Europe’s first LGBTQ+ youth support centre has reopened in Manchester after a massive redevelopment effort.
LGBTQ+ charity The Proud Trust unveiled its newly redeveloped centre, The Proud Place, on 27 May. It’s a place where LGBTQ+ people can access community groups, support workers, and a range of events to meet local peers.
The £2.4 million centre opened its doors after four years of development to the rapturous applause of Manchester patrons; its previous home of 20 years closed in 2020.
Among the crowd were It’s A Sin star Nathaniel Hall and Schuh managing director Colin Temple, who presided over its opening along with other Manchester dignitaries. Hall spoke about the “beautiful” new building during its opening, saying that “it feels like a place you can kick off your shoes and just relax”.
“The Proud Place is amazing – it’s so beautiful,” he said. “It’s the place that I definitely needed when I was 14, 15, 16 growing up and understanding my sexuality and navigating a homophobic world.
“To spend time with other people my age, like me, and grow and learn and connect would have been invaluable. Everyone needs to come down and experience it.”
The building spans three floors and will play host to activities, amenities and events that are free to apply or participate in for queer youth looking for a place to meet new people. With its new golden exterior, it’s hard to miss.
The Proud Trust CEO Lisa Harvey-Nebil said: “It’s an honour for The Proud Trust to take care of such an important building on behalf of Manchester’s LGBTQ+ community and we’re excited for this next chapter in our history.
“Our beautiful new home is such a far cry from the original building, which was built for privacy in the days when many people in our community were fearful of accessing service.”
Organisations such as Schuh, Amazon, Post Office, and Siemens funded The Proud Place’s renovations, buying corporate bricks and/or contributing other considerable expertise and financial support.
“Working with the Proud Trust helps us further understand the key issues for young LGBTQ+ people,” Schuh managing director Colin Temple said. “We want to continually educate ourselves and our teams, customers, and the wider community.”
The original building was constructed in the same Sidney Street location in 1988 and has been a pillar for Manchester LGBTQ+ youth for decades. Now, after waiting for its eventual refurbishment, service users such as Simone, 24, are ecstatic to see its return.
“It means so much to be here today,” Simone said during the opening. “To see it all finally complete, it very much feels like now everything can start.
“I first came to The Proud Trust as a young person to help me with getting employment, they supported me on my options, as I hadn’t been out long as a trans woman,” she continues. “Ever since then I have never looked back.”
Lord-lieutenant of Greater Manchester, Sir Warren Smith, attended the launch and spoke to the attending guests, saying: “This centre was the first of its kind in the whole of Europe when it first opened. It makes a real statement and should be something that Manchester is really proud of.
“I was the first openly gay lord-lieutenant in 500 years of history, I must admit it was a challenging route. I went through 40 years of being mocked. This organisation will eventually change that, and I am so proud to be a part of it.”
Support for same-sex marriage has reached an all-time high in the US, according to new polling.
Seventy-one per cent of Americans said they support same-sex marriage in Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs poll, released Wednesday (1 June).
This is one percentage point more than last year, and the highest level of support since Gallup began asking Americans about marriage equality in 1996. That year, just 27 per cent of Americans supported same-sex unions.
According to Gallup, the statistic reflects a “steady increase [of support]among most subgroups of the population, even those who have traditionally been the most resistant to gay marriage.”
Support for same-sex marriage reached a majority among adults aged 65 or older in 2016, protestants in 2017, and Republicans in 2021.
Weekly churchgoers remain the main outlier, with 58 per cent opposing same-sex marriage.
In contrast, as of 2004, Americans that almost never attend church are the predominant supporter of same-sex marriage.
As of 2022, 82 per cent of those who seldom/never attend church support gay marriage, while 70 per cent of monthly attendees are in support.
Overall, since 2011, the majority of Americans have backed same-sex marriage. It hit 60 per cent in 2015, just one month before the historic Obergefell V. Hodges decision by the Supreme Court that guaranteed the right to same-sex marriages.
“As Gallup’s trend on support for legal same-sex marriage inches ever upward, the question is when it will reach its ceiling,” the report said.
“Some observers of the Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion related to Roe V Wade in May have questioned whether an overturning of Roe would clear a path for the conservative-leaning court to also overturn Obergefell.”
