Weaponized at Home, Dismissed Abroad: The Left’s Silence on Hamas, the Mullah Regime, and Islamic Fundamentalist Violence Against LGBT People

I am a member of the LGBT community. I grew up in an openly gay household in the 1980s. I volunteered in the AIDS vaccine trials from 1998–2002. I am bisexual. I am also a United States Army veteran and a public policy analyst. I do not define myself by any single one of those facts — but none of them are negotiable parts of who I am. Because of that lived experience, I want to be clear about why I hold the positions I do. My issue is not with equal protection under the law. I have consistently supported equal treatment. What I object to — and what I have directly witnessed and experienced — is the political co-opting of the challenges facing LGBT people as a means of redefining us around a warped and reductionist version of our sexuality.

Identity politics, as it is practiced by the hard left, collapses a whole human being into one characteristic and then weaponizes that characteristic against political opponents. It redefines us not as full individuals — veterans, parents, professionals, people of faith, people of none, conservatives, liberals, independents — but as a voting bloc and a tactical instrument.

I have personally experienced the consequences of rejecting that framework. I have been harassed, ostracized, and labeled for disagreeing with the prevailing narrative. I have watched members of my own community be treated as traitors simply for holding center-right or religious liberty positions. That is not inclusion. That is ideological enforcement.

There is also a cost to this weaponization that the hard left rarely acknowledges. When LGBT identity is used as a political cudgel, it deepens polarization and social mistrust. It reinforces the perception that we are not citizens seeking equal protection, but activists seeking to compel cultural submission. That perception harms the very people it claims to protect.

Equally troubling is the lefts selective application of "moral outrage".

We see the radical lefts relentless activism domestically against religious bakers, small businesses, or cultural conservatives. Yet there is near silence from many of these same radical leftists regarding the execution, imprisonment, and brutalization of LGBT individuals by Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations and by regimes such as the Iranian mullah regime that governs Iran. In direct contradiction to the false narrative pushed by the radical left criticizing those Islamic terrorist and their rogue regime patrons' is not the same as "condemning all Muslims."

The urgency of this position is especially clear in the current moment. We are witnessing radicalized leftist that have forcefully occupied the LGBT activist sphere and engaged in performative outrage under banners such as “LGBT for Hamas,” while maintaining deafening silence about the documented execution, imprisonment, and torture of gay individuals by Hamas and by the mullah regime that occupies Iran.

In direct opposition to the selective / performative outrage demonstrated by the left to maintain any level of logical and moral consistency regarding claims to advocate for the safety and dignity of LGBT people, that advocacy cannot be selectively applied based on whether the perpetrators align with a preferred geopolitical narrative. Young gay men have been executed in Iran. LGBT individuals are persecuted under Islamist extremist rule. Silence in those cases, paired with loud moral posturing domestically, exposes superficial nature of the lefts outrage.

My position has always been rooted in equal protection under law, constitutional order, and mutual liberty — not preferential treatment, not compelled participation, and not selective outrage. I will not allow myself to be reduced to a single political function. I am not a mascot for any party. I am not a weapon against religious Americans.

I am not a prop in a culture war. I am a member of the LGBT community who believes in equal rights, free speech, religious liberty, and intellectual honesty — all at the same time. Those principles are not contradictions. They are the foundation of a free society. And I will not stay silent about that.

Jeffrey Damien Cappella

President Soldiers to Statesmen Foundation

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