John Corvino, chairman of the philosophy department at Wayne State University, is the author of "What’s Wrong With Homosexuality?"

I’m amused whenever I hear someone say “as an L.G.B.T. person.…” Nobody is an L.G.B.T. person. You can have two, maybe three letters maximum at any moment (three could be a bisexual trans man in a gay relationship).

It’s a little better to say “as a member of the L.G.B.T. community.…” But is there really such a community? Sexual orientation and gender identity vary independently: Sexual orientation is about the gender of people you’re attracted to, whereas gender identity is about your own gender, including whether it corresponds to that which you were assigned at birth. Given these two variables, does maintaining the L.G.B.T. coalition make logical and practical sense?







At the risk of sounding like the philosophy professor I am, I answer: Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that our overlapping communities often have shared goals. These include the deeply personal (like coming out to family), the political (like employment non-discrimination laws) and the social (like challenging rigid ideas about the moral constraints posed by our bodies). Remember, the people who pick on the T’s are usually the same people who pick on the L’s, G’s and B’s.

But sometimes the answer is no: It does not always make sense to try to align sexual orientation and gender identity in one coalition. Each group has distinctive needs and challenges. By jumbling them all together into one alphabet soup — L.G.B.T.Q.I.T.S.L.F.A.A.*, anyone? — we run the risk of covering or erasing people’s experiences, especially those who are already most marginalized.

*In case you were wondering, it stands for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, two-spirit, leather-fetish, asexual and allies.” Even I had to ask about some of the letters.



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