[Warning: Some of the links in this article contain disturbing material.]

I first became aware of Christopher Rufo when scrolling through the responses to Dave Rubin’s announcement on X concerning the imminent birth of two children, whom he bought via in-vetro fertilization (IVF) and surrogacy with his same-sex partner. Those who congratulated the couple included such “conservative” influencers as Megyn Kelly, Brandon Straka, and Libs of TikTok. Included in this list of well-wishers was Christopher Rufo who wrote: “Congratulations—and RIP to sleeping for the next few years!”

Who is Christopher Rufo? Christopher Rufo is a senior fellow and director of the initiative on critical race theory at The Manhattan Institute. Although, recently, the focus of his research and journalistic efforts have been transgenderism; particularly so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors. Rufo attended Georgetown – a “Catholic” university that is controlled by the Jesuits; a highly gay-affirmative male religious order in the Roman Catholic Church. According to the official Georgetown web-site: “As the first Catholic, Jesuit higher education institution to establish an LGBTQ Resource Center (2008), Georgetown celebrates the LGBTQIA+ community and draws upon our commitment to continuing to advance equity and inclusion.” After earning a BA in Foreign Service, Rufo later received an MA in Government from the Harvard Extension School.

Although Rufo often writes about transgenderism, LGBT activism, and the influence of “gender theory” on society and education, he only very rarely, discusses homosexuality, the gay community, or the history of Gay Liberation. Like most Millennials, he believes that the gay right’s movement was highjacked by sexually perverse radicals. In an essay about “drag queen story hour,” he wrote: “By 1984…stable homosexual couples had achieved a certain amount of respectability in society.” But he argued that “the queer theorists, and the fetishists of the BDSM subculture wanted more.” According to Rufo, “the goodwill associated with the gay and lesbian rights movement” was utilized by the radicals. Rufo then proceeds to expound a sort of Log Cabin Republican revisionist history of drag culture which originally sprung from the gay male community in its modern context. He never mentions the emergence of organized gay rights groups in 1960s as well as the developments made during the 1970s in terms of societal acceptance of homosexuality, oftentimes through pop-culture. He neglects the important influence of the Mattachine Society – the first gay rights group in the US; and one of its founders, the cross-dressing NAMBLA supporter Harry Hay. He doesn’t even mention the long history of female impersonation and cross-dressing among homosexual men. This all took place in gay bars; and still does. But Rufo will not even use the term outside of his description of the Stonewall Inn; instead, he solely refers to “drag bars.” He also never mentions that the vast majority of drag performers are gay men. A minor detail, but its significant. Rufo’s project is tantamount to thoroughly exploring and denouncing the mutilations and mass murders perpetrated under Lenin and Stalin while completely ignoring Marx.

This deliberate process of choosing certain sources while ignoring others is something journalists and historians have been doing for centuries; its how they seemingly prove their pre-selected narrative or theories.

Rufo’s refusal to look at the gay origins of the transgender phenomenon is part of a larger movement among certain homosexuals (dubbed LGB without the T) who want to distance themselves from transgenderism; the most prominent group with this aim is “Gays Against Groomers” (GAG).  In a post from their account on X, GAG used a graphic with side-by-side images of the original “Pride” flag next to the revised version with the captions: “Reject Modernity – Embrace Tradition.” Gays Against Groomers never mentioned that the creator of the original “Pride” flag, Gilbert Baker, has repeatedly participated in grotesque acts which profinite Jesus Christ and Christianity. GAG frequently reposts on X content from Rufo and other members of The Manhattan Institute.

Rufo has also been caught manipulating evidence; for example, when he attempted to compare the problem of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church as contrasted to its occurrence in public schools. Afterwards, the author of the study he cited publicly disputed his conclusions.

Even within the first gay rights group in the US – The Mattachine Society –  there was friction between the sex radicalism of Harry Hay and the assimilationist tendencies of those like Frank Kameny who argued that gays must appear as “normal” as possible in order to gain acceptance with heterosexuals; the Kameny wing won-out, because while Hay (who died in San Francisco in 2002) would be remembered as the controversial leader of the “Radical Fairies,” Kameny was meeting with Obama at the White House.

But following Stonewall, the more radical Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was founded in New York City; with a chapter in San Francisco. The New York GLF published a periodical titled “Come Out” which frequently featured articles about transvestism and transsexual liberation. In San Francisco, the GLF published Carl Whittman’s “Gay Manifesto” in 1970 which would heavily influence a similar “Manifesto” published the following year by the GLF in the UK. Thirty-five years before the Obergefell decision, Wittman dismissed the idea of a monogamous gay marriage based on heterosexual standards when he issued this warning:

Gay people must stop gauging their self-respect by how well they mimic straight marriages. Gay marriages will have the same problems as straight ones except in burlesque.

