The "cancel culture" adds two news things to the picture. One is the ability for anyone to participate, not just the few on the TV screen or newspaper pages. Another is the attempts at totality: expel the victim from every social media platform, every internet hosting, every payment platform, every public venue. It's not yet as bad as it was during the fascist years in Italy, but the approach is pretty similar. There is also no formal totalitarian party to drive it; people just join the cause by reposting a tweet, and acting accordingly when in a position to ban, expel, deplatorm, etc.
But now with the inward-lookingness of cancellation, you have people from group B who are cancelled by group B, and have no one to fall back on.
An example would be a teacher arguing for the support of gay marriage getting cancelled by a catholic school they work for. That person, in the past, could pick up their bags and move in with the liberals next door. Yes, they lost their job, and maybe half of their associates, but they still have the other half who would be more than welcoming of them for the plight they've been through.
But what happens when a group cancels their own? For example, the Peru N-word journo. By all appearances, he is a liberal-minded person, who worked for a liberal-minded newspaper, in one of the most liberal-minded cities in the nation. But now he got cancelled by his colleagues. What is he supposed to do - go hang out with white supremacists? Neither side would find that appealing. So instead he has to...not partake in society at all?
It's split into tolerant people and intolerant people.
Some people wear a thin veneer of tolerance to cover their intolerance. These are the people doing the canceling. These are the people you don't want to associate with anyway.
But there's still plenty of tolerant people around in society.
I would argue people that don't really care are in fact the majority.
Do you imply that the only groups in society are liberals and white-supremacists?
This is the problem liberals have...they have to get onboard with all the progressive stuff because they don't realize that everyone else is not a white supremacist as they are told by the NYT.
A lot of Trump support came from former Democrats who realized that they are no longer onboard with the ideals of the modern Democrat party pandering to the Progressives. These people didn't want a traditional religiously crusading Republican - they wanted opposition to identity politics and globalism.
There are good people in the center, and this Peru guy will be fine - but he should have realized a long time ago the NYT is not for people like him.
Of course most businesses would not oppose such a force, because otherwise they will be a target themselves, and enough of a public opinion would be against them, at least vaguely. They have everything to lose, and very little to win if they do not conform. This is why the "cancel culture" easily makes them cooperate.
Apparently, in the eyes of many, freedom is seriously less important than justice, and justice is often seen as the right to not be offended by anything. Not that it's impossible to achieve, but the resulting society would end up extremely homogeneous.
One thing that’s important to keep in mind is that most people of color largely don’t even read the NYT, or NPR. Fox News is a far more popular news source among people of color, even Democrats: https://www.journalism.org/2020/03/11/black-and-white-democr...
If the Republicans could find a candidate who better reached out to conservative minorities while not alienating their present constituencies they certainly would prove a strong contender, specially if the Democrats veer further to the Progressive agenda. Trump's problem was while he appealed to more minorities than most past Republicans he did not market it well and didn't put it front and center enough and also turned off the so called 'soccer moms' with his poor approach to the pandemic.
It’s not clear to me that you can make the coalition work. It depends on what issues you surface. Opposition to cancel culture is apparently something right wingers and my mom can both get behind—apropos nothing, she shared Bill Maher’s recent segment about McNeil on Facebook. I don’t think she’s ever watched Bill Maher in her life.
But of course, opposing cancel culture and winning back nervous Democrats like my mom is also a clear opening for... Democrats. Hint hint.
And what claim stands, exactly? Are you suggesting that because something bad has happened before, it shouldn't be opposed now?
I get your point, but if you tell me I did a bad thing, I can answer in one of two ways: “you did a bad thing too, so you have no right to criticise me”, or “you did a bad thing too, maybe we should have a frank conversation about why we both fell into the same trap”.
And I'd love to see a frank conversation about how we can avoid falling into that trap, but such a discussion has to start by acknowledging that it is a trap; that is to say, that cancel culture is wrong.
Regarding your edit:
> Edit: Forgot to mention this extreme example of cancel culture: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/professor-who-wore-hijab-...
