There was a time when messaging about homosexuality and gender identity was so pervasive in our country that it was impossible to escape it. In fact, the push went well beyond normalizing homosexuality, with many on the left attempting to throw out the entire idea of there being two distinct sexes.
I don't have to tell you too much about it. You were there to see this mind virus befall society, whether you wanted to or not. For some very unfortunate people, the virus managed to make its way into their homes and, in some way, infect their children. It's my honest hope that the virus didn't get too deep into the minds of anyone you knew. Some people didn't survive it.
As my colleague Becky Noble wrote on Tuesday, reports are now surfacing that show the share of people identifying as a member of the LGBT community is dropping off, and not gently. Cratering is probably the appropriate word to use here, and my only hope is that it picks up so much speed that when it impacts the ground, it wipes out everything around it:
There are some new findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Fewer American teenagers are identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB). The most interesting part of this is the fact that much of this new data is being driven by young women. The CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey of American ninth through 12th graders from 2025 showed a decline in teens identifying as LGB across each of those grades compared with the prior two years. San Diego State University psychology professor Jean Twenge broke down some of the points of the survey.
High school seniors aged 17 to 18 had the highest numbers of LGB identification in all four grades at 16 percent, two percentage points below the number of seniors surveyed in 2023. In fact, each grade level had a lower percentage of those identifying as LGB in 2025 than in 2023. The numbers among 9th graders aged 14 to 15 had the lowest number of LGB identifications and the highest drop. In 2023, 17 percent of those 9th graders identified as LGB; in 2025, it was down to 11 percent.
Noble opines that teenagers were primarily identifying as LGBT over the "rabid desire to fit in."
This is all well and good, but from this we can draw two conclusions — one good and one bad.
For starters, it proves that the left was wrong. There aren't a bunch of homosexuals and transgender people living in the shadows and feeling forced to keep it to themselves out of social pressure. It was social pressure that caused them to identify as homosexual or nonbinary, not the other way around. When the pressure is off, nature returns. There's no need to pretend anymore.
The fact that this destroys one of the most ridiculous accusations against greater society can't be overstated. Harken back to the killing of six people, three of them children, in a Christian school by a person who identified as transgender. Some of you may not remember this, but I'll never get it out of my head. The initial reaction by the media was to blame the people of Tennessee for not being more friendly to the LGBT community, as if their children had it coming.
But as we can see, this is all nonsense. As a nation, we're one of the most friendly to the LGBT community, to a fault. The fact that the LGBT community became so aggressive and demanding shows that our level of friendliness was a mistake.
But the second thing this proves is that we're far too open to ideological attack. This entire episode could've been prevented if we had been guarding our institutions a bit better.
Noble points out that this study largely covered the Biden administration years, which means that the drop-off began happening after we had allowed things to get too far, once we finally started paying attention and began taking action. We made it clear, through boycotts, expressed mass outrage, cancellations, and more, that we won't be tolerating this any further.
Society is slow to react. We here in America used to use the term "sleeping giant" quite a lot during the Obama era, and we like to think it finally woke up. I'd say it did, but the issues are modular. We're reactive to things that get too far, but rarely are we proactive.
It's my honest opinion that we, as a society, need to start clamping down on the places where these radical ideas are being bred. University campuses are one of those cesspools. If a university dedicates itself to churning out anti-American ideologues with a penchant for self-destruction, then we should pull our tax money, grants, or whatever else we need to until that university gets the point and forbids the spread of these sentiments within its walls.
Again, people died because of the LGBT radicalism that was, in part, born from places like this. If they didn't die, they made irreversible changes to their body. Children were sacrificed on that altar by parents who wanted to be trendy. If the places and institutions that encouraged this radicalism were a person, they'd be tried in court. Since they aren't a person, they can be tried in the court of public opinion, and we can take action through the government, but action has to be taken. This can't happen again.