He added:

We have to define for ourselves a new pluralistic, role-free social structure for ourselves. It must contain both the freedom and physical space for people to live alone, live together for a while, live together for a long time, either as couples or in larger numbers; and the ability to flow easily from one of these states to another as our needs change. Liberation for gay people is defining for ourselves how and with whom we live, instead of measuring our relationship in comparison to straight ones, with straight values.

Here, Wittman not only predicted the negotiated open relationships that would dominate in the gay male community, but also the swinging, bed-hopping, partner-swapping that emerged among some of the young straight population in the 1970s.

In response to the revolutionary ideas of the GLF and Carl Wittman, almost immediately a group of predominantly white male upper-class members broke-away and formed the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) which wanted to abandon the intersectionality of the GLF. While the GLF were primarily composed of revolutionaries, who could be considered the descendants of Harry Hay, the GAA wanted to influence existing political and social structures in order to gain influence and eventual power. As a result, a few years after their founding, in 1973 the GAA would play a pivotal role in pressuring the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality from their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. While the GLF imagined a new gay consciousness, the GAA imagined a new world. Hence, they lobbied for the repeal of state laws prohibiting sodomy, solicitation, and they protested against the arrest of homosexuals at gay sex cruising locations. Oftentimes, to achieve their aims, the GAA employed the protest tactics of the 1960s; when they organized marches, non-violent demonstrations, and “sit-ins,” or what the GAA described as “zaps.” The GAA also sought to make connections with sympathetic members of the media.

In 1972, the GAA sponsored “A National Coalition of Gay Organizations” which brought together 85 gay rights groups from across the US. The purpose of this gathering was to prepare a “gay stance” for the 1972 Presential Election. Sociologist Laud Humphreys, in his landmark 1972 study of the early gay rights movement, “Out of the Closets: The Sociology of Homosexual Liberation,” detailed the meeting and their demands. The 1972 “Gay Rights Platform” included the following:

Federal encouragement and support for sex education courses, prepared and taught by Gay women and men, presenting homosexuality as a valid, healthy preference and lifestyle as a viable alternative to heterosexuality.

Enactment of legislation so that child custody, adoption, visitation rights, foster parenting, and the like shall not be denied because of sexual orientation or marital status.

Repeal all laws governing the age of sexual consent.

Yet, the Illinois chapter of “Gays Against Groomers” claimed: “The gay rights movement was a bunch of based gays fighting the establishment to secure their rights. This new thing…is demonic. It is evil. It is designed to sexualize children and drive them insane.” This is also very much the mentality that pervades the work of the LGB without the T crowd and those at The Manhattan Institute. But as early as 1966, Kameny said in a speech to the New York Mattachine Society:

“I take the stand that not only is homosexuality…not immoral, but that homosexual acts engaged in by consenting adults are moral, in appositive and real sense, and are right, good, and desirable, both for the individual participants and for the society in which they live.”

To slightly unpack this very crucial statement, Kameny is arguing that sodomy is not only beneficial for the two men involved, but for the world. And it is this argument that would form the basis for same-sex marriage; not coincidently, Paul Singer (who is chairman of the board of trustees for the Manhattan Institute and is one of its main contributors) said: “Obviously, the institution of marriage in America has utterly collapsed.” He added, the fact that gay men and women want to marry: “is kind of a lovely thing and a cool thing and a wonderful thing.” Therefore, according to Singer, the legalization of same-sex marriage would promote “family stability.”

The dramatic shift in US public opinion concerning homosexuality and same-sex marriage is one of the most successful PSYOPs in history: in 1972, 73% of American adults believed that homosexuality was always wrong; by 2018, only 32% said the same. The rise in acceptance for same-sex marriage was even quicker and more dramatic: in 1996, only 27% of Americans believed that same-sex marriage should be legal; by 2023, that number had risen to 71%. This was made possible due to the actions of gay activists stretching back to Stonewall and before. In the 1970s, which Chris Rufo does not cover in his “history” of drag, the highly sexualized and transgressive branch of gay activism made some major inroads through the mainstream popularity of disco music, in particular via such gay acts as The Village People and Sylvester; it was extremely telling that The Village People performed at one of Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration events. The drag persona also reached a much wider audience during the 1970s through David Bowie, Andy Warhol’s “Factory,” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” While the Kameny wing was represented by Harvey Milk in San Franciso; although, like a number of other gay men, Milk had a penchant for underage teen boys, he presented a more palatable image of homosexuality for the middle-class with his shorter haircut and in a suit and tie.

