Black Lives Matter’s Agenda is About More than Race

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on The Hill’s website.

“Black Lives Matter is a radical social intervention.”

That’s a direct quote from Black Lives Matter’s website.

While the media have typically focused on Black Lives Matter’s assertions of societal racism and systemic police brutality, they have largely ignored the movement’s LGBTQ agenda.

One of the “guiding principles” of Black Lives Matter states: “We are committed to…doing the work required to dismantle cis-gender privilege and uplift Black trans folk…”

Another principle explains: “We are committed to fostering a queer-affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking or, rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual unless s/he or they disclose otherwise.”
Yet Black Lives Matter’s LGBTQ agenda extends far beyond normalizing all permutations of sexuality. Black Lives Matter also advocates redefining the family.

“We are committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, and especially ‘our’ children to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable,” the group states.

The fact that so many otherwise well-informed Americans remain unaware of Black Lives Matter’s goal to revolutionize the structure of society proves the media consistently fails to report the entirety of BLM’s goals and agenda.

Describing Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors, the founders of the movement, the Black Lives Matter website says, “all are U.S.-based black feminists, all are seasoned organizers, Cullors and Garza identify as queer…”

Cullors says on her website, “I am happy I have an amazing partner who is queer and trans and Black and brilliant.” Her biography identifies her as, “A self-described wife of Harriet Tubman.

According to The New Yorker, Garza is “a black queer female married to a trans male.”

The movement openly supports transgender involvement: “We are committed to embracing and making space for trans brothers and sisters to participate and lead.”

Blacklivesmatter.com explains that “Justice as imagined by its organizers is not only about ending anti-black racism. Visions of true justice must include freedom for black people who are queer, transgender, formerly or presently incarcerated, undocumented or facing any number of other challenges.”

However, Americans already possess the liberty to live transgender or queer lifestyles, so what additional “freedom” does “justice” require? The ultimate goal of the LGBTQ agenda does not end with legalization, but with societal transformation.

Numerous words and phrases scattered throughout blacklivesmatter.com reveal the movement’s design-your-own-gender mentality, including terms like “trans women, gender non-conforming, femmes, same-gender-loving,” “actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression” and “gender spectrum.”

Black Lives Matter even adopted an altered spelling of a word in order to promote its LGBTQ agenda. After the Orlando terror attack, the group published an article titled, “In Honor of Our Dead: Latinx, Queer, Trans, Muslim, Black — We Will Be Free.” The word “Latinx” is a “gender-inclusive” form of the word Latino/Latina.

Promoting an online event called the “#SayHerName National Day of Action,” Black Lives Matter explained on its Facebook page that, “On this day, we are standing in solidarity with all Black women (cis and trans), girls, and femmes in efforts to shed light on the abuse that they endure under systems of anti-Black misogyny.”

The sheer volume of easily accessible information available about Black Lives Matter’s radical LGBTQ agenda proves that the media are either stunningly incompetent or they’re willfully ignoring this story. Either way, many news outlets have failed the American people by severely underreporting this information.

Black Lives Matter proclaims its LGBTQ agenda across its website, so if this is the first time you’ve ever heard any of this, remember to thank the media.

Alex Nitzberg is an intern at the American Journalism Center at Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia. Follow him on Twitter @alexnitzberg, on Facebook and Instagram.

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