Out! Raleigh Pride 2022 (c) John Suddath
June is Pride Month with parades and festivals all across the nation. While we have much to celebrate in progress in recent decades, the backlash is disturbing. The radical right has moved beyond protests to efforts to disrupt our celebrations with violence. What is even more disturbing, was the recent revelation that many of the corporations that support Gay Pride also donate millions in contributions to legislators on the radical right. In North Carolina, the celebrations have spread beyond the major cities to the suburbs and smaller towns. The North Carolina General Assembly tried to mimic some of the restrictive legislation recently passed in other states, but that appears to have been tabled for now thanks to the efforts of Equality NC. Lambda Legal recently won a case challenging North Carolina’s exclusion of gender affirming health care for trans state employees.
In 2022, Florida got most of the notoriety, but more than 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in 36 state legislatures. In eight states, these bills have been signed into law. Clearly the Republicans are using us as a wedge issue in the mid-term campaigns. Transgender folks are getting the worst of the attacks. Whether the issue is participation in sports, health care during transitioning, or gender identity, the political knives are being used to hurt people.
Florida is targeting LGTQ+ kids with laws that would shame, bully, and stigmatize them. It is not about parental rights; it’s about censorship and mandates of whether public schools can allow their teachers the right to teach or for trans kids to participate in sports. Teachers, who already are stressed, are now put at risk of legal action for even discussing gender issues in the classroom. What’s happening in Florida is only one example of what more than 200 proposed laws in other states are doing in the “culture wars” agenda of the radical right. It is part of the strategy to use gender identity as a wedge issue in their political gamesmanship.