“If this were to happen, the court would be moving in opposition to a public opinion trend that has shown increasing support,” it continued.
The poll is based on telephone interviews conducted every year to a random sample of 1,007 American adults, living in all 50 US states, as well as the District of Columbia. There is a 95 per cent confidence level in the report, with sampling errors at around ±4 percentage points.
The Taliban is using monkeypox as an “excuse” to harass and detain LGBTQ+ people in Afghanistan.
Two gay men who live in Kabul told PinkNews that the Taliban’s persecution of LGBTQ+ people has been ramping up ever since monkeypox started being detected in Europe.
While not sexually transmitted, public health officials believe monkeypox is being transmitted in these networks through close contact during sex – though experts have also suggested the statistics may be skewed towards queen men because they are more conscious of their sexual health.
Right now, Afghanistan has not officially recorded any cases of monkeypox – but that hasn’t stopped the Taliban from using the spread of the virus to crack down on and attack the LGBTQ+ community.
Monkeypox has emboldened the Taliban to ‘harass’ LGBTQ+ Afghans
Maalek*, a gay man living in Kabul, told PinkNews that the Taliban’s persecution of LGBTQ+ people has only worsened since the monkeypox outbreaks began.
“The Taliban have no scientific knowledge about the disease,” Maalek says. “The Ministry of Health has stated that no cases of the disease have been registered, yet they are still looking for excuses to harass the Afghan gay community.”
He continues: “Wherever they see handsome men wearing no local clothes, they check their cell phones and, if they find the slightest evidence that they are gay, they arrest them and take them away.
“When they detain homosexuals, [they tell the public it’s to] prevent the spread of monkeypox.”
According to Maalek, trans people are just as much at risk. If the Taliban finds a nude photo on a person’s phone, they will beat and detain them.
Being detained by the Taliban is a terrifying prospect for Maalek. He knows a gay man who was arrested and raped by six Taliban members.
“He now suffers from a mental illness and has fled Kabul,” Maalek says. “The Taliban do not like anyone to wear fashionable clothes. They threaten all homosexuals with death after being detained. They say they should wear local clothes, should not shave their beards and act as they wish.”
Trans people cannot even come out of their house.
Like most LGBTQ+ Afghans, Maalek has been forced to change his behaviour and the way he presents himself to the world in a bid to stay safe from the Taliban.
“We no longer go to beauty salons to cut our beards, we can not even cut our hair in a modern way. We can not wear stylish and acceptable clothes. Trans people cannot even come out of their house because they are arrested immediately.
“Personally, I go out in local clothes now. I do not bring my smartphone with me when I leave home. I try not to leave home without doing my homework. Their checkpoints are very dangerous.”
LGBTQ+ Afghans are ‘scared and miserable’
Maalek’s claim that the Taliban is cracking down on LGBTQ+ people ever since monkeypox started spreading in the community was backed up by another gay man who lives in Kabul.
Timur* thinks the Taliban is using the spread of the virus in other countries as another reason to “torture” LGBTQ+ people.
“I’m afraid in Afghanistan. I’m afraid of being arrested by the Taliban,” Timur says. “I’m not leaving home. I’m scared and miserable.
“I’m asking the big governments of London and other countries to help me and all LGBTQ+ people leave Afghanistan.”
Nemat Sadat – a gay Afghan author and activist who lives in the US – has also received reports that gay men are being “singled out” by the Taliban because of monkeypox.
“The Taliban are rounding up gay people on the grounds that homosexuals carry monkeypox,” Sadat tweeted.
“They are singling out pretty men and checking their phones. This operation is happening in the Lycée Mariam, Khairkhana neighbourhood and all the districts of Kabul.”
LGBTQ+ Afghans have been facing heightened persecution since the Taliban seized power in August 2021. Reports suggest that queer people have been killed, raped, beaten and arrested for arbitrary reasons ever since the takeover.
Ever since monkeypox was detected in the UK and other European countries in May, concerns have been raised about anti-LGBTQ+ stigma.
Health experts have said the virus appears to be predominantly circulating among gay and bisexual men, however, they are clear that it is not a “gay disease”.
It is believed that monkeypox is spread through close contact with an infected person’s skin, meaning that anybody is susceptible. Because of the way it is transmitted, it’s thought that monkeypox is working its way through sexual networks.
