There is a frightening new version of homophobia pervading the U.S., disguised as, of all things, "LGBTQ" activism. For adult gay people like me, it's clear that this activism does not advance our equality, but in fact compromises our ability to live peacefully in society. In fact, it is threatening our very existence.

I was, I quickly learned, not the right kind of "queer." I was just another "cis" (short for "cisgender," a word I had never even heard until it was assigned to me, typically as a slur) gay male—in other words, a privileged and unevolved relic of the past. After all, I had my rights—the right to marry, the right to serve openly in the military, the right to assimilate into this oppressive, "cisheteronormative," patriarchal society. It was time to make way for a new generation of "queer," one that had very little to do with sex-based rights and more to do with abolishing the concepts of sex and sexuality altogether.

Within liberaldom right now you literally cannot know, outside of private conversation, whether someone is fully [excited about the explosion of young people identifying as “trans” or “queer”, ambivalent about it, or concerned]. There is a gap between what people are willing to say in public and what they really think that’s unprecedented on any controversial issue I have seen.

This — call it discretion, if you want — is partly voluntary, based on a desire to be a good ally, to show maximal kindness, and not give any aid and comfort to conservatives, Republicans, Ron DeSantis.

Every systematic review of evidence to date… has found the evidence for mental-health benefits of hormonal interventions for minors to be of low or very low certainty. By contrast, the risks are significant and include sterility, lifelong dependence on medication and the anguish of regret. For this reason, more and more European countries and international professional organizations now recommend psychotherapy rather than hormones and surgeries as the first line of treatment for gender-dysphoric youth.

Ollie Davies was 26 years old and at the lowest ebb of his life when he made a decision to come out as a trans woman.

“I think there is a massive population of people who actually don’t have gender dysphoria who are now either being pushed toward or themselves being drawn toward this gender affirmative care pathway,” he says.

“It has infiltrated the culture, it comes from doctors, it comes from the school curriculum, it comes from the media, it comes from ­social media, it comes from the peak LGBTQIA+ organisations and the marketing that they put out, it’s everywhere, telling you if you don’t feel like you fit the stereotype, you might be trans. For me, it felt like I’d pretty much been involved in a cult.”

A controversial NHS clinic that led the way in prescribing puberty blockers to children who questioned their gender is being shut down.

The gender identity development service at Tavistock & Portman NHS trust will close next spring after a review found that it was not a “safe or viable long-term option”.

The clinic in north London has been accused of rushing teenagers into life-altering treatment on hormone-blocking drugs. Legal experts said the trust could now be sued by patients who felt they did not receive the right treatment.

Gay men spent decades fighting for legal rights and social acceptance — but some far left circles now consider them insufficiently radical. Consequently, there has been an emerging “woke homophobia” that denigrates gay men and attempts to minimize their role in LGBTQ history. This new strain of homophobia shows how woke advocacy for minority rights is often politically conditional — ”We will fight for you, so long as you adopt our ideology.”

There is much debate today about transgender treatment, especially for young people. Others might feel differently about their choices, but I know now that I wasn’t old enough to make that decision. Given the strong cultural forces today casting a benign light on these matters, I thought it might be helpful for young people, and their parents, to hear what I wish I had known.

I once believed that I would be more successful finding love as a woman than as a man, but in truth, few straight men are interested in having a physical relationship with a person who was born the same sex as them. In high school, when I experienced crushes on my male classmates, I believed that the only way those feelings could be requited was if I altered my body.

I shudder to think of how distorting today’s social media is for confused teenagers. I’m also alarmed by how readily authority figures facilitate transition.

The court was correct to halt a disturbing trend among clinicians to assume those as young as 10 were fit to make life-altering decisions about gender identity.

Any questioning of the gender-affirming model – and the role that trauma, internalised hostility to same-sex attraction or misleading online material may play in gender dysphoria in teenagers – is dismissed as transphobic. This is a chilling state of affairs that is detrimental to child safety.