The professor was fired from a Christian school for making an assertion (that Muslims and Christians “worship the same god”) that, according to its theology, amounts to heresy: https://www.businessinsider.com/professor-maybe-fired-for-hi...
> “Contrary to some media reports, social media activity and subsequent public perception, Dr. Hawkins' administrative leave resulted from theological statements that seemed inconsistent with Wheaton College's doctrinal convictions, and is in no way related to her race, gender, or commitment to wear a hijab during Advent," Wheaton's administration said in a statement released December 16th.
So if your point is that cancel culture is the expression of a new progressive theology, then again I accept your concession.
> McNeil repeatedly made racist and sexist remarks throughout the trip including, according to two complaints, using the “n-word.”
I don’t understand how this is related to cancel culture, given it’s been corporate policy to not make racist and sexist remarks for decades? And just, regular human decency? What are the arguments for keeping this person employed by a major news organization?
> In the absence of a full accounting of this episode, I can’t make any firm judgment about the merits of McNeil’s departure. For all I know, he could have been acting unprofessionally for years, and it took a few teens to force the Times to take action it should have taken years ago.
So this is a he said they said situation. The nymag article doesn’t account for the sexist accusations as well. The NYT say they performed an investigation and based on that decided to fire him. So if you believe the NYT is liable to fire a senior reporter over the say so if a few “woke” college students you will feel justified to protest this. If you believe the NYT corroborated the college students story that were extremely uncomfortable due to actual sexist/racist behavior and then fired him, it doesnt look like much of a story.
Neither you nor I know the specifics of what he said or didn’t say - that’s only him, the students, and maybe to an extent the NYT investigators. I’m not saying I inherently agree with the assessment of one side at all here, just that to say he was “canceled” is quite a bit of a reach.
Second, what sexist language, exactly? What did he actually say? We certainly can't trust the mere accusation from a source like The Daily Beast. And again, this story is all about details.
Third, it's easy to believe the NYT overreacted here given the evidence from other incidents. For example:
James Bennet, the editorial page editor, resigned under pressure after publishing an op-ed by a sitting US Senator.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/business/media/james-benn...
Lauren Wolfe, a freelance editor, claims she was fired for tweeting “Biden landing at Joint Base Andrews now. I have chills.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/25/lauren-wo...
Bari Weiss, who accused the paper of "unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge" described the situation as:
> Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.
> Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.
> All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain.
> Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do. Why? Perhaps because they believe the ultimate goal is righteous. Perhaps because they believe that they will be granted protection if they nod along as the coin of our realm—language—is degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes. Perhaps because there are millions of unemployed people in this country and they feel lucky to have a job in a contracting industry.
> Or perhaps it is because they know that, nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the “new McCarthyism” that has taken root at the paper of record.
No one reasonable thinks he made a racist remark.
> I told him what I’d actually said in Peru. He said, “Donald, you sound exactly like my father. He would also say ‘You can’t dress like a thug to a job interview and expect to get the job.’ But from you, it sounds racist.” I said “How is ‘thug’ racist? What about Thug Life Records?” He said “It’s almost the equivalent of the n-word. Don’t you know about Marshawn Lynch?’’ I said: “He plays for Seattle?” I could hear him sigh. “No, Donald, let me explain…”
So it seems like he by his own admission probably said some stuff that was frankly out of bounds. But doesn’t necessarily mean he deserves to be fired.
Being blind to how one speaks and how it affects others however, is not a trait that I’d imagine most newsrooms are looking for, at all. His finally thought:
> One last thought: what’s happened to me has been called a “witch hunt.” It isn’t. It’s a series of misunderstandings and blunders.
I mean, I feel like that says it all? A victim of a changing culture? Probably. But sound judgement in the here and now is a prerequisite for employment in an industry like journalism. You can’t just lie back and wax nostalgic about how things that were acceptable aren’t now, and believe that excuses ones current actions. Hopefully we’ve progressed a bit. It’s sad what happened to him, but I get the feeling he knows he did make a few “off-color” remarks and was quite unaware of the lens society views comments like that. The latter part is probably the real fault.