It was this Boomer Generation of gay men that would later be the impetus behind the push for gay marriage; for the most part, they were decimated by the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and early 90s; Bruce Voeller of The NGTF would die of AIDS in 1994. Some of the more articulate and thoughtful of that era tried to figure-out what exactly went wrong. Probably San Francisco gay journalist Randy Shilts, the author of “The Band Played On,” came the closest when he wrote:

“The trouble was that, by definition, you had a gay male subculture in which there was nothing to moderate the utterly male values that were being adulated more religiously than any macho heterosexual could imagine…Promiscuity was rampant because in an all-male subculture there was nobody to say ‘no’ – no moderating role like that a woman plays in the heterosexual milieu. Some heterosexual males privately confided that they were enthralled with the idea of the immediate, available, even anonymous, sex a bathhouse offered, if they could only find women who would agree. Gay men, of course, agreed, quite frequently.”

It’s this stark vision of male homosexuality, unencumbered by any restraining influence, that unleashed the living hell which became AIDS. As Shilts described in his book, by the late-1970s, doctors in New York City began to notice that gay men were becoming habitually infected with an unlimited series of venereal diseases. According to Shilts: “In San Francisco, incidence of the ‘Gay Bowel Syndrome,’ as it was called in medical journals, had increased by 8,000 percent after 1973.” 

I would argue that the horror of AIDS traumatized a whole cohort of gay men and they retreated into what Carl Wittman would describe as sort of “burlesque” simulacrum of heterosexual marriage. Probably the most explicit example of this gay caricature of suburban middle-class values materialized during the lead-up to Obergefell when the all-American brand Nabisco featured a same-sex couple with two children pictured in front of a house with a white picket fence. Using his own words, this is precisely the “lovely thing” that Paul Singer and The Manhattan Institute wants to promote.

There is no major LGBT advocacy group which has any plans to distance themselves from the transgender community or drag culture. But a small group of homosexuals (once again, primarily white upper-class men) have infiltrated the upper echelons of the Republican Party; currently, the most influential are Richard Grenell, Scott Bessent, and Dave Rubin. During the 2024 US Presidential campaign, Grenell hosted a fundraiser for Trump with the Loga Cabin Republicans. The official 2024 GOP Platform removed any previous language referring to marriage as between “one man and one woman.” Before his confirmation, the fact that Bessent is ”married” to another man and has two children born through surrogacy, was hardly ever mentioned. During Bessent’s confirmation hearing, liberal pro-Trump journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon posted the following to X:

Such a cute moment. This is who Trump brought into the GOP—proud gay parents. You just love to see it. Average Americans are anti woke but they are super pro-gay. A conservative movement that doesn’t welcome loving gay families doesn’t have a future.

Her sickening sentimentality is reminiscent of Paul Singer, but she is correct – Trump has initiated a form of “big tent” conservatism that includes homosexuals; although, in the 2024 election, Trump received only 12% of the LGBT vote; that’s about 1% of the total electorate. But it isn’t about votes, this is an ideological war. And its sadly ironic that the battle-lines for this conflict cut through the family, from which, for the most part, homosexuality first emerges in childhood. Strangely enough, a salient example is that of Paul Singer who has a same-sex married son. In an interview, Singer said: “that before his son Andrew came out of the closet he would have rated himself ‘a solid 2.1’ out of 10 when it came to accepting LGBT issues.” (This quote comes from a rather tragic article titled “Wall Street CEOs open up about their gay sons,” which described a set of high-performing men and their sexually confused sons – who all looked oddly similar; to this list of gender dysphoric children could be added the transgender son of Elon Musk).

Over the years, Singer has financially supported initiatives to legalize same-sex marriage in New York and Maryland. He has also contributed to a PAC that sought out Republican candidates who support same-sex marriage; overall he has contributed about $10 million dollars to the gay right’s movement. From what I could gather, all of this activity occurred following the 2009 “marriage” of his son to another man. In 2024, The Manhattan Institute presented its Alexander Hamilton Award to gay political commentator Douglas Murray. In his book “The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity,” Murray argued that somehow when gay men participate in anal sex, that act gives them insights which heterosexual men lack.

