Braving the threat of persecution, dozens of queer people packed the streets of the capital of Malawi for the country’s first-ever Pride parade Saturday (26 June).
Organised by the Nyasa Rainbow Alliance, some 50 LGBT+ people marched through the streets of Lilongwe in a show of defiance.
After an hour-long march through winding but silent thoroughfares as masked attendees sang and danced, the protesters handed a petition over to city officials demanding marriage equality and better access to healthcare, Malawi 24 reported.
Principal administrative officer for Lilongwe City Council, Hudson Kuphanga, told the outlet he has received the petition and pledged to send it to the president and cabinet office on Monday (28 June).
“We want a sense of belonging to this nation since we are also part of Malawi,” he added, “we are fighting for togetherness, oneness.”
Queer folk shout ‘Viva LGBTI!’ at first Malawi Pride parade
Footage from the fledgling advocacy group showed the Pride-goers walk along the thoroughfare from Area 18 Glass House to the Civic Offices in the city’s centre.
Marching under the theme “Liberty, Justice Four All”, participants faced being arrested and imprisoned by simply marching in public. But, for one afternoon at least, they couldn’t care less.
The march was showy and splashy. Music blared from a pickup truck that fronted the march. People wore painted eye masks and face coverings to protect their identities Many swayed and laughed while holding placards up high.
Rainbow flags fluttered as some wore them as capes, while even more rainbows could be seen on banners, t-shirts, hats and signs.
“Viva LGBTI!”, they shouted, filling the silence of the streets they walked through. No crowds of people gathered to watch the 50 LGBT+ attendees walk by – only the occasional car honked in support.
Indeed, in Malawi, homosexuality remains illegal and convictions run up to 14 years for men and five for women.
But in 2012, president Joyce Banda suspended such laws and two years later the country’s justice minister Janet Chikaya-Band said the country will no longer arrest people for queer sex.
Many living with HIV say that the discrimination has even led to them being unable to access life-saving treatments. Trans people, in particular, the group highlighted, face extreme levels of violence.
Same-sex couples in Hong Kong will now be allowed to own subsidised housing together after a landmark High Court ruling which saw a gay widower take on the government.
Henry Li was not able to inherit the government-subsidised flat his late husband Edgar Ng bought in 2018 after they wed in the UK because the city’s housing policies deny same-sex partners joint occupancy and ownership rights.
The court said that the refusal to acknowledge married same-sex couples in Hong Kong’s subsidised housing policies “constitute[s] unlawful discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation”.
Justice Anderson Chow, who presided over the case, said that denying joint occupancy and ownership rights to same-sex couples was in violation of Hong Kong’s constitution and the Hong Kong Bill of Rights.
In 2019, Ng had brought two judicial review proceedings against Hong Kong’s government, one seeking equal rights for same-sex couples in subsidised housing. The other review challenged inheritance and intestacy laws, as he was concerned his husband would not inherit his property if he died without a will.
The High Court ruled in Ng’s favour in September last year to grant he and Li equal ownership of their home. However, the government attempted to appeal against the decision.
Ng died by suicide in December 2020, and the hearings for his two judicial reviews began in April this year.
As cities around the United States celebrated Pride this month — including here in Denver on Saturday — there’s been a great deal of attention given to the prominent role that transgender folks have played in the LGBTQ rights movement in the country.
There’s also been a serious look into the ways anti-LGBTQ jackals have disproportionately focused their attention on trans people and trans kids over the last few years.
But, as with every June, there is often less acknowledgment given to the fact that Indigenous LGBTQ people were the first people on this continent victimized by the white Christians who arrived as Bible-thumping invaders — Indigenous peoples who are not only accepted, but also often venerated by their own people.
To be gay, lesbian, gender-nonconforming, nonbinary or trans is a blessing to Indigenous peoples; it’s a spiritual role in many nations and tribes known as Two-Spirit. If a Native person is Two-Spirit, they are holy people.