Now it's manufactured outrage about the word "thug", a word used quite recently by President Biden, and not that long ago by President Obama.
Suddenly "it’s almost the equivalent of the n-word."
How could a coronavirus reporter possibly keep up with that?
It sounds to me like a few kids at this conference were butthurt for being told they were wrong about completely unrelated questions, and pounced like jackals for anything to make this guy look like a nazi. "I might be completely wrong about Jared Diamond and look like a dumbass... but 'n______' came out of this guy's mouth at some point! Get him!"
If it fits ones narrative then they’ll believe it one way. If it fits ones narrative that old reporter said a bunch of stuff that demonstrated really questionable judgement if not disdain, then you’ll believe it that way. The NYT say they investigated, so it comes down to whether you believe them to be fair in that process (I would think if I worked there I’d want it to be a fair process). Not having any primary information, I don’t feel compelled to make any judgement of fault here.
His use of that word was supposed to be a smoking gun, but instead their story seems to be all smoke and mirrors.
That's a perfect example of cancel culture: the mere allegation is enough, proof is neither required nor given.
Some Evangelical Christians, being Protestants, have a ton of disagreement with Catholics, and disagree at this point, too.
Muslims universally agree, AFAICT, because Muhammad himself stated this explicitly (and Christ figures prominently as a prophet in Quran).
See a short analysis in [1].
Even though the OP was not correct at classifying the case as a manifestation of "cancel culture", I can see the similarity. It is in the same intolerance and unwillingness to discuss and listen in either case. The truth is known, any doubt is a vice, whoever disagrees should be shamed away. This is what I find the most dangerous part of the phenomenon.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2015/12/20/460480698/do-christians-and-m...
Every Christian worships Jesus as God. No Muslim will. It’s that simple.
When Muhammad says that Jesus is a prophet, it is a rejection of what Jesus claimed about Himself. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.”
Many of course have tried to act as though the two are compatible, but when you come right down to it, I believe what Jesus said, and Muhammad didn’t.
If you’re trying to tell me what Muslims believe, you’re also wrong.
Saying that Jesus is the Son of God is very different from saying that He is a prophet of God. That difference is precisely why Muslims cannot agree that Jesus is the Son of God and why I cannot agree that Muhammad is a prophet of God.
I don't dispute that's what you believe, but it isn't the position of all Christians.
The Catholic Church is quite explicit about its belief that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. It has expressed that belief in the decree Nostra aetate of the Second Vatican Council, and numerous other Vatican documents since. And the Catholic Church is not alone among Christians in this belief.
I think there is a real disagreement among Christians as to whether the God of Islam is a (somewhat distorted) account of the God of Christianity (the official Catholic position, but certainly some Protestants agree with it too), or whether it is a completely different entity (the position of yourself among others).
I think from the Muslim point of view – the Islamic designation of Christians as "People of the Book" only makes sense if Muslims believe that Christians worship the same God as they do, even if wrongly and confusedly.
Techy: Ummm... no.
Me: Techies can be so sensitive about minor things. You can believe whatever you want, I don't care. But it is a fact that Java and Javascript are both programming languages. If you don't like it that doesn't change the fact.
Wheaton’s college is an extremely narrow evangelical Protestant theology, that as well as dismissing Hawkins for her statements and firing a professor a few years before for becoming Catholic as it violated the schools duty to employ faculty embodying it's Protestant ideals, also led it to sue against the ACA’s preventive services mandate.
I'm not sure why you would suggest that “cancellation” under that theology has anything to do with progressivism.
It seems pretty obvious that you don't understand that any culture has norms and boundaries, but only pathological cultures become entirely reactionary and define themselves purely in terms of opposition to something.
>You can go back further to McCarthyism
That's exactly what we're going back to and you have to be truly blind to think this is a good thing.
why is that so hard to understand and to be consistent about this? people need to stop getting distracted by naked partisanship and focus on the issue. a principled stance is key!
now we're seeing big tech getting roped in and the tools of censorship are expanding. you may be fine with that now, but the tools will change hands. imagine them in the hands of your enemy.