Consequently, its not surprising that Christopher Ruffo and The Manhattan Institute frequently publish copious articles about the transgender issue, but nothing critical about same-sex marriage – or even homosexuality. Yet in his essay “The Anti-Normative Society,” where Rufo extolls the societal benefits of “the male-female gender binary,” he ends with this conclusion:

“We want to have a society that respects the fundamental nature of reality, human sexuality, and human reproduction, but also provides a space and provides equal dignity for people who don’t automatically fit into those ideal types.”

And that’s the problem with conciliatory thinkers like Rufo who want to endlessly critique gender and queer theory, but remain wholly silent about its antecedent – the philosophy of gay liberation: What does the “space” he described look like? Clearly for the primary benefactor of The Manhattan Institute, Paul Singer, that space would absolutely need to include access to legal same-sex marriage; and extrapolating from Rufo’s congratulations sent to Dave Rubin – access to children through IVF, surrogacy, and presumably adoption.

The Manhattan Institute’s tacit approval of homosexuality and same-sex marriage could be somewhat excused by conservatives, because, at least, these concessions only involve adults; but as Rufo’s reaction to Dave Rubin’s purchase of children demonstrates, innocent lives are also at risk here. But The Manhattan Institute has gone far beyond this point. What’s truly reprehensible is their repeated contention that gender dysphoric children are actually gay. But this agenda goes part and parcel with their agenda to present a benevolent image of gay men and women by contrasting Log Cabin Republican style homosexuality with the worst examples of transgender butchery. The Manhattan Institute fellow Leor Sapir wrote:

“LGBTQIA+.” The sole purpose of this acronym is to enable activists making radical claims about human nature and society to piggyback off the far more broadly accepted claims of gay rights.

About a generation ago, there was not even a majority of support for gay rights; but it seems to those who write for The Manhattan Institute, the ever-shifting Overton window is now the arbiter of moral acceptability.

During an interview, transcribed and posted to The Manhattan Institute’s “City Jornal,” Sapir revisited his idea of “the T piggybacking on the LGB.” He continued:

And they’re doing that while also insisting that transgender and gay are two completely separate things that are never to be conflated with each other…the obvious difference here is that being gay or lesbian does not require drugs and surgeries, nor does it entail denying the reality of one’s physical sex or requiring that others deny it as well. Accepting a gay kid as gay means something very different from accepting a kid’s transgender identity as real.

There is so much here that is either grossly misinformed or just evil that’s its difficult to unravel. First of all, homosexuality and transgenderism are two different things, but there is a reason why (from the very beginning of the gay rights movement in the US) homosexuals, lesbians, and various trans individuals cooperated with each to form LGBT activist groups, because they all fundamentally do indeed deny the reality of one’s physical sex. The penis will never be analogous to the rectum. Just a few years following Stonewall, physicians treating gay men were already seeing multiple pathological issues that they termed “gay bowel syndrome.” Various studies have shown that gay sex, no matter what sort of social confines it occurs, is detrimental to the human body causing immunosuppression, and other forms of long-term damage and physiological changes. For this reason, gay men made the ideal hosts for the HIV virus. Second, although homosexuality may not require surgeries (although in some cases it does – due to the prevalence of anal trauma in gay men) it certainly does require drugs; 42% of gay white men take the daily prescription HIV prophylactate PrEP. Currently, about 20% of gay men are HIV+ and they account for 71% of new infections in the US. HIV+ gay men must adhere to a lifetime daily regime of antiretrovirals – that can include up to 8 pills a day. Gay men are also at a significantly higher risk of contracting cancer causing HPV, as well as rectal gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis. Lastly, exactly why is accepting a gay kid…different from accepting a kid’s transgender identity? Sapir argues that homosexuality in some children is the benevolent default. But no one is born gay, and no one is born in the wrong body.

On July 22, 2024, Elon Musk was interviewed by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. During their conversation, Musk very briefly spoke about his transgender son. Musk blamed the “woke mind virus” for his son’s condition; and during a separate interview, he blamed “communism.” On the same day as the Peterson interview, Musk said more about the situation in response to a post (about the interview) from “Gays Against Groomers.” Musk wrote:

Xavier was born gay and slightly autistic, two attributes that contribute to gender dysphoria. I knew that from when he was about 4 years old and he would pick out clothes for me to wear like a jacket and tell me it was “fabulous!”, as well as his love of musicals & theatre. But he was not a girl.