Long before the white man and their Bible came to this land, Two Spirit individuals were holy, healers of the people, and they still are today.
Historically — as my Oglala Lakota elders told me as a kid — to be Two-Spirit means that you have the spirit of a man and a spirit of a woman. It means that you’ve been blessed by the creator with the lens of both, and that’s what we call good medicine.
A straight man, after all, has only the lens of a straight man, and a straight woman has only the lens of a straight woman. A Two-Spirit person has at least the lens of both — and sometimes even more lenses, as some nations acknowledge that there exists more than just men and women, and have a long list of gender identities.
But when Christians blundered onto our ancestral lands, they waved the Christian Bible in our ancestors’ collective faces and called any Two-Spirit person “a sin” and “an abomination against God and nature.”
They were, of course, already aghast when they witnessed Indigenous women involved in politics; they would go into fits of rage at even the idea of Two-Spirit people sitting among them during meetings or discussions.
And though the U.S. government only legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, such unions had been commonplace between Two-Spirit people and recognized within Indigenous communities for thousands of years before the Christian encroachers arrived.
If a Native person is Two-Spirit, they are holy people.
White people showed up here, claimed to be more civilized than us and prided themselves on their faith and supposed logic, but then acted illogically, uncivilized and without the love for their neighbors as their Jesus preached.
Kayla Shaggy is Diné and Anishinaabe, and she’s Two-Spirit, which she points out is today a reclaimed identity, even among some Native peoples.
In part, this comes from specific white government policies: In America, the term was “Kill the Indian, save the man.” Together, the Catholic Church (predominantly) and the United States government worked to rid Indigenous children of their culture, language and spirituality by barreling through Indian country, preaching Jesus while forcing Indigenous children into boarding schools in the U.S.from 1860 through 1978. (Canada had a similar program in place from 1883 until the last one closed in 1996.)
As a result of the Christian brainwashing endemic in those often-compulsory boarding schools, there’s a whole generation of Christian Indians who have largely forgotten or will not acknowledge the spiritual significance of Two-Spirit individuals; they shun them and speak (in the way of the white man) by referring to anyone like Shaggy as “a sinner.”
“That effect of colonization and the boarding school era created that animosity,” Shaggy said. “It’s a learned cycle of hate.”
Non-Native LGBTQ people should not identify as Two-Spirit because it’s not a synonym but an ancient role in our communities.
Still, long before the white man and their Bible came to this land, Two Spirit individuals were holy, healers of the people, and they still are today. “It’s more than just an identity to take on,” Shaggy said. “It’s a ceremonial role.”
Two-Spirit is, indeed, exclusively Indigenous; it is not synonymous with all people who are LGBTQ, and non-Native LGBTQ people should not identify as such because it’s not a synonym but an ancient role in our communities.
“It was something we had to reclaim after colonization and an attempted erasure” Shaggy said. “If people want to be supportive and have solidarity with us, then they should have respect for that and not co-opt it.”
I’ve seen for myself the respect that Two-Spirit people command among our elders. One day, years ago, I was at the Four Winds American Indian Council Center in Denver when an elder with bad knees struggled to stand; his grandson told him to “sit down,” and that he’d get his grandfather whatever he needed. The elder told his grandson that he was standing in respect of the Two-Spirit who’d just arrived at the center, and then thanked the Two-Spirit for bringing good medicine into the space.
This is what Christians didn’t understand when they stumbled our way, and some still don’t today: It’s a blessing to be LGBTQ, and it’s holy to be Two-Spirit.
ust before the start of Pride Month, Walmart, the largest retailer in the world, began selling a wide variety of rainbow-themed merchandise. A perusal of the company’s website reveals hundreds of such items for sale, like a Queer Eye-branded clothing line and tie-ins from rainbow-themed brands like Skittles and the Kellogg Company. You can even buy a shirt that reads: “I can’t even think straight.”
