I believe that part of the reason is the fact that they became the whipping boys/girls of the religious political machine and pushed back. Remember the "gay agenda"? Well, here we are. Backlash. But also they figured out how to band together and support one another instead of remaining in the proverbial closet and therefore in isolation.
Hard to say, although as with so much else a lot of the howling comes from white liberals rather than the group themselves. Just like it seems to have been the case for ages that white liberals have taken it upon themselves to decide what black people might find offensive (offending many along the way, by virtue of the inherent assumption that they can't decide for themselves if they are offended and speak up accordingly), now it seems there's just another group that we're all supposed to hate ourselves for failing to fully indulge in every way they may like. I guess the gay population is sufficiently large to make a noise, and the QUILTBAG alphabet soup lumps all sorts of disparate groups together under a single growing umbrella, so it's not just a tiny fraction of a percent of the population making a fuss.
A generous estimation of the gays put's them between 2 - 4 % of the total population. They are a tiny fraction. Even if they were only half of a percentage point I wouldn't want to see them persecuted, harassed or whatever. But it's like I can't go a single day without hearing about them in some form of media or context - or in a church - and it's baffling.
I'm like Hoke in Driving Ms. Daisy... "Now, Miss Daisy, I'm a ___ year old man. I knows when I has to make water. So, I'm just going to go off over yonder and do what I got to do, and that's all there is to it." I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would be concerned about the physical plumbing of anyone in any bathroom in the world. If I'm standing at a urinal and your giving me the eye, you are going to wake up with a nasty bruise and unpleasant memories. Regardless of what plumbing you have.
They are a small fraction but since they are one of the more recent additions to the list of people nobody is allowed to discriminate against (where apparently "discriminate against" increasingly means "do anything that even remotely risks upsetting any one of them") the howling begins. And it does seem that pitting homosexuals against a religion that believes homosexual acts are sinful seems like a good way to play the next stage of "divide and conquer", potentially getting rid of the church along the way (but of course it's OK for Islamic states to execute homosexuals because Islamophobia is presumably worse than homophobia, in the same way that not supporting Hillary Clinton was apparently sexist but the same people making that claim could refuse to support Sarah Palin because Not Being Racist trumps Not Being Sexist and Sarah Palin was a member of The Wrong Party so doesn't count) It seems to me that the endless threats of a discrimination lawsuit means everybody ends up walking on eggshells, trying to come up with the right form of words that is inclusive without being overly accepting and dancing around the issue of sinfulness. And all the while some fuss and worry about homosexuality while ignoring other forms of sinfulness that might strike a little closer to home. It's easy, as a straight man, to speak against homosexuality because the chances of that particular sin coming back to bite me are vanishingly small; to speak equally frankly against adultery is riskier because I never know when/whether I might end up condemned by my own words.
I think the concern is less about the plumbing of the person in the next cubicle doing whatever it is they need to do and more about the problem of a man simply walking into the ladies' room or changing room wanting to look at women in a state of partial or total undress, justifying his presence with an unverifiable and unfalsifiable claim that he feels female and therefore is female.
Why would any woman in any restroom be in a state of partial or total undress in public ever? Not in any woman's bathroom that I've ever been in, and sadly, I've been in several over the years! But that's another story!
Well, uhhhh.... certain garments need to be repositioned to perform the bodily functions typically performed in the restroom Seriously, one would expect the occupants of a restroom to restore their clothing to its usual position before leaving but, if the gaps between the panels in the ladies' restroom is anything like the men's rooms I've been in the US one wonders why they even bother putting a door on at all. I know I'm taller than most but it does seem rather pointless erecting a stall around the - er - seated facility when the guy at the standing facility right next to it can see over the top. The "partial or total undress" applies more in changing rooms, for reasons that should be pretty obvious...
Personally, I think less about prying eyes than I do about being overpowered walking into or out of a stall. It's all fine and well for a guy to cold-cock another one over the "eye," but if we're talking about a 240 pound dude taking advantage of inclusive laws to get into the ladies room for nefarious physical purposes, I'm in trouble.
Laws won't make it any easier than it already is for some evil person to do that. Mr. Smith and his partner Wesson are good suggestions. It's a shame their friends Heckler and Koch never seem to get invited. On the unrelated subject of guns, the good ole' m240 is a portable solution that would seem to get the job done.
True that somebody with those intentions can already do it and they have done it, but now it seems like we've given them an open invitation. There's no reason to sneak around when you can just walk right in.
I think that's the key thing. One would hope in times gone by that security (either store security, mall security or the police if needed) would remove the 250lb dude with a beard standing around in the ladies room watching everybody. Now it seems he can say he's female and nobody can do anything about it. Perhaps Smith & Wesson may help but unless you could convince a jury you were in fear of imminent sexual assault (as opposed to merely being watched which, however disturbing, doesn't pose an immediate physical danger) the chances are you'd end up in a really bad place yourself.
Having not walked into a ladies room, recently, how often does a 250lb bearded guy just hang out in the ladies room?
I can't say from experience, having used the ladies room once in the last two years (on the basis the gents was locked and it was either that or just find a corner). I don't suppose it is something that happens very often, but I also don't suppose it's something that has to happen very often for it to be quite unsettling for those who experience it. For me the issue isn't so much that it doesn't happen very often (rape, murder, burglary etc don't happen very often either) but that if it does happen there seems to be precious little anyone can do about it any more.
Some days I alternate between annoyed or amused in regards to how completely stupid a country the United States has become. 20 years ago, 10 years ago, hell, 5 years ago, I would have never imagined we'd be debating as a society if human beings with a penis should be using the "men's bathroom" or the "women's bathroom." And here we are. Stupid. Completely stupid...