It's negatively affecting people (for this article, the young authors who are self-censoring), and should be fought against.
Most importantly, we have politicians adopting authoritarian attitudes as a reaction to it. Private companies have a right to "cancel" whomever they want, whether that takes the form of banning someone from a website or of canceling a contract. Yet certain politicians want to interfere in private websites or publishers by limiting their ability to exercise editorial control.
I don't know the situation across the pond. I'm writing from an American perspective, where the term "cancel culture" has been entirely co-opted by cynical politicians.
This is the mindset at fault. This idea that intolerance is objective, when clearly it isn't. This idea that certain ideas, regardless of their merit, are simply intolerant and must be met with collective, unilateral intolerance, which typically aligns with progressive politics.
>Most importantly, we have politicians adopting authoritarian attitudes as a reaction to it
This is an ironic take, considering the entire premise behind cancel culture is a collective authoritarianism.
>Private companies have a right to "cancel" whomever they want, whether that takes the form of banning someone from a website or of canceling a contract.
And this is perhaps the most misleading part of the comment. This isn't strictly about private companies cancelling people (although that's also a problem when incentives are aligned to effectively remove cancelees from the public square). This is about rabid, authoritarian mobs attacking individuals for dissent, and the fact that loud minorities are dictating corporate action with a specific political slant.
People were complaining about cancel culture long before politicians. And possibly the most pressing issue is the fact that it isn't that these ideas themselves are intolerant, or even factually incorrect, it's the fear of some of their implications that is responsible for this conditioned suppression of their discourse, and unpersoning of anyone daring enough to ask certain questions. It's like banning research on fission because it could be used to create nuclear weapons. It's egregious anti-intellectualism to forbid certain questions or discussions strictly because of their worst implications.
This (Mexican-American) guy was fired for a photo that for a brief moment showed his hand making an OK sign out the window of a truck because for a few months the mainstream media tried to convince everyone that the OK sign is a white supremacist symbol: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/502975-cal...
That was technically possible before social media, but only if someone powerful decided to make an example of you. Now it can happen because a random person was bored or in a bad mood.
That's specifically what Ishiguro was complaining about. He even said he wasn't worried about influential people like himself (or all the examples you gave). I don't think he used the phrase "cancel culture," either.
> Apparently now that folks aren't just being cancelled for supporting gay marriage, the free exchange of ideas is suddenly important.
Some people suddenly started caring about the free exchange of ideas and others suddenly stopped, but you might be surprised how many just continued. To me, the ones who suddenly stopped are the biggest hypocrites of all.
I will say it is most certainly a problem, and I think it likely has much deeper roots than "social media exists, only now are people being hurt by mob mentality". It may be that social media only makes mob mentality more obvious to people, so now everyone is aware of it. But then the problem is why did we ever develop mob mentality in the first place....
There has always been a mob mentality, but it was hard to gather a mob. You had to get people to gather in person, and get them angry. Now you just get them angry, and you can do it sitting at home throwing together some memes and posting on Twitter. The bar didn't just drop a little, it dropped like 99%.
Like, we have a congresswoman blaming California wildfires on Jewish space lasers.
The republicans can deflect from the crazy by claiming "the left" is "cancelling" these people. When in reality any public figure that said crap like that would be shunned. Probably even more in past when American society was outwardly more polite.
Also, their next studio album came 14 years (!!!) after Taking The Long Way.
In my circles the Dixie Chicks rebounded from the Bush backlash and had their biggest pop hit ever in response to it ("Not Ready to Make Nice"); they became more respected in the wake of it than they ever had been.
All because France thought going to war with Iraq in 2003 was a bad idea.
If you’ve ever wondered why “frankfurters” are now called “hot dogs” or why “sauerkraut” was called “liberty cabbage” for a hot minute, it’s because of anti-German sentiment in the US [1]
[1] https://www.hppr.org/post/freedom-fries-liberty-cabbage-myth
It isn't.
I recommend "The Realignment" podcast which often discusses why this shift has occurred: https://the-realignment.simplecast.com/
The right (religious and otherwise) hasn't reduced it's policing of ideological orthodoxy at all.
