De Morgen Misses the Point—and That Is No Coincidence
The Familiar Refrain
De Morgen has once again published an article titled It really isn't just Muslim youths who would rather see gay people back in the closet. It's the familiar refrain: there is a problem with acceptance of gay people, but be careful not to focus too much on one group. After all, there is also the manosphere, toxic masculinity, right-wing rhetoric, a general hardening among young people. Everything has to remain broad and vague.
And that is precisely where the newspaper misses the point.
The Battle That Was Won Long Ago
No one who is serious has a problem with gay men or lesbian women living their lives. In large parts of the Western world, that battle was won long ago. The real conflict today is not "gay people back in the closet". It is the systematic conflation of sexual orientation with gender identity, and the medical scandal behind it.
The Trick: LGB and T Lumped Together
By placing everything under the umbrella of "queer" or "LGBTQIA+", criticism of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for minors is immediately turned into "homophobia" or "queerphobia". Anyone who points to the explosive rise in girls with late-onset gender dysphoria, the high comorbidity with autism and trauma, the virtually nonexistent evidence of long-term benefit, or the permanent damage—infertility, sexual dysfunction, bone problems, scarring—is placed in the same camp as someone who wants to discriminate against gay people.
That is the trick. Lump LGB and T together so that the medical scandal cannot be discussed.
What De Morgen Leaves Out
De Morgen does exactly that. Instead of examining the concrete harm caused by "gender care"—irreversible interventions on healthy bodies, the detransitioners now living with the consequences, the clinicians who downplay side effects—attention is shifted to a vague, all-encompassing discussion about "who does not accept gay people". This keeps the real problem out of sight: an ideology that denies biological sex and normalizes medical experiments under the guise of "care" and "visibility".
Two Fundamentally Different Things
Homosexuality is a sexual orientation. Gender identity is a claim that seeks to overwrite the reality of sex with hormones and scalpels. Conflating the two is not solidarity. It is a strategic confusion that serves precisely to protect the medical scandal.
As long as media outlets such as De Morgen continue to write as though criticism of transition is the same as hostility toward gay people, that protection will remain effective. And the newspaper will continue to miss the point.
What this conflation means for young people themselves is discussed in gay and lesbian young people in the gender debate. How much of the media covered gender care for young people from a single perspective for years is described on gendermedia.nl. The meaning of the letters in the acronym LGBTQIA is explained on alfabetbende.nl.