‘The End of the Gay Rights Revolution’ is a heartfelt attempt by an insider to honestly assess the movement. Yet as he points toward sexual autonomy as an essential good, McCrea demonstrates why unfettered freedom can never be the lodestar for personal and societal well-being. He worries about external backlash, but the evidence shows that the problems come from within the movement itself.

Several years ago, a young man experiencing same-sex attraction asked me for counsel. He’d heard a sermon at his church that, while not affirming homosexual sex, described those identifying as LGBTQ+ as if they’re a category of people, as a matter of being. He was anxious to know if, as a professing Christian, he should accept that he’s LGBTQ+ and join the LGBTQ+ community.

I sympathized with him; young people are inundated with confusing messages pertaining to sexuality. I explained to him that he’s a man created in God’s image. As one raised to new life in Christ, he should let that direct his sexual desires and conduct. Thus, his sexual desire for men neither defines nor governs him. As he listened, his distress and anxiety diminished. The burdens our society had imposed on him, unwittingly affirmed by his church, were lifted, and he left our time grateful and hopeful, with a path forward in Christ.

Dramatic shifts in our culture’s understanding of sexuality and identity have been promoted, despite their harms, as an unmitigated good. So it’s intriguing when a champion of the LGBTQ+ movement recognizes the damage the ideology has caused. That’s what makes Ronan McCrea’s book The End of the Gay Rights Revolution: How Hubris and Overreach Threaten Gay Freedom important.

According to McCrea, professor of constitutional and European law at University College London, “the Gay Rights Revolution” achieved a “comprehensive and decisive” triumph (5). While he celebrates that triumph, McCrea worries it’s imperiled. He’s especially concerned that the movement’s excesses will lead to its self-destruction. Yet he fails to recognize that what he sees as internal threats are the inescapable consequences of the sexual revolution.

Illiberalism and Intolerance

It’s no surprise McCrea sees anything that might encroach on sexual autonomy as a threat to the gay rights revolution. Thus, he argues, “Gay freedom will be particularly vulnerable to any broader cultural changes that move society in a more conservative direction” (37).

The sexual revolution’s steep costs—especially to young women—are leading to the loss of “fulfillment of people’s plans in terms of family and children” (76). While expressing some sympathy, McCrea explains away much of this dissatisfaction, claiming that “some people just prefer order and conformity to freedom and experimentation” (77).

While suspicion of conservatives is to be expected, one of McCrea’s concerns is intolerance coming from the LGBTQ+ movement. For example, he warns against the “increasing tendency to require active validation of homosexuality” (83). He notes that such demands “run counter to some of the liberal principles that gay-rights advocates relied on to get their movement off the ground” (84).

There’s internal conflict within McCrea’s perspective. For example, he considers any opposition to imposing sexual and gender ideology through curriculum in schools a “worrying sign” (64). The gay rights revolution claimed “the classical liberal claim of a right to be left alone” (83), yet the movement that had same-sex marriage as its ultimate goal could never accept a “live and let live” approach. McCrea advocates for space for peaceful coexistence, yet the terms of that coexistence seem tenuous.

Demolition of Sex Reality

McCrea also worries about the denial of male-female sex differences. Yet he fails to recognize that arguments for same-sex marriage result in the conclusion that sex differences don’t matter.

The demand for the recognition of same-sex marriage, which was at the heart of the gay rights movement, was empowered by the insistence that defining marriage as only a male-female union is morally defective.

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