Now, if you threw “exclusively” into that sentence, there might be something like a point.
I have, for actual kids (as in children, not young adults), including lately. Usually for something like “their mother has an OnlyFans page”.
> A, B and C v Ireland is a landmark 2010 case of the European Court of Human Rights on the right to privacy under Article 8. The court rejected the argument that article 8 conferred a right to abortion
Or maybe the Overton window has just shifted very left in the US about what social issues are human rights and what can properly be decided by legislative majorities?
And if far-right ACB were successful in making the right to privacy in the US similar to the one under the European Convention on Human Rights, the US states would be free to draw the line for on-demand abortions without any medical emergencies at 12-13 weeks, like nearly all European countries do and 70% of Americans support, instead of at 22-26 weeks, as is required by Roe. https://www.france24.com/en/20180525-abortion-laws-vary-eu-i.... https://news.gallup.com/poll/235469/trimesters-key-abortion-...
Of course, overturning Roe isn’t really in the cards. There are just 3 votes for it. In June Medical just two Justices, (not including ACB, who was not yet on the Court) signaled a willingness to overturn Roe. Unlike deciding a case in the first instance, overruling an existing precedent is an act of discretion. A Justice who disagrees with the merits can (and likely will) still support to uphold the precedent.
Much more likely than ACB overturning Ginsberg’s legacy with respect to abortion is ACB upholding Ginsberg’s legacy with respect to the Equal Protection Clause. At the ACLU, Ginsberg built that legacy on a textualist interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause, challenging laws that discriminated against men supposedly to benefit women as violations of equal protection. Under the current progressive worldview, that literal interpretation of “equal” treatment under the law will prove an impediment to importing critical theory into the law. That area, where the precedent isn’t as clear cut, is much more likely to be an area where ACB has an impact.
> > A, B and C v Ireland is a landmark 2010 case of the European Court of Human Rights on the right to privacy under Article 8. The court rejected the argument that article 8 conferred a right to abortion
Article 8 states:
1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
COTUS A14 states:
...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
The latter is clearly broader.
>the US states would be free to draw the line for on-demand abortions without any medical emergencies at 12-13 weeks,
A farcical conjecture, when we all know the actual likely outcome.
I think it still is, it just isn't a monopoly?
If you look at the history of 20th century, you may find a number of instances when e.g. Communism was professed (and enforced) with a truly religious fervor and lack of doubt. Ironically, the same thing happens time and again to Atheism.
Insofar as right-wing people now invoke the liberal notions of free expression it’s only because that was a middle ground that allowed coexistence and liberals are now sitting aside while progressives try to blow up that compromise. (And also because a bunch of center right people think it’s a good thing—it’s not like the right is uniformly absolutist evangelical types).
Put differently, Christian evangelical are angry that liberals broke all these taboos in the name of free expression, and now progressives are trying to treat Christian evangelical beliefs as the basis for cancellation. There is nothing hypocritical or contradictory about this.
Go look at these arguments about confederate statues. Liberals condemn the moral faults of the person. Conservatives excuse it as values of the time; moreover they appeal to the virtue the society has chosen for the statue to represent. There’s nothing more post modern than that.
From your post, it seems your view is that conservatives adopted these tools because they are the tools of an oppressed minority, which conservatives now perceive themselves to be. I think that very well might be the right explanation. But I also wonder if this shift is more of a demographics thing. Post modernism can’t be the young, hip mindset for the rest of human history. I wonder if young people today are carving out some new view of the world, which is far more interesting to me than arguments over celebrity Twitter accounts.
Free expression of contrary views is also important (though not ALL contrary views). What I think will happen is further Balkanization of the internet. We can’t all play in the exact same sandbox. Echo chambers are not new - people lived within distinct communities before the internet. I lived in a 50/50 liberal conservative town growing up and I interacted with only other kids of conservatives outside of school.
Now if we could have platforms that didn’t reward shallow engagements maybe we could get somewhere.
... and that is precisely why I find HN (despite its flaws) to be one of the most interesting places for discourse. The aggressive moderation by dang and friends gives this forum a coherence that is hard to find anywhere else.
