If you have followed my social media or my writing for any length of time you know that one of my primary voices is dedicated to the concept of gay individuality. As odd an idea as it might be, it has become ever more relevant to insist that gay people have the ability and the option to think freely without loyalty to any particular ideology or certainly any political party. This is becoming more and more controversial as crazy as that might seem. The LGBT movement has always been tribal, but until fairly recently it was defined by its great diversity of ideas and ferocious demands for celebrated individuality.

Context is everything and when understanding the LGBT movement, the environment of its formation matters. The collectively shared image of what its like to be gay tends to involve isolation as children, rejection in your teen years by friends, family and religion (Christian usually), an escape to college or a move across the country and finding a new family in the arms of a gay community separated from your previous life. For gays of a certain age this was true. I grew up right on the edge of the end of that age and gay people younger than me have lived an entirely different experience ever since.

Pre-Ellen (1996) and post-AIDS (1981) the idea of what being ‘gay’ changed. Jim Downs, professor of history at Connecticut College writes of how the 1970’s created the foundation of what we know as gay culture when homosexual people collected together and built an identity around their sexual preference. HIV/AIDS changed gay history in a way not many LGBT wish to acknowledge in that it terrified the entire population for over a decade. LGBT tend to remember the AIDS epidemic from the victim perspective only but is typically unwilling to consider the context of the epidemic to the rest of society.

Homosexuality, as Downs points out in the above article, as an identity is a new concept. Homosexual behavior has, in contrast, been a part of every civilization in history and in context to our own held a very significant religious and therefore social stigma. Traditionally Jewish perspectives of sexuality were viewed in comparison to pagan practices in antiquity and Christian views of sexuality always held a significance we cannot dismiss with modern ideals. We often forget that the idea of a woman having a child out of wedlock was a significant social stigma well into the 1990’s. Homosexuality before AIDS was darkly viewed as hedonism and like all forms of sexual hedonism in the 1950’s, greatly opposed.

We forget that common sexually transmitted diseases easily treated today were permanently damaging and sometimes fatal just a generation or so ago. Outside of a general social structure around marriage and sexual morality there was the reality of disease. Contracting an STD could mean lifelong social stigma and the denial of marriage, children and good social standing if the disease did not kill you. I recall watching clips of World War II era American documentaries meant to educate young men going overseas about sexually transmitted diseases. In one clip a young man is diagnosed with some incurable disease and the implication is he was infected by a prostitute. He says ‘Welp Doc, I guess this is the end for me!’ He was probably 18 years old.

Socially shamed teenage girls becoming pregnant from youthful sexual encounters (and their children) with their high school boyfriends and 18 year old soldiers being told their life was over after contracting Syphilis illustrates how seriously our society took sexuality. Imagine how this society must have viewed homosexual sex at all and certainly habitual homosexuality. We tend to view this as intolerance or hate today, but in context the very idea of this level of deviation from the norm and the resulting consequences were extremely relative to the social consciousness.

We have to remember that until 1974 the general consensus of the medical and psychological community was that homosexuality was a mental disorder. People today do not appreciate the weight of that reality. When people began to declare themselves to be homosexuals, not just engaging in a behavior believed to be the result from an actual disorder, it is absolutely understandable why the general population rejected it. AIDS happened so close to this social change that it requires purposeful intention to ignore the natural social reaction. Men believed to be mentally ill by most people, engaging in activities most people could not even imagine, flamboyantly parading in the streets in ways believed to be obscene, notorious for entertaining the absolute extremes of the 1970’s disco/drug era were now dying in droves from a little understood and terrifying illness that was reported to break out into the general population at any time. Of course parents did not want their kids to be gay.

What do we do today when a kid is on drugs? We engage in tough love. We bring in outside intervention. I studied counseling and drug addiction in college and it is common to encourage parents to shut teenagers out of their house as a method of breaking the cycle of partying-safety and to curb stealing. We know its difficult but we also know strong measures are required. In the 1980’s how were parents supposed to react when their son announced he was gay? We cannot, however, diminish the lifelong psychological and emotional impact this had on that generation of gay people but we can appreciate the larger experience of both groups.

