BTW if you or anyone in this thread do not know of how this all started check out the Metcalf sniper attacks[0]. Basically suspiciously after a weakness in power infrastructure was identified it was exploited.
The purpose of these laws is making it impossible to exist as a trans person in public. The playbook is to 1) suggest that wearing gender nonconforming clothing as in drag shows is inherently sexualized (not true) and thus doing so around children is inappropriate and then 2) outlaw "drag shows" around children because many conservatives and cops can't tell the difference between a person in drag and a trans person, so it gives cops plausible deniability to harass trans people (even more than they already do).
In parallel there's a massive ongoing social media campaign equating being publicly LGBT with pedophilia, which is an old trope that I thought had died off in the US but has sadly resurfaced.
This situation is extremely dangerous for trans people and it's going to be dangerous for gays and lesbians too if it succeeds. Major conservative Christian groups have stated publicly that they think gay rights are too entrenched to attack right now, so the plan is to try to divide the "T" from "LGB", go after trans people, and then build up the public appetite to roll back gay rights again.
Many of the most impassioned activists who are against including the T with the LGB are themselves part of the latter. Groups such as the LGB Alliance have formed in recent years as a direct reaction to the forced teaming of the LGB and the T.
Partly this is to dissociate themselves from the bad reputation that mainstream LGBT activists are giving the movement. The drag shows for children are part of this. Really, this really should have nothing at all to do with being gay, or trans for that matter, yet it's being promoted and defended by various LGBT activist groups.
But the main reason to separate the LGB out from the T is because having one's sexuality rewritten from being same-sex attracted to same-gender, as has happened with this ideological change that centers gender identity instead of sex, is a quite offensive form of erasure.
By and large, lesbian women (female) aren't romantically or sexually interested in transwomen (male). And the same for gay men (male) and transmen (female). From an shared activism point of view, it makes little sense for the LGB to be stuck with this modern incarnation of the T.