Walmart earned a perfect 100 percent rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2021 Corporate Equality Index, which scores companies based on their support of LGBTQ employees through HR policies, practices, and benefits, as well as their public advocacy. Earlier this year, when Arkansas — Walmart’s home state and the location of its global headquarters — banned both gender-affirming medical care for young people and the participation of trans girls and women in school sports, the CEO of the retail giant issued a statement calling the legislation “troubling.”
But in fact, Walmart had a direct hand in electing the very legislators who attacked trans kids. A recent Business Insider investigation found that since the beginning of 2018, Walmart had given $58,100 to the Arkansas state legislators who later sponsored the anti-trans bills. The investigation, which examined the campaign finance records of 76 Arkansas lawmakers, uncovered more than $400,000 in total donations to said lawmakers by the political action committees (PACs) behind nine corporations and industries that claim to be LGBTQ-inclusive. A Walmart spokesperson told BI that the political contributions were made before the bills’ introduction, adding that Walmart reviews its “political giving strategy” on an ongoing basis.
Now some families with trans kids in Arkansas are looking to flee the state just to avoid persecution. While Arkansas is so far the only state to fully ban transition care for everyone under the age of 18 (Tennessee passed a bill limiting transition care for prepubescent children, but transition care doesn’t normally happen until puberty), similar bills are still on the agenda in states whose legislative sessions haven’t ended yet. (Comparable proposals in 19 states failed, according to the Guardian.) On top of the push for medical bans, nine states have successfully banned trans girls from competing on girls’ sports teams this year. Trans advocates are worried the attacks will only accelerate.
While companies like Walmartprofit off of rainbow merchandise and branding, this recent waveof anti-trans legislation has largely been met with corporate silence. It’s not that corporations have historically stayed apolitical; in the recent past, many have shown up when it matters, influencing lawmakers on LGBTQ equality and having significant impact.
Two years ago, when Bostock v. Clayton County was being heard by the Supreme Court, more than 200 companies — from Disney to Ernst & Young — cosigned an amicus briefcalling for employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity to be made illegal. The Texas Chamber of Commerce was instrumental in keeping the conservative-controlled state legislature from instituting a bathroom bill. And in 2016, large corporations such as PayPal, alongside the NCAA and the NBA, were credited with the eventual rollback of North Carolina’s anti-LGBTQ bill, HB 2, after widespread backlash to the law cost the state around $3.7 billion over 12 years, per Associated Press estimates.
“We are really grateful to corporations that have stepped up to support LGBTQ folks in the past,” Viv Topping, director of advocacy and civic engagement at the Equality Federation, told Vox. “But this year we saw a noticeable lack of engagement from corporations as the anti-trans bills have been further introduced across the country.”
The corporate world, it seems, has been hesitant to weigh in on the debates over trans children. This is partially because conservatives have launched a misinformation campaign against trans kids and gender-affirming care that has left many reluctant to jump into the fray. It’s also because companies are often motivated into advocacy as a way to protect their employees — but parents of trans kids are rarer than gay employees. Corporations, their bottom lines, and retention rates have yet to be pushed into standing up for trans rights the same way they do for the larger LGBTQ community.
How Pride became a corporate profit center
Pride wasn’t always a friendly neighborhood parade and festival day blanketed in rainbow gear. Originally, it grew out of a protest.
In the 1960s, outdated state laws banning “cross-dressing” — and various other activities associated with homosexuality — were used as a subtext by the police to raid businesses and bars where LGBTQ people were known to hang out. During the Compton’s Cafeteria riot in San Francisco in 1966, trans and queer street queens revolted against the police. Then the gay rights movement really solidified at the Stonewall Inn in New York City in June 1969, when queer and trans people struck back at raiding police, sparking riots andeventually leading to less police harassment in the city’s queer bars.
The first Pride parade, at the time called Christopher Street Liberation Day March, was held in 1970 to commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Pride paradesin cities across the country in the ’70s and ’80s bear little resemblance to the elaborate, corporate-sponsored family days we see now in 2021. And the reason behind that evolution is simple: capitalism.
