As Pride month comes to an end, we must counter growing threats to the LGBTQ+ community.
by Emily Kay
Pride Month should be festive and jubilant. Instead, the Covid-19 pandemic and internal politics involving a lack of diversity have shut down Boston’s Pride parade for the past two years. Meanwhile, an epidemic of anti-LGBTQ legislation spreading across the country has cast a pall over what should be a joyful celebration of diversity.
Stonewall Riots
Pride Month stems from political activism after cops raided the Stonewall Inn – a gay bar in Greenwich Village – at the end of June 1969. After constant onslaughts on gay bars by police, the patrons fought back. There were days of protests and riots, with transgender and Black people leading the way.
The first Gay Pride parades took place in several large cities the next year, though they inexcusably excluded lesbians, trans women, and people of color. We’ve made progress since then – with Pride celebrations becoming more inclusive. Today more trans and people of color occupy positions of leadership in Pride groups, which are also striving to ensure disabled and people of all income levels and backgrounds have easy access to on-site and online events.
However, hatred still threatens the civil rights of LGBTQ+ people. Our community remains under a never-ending siege of Republican legislation that would, among other steps backward, withhold gender-affirming and life-saving health care from trans youth. As physical attacks grow more violent — especially for people of color, trans, and non-binary citizens — “the fight for collective, intersectional, and inclusive liberation” continues, according to MoveOn.org.
Don’t Say Gay
Gov. Ron DeathSantis’ police state, formerly known as Florida, leads the way in anti-gay hysteria. In March, the callous, far-right bully who’s actually out-Trumping the twice-impeached, one-term former president, signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill – which prohibits classroom discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity through the third grade.
In the name of “parental rights,” and as an own-the-libs tactic in his escalating war on “wokeness,” DeathSantis is doing everything he can — including going after Mickey Mouse and banning books — to cancel LGBTQ+ people and our history. In addition to letting parents determine school curricula, and shelving math text books (!) that supposedly “indoctrinate” kids, DeathSantis encourages mom and dad to sue school districts that they believe breach the law.
Not wanting to be left out of the anti-gay sweepstakes, more than 20 other copycat states have introduced upwards of 320 anti-LGBTQ+ bills, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Ohio’s state legislature has actually passed a “genital exam” bill, under which anyone — including a parent with a kid on an opposing team, an LGBTQ+ hater, or any other lunatic-fringe individual — can compel girls and young women on their school teams to undergo invasive tests to verify their genders.
As Goes Roe v. Wade, So Goes Bodily Autonomy
And let’s not forget the terrifying daddy of all terrorist attacks on our rights, which will cause undue pain for the LGBTQ+ community as well as so many others: the Supreme Court’s pending decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. As my wife and CI’s own Anita Saville noted recently, SCOTUS’ expected action “opens the door to a national ban on abortions [as well as] bans on contraception, equal marriage, interracial marriage, and so much more.”
MoveOn.org agreed, noting: “The GOP’s latest all-out attacks, from restrictions to full-out bans on trans athletes to bans on abortion at fertilization to bans on gender-affirming care, are all about bodily autonomy — and are fundamentally connected…And Republicans have no intention of slowing down these attacks.”
Indeed, such loathsome and hateful legislation and rhetoric that accuses us and our supporters of abusing and “grooming” children have deadly, real-world consequences for our community.
Exhibit A: The evil, MAGAt-endorsed South Carolina congressional candidate who espouses the arrest and EXECUTION of anyone supporting LGBTQ+ and trans kids.
Exhibits B, C, D…: The 31 Patriot Front members arrested for conspiracy to riot near a recent Pride event in Idaho typify the many white-supremacist, domestic-terrorist groups aiming to disrupt and threaten such occasions.
Even with these brutal and inhuman efforts to deny us our full rights, we must find comfort and cheer where we can if we’re to maintain our sanity and continue to fight for equality for all. Which is why Pride Month is critical to the LGBTQ+ community. With no Pride Parade in Boston, for example, cities and towns throughout the state offered their own versions — like Lexington’s Pride Picnic and Boston’s Pop-Up Pride.
Rise Up and Fight Back
Activism will remain a crucial component of Pride Month, too. In the 1980s and ‘90s, Pride Month focused on the horror of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In recent decades, Pride Month has drawn attention to progressive issues such as marriage equality and racial justice. With police continuing to brutalize people of color, Pride leaders in some locales, including New York, have prohibited the participation of police and corporations that LGBTQ+ organizations deem damaging to the community.
Much as the courageous Stonewall Inn participants did more than half a century ago, we must organize; sign petitions; elect progressive Democrats; and demand that our local, state, and federal representatives join the battle by enacting laws to protect us all.
Biden Signs Pro-LGBTQ+ Executive Order
Averring that “pride is back at the White House,” President Biden signed an executive order in mid-June to thwart discrimination against transgender youth and ban the use of federal funds for “conversion therapy.”
The order does not, however, prohibit discrimination against people based on sexual orientation and gender identity, as the U.S. House-passed Equality Act would. That legislation has, of course, stalled in the Senate.For more information on what we can do to combat LBGTQ+ hatred, and support our youth especially, check out MoveOn’s Generation Rainbow page.
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