The World Health Organization (WHO) initially said the unusual spread of the virus posed a “low risk to the general public”, but that was upgraded to “moderate” at the end of May.
Officials said the risk could be upgraded to “high” if the virus spreads to those who are medically vulnerable, such as children and immunosuppressed people.
Late Wednesday night, Ohio Republicans passed a bill requiring certain high school and college athletes competing in women’s sports to have their genitals inspected to ensure that they are not transgender.
H.B. 61, known as the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” was intended to prevent transgender women and girls from participating in school athletics.
Under the Ohio High School Athletics Association’s (OHSAA) current guidelines, transgender women and girls must have completed a minimum of one year of hormone treatment and/or demonstrate that they do not possess physical or physiological advantages over “genetic females of the same age group.”
The new law would prohibit trans women and girls from competing with cisgender women and girls. What’s more, anyone would be able to accuse an athlete of being transgender, thus forcing her to undergo evaluations of her external and internal genitalia, testosterone levels and genetic makeup.
“This is truly bizarre medically and nonsensical, but looking at it practically, this bill means that if anyone decides to question a child’s true gender, that child must undergo a sensitive exam,” argues Democratic state Rep. Dr. Beth Liston.
Supporters of the new rules argue that trans women and girls possess unfair biological advantages over cisgender women and girls. Both Equality Ohio and OHSAA confirm that in the seven years since the current rules have been place, there has never been more than on transgender girl participating in girls’ high school sports in any given year.
What’s more, the new rules could have unintended consequences for cisgender girls “accused” of being trans as well. In addition to the invasive genital examinations, Bruno points out that, “Women will sometimes have more testosterone completely naturally than folks would prefer a transgender athlete to have. So they actually are functioning at a lower threshold for what they are allowed to have hormonally to compete.”
Though the bill was not on the state House legislators’ schedule, its language was included in an unrelated bill, H.B. 151, which would revise Ohio’s Teacher Residency Program. House Democrats and even some Republicans had not seen the bill at the time of the vote, according to local ABC affiliate News 5 Cleveland.
“Having this third bill now slipped into an unrelated bill at the last moment is just such an additional slap in the face to our entire community,” said Equality Ohio’s legislative policy director Maria Bruno. “I know that there are a lot of folks in the LGBTQ community who are sitting there asking themselves, ‘What did I do to them? because they keep coming after me’ and I can’t blame them for having that perspective. But the answer is nothing, just existing.”
Jerusalem Pride defied death threats and counterprotests to celebrate LGBTQ+ rights loudly and proudly.
Around 7,000 people attended the Jerusalem Pride march on Thursday (2 June), with 2022 marking the event’s 20th anniversary.
Knesset speaker Mickey Levy addressed the crowds, saying he was “shocked to the depths of my soul” by the threats.
“So I came today to stand against this evil specter,” he said, per The Times of Israel.
“You are entitled to love who you want, you are entitled to marry who you love, you are entitled to raise a family like anyone else. These are not privileges, these are basic rights for every citizen in the country.”
Israeli police arrested 10 people over suspicions that they were planning to harm marchers, according to The Times of Israel.
Police confirmed that they were monitoring a total of 180 people who could pose a threat to the event, to which 2,400 police officers were deployed following its history of anti-LGBTQ+ attacks.
Prior to the 2022 march, a vicious message was sent to an event organiser, Jerusalem Open House community director Emuna Klein Barnoy, saying: “We will not allow the Pride Parade to take place in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the Holy City. Shira Banki’s fate awaits you.”
In 2015, 16-year-old Shira Banki was stabbed to death while several others were wounded by an ‘ultra-Orthodox’ Jewish man, Yishai Shlissel, who ambushed the parade.
The threats were sent on Facebook and Twitter from an account called ‘The brothers of Yishai Schlissel’. The same message was also sent to pro-LGBTQ+ politicians Gilad Kariv, Naama Lazimi and Eitan Ginzburg.
Police have confirmed the arrest of a 21-year-old man named Yehuda Gedalia who is thought to have sent the messages.
Despite the threats of violence, attendees were still seen dancing and displaying LGBTQ+ flags in the streets of Jerusalem.
Alon Shachar, event organiser and CEO of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance, said: “In the 20 years we have been marching in Jerusalem, we have experienced violence, and even in 2022 there are those who are trying to push us out of the city.”