The point here is that we had two divergent cultures at odds with each other with what seems like a random sampling of the population involved. Any family could experience this and being gay involved incredible conflict. The migration of young gay people away from their homes and family to centralized areas where they essentially grew up together reinforced a culture already defined by its sense of being outside of society. At the time they were extremely proud of that attribute. The LGBT leaders today largely come from that generation.

My generation, post-Ellen (1996), became the turning point for this culture. We came into full awareness of our sexuality right at the moment the internet exploded, celebrities began coming out and the very concept of a gay teenager was being debated across the nation. HIV/AIDS was much more easily treatable. I came out in 1998 when I was 16. I was the first openly gay student in my high school. All of my gay references came from the generation that survived AIDS and the social backlash that followed. Most of my generation carry the memories of that generation with us because they were the adults we congregated around when our families struggled with our coming out.

But something changed soon after. Gays in their 20’s now came out in middle school and were among many others their same age. They grew up with the internet being common and gay media being mainstream and popular. They grew up with gay celebrities, athletes, politicians and a president that openly celebrated them. Right now being gay is so mundane one is often lumped with the general public in terms of ‘privilege’ and ignorance depending on if you are white, male and happy being male. Today a young gay man is more likely to be lectured on his ‘Cis-privilege’ by other LGBT than his ‘sinful’ sexual choices by Christians.

Gays today live with so much freedom, equality and social acceptance the worst thing they seem to imagine is a Christian might hesitate when asked to write ‘Support Gay Marriage’ on their wedding cake.

This is what happens when society changes so quickly. Teenagers fighting for recognition of their identity and causing controversy for taking their same-sex date to prom went to college and learned about advocacy, gay history (from the generation of the 70’s and 80’s) and devoted themselves to fighting the injustice. But by the time they got old enough to be in charge, all the injustices were gone - but the passion and the narrative remained. Today we have an entire generation of gay people in their 30’s who have not left high school in their minds. They are still fighting Ellen’s 1996 battle. They are still carrying the torch for their 1980’s mentors. They are are still arguing against Falwell and raging against Reagan. Still trying to prove homosexuality isn’t a choice or sinful.

My generation has finally built the inclusive, diverse, safe, celebrated and socially influential gay movement we dreamed of as teenagers with complete arguments against all opposition and we simply cannot accept that its obsolete.

Cultures either evolve or they become ferociously tribal. The left in the last decade has encouraged tribalism in all minority groups, rejecting cohesive assimilation at any cost. In the wake of equality and social normalcy, the LGBTQIAP+ movement has chosen to follow this path. Unfortunately this has created an almost cult-like environment.

Today ‘LGBT’ is not just a catchall phrase meant to be welcoming to anyone ‘queer’ in society. At one time it illustrated the vast range of diversity connected under an umbrella of acceptance. It used to be a running joke of how impossible it was to get any subgroup of gays to agree on anything. We used to complain that our movement had no social influence because we couldn’t agree on what to fight for and were often too busy fighting among ourselves. This is no longer the case. While it is true there are battling priorities within the various groups, the understanding is that to be LGBT means to be loyal to the cause. A cause everyone must fight for.

Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire who made news this summer for endorsing Donald Trump at the Republican convention, is a man who has sex with other men. But is he gay?

“This intolerance has taken on some bizarre forms,” he said. “The Advocate, a magazine which once praised me as a ‘gay innovator,’ even published an article saying that as of now I am, and I quote, ‘not a gay man,’ because I don’t agree with their politics. The lie behind the buzzword of ‘diversity’ could not be made more clear: If you don’t conform, then you don’t count as ‘diverse,’ no matter what your personal background.”

This is the reality we live in today. Where once the gay movement defined itself by open and welcoming love and support for everyone, including non-gay people, today one can be exiled for dissent. As I have written about for years now, the gay left has become absolute in its authoritarian approach to what is appropriate to believe as a gay person. Where it was once fairly understandable to question why a gay person would be a Republican, today there is actual hatred directed towards individuals perceived as traitors for choosing this affiliation. The gay movement once defined itself as almost ridiculously diverse. Today it holds a single political affiliation: LGBT are Democrats. There are no other options. Even non-conservative alternative parities are targeted.