“Gays Against Groomers” repeatedly claims that the majority children who identify as transgender are actually gay. This unsubstantiated theory has been most notably promoted by Jordan Peterson. In 2022, just a few months before “Gays Against Groomers” would make the same assertion, Peterson said: “Gay kids are being convinced they’re transsexual. That’s not so good for gay people, is it?” But Peterson is frankly disinterested in the psychological background of most homosexuals; even the transgender son of Elon Musk has maintained that he was a “rarely present” and “uncaring” father. This strange decades old effort to disavow the extremes of the homosexual rights movement, which include the leather scene, transvestism, and transgenderism, I find this attitude disturbingly familiar to parents like Musk who blame everyone else except themselves. Because I have always maintained that transgenderism is merely an extreme form of homosexuality – with the creation of a neo-vagina using parts of a man’s colon as a Frankenstein-like version of gay male anal sex; and with the double mastectomy in trans-men as a radical version of the practice amongst butch lesbians known as “binding” of the breasts.

Leor Sapir co-authored another article about children and transgenderism with another Manhattan Institute fellow – Joseph Figliolia; who does have some educational experience in psychology, though not a doctorate; but like Rufo, Sapir has no educational background in the physiology, psychiatry, or medicine; his Ph.D. is in Political Science. In their article “Medicine with a ‘Transgender Bias,’” they wrote: “many of the youth who outgrow their [gender] dysphoria by adolescence later identify as gay or bisexual. Decades of research confirm as much.” But immediately, they are problems with the studies as they mispresent the results of one and the other two are questionable. The first study differentiated between gender dysphoric youth who desisted identify as transgender and those who persisted: “In the desistance group, all of the girls and half of the boys reported having a heterosexual orientation.” The second study did not differentiate between those who desisted and those who persisted. And the third study utilized data from Dr. John Money – a largely discredited sexologist who was involved in the incredibly sadistic David Reimer case. At best, this is weak evidence which does show that some young people with gender dysphoria do grow-up to identify as gay, but not the majority. However, Sapir continues to repeatedly make this claim, even turning to the highly politically compromised American Psychiatric Association which, under political pressure from gay activists groups, declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder with no scientific evidence that warranted doing so. At the time, even amongst some members of the APA, the decision was highly controversial:  psychologists Rogers H. Wright and Nicholas A. Cummings objected:

“The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association suddenly and completely gave in to political pressures when in 1973 it removed homosexuality as a treatable aberrant condition…marking the first time in the history of healthcare that a diagnosis or lack of diagnosis was decided by popular vote rather than by scientific evidence.”

While Sapir decries the use of “Dubious Transgender Science” and how “the AAP Has Chosen Ideology Over Science,” its rather mind-blowing to witness him and others as they accept the same sort of dubious science and ideology when it pertains to homosexuality, but not when it concerns transgenderism. Its also remarkable they can’t comprehend that the identical forces which influenced the acceptance of homosexuality are now doing the same with transgenderism.

Recently, Sapir, Figliolia, and yet another white male Ivy League educated millennial fellow at The Manhattan Institute – John Sailer – made a dramatic proposal to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which included the following:

[The] NIH should consider funding research that attempts to understand the causes of the unbalanced sex ratio of clinic-referred youth; if and how comorbid mental illness and neurocognitive difficulties contribute to gender dysphoria; if and how interpersonal factors/social contagion influence dysphoria; and the relationship between an emerging homosexual orientation and the development of gender dysphoria.

They also called for: “longitudinal studies on the natural history of gender dysphoria.” Suddenly, there seems to be a great amount of interest in what causes gender dysphoria; after all, a bestselling book was dedicated to the entire subject. But, simultaneously, there is an alarming lack of interest in the possible causes of homosexuality; even, the highly gay-affirmative American Psychological Association had to admit that: “There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a…gay or lesbian orientation.” What is known – there seems to be a highly disturbing correlation between homosexuality and same-sex childhood sexual abuse in men. Yet, no one from The Manhattan Institute is suggesting that the NIH investigate that. However, in a rather extraordinary conversation Christopher Rufo had with podcaster Joe Rogan in 2024, Rufo exposed just what sort of person he really is. At one point in the discussion, Rogan began to talk about social commentator and author Milo Yiannopoulos, in what I consider a very thoughtless and crass manner. Rogan discussed the sexual abuse of Yiannopoulos; and how he believes that Yiannopoulos was born gay; Rogan also offered an extremely weak argument for homosexuality being biologically determined; Rufo had no response. But Rufo commented, to Rogan’s statement (about Yiannopoulos) by saying: “It’s baked in by the universe.” According to Rufo, the apparent homosexuality of a groomed, abused, and molested boy is “baked in by the universe.” Such a comment is startling when viewed in relation to the gay rights movement’s early involvement with Harry Hay and NAMBLA.