“We have nothing to be ashamed of. And Jerusalem – you have nothing to be ashamed of. Those who should be ashamed are all those who produce and allow such expressions of violence”.
Franz is struggling to comprehend how it’s been 100 days since Russia invaded Ukraine, kicking off a war that has dragged on for months.
“You know, I didn’t even realise it’s been 100 days already,” Franz, who is just 18 years old, tells PinkNews. “It doesn’t feel quite right that it’s already summer. Some part of me still expects to see snow outside the window each morning, as if it was all just February that never ended.”
Right now, Franz is in Slovakia, where he’s studying at university. He spends his days wondering where time is going – why the days seem to be slipping away from him.
“It’s like there was no spring at all,” he says. “Springs should be camera roll full of flowers, evening walks and studying frenzy. The start of summer should have been Pride marches and making plans and treasured time with friends and family in that short period of the year when everyone can finally catch a break.”
But there has been no break for the Ukrainian people. The war has raged on, with Putin refusing to relent, even in the face of fierce opposition from Ukraine.
In the 100 days since Russia invaded, an estimated 14 million Ukrainian people have fled their homes. That’s why PinkNewslaunched the LGBTQ+ Refugees Welcome campaign, which is raising funds for charities working with queer people fleeing the war.
That’s why it’s so vital the world doesn’t let its focus slide away from Ukraine, Franz says. His people need Europe to continue advocating for them.
“No matter how tired you are or how much you’ve already done, every day is new weapons needed, and more medicine lacking, and more homes ruined, and more people displaced,” he says.
“The weight of it is enormous for any country. Our will to defend ourselves doesn’t depend on international support, but our ability does. The price of indifference is measured in lives, and I don’t mean only politicians: even inside of Europe there are important and powerful people eager to pay that price on our behalf. If their electorate grows tired of Ukraine, the help that decides whether we survive or not will stop very quickly. Caring matters.”
Pride Month has a particular significance as the war rages on
It’s also fitting for Ukraine’s LGBTQ+ community that they’re marking 100 days of war during Pride Month. This year, the occasion has a particular significance for Franz, who is watching from afar as his queer siblings fight for freedom back home.
“LGBTQ+ soldiers and volunteers have to be twice as fearless, resourceful and strong in the face of the invasion, because there’s doubly no future for us under the Russian Empire.”
He continues: “I wish I got a cent every time someone proclaimed queer Ukrainians either don’t exist, aren’t in the army or tried to patronisingly explain what’s good for us – that would make a hefty and regular donation to the armed forces of Ukraine.
“Despite the judgement of people whose expertises consists of a skimmed Wikipedia article, I know firsthand how intimately Ukraine’s future and queer liberation are connected.”
As Pride Month gets underway, Franz is pleading with the world to show solidarity and to keep donating funds to help the Ukrainian people survive an impossibly difficult time.
“Solidarity now is the direct action to achieve the goal which, in the end, we all share: to be ourselves and to be free.”
That’s echoed by Andriy Maymulakhin, the coordinator of the LGBT Human Rights ‘Nash Svit’ Center in Kyiv. Like all Ukrainians, he too has endured hardship – he hasn’t seen his boyfriend since January, when he travelled to Lviv to help relatives on a building job.
Since then, his boyfriend has joined Ukraine’s national guard – he’s currently serving as a chef in a military division in western Ukraine.
Andriy is based around 60 kilometres from Kyiv – so far, he’s been lucky. He’s managed to avoid the bulk of the violence, but he’s bee able to hear bombs in the distance, serving as a frightening reminder that the war is never too far away.
“It very much differs depending on where you are. If you’re in eastern Ukraine, then it is a terrible situation. If you’re in other parts of Ukraine, in big cities, they also could be attacked by Russian missiles, so everywhere could be dangerous.”
In the background, Andriy and his colleagues have been trying to continue the work they’re doing to support Ukraine’s LGBTQ+ community.
“Our priority is providing legal help, so we’ve tried to restart all this work. We collect information about specific problems which LGBTQ+ people have faced during this wartime.”
Andriy’s centre has also recently published the results of a survey which showed that there has been enormous change in the way Ukrainian people view the LGBTQ+ community in the last five years. The survey was conducted by an external sociological organisation.
