LGBT as a word became known after the Stonewall riots (follow the reference for the story), where police came to crack down on a known gay/trans bar and it ended up with the clients barricading themselves inside the bar and throwing bricks at cops.

LGBT identities have always existed whether they had a name or not. They didn’t suddenly pop up in the 1990s.

You’re actually playing into the western bourgeoisie’s hand when you say that they created it and are trying to force it upon other cultures because it keeps you fighting your fellow proletariat. In many places non-binary gender identities (non-male and non-female) were commonly accepted until Christian missionaries came over. Uganda, which has recently destroyed all protections for gay people and made it a severe crime, did so because US missionaries funded by the FOX company (of FOX News) ran TV channels in the country that promoted anti-gay propaganda.

Yes, the CIA ran an ad with a “queer woman of color” proud of serving in the CIA. Yes, the US military likes to write biographies of their LGBT soldiers and officers. Yes, non-acceptance of LGBT rights is now used to separate the “us vs them” in geopolitics.

It doesn’t invalidate the identity as a whole though. This is a shortcut of lumping everyone into the same basket.

The bourgeoisie is the one who decides to make the CIA and US Army ads featuring gay people and promoting how inclusive their imperialist murder machine is – everyone can become a murderer!

Man, it even helps them! I can picture Biden chuckling gleefully every time he sees one of those ads, because he knows it’s going to make gay rights look even more unappealing in the countries they’re invading. And don’t think he gives a fuck about gay rights because he voted to enshrine that marriage is between a man and a woman in 1996.

Don’t look at the opportunists for guidance. If you can do that for Marxists you can do that for LGBT identities. This shift in how LGBT identities are perceived serves two purposes for the bourgeoisie: 1, it makes them unappealing in the countries I mentioned. 2, it makes liberals cheer even harder for invasion.

But LGBT people exist and will exist regardless of what their country does. I’m a worker and I exist whether my country is imperialist or not (and it is). Their rights are important to them: the first thing people ask me when I talk about marxism is about LGBT rights in AES countries. It’s important in the same way the economy is important or labor rights are important to people. We don’t get to decide what’s important to the proletariat, they’ll tell us.

I won’t fault a prole for being homophobic if that’s all they know and have learned. I know I’m not going to change their minds by being combative or in one essay. It takes time and listening. But as communists we must hold ourselves to a higher standard.