Every time the LGBT community suffers a significant political loss, such as HERO in Houston or California's Prop 8, or ENDA in the US Congress, one can count on a campaign to drop the T from the end of LGB.

This time it takes the form of a Change.org petition. The petition so far has 1229 signatories.

We are a group of gay/bisexual men and women who have come to the conclusion that the transgender community needs to be disassociated from the larger LGB community; in essence, we ask that organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, Lambda Legal and media outlets such as The Advocate, Out, Huff Post Gay Voices, etc., stop representing the transgender community as we feel their ideology is not only completely different from that promoted by the LGB community (LGB is about sexual orientation, trans is about gender identity), but is ultimately regressive and actually hostile to the goals of women and gay men.

So far there have been public rejections from GLAAD, HRC, and the Advocate.

GLAAD responded as follows:

GLAAD stands firmly with the transgender community and unequivocally rejects the outrageous and destructive idea that the ‘T’ be removed from LGBT. For decades, transgender people have worked alongside lesbian, gay, and bisexual people to advance equality for everyone, often leading the way in the movement for full equality and acceptance. Many trans people are also lesbian, gay, and bisexual — they are an inextricable and invaluable part of the LGB community. At a time when anti-LGBT activists continue to attack the basic rights and protections essential to all of our lives, we must stand together, rather than succumb to the ruin of divisiveness.

--GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis

HRC was equally eloquent:

This is unequivocally wrong. The hate that killed Matthew Shepard killed Zella Ziona. The bullies at school aren't just harassing the gay kids, they're harassing the transgender kids. The parents who could provide loving homes for the 400,000 children in foster care aren't only lesbian parents, or gay parents, they're bisexual parents and transgender parents. This idea that we are somehow separate and apart is patently untrue. We are one movement, stronger in our unity. We are one community, period. And the Human Rights Campaign will not be done working until equality reaches every single one of us.

The petition, authored by an anonymous avatar simply identified on Change.org as "Drop the T," recycles several anti-trans arguments often advanced by so-called Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminists, or TERFs. The petition claims to come from "a group of gay/bisexual men and women who have come to the conclusion that the transgender community needs to be disassociated from the larger LGB community.

After arguing that trans people do not belong in a movement of LGB people because "LGB is about sexual orientation, trans is about gender identity," the petition highlights several recent controversies where TERFs squared off with trans people and supporters over inclusion and language.

The petition even recycles the transphobic myth that successfully felled the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance this week, claiming that letting trans people use the bathroom that matches their gender identity would lead to men "pretending" to be transgender to gain access to women-only spaces and harass or assault women and children.

--Sunnivie Brydum, The Advocate

The issue which the petition's authors deem "most troubling," however, revolves around trans-affirming health care for young people. The petition alleges that trans people are "persuading parents and health professionals to diagnose children as young as four as transgender." Parents and doctors affirming the proclaimed gender identity of children from a young age, the authors contend, actually "runs counter to traditional LGB and feminist philosophy — whereas feminists and gay men/women advocate for expanding and re-defining gender concepts, the trans movement is regressive, insisting upon re-asserting and codifying classic gender concepts of what is masculine and what is feminine.

--Brydum

A responding petition has been initiated if you are so inclined. So far it has been signed by 765 people.

We find the petition by ‘Drop the T’ to be insulting, inaccurate and transphobic and we want to make it clear that this narrow group of people do not speak for the LGBTQ+ community as a whole.

We do not wish the rest of the LGBTQ+ community to be associated with any group of people who seek to spread such intolerance and wilful ignorance. It is inaccurate and harmful and feeds into a dangerous rhetoric that seeks to perceive trans people as a ‘threat’. Such views encourage a corresponding increase in threats and violence towards trans people. We unequivocally object to this.

Arguing for the division is Gamergate's Milo Yiannopoulos of the UK, who goes further as writes, "Frankly, the whole LGBT edifice needs to come down. What have gay men got in common with lesbians? We hate each other!"