It’s also become a rite of passage every June for corporations in the US and Western Europe to change their social media logos and other branding to a rainbow theme. Corporations have become staples at local Pride parades, with even the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin running a parade float.
It’s all in pursuit of the gay dollar. According to the Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey, same-sex married couples had a higher median income than straight married couples, at $107,210 to $96,932, with male same-sex couples earning a median of $123,646. In other words, cis LGB couples, particularly gay men, present a big opportunity for profit.https://e066f5663dde9769bd47e3740294dc01.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Come July 1, however, the rainbow Twitter logos and glitter merch promotions are often ditched. Companies go back to business as usual.Meanwhile, queer and trans people continue fighting for their basic rights.
“As a queer trans woman, my life is often misery. So when I see corporations or big-name artists trying to tap into some sanitized version of my identity that’s only about the fun parts, I feel alienated and that huge parts of my experience are erased,” Teen Vogue editor Lucy Diavolo told Vox in 2019. “Being queer is about joy, but that joy is often tempered by a great deal of pain; it is through that bitterness that the sweetness is that much sweeter.”
Anti-trans bills have swept states. And corporations have stayed silent.
The pace and swiftness with which conservative legislatures moved on these anti-trans bills was overwhelming to LGBTQ advocates. “We were trying everything, and there was just more and more,” ACLU attorney Chase Strangio told Vox. “It was like we would kill one and then it [would] come back to life, and then we would be organizing in one state and another state would file, like, five [more]. And so there was this relentless as to it.”
In the past, Strangio said, LGBTQ advocates used every trick in the book to oppose bills similar to those that passed in Arkansas — including leveraging corporate partners to lobby against anti-equality legislation. “Many [legislators] may not be driven by hearing from trans people, but they are driven by fear of loss, business, or financial and other economic consequences,” he explained. But this year, Strangio said, he has found businesses and corporations reluctant to weigh in.
He pointed to a letter signed earlier this year by 137 companies, including Amazon and numerous airlines, generally opposing anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans legislation, but the corporate world largely has not gone beyond that. In 2016, for example, boycotts were instrumental in overturning North Carolina’s HB 2, and such forceful action could be effective once again. “We wanted direct engagement from companies in individual states,” he said. “It was crickets.”
The contrast between that silence and the annual rainbow corporate embrace of Pride didn’t go unnoticed by Strangio and other advocates. https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1370812223992573961&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F22543423%2Fpride-merch-trans-youth&sessionId=a3fe43cb2e1b15d02218af119252e471560d011f&siteScreenName=voxdotcom&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px
“Watching all this transpire from such close proximity in February, March, April, even in May, knowing that every company was going to then turn their Twitter profile to a rainbow come June — that’s so hard to stomach,” said Strangio.
He speculated that corporations may be reluctant to get involved this year against bills that are explicitly focused on trans people, rather than the LGBTQ community at large. North Carolina’sHB 2, he pointed out, applied to the entire queer community, even though it was focused on trans bathroom access (it also banned municipalities in the state from passing LGBTQ nondiscrimination ordinances).https://e066f5663dde9769bd47e3740294dc01.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
In contrast, the Arkansas bills focus exclusively on trans people, in particular trans youth, and the political debate on trans kids is much more unsettled now than LGBTQ rights writ large were in 2016, when HB 2 made headlines. These days, Republican misinformation campaigns have moved on from bathroom access, finding success in spreading fear over youth gender transitions, even though an affirming approach is endorsed by nearly every major US medical association.
“We are seeing even folks who are on the left actually have questions about transgender youth and have questions about medical care for transgender kids,” said Topping. “People are less familiar with it. That is part of the issue.”
While Strangio cites reasons like a lack of understanding, systemic transphobia, and entrenched gender roles as potential reasons corporations may not be showing up for trans people, it’s also likely that because “trans people are a smaller population” —an estimated 0.6 percent of the US total — corporations can get away with not doing much