“Flailing about for relevance since the legalization of same-sex marriage, many gay-rights groups [have] pivoted to a related but fundamentally different cause: transgender rights.

“Rather than emulate the movement’s past approach — seeking allies across the political spectrum and accepting compromise as a precondition for legal and social progress — they have taken hard-line left-wing positions. LGBTQ groups repeat the mantra ‘the science is settled‘ on the extremely complex and fraught subject of youth gender medicine and insist that anyone who questions the provision of puberty blockers to gender-dysphoric children is transphobic.

“They continue to spread this message even as many European countries have backed away from such treatments after concluding that the evidence supporting them is weak.

“The reflexive promotion of major medical interventions for minors should be a red flag for gay men and lesbians, considering the research indicating that many gender-distressed and gender-nonconforming children grow up to be gay.

“Last year, though, GLAAD, HRC, and other organizations staked their reputations on a foolish crusade against the Times, condemning the newspaper’s careful and empathetic reporting on youth gender medicine as ‘irresponsible’ and ‘biased.’

“GLAAD has placed the Harry Potter novelist J. K. Rowling and the journalist Jesse Singal, who has reported extensively on youth gender medicine (including in The Atlantic), alongside such people as the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on a McCarthyite list of ‘individual public figures and groups using their platforms to spread misinformation and false rhetoric against LGBTQ people, youth, and allies.'” — from “How the Gay-Rights Movement Lost Its Way,” an 8.12 Atlantic article by James Kirchick.