It was always important. What makes you think that the people (like myself) who oppose cancel culture were against gay marriage?
The demographic consisting of "people who oppose cancel culture" were instrumental in making progress for gay acceptance.
If we allowed cancel culture to flourish, there would be no acceptance of homosexuality, women wouldn't have equal rights, minorities would be denied opportunity, etc.
Considering all the benefits that freedom of speech brought us, you now suddenly want to take it away under the guise of "freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences"?
Do you seriously think that there are no more benefits from allowing people to advance their cause? To speak up for or against any particular idea?
I really really want to know: why are some ideologies so perfect that none be allowed to criticise them?
If someone condemns X and doesn't mention Y, or the reverse, it is unreasonable to react how you've reacted here.
It's just...jarring to read the OP. It reads (to me) like "the right-wing does this all the time...now it's our turn!"
Different religions are going to have angry doctrinal differences by definition, but you can't let that obscure the obvious. We're not talking about tengrism or Brahma here.
I'm not sure if the greater theological offense was the solidarity with Muslims or quoting the Pope in support of it (Wheaton had only a few years before fired a professor for converting to Catholicism; “Christian” isn't a label of a monolithic group in practice.)
This comment is a fine answer to your ideas: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26311621
I suppose we are fortunate that nowadays a twitter ban doesn't come with an accompanying sip of hemlock.
Impiety is essentially failing to respect something considered sacred.
To (mis)quote another controversial philosopher "History repeats itself, first as tragedy than as farce"
>He said they may be concerned that an "anonymous lynch mob will turn up online and make their lives a misery".
>[...]
>The 66-year-old said he was worried that less established authors were self-censoring by avoiding writing from certain viewpoints or including characters outside their immediate experiences.
In the past you might have had e.g. Catcher in the Rye or Lolita or whatever banned from libraries, but low-profile authors weren't receiving death threats. The important question isn't whether the critics are fair or what their politics are; the important question is what kind of an impact do they have, and a chilling effect is worth being concerned about.
"But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness."
(https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...)
"But the right has always done this" should be all the evidence you need that what you're doing is wrong.
Excluding people because they exclude others is not the same as excluding people because of who they are.
Its the difference between ‘cancel culture’, and plain bigotry.
If you don’t want to be excluded, stop being a bully.
People are becoming offended by everything now.
They're being suggested reasons to be offended, and many seem to adopt that stance.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this is being stoked by robots. Perhaps corporate or state actors.
What if "being offended" is a mind virus that spreads easily through the power of suggestion?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention_co...
I have always believed that a platform should verify identities and have a zero-tolerance for bots if we (as a society) are to trust any information coming from that platform. This is not to say that platforms that don't do these things should not exist but that we should not take them as seriously as we do today. Unfortunately, this completely goes against the business model of many of these social media companies.
https://weburbanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/curtiss-a...
It's a new thing on the internet because the people who grew up here thought we'd be safe from the people who made our lives hell before university for not fitting in.
Unfortunately the unwashed masses came in and took over and are now throwing us out because we don't act like how they expect us to act.
That Stallman got cancelled for being right while everyone else who took money from a pedophile rapist got away should tell you all you need to know about the state of the internet.
Now it's Godzilla stomping through Seattle.
It is magnified vastly by social media. That makes a big difference.
And 10x that power when the engines of social media are in the hands of the cancellers, as appears to be the case.
Further - it was pretty scary getting cancelled by my parents and community when I came out. I’m glad it wasn’t scary for you.
The present, much greater, scariness in no way diminishes the prior scariness.
And it was, and is, scary for many many more than just the "gays". Get some perspective here.
Cancel culture remains a thing. Apparently now that folks aren't just being cancelled for supporting gay marriage, the free exchange of ideas is suddenly important. The outright hypocrisy of so many on this issue is the biggest story.
Edit: Forgot to mention this extreme example of cancel culture:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/professor-who-wore-hijab-...
A professor was cancelled because she wore a hijab. There was no outrage at all from the usual suspects.