Most telling is an article by Joseph Figliolia titled: “Conversion Therapy” Bans Put Kids at Risk.” Here, Figliolia is in no way concerned by the fact that abused or neglected children with same-sex attraction might be denied mental health services, but he is troubled by how these conversion therapy laws might affect gender dysphoric children. He wrote:

…the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, which have determined that conversion practices cause “significant long-term harms to LGBTQ+ youth.” These claims, however, take the evidence too far. The harms of conversion practices among gay adults have been studied and rightly condemned.

Here, I find it strange that he is very willing to believe the AMA and the APA concerning their pronouncements about “conversion therapy” and homosexuality, but he is highly suspicious of the mainstream medical establishment when it comes to so-called “gender affirming” care for children. As the AMA has taken a decidedly pro-interventionist stance with so-called transgender children; even collaborating with the notorious Fenway Institute in Boston that Sapir and Figliolia accused of turning gay men into trans women.

Figliolia ignores the groundbreaking work of Dr. Gerard van den Aardweg and Dr. Joseph Nicolosi who explored the possible causes of homosexuality while working with men who either lessened or eliminated their same-sex attraction. Dr. van den Aardweg found that:

The great majority of men with SSA report childhood emotional distance from their father, and/or disturbed father relationships or paternal absence, at any rate, as well as a lack of father-son confidentiality and of positive paternal influences. As a rule, this “psychologically absent” father figure co-occurred with maternal over-influence…

This is the dysfunctional family environment from which gay men spend their childhood; as a result of such paternal absence and neglect, in addition to the high-rates of sexual molestation, it’s no wonder that these boys are confused about their sexual identity. And, it’s not surprising that homosexuals have much higher rates of all forms of mental illness than heterosexuals. But The Manhattan Institute, Jordan Peterson, Gays Against Groomers and those who subscribe to this LGB without the T project are not asking for any such funding that would research this problem. Instead, they are only focused on those who get caught-up in the transgender deception. They want to save children and young people from transgenderism, and then send them off to be groomed and abused by homosexuals. It’s like taking a child out of one abusive home, and sending them to another.

In 2024, someone with the X account @JoeGayHistorian posted a group of four pictures of supposedly happy, healthy, and normal gay men – taken at various “Pride” events. The post was liked over 10,000 times. JoeGayHistorian, who describes himself as an “American, Homosexual, Student of history,” I could quickly surmise after briefly perusing his X feed, he is certainly sympathetic to the LGB without the T cause. But in this one particular post, he wrote: “Gay Pride in the 70s, 80s, and 90s; what do you not see?” Judging by the responses to the post, over 1,600, he was clearly implying that there were no transsexual or transgender persons in attendance. This is the sort of selective gay historical revision that is now taking place. The reality is far different. So rife was the early gays rights movement permeated with open pedophiles that in 1980 a group called the Lesbian Caucus of the New York City Pride Parade threatened to boycott the event if NAMBLA was allowed to participate. And in 1995, numerous major figures in the history of gay rights signed a petition demanding that NAMBLA be included in the 25th anniversary celebration of Stonewall in New York City; they included Harry Hay, Gayle Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, Jim Kepner, and Camille Paglia. NAMBLA did not march, but what did happen was a group of nude gay male parade goers showed up to protest in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Such wholesomeness is worthy of a Nabisco advert.

And just a rather cursory survey of online photographic evidence (here are examples from Chicago and San Francisco) clearly proves that all sorts of transvestite and transgender extremism (including the open mockery of Christianity) took place at various “Pride” parades throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Like I said, even historians will partake in such cherry-picking, but this is simply propaganda. Reminds me of the Soviet efforts to hide the disaster at Chernobyl in 1986.

But the most pathetic aspect of the post is that JoeGayHistorian included in the four photos that he selected, one of the late gay porn actor Joey Stefano; born Nicholas Iacona in 1968. I actually met Nicholas during the early 90s. His was a very tragic story: sexually abused as a child, came-out as gay when he was a teenager, was exploited by older gay men, became involved in drugs and the sex industry, ran away to Hollywood where he got into gay male pornography, was infected with HIV, and later died of a drug overdose at age 26. So, this is the legacy of homosexuality that is now celebrated: child abuse, despair, desperation, disease, and death. Sounds about right.