The savage hate we face from liberal bullies is staggering. But they're probably just insecure about supporting fracking warmongers. https://t.co/iVzyFpgMks — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) October 15, 2016

LGBT media collectively declared it dangerous to acknowledge a conservative/libertarian gay man, Milo Yiannopolous in a gay magazine, not because of anything he said, supported or fought for but because he was openly on the right. He doesn’t oppose a single cultural or social attribute gay men, for example, embrace or practice. But his views and more importantly the perception of his views, were determined to be an actual threat to the safety of all LGBT.

#GaysforTrump supporters handed Donald Trump a rainbow flag they had written a supportive slogan on at an event which he held up for the cameras. The act was completely mundane in that Trump has never been hostile towards gays and he tends to be enthusiastic about all of his supporters, often showing open public support for them. Trump holding the flag was simple, it wasn’t staged, and it wasn’t a planned photo-op at a gay event to pander. It also wasn’t done with political biting-of-the-tongue because he had to. Trump was handed the flag by supporters and he did what he always does, he held it up and smiled.

Putting a slogan on a flag is considered desecration. Also, the flag was upside down (red goes on top). What am I supposed to respect here? pic.twitter.com/wgliUODYni — Zack Ford (@ZackFord) October 31, 2016

The LGBT media instantly pounced on the idea that the flag was ‘upside down’ and Ford ranted endlessly, clutching multiple strands of pearls at once, about ‘desecration’ of what is now, apparently, a sacred flag. This is cult-like behavior. Its tribalism. The flag is usually presented with the red stripe at the top but there has never been a question of a correct side. The notion it is being held ‘upside down’, especially with the implication given to say an upside down cross, is nonsense. Gay people wrote on the flag, it wasn’t desecrated. I find the sudden treatment of this symbol as holy disturbing.

In a significant way, as I wrote previously, Downs is right. Although he uses ‘gay’ where I use ‘LGBT’, he is correct that there is a separation happening between those who choose the movement and those who do not. The conflict is in the emotional idea that we have a separate ‘family’ in the gay community and that we can be exiled from it. My generation sought out this community and we were excited to be a part of the colorful and open society of love and celebration. But today it has become a cult orbiting a centralized concept of hatred for symbolic enemies that no longer exist. In short, the thought-policing, authoritarianism, obsession with victimhood and oppression, stifling standards of approved self-expression, mandatory groupthink and allegiance to the group as a whole is the opposite of what gay culture is about. Gay culture is about freedom and celebration of personal individuality and uniqueness.

LGBT is not gay culture.

Free-thinking, independent, rational and generally non-political gays should take notice. We hold no loyalty to this group any longer. While many of us have named this separation in terms of political affiliation, it is not truly necessary. I did not remove myself from ‘LGBT’ because I am conservative, I could be a socialist Green party supporter and do the same. The direction this LGBT movement is going is extremely negative in terms of social isolation. With the leaders moving to block all opposition and attempting to silence or shame all dissenting voices it is no longer a place of security for those wishing to express themselves in unique ways. The question is how many gay people can have a sense of identity without it.

And that is what is being held over our heads. They are threatening to take away our identities. People who have grown up with a singular sense of who they are in our society are being told that can be taken away from them if they step out of line. This, as I said, is cult behavior.

But I reject it. I choose the term ‘gay’ because I like it and its the most easily recognizable to the average person. But I am not ‘LGBT’ and I want to make this very clear. If you are gay or trans or generally queer and you do not wish to belong to an authoritarian group demanding your complete loyalty with threat of expulsion due to any slight offense, you should stop identifying yourself as ‘LGBT’ too.

Gays, trans and anyone with a sense of individuality currently have full and complete civil and legal rights in our country. We do not need a special identity movement to ‘fight’ for us any longer. I am a Republican because I prefer the economic and Constitutional policies, but you certainly don’t have to be one. You do not need to limit yourself to any political party. No one wants to discriminate against us, our hate crime rate is 0.01% of our population and anyone honest and clear-headed knows regular people in our everyday lives accept and love us. Parents are accepting. Friends, family and our religious organizations are too.

We don’t need LGBT anymore.

Drop the flag. It isn’t sacred. You don’t have to vote for ‘pro-equality’ candidates to prove your loyalty. You don’t have to use the word ‘slay’ in sentences unless you really want to. There is literally nothing you need to do, believe, say, think or be in order to be yourself any longer. I am gay, I am Jewish, I am conservative and I am an individual. No one can take that away from me. If you value your sense of gay culture, you won’t allow LGBT to take it away from you either.