Strikingly, the survey shows a stark drop in the number of people who feel “negatively” about the LGBTQ+ community. Andriy was “surprised” by the results – he wonders if part of that shift could be attributed to the war.
“The so-called ‘Russian world’ is explicitly homophobic,” he says. “In this situation, it could be because people are against the Russian invasion.”
He wants to make sure the world doesn’t forget about Ukraine 100 days into the war.
“It’s a moral responsibility of the western world, Europe and the United States, Canada and Australia, to support Ukraine in this fight,” Andriy says. “If possible, give us weapons to protect our land. Support our refugees – millions have left Ukraine.”
Andriy felt more optimistic about the outcome of the war back in February when Russia first invaded. As time goes by, he’s becoming increasingly afraid for the future.
“I don’t think the Russians want to stop – they want to continue this ugly war. That’s why we need the world to support Ukraine in these difficult times.”
A federal court in Georgia ruled Thursday that employers who categorically exclude gender-affirming medical care from health insurance coverage violate federal law.
Anna Lange, a transgender woman and sheriff’s deputy in Houston County, Georgia, sued in 2019 after she was denied coverage for a vaginoplasty in November 2018.
The Sheriff’s Office provides health care coverage to employees through the county plan, which, beginning in 1998, excluded coverage for talk therapy related to gender dysphoria, gender-affirming hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries, according to the opinion released Thursday.
Chief Judge Marc Treadwell, of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, wrote in the opinion that the exclusion “plainly discriminates because of transgender status,” and as a result violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal law that prohibits employment discrimination based on race, sex, religion, national origin and other protected categories.
He pointed to evidence that showed Houston County’s health care plan, provided through Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, would provide hormone therapy for menopause and surgery for breast cancer, but it would not provide the same procedures as treatment for gender dysphoria.
“The undisputed, ultimate point is that the Exclusion applies only to transgender members, and it applies to Lange because she is transgender,” Treadwell wrote, citing a landmark Supreme Court decision in June 2020, which found that Title VII’s protection from discrimination based on sex also includes gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination.
The opinion also noted that, in 2016, Houston County’s insurance broker, who acted as a liaison between the county and Anthem, informed the county that Anthem would no longer categorically exclude coverage for treatments related to gender dysphoria as a result of the Affordable Care Act’s Section 1557, which prohibits discrimination based on sex and other characteristics.
“Despite Anthem’s recommendation to do so, the County chose not to accept the nondiscrimination mandate,” according to the opinion.
A representative for Houston County did not immediately return a request for comment.
Lange, who was represented in part by the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, said in a statement that it’s “a huge relief to know that I can finally receive the medically necessary care that I was repeatedly and unfairly denied.”
“I can confidently move forward with my life knowing that gender affirming care is protected under federal law,” she said. “This decision is not only a personal victory, but a tremendous step forward for all transgender Southerners who are seeking insurance coverage for medically necessary care.”
LGBTQ survivors of sexual abuse are often blamed for causing their own abuse or are subsequently accused of wanting to molest kids, a new report has found.
The U.K.-based Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) — a non-governmental investigative organization that recommends policies to protect children — interviewed 31 LGBTQ survivors of child sexual abuse and 31 organizations that aid LGBTQ survivors to better understand their experiences.
The IICSA report found that when queer people reported being sexually abused as kids, they received “poor responses” based on “stereotypical attitudes about sexual orientation.”
Some victims and survivors were told that their gender identity or sexual orientation either caused the abuse or resulted from it. If a queer person is targeted by a predator while exploring LGBTQ identities in an online forum — something queer youth do in response to the lack of LGBTQ resources in communities and schools — victim-blamers will say that the queer person “brought it on themselves” for being curious about their identities.
“If we are LGBTQ because a man abused us [then] ‘we are blaming all men’ or if we got abused by a woman we ‘are confused’,” one female survivor of sexual abuse told the IICSA.
“I’ve been asked whether I’m non-binary specifically because I experienced child sexual abuse, and whether I’m turning my discomfort with my body from the sexual abuse into a gender issue that isn’t really there,” another non-binary person told the inquiry.
Even worse, there’s a myth that abused people go on to abuse other kids, something that keeps gay and straight men from reporting their own abuse for fear of being considered a pedophile.
