The true goal isn’t about transgender people or drag shows. It’s about you.

BY MICHAEL AARON

Theultraconservatives pushing against drag story hours and the rights of transgender people have finally tipped their hand a bit and revealed their true ultimate goal: You.

Singer Kid Rock went after Bud Light in a huge way, even going so far as to machine-gun cases of the beer in a viral video, followed up by “Fuck Anheuser Busch,” because a transgender influencer was sent a case of cans with their likeness on it.

And then, just weeks later, he is seen in his own bar (which never stopped selling Bud Light) drinking the Devil’s elixir.

But it was never about Dylan Mulvaney or Anheuser Busch. It was about you.

This month, the true intent of this and a multitude of other actions and tweets, and Fox News stories by the uber-right was admitted by the poster boys of the efforts.

Matt Walsh, a host for far-right media outlet The Daily Wire and one of the most virulently anti-trans voices in the country, kicked off a tweet storm about recent calls to boycott brands like Bud Light and Target by explicitly outlining what he says has been the goal from the start.

“The goal is to make ‘pride’ toxic for brands,” Walsh tweeted. “If they decide to shove this garbage in our face, they should know that they’ll pay a price. It won’t be worth whatever they think they’ll gain. First Bud Light and now Target. Our campaign is making progress. Let’s keep going.”

Another Daily Wire host, Michael Knowles, backed up Walsh’s point. “This has been the point that has been building for months now, which is we need to make that symbol toxic, the Pride flag symbol, we need to make that toxic,” Knowles said. “We need to have companies think twice about it.”

“Everyone was talking about the Dylan Mulvaney incident as being harmful to the Bud Light brand,” Knowles continued. “That’s true. But more importantly, it was harmful to the Dylan Mulvaney brand. Now, other companies are going to think twice before sponsoring Dylan Mulvaney because they don’t want to lose $6 billion in market cap in two days. That’s what we got to do. And then once we make these things culturally toxic, or as we’re making these symbols culturally toxic, we’ve got to bring in the cavalry, we’ve got to come back in with more political force to ban some of this stuff and to say no.”

Walsh tweeted, “The Bud Light boycott will prove to be one of the most significant conservative victories of this decade. It was never just about Bud Light. It was about sending a message.”

The message is to send the entire LGBTQ+ movement back into the closet, just like the Pride items at Target literally were.

Ultra-conservatives are declaring the Pride flag to be “fighting words.”

If you think that you and your rights are separated in the minds of the ultra-right from the rainbow flag, you are mistaken.

They are doing the traditional “divide and conquer” tactic that works for nearly every social movement that exists. It also worked for the Nazis.

Some gay men, especially, are working to separate the LGB and the TQ+.

“I’m not holding any ill will toward anyone, but as a gay man I didn’t agree to have the ‘movement’ hijacked by the alphabet mafia,” reads one post from an Ogden gay man.

The leader of the Utah Log Cabin Republicans is on a war path with transgender people and drag shows.

And this month, an ally was murdered by a young man for putting the Pride flag in front of their business.

Suspect Travis Ikeguchi’s social media posts show him tearing down and burning Pride flags, just like what happened on Washington Street in Salt Lake last month.

The true target of all this noise is you, your rights, and even your lives. Q