Unfortunately, the answer seems to be that the left has to somehow overtake mainstream liberal institutions in pro-gay/Trans rights messaging but that hardly seems possible.

This is indeed the answer - recognizing LGBT rights is an easy way to prevent that CIA-backed NGOs use them as a front to agitate. Repression of the queer community pushes us to side with whoever offers us the chance of survival. It is the repression itself that creates this risk. This was why the DDR legalized gay sex and why it was so ahead of its time in regards to trans rights (Germany still has more restrictive name and gender change laws today than the DDR): The Stasi recognized that there was a massive potential to blackmail queer people with the threat of a forced outing and "flip" them. That happened all the time in the mid 20th century, navy admirals in West Germany were still sacked for being gay in the 1980s. So the DDR did the pragmatic thing and removed that blackmailing potential, because they recognized that it is impossible to remove queer people. We'll always be around, accepting that is the only rational response.

LGBT rights are very definitely not inevitably linked to neoliberalism, quite to the contrary. Neoliberalism can only pay lip service to our cause, it will always favor an assimilationist, invisible queer existence full of internalised queerphobia that does not offend the reactionary sensibilities of the bourgeois class and their clerico-fascist allies. Neoliberalism elevates a privileged minority of cis-passing trans people while ridiculing those of us who will always be visibly trans because we didn't luck out in the genetic lottery. It cannot do otherwise in a society were looks are part of your economic value, capitalism will always be judgemental in that regard. It will grant us advances that are cost-neutral, like marriage equality, legally recognizing our gender identities or using us for PR campaigns, but it will always struggle to go beyond that and also meet our material needs - neoliberalism gives us access to gender-affirming care, but will not provide it as a human right like Cuba does. The hoops i have to jump through even here in Europe to just go on HRT or get voice training are ridiculous, and if i ever want to live without having to shave my tits every day, i will pay for that completely out of pocket in spite of "socialized health care". Bottom surgery that is up to today's medical standards will also only be covered partially by my insurance, meaning i have to pay a 4-digit sum myself if i ever want a vagina that does not require lube. Meanwhile, Cuba just trained an entire team of ten surgeons in gender-affirming procedures, they are now able to help trans people all over LatAm to get otherwise unaffordable treatments for free. Only socialism can achieve that much. The same goes for other areas were queer people are materially pushed to the margins, such as homelessness. Nobody in the US is at such a high risk of becoming homeless as queer people. Neoliberalism cannot solve that, because it is incompatible with the obvious solution of giving free housing to a gay kid who just got kicked out by their evangelical parents. Neoliberalism dreads to protect trans people from getting fired by their transphobic boss because that infringes on the boss's property rights. Neoliberalism only sees the option to performatively wave a pride flag for one month a year to pinkwash itself, but it will never confront the many, many rich and powerful enemies that we have. It will point the finger at Russia, but it has done nothing against the rampant homophobia in Poland, as Poland is a good little lapdog of Amerika. It will wring its hands about how some decision from China may be read as disrespecting gay rights while applauding the monarchy in Qatar, where torture and forced conversion "therapy" of LGBT people are an everyday occurence, as it desperately needs Qatars LNG now. It will highlight how queer people are threatened with death in Iran, but when an Iranian trans woman flees to my country, she gets denied asylum, gets denied medical treatment and gets deadnamed every time she has to confront our racist buerocracy until she publicly sets herself on fire because she has lost all hope (that's an actual, real life example how neoliberal Germany dealt with a trans refugee from Iran while performatively condemning the state she fled from - rest in power, Ela Bayan).

And most queer people are painfully aware of all of these injustices. We know that this system does not give the tiniest fuck about us, and if we connect the dots we can easily extrapolate that this is because our system does not care about human beings in the first place, and because it routinely bankrolls queerphobes who naturally align with capital's interests as reactionaries tend to do. Capitalism always relies on people who love punching down, it will always love our enemies for that. Our existences are inherently radicalizing. Simply existing as a trans person in public is a revolutionary act. My existence can only be understood properly through the lens of viewing it as a struggle for the most basic material need, a body i can safely and comfortably inhabit, and i have to fight against a capitalist healthcare system and a patriarchal superstructure with every step i take on the road towards that goal. When socialist orgs reject that because Stalin and Mao, unfortunately, were as homophobic as most people in the 1950s were, when they mistake such reactionary "birth marks" for core parts of a communist value system instead of recognizing them as artifacts left over from the pre-revolutionary society, they give up on one of the angriest, most disappointed, politically most disenfranchised demographics that exists. That so many gay or trans people are radlibs is not due to liberalism being a perfect fit for us. It is due to a lack of choice, it is because many people in my community get the feeling that nobody else even pretends to do anything for us. It is out of hopelessness. But there is hope for us, and it comes in the form of getting back to the point were in a confrontation with the forces of reaction, we are the ones who are throwing the bricks again. Fuck assimilation. Revolution is the only thing that will get us the lifes we deserve and it is high time the "culturally conservative" far left does some self crit, understands that and closes the ranks by not recoiling from us when we offer to stand shoulder to shoulder with all other oppressed people.