Sex abuse can force LGBTQ survivors to have to reckon with their gender identities and sexual orientations before they’re ready. This, combined with internalized queerphobia and the societal stigma remaining from the HIV epidemic, all make life much harder for survivors.
Some people won’t disclose their experiences with traditional support networks like family, friends, religious peers or work colleagues for fear that they’ll be rejected or shamed for their queer identities. The media also perpetuates narratives about “gay pedophiles”, cis-male perpetrators and cis-female victims being the norm.
Additionally, few mental health professionals are specifically trained to work with LGBTQ survivors, raising the risk that survivors will face additional stigma and shame even if they do seek out counseling services.
The report noted that queer people in the U.K. still live under the shadow of Section 28, a now-repealed law that banned “promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” One of the key arguments used to pass the law was that queer people sexually prey on children.
The U.S. is undergoing a similar cultural shift, in which anyone who wishes to acknowledge the existence of queer people in classrooms is labeled as a “groomer.” Actual “grooming” occurs when sexual predators use manipulative behaviors to gain access to potential victims, coerce them to agree to the abuse, and reduce the risk of getting caught, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.
Abuse survivors in the U.S. have complained that the right-wing labeling of LGBTQ people and allies as “groomers” is doing nothing to help actual survivors of childhood sexual abuse. But then again, the right-wing’s “grooming” attacks aren’t meant to protect children from predatory teachers — something that rarely happens. They’re meant to demonize queer people.
Gaming giant EA has told staff that the company will not publicly defend trans rights or abortion rights at a company-wide meeting.
The gaming publication Kotaku reported that it had seen and verified a transcript of the town hall meeting on Tuesday (24 May), which allowed employees to raise issues with senior management.
Employees had called on EA, the gaming company behind FIFA and The Sims, to make a public statement on the leaked Supreme Court draft opinionwhich showed that the court is poised to strip constitutional abortion rights from US citizens, and on the wave of anti-trans legislation sweeping America,specifically legislation in Texas which classes gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth as “child abuse”.
But according to the transcript, and despite publicly supporting the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd, staff were told that “being an inclusive company means being inclusive of all those points of view”.
Chief people officer Mala Singh reportedly said: “The thing about the world today is there is a lot of division, we know this right, we see it every single day, but the thing that unites us is that we’re all here to make amazing games and experiences for our players, and that is how we have the most positive impact on the world.
“These things are hard and they’re personal and we all have our own perspectives and sometimes we won’t speak, and that will be upsetting and I understand that, we really do.”
Instead, Singh reportedly told EA employees to make use of the gaming company’s “healing circles” to process their feelings about trans and abortion rights.
An EA employee told Kotaku that “healing circles” are group mental health sessions centred around specific issues, which are made available to staff as part of the company’s healthcare benefits.
“I know these have been tough issues, whether it’s the shootings that happened recently in the US, the Roe v Wade issues, these are hard,” Singh said.
“And so, one of the other things you’re going to see is we’re going to be making some more healing circles available through Modern Health.”
In a statement to the publication, EA corporate communications director Lacey Haines said: “We’re not going to comment further on the global town hall, as that is a company confidential forum.
“That said, we work to create an environment where our employees can talk about complex issues in our world today. We do this in a number of ways, from town halls to Slack discussions, group dialogues, surveys, and more.
“From all of that, we recognise these topics are deeply personal, and we know that there are many strong opinions, and some will be disappointed when we say that we’re not making public statements because we’re focused on the ways we can support our people around the world as their employer.
“That is what we’re doing, in this case, making sure that people have access to the healthcare benefits we provide as a company, even if those aren’t available locally.”
EA told PinkNews that Singh had told employees that the company was “working with our US healthcare provider to determine how we can expand our benefits to include travel support for any covered services where access is limited in an employee’s region, including reproductive services, gender-affirming care and others”.
Let’s face it, this year’s Pride comes at a time when many in our community are feeling a sense of doom. The passage of Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill this spring was a shock, not to mention the gut punch of the Supreme Court’s likely Roe vs. Wade decision and its deeply concerning implications for our rights and freedoms.
So if you’re feeling threatened, there’s good reason — and it’s not just because of what happened in Florida. This year, over 230 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced in state legislatures aimed at sports, libraries, and curricula, all with the aim of protecting children from what is seen as a growing LGBTQ menace. It feels like a new assault. But sadly we’ve been here before. For many of a certain generation, the present moment feels like deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra famously said.
During the 1970s, in the years after Stonewall as gay men and women started becoming loud, out, and proud there was a similar backlash. In 1977, after Florida’s Dade County passed a gay rights bill, born-again Christian and singer Anita Bryant launched a campaign called “Save Our Children.” The language she used and her faith-based appeal are similar to what we’re seeing today, all in a desperate attempt to save kids from exposure to the “evil of homosexuality,” “perversion,” and the newest fear-buzzword “grooming.”
Hearts And Minds
The massive difference between then and now is that this message of hate falls on many more deaf ears. Despite the latest assault on our hard-earned freedoms, the American public is overwhelmingly supportive of LGBTQ rights. Today, nearly 80 percent of Americans support laws that protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination in jobs, housing, and public accommodations. Almost 70 percent support same-sex marriage, up considerably from 54 percent in 2014.
And the most important part? This support is up from what was essentially zero in the 1970s.
Just remember the context back then: homosexuality was considered both a mental illness and a crime. During the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, being gay was equated with a deadly, physical illness — a modern day plague. The conservative Reagan-era politics pushed many people back into the closet and LGBTQ progress slowed.
But we owe everything to those who resisted — the ACT-UP protestors who paved the way for major progress in the 1990s by national organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, and GLAAD. These were real victories on the battlefield of public opinion which ultimately created the context for acceptance, culminating in federal marriage equality in 2015.
At the time it seemed like a gay “end of history,” with many feeling the fight had been won. So what happened? How is it that in 2022 despite overwhelming changes in public opinion, and when coming out and living out is so much more common and accepted, we are back to the same old attacks of the ‘70s? There are a number of reasons.
First, the galvanization of the evangelical Christian right — a political juggernaut that has only gained momentum. Second, the “normalization” of hate facilitated by Donald Trump; there’s a permission structure for a vocal minority of haters to speak — inaccurately — for the majority of Americans. And, of course, 2022 is an election year. In many recent election cycles, LGBTQ rights have become weaponized by the right into a potent and useful wedge issue to drive their voters to the polls.
The Fight Isn’t Over
So what can we do? There are no silver bullets. That means we have to do what we’ve always done — fight back. If the voices of hate and fear are loud, then all of us have to speak up and be even louder. The only reason the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a diagnosis in 1973 was because of years of protests. (There’s an excellent film out now called “Cured” which explores this battle in depth.)
Activism works. Loud voices get heard. And protest sparks change: Anita Bryant, California’s Prop 8, and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell were all defeated by relentless activism and passionate protest.
Another major difference between now and the 1970s is representation. Across the country, there are now many members of the LGBTQ community serving on city councils, state legislatures, and even occupying the governor’s office. While there’s less representation in states like Tennessee, which not coincidentally has the highest number of these proposed anti-LGBTQ+ bills, there are certainly allies there who can make a difference even if it’s just by voting.
So, while it would be nice to sit back on our laurels, have a few margaritas, and watch this year’s gay Pride parade pass by, that’s not an option. The fight is not over. Sure, we can celebrate this month — after all, that is what Pride is all about. But let’s not forget Pride started as a protest and not a parade. It was a march; a march for visibility that had a vision for a future in which there was no stigma or shame in being gay.
We have arrived at that future in many respects. Now we need to take the next step forward, which is to live openly and advocate for ourselves so that those who are driven by fear can see the truth.
Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” I like to think that history actually can repeat itself and that’s not always a bad thing. In the same way that Anita Bryant’s campaign was ultimately a failure, I believe the current spate of hate-based legislation trying to save children from a threat that doesn’t exist will also falter. We’re sorry, haters: the gay genie is out of the bottle and the effort to try to reverse that is destined to fail because we’re not hiding anymore. Not only are we here and queer these days, but we are also aware and active and fighting for our very lives.
To those in our community who are maybe less vocal or more resigned, this moment is the wake-up call to speak up, fight back, and make the right kind of history repeat itself again.
Alex Slater is the founder and CEO of Clyde Group, a mid-sized PR and marketing firm based in Washington, DC.