pointless and keeps us from actually making any real difference. People here on Lemmy fight over which words to use, gender issues, or god forbid, someone admits they are not vaccinated...! Wow. Nuclear bomb right away.

None of this matters at all, it's just entertainment.. Nobody changes their minds from getting downvoted either. Sometimes it feels like keyboard warriors here think they are fighting some kind of fight. But nobody changes their mind guys, even if you downvote them.

So it's actually pure entertainment and distraction from what matters... :) We don't have to be so serious.

The forces of reaction never went away, they just weren't as narketable for a few years, there. Companies are trying to increase their marketshare among bigots while also not alienating the people that don't hate gay people. So you get pinkwashed corporate logos and genocide along with cancelled gay shows and an increase in false history nouveau Westerns.

american school system. decades of wrong education by specialising while not having broader knowledge and making education a side hustle while college football is their slave business.

this has led to a mostly degenrated society. an idiocracy.

Have you seen the Russian psy ops instructions?

Aside from what everyone else has said, one of the big leaders to this scenario is that the world has gotten so much safer and so much less violent and so much more accepting that people have to literally scrape the barrels to find something to be outraged about.

We all of us know that the Republican playbook of taking rights away from people is a thing that is intended to target people and punish them for not adhering to the moral code of the people doing the targeting.

But the fact that we can spend so much of our national resources on arguing over morality is a side effect of the world being so good that we don't have to argue over worse things.

I'm not attempting to apologize or forgive anybody for their stance, but it is true that we are arguing over whether or not it's okay to have an abortion or whether or not it's okay to be gay rather than whether it's not okay to let have the country starve to death or whether or not it's okay to kill everyone all the time always.

I've said this before and I will inevitably say it again, human history is a pus filled boil on our consciences.

The only way to fix it is to lance it and to deal with all of the pus. We are in the pus clean up stage of human history, and in time with enough constant patient care, it will get better.

Cultural progressivism has been used as a shield to implement bad economic policies.

Edit for those who do not understand:

Family sizes are down, birth rates are now 1 per family, maybe 2 children.

This is due to many reasons but mostly

• Hormonal birth control
• Women entering the mainstream labor pool

Basically, there are better things for women to do then just have kids. This has a been a huge force multiplier for the economy

However, this means that family lines, genetic lineage, family names, dynasties... All rests on the shoulders of a single child. That's a lot of pressure.

When you had 10 children, and one or two were "special", it may have caused some drama but the lineage was still being secured by the other 8.

When there is only one child who then chooses a alternative life style that does not reproduce that means the END of a genetic line, the end of a name, the end of a dynasty, the end of a family. These things are hugely important to people.

I think people are more angry about sexual choices now, because they're more important, because people have less children.

That 40 year step backwards comes from good intentioned politicians making deals with homophobic devils so to speak in order to save other people.

Why does it seem you have all of a sudden started to look at information about sexual orientation? Did you miss that in the current information overload, everyone gets exposed to different information and no one can tell you why you are getting exposed to whatever you are getting exposed to?

CIA and maybe collaboration with Mossad. Pink and rainbow washing is used to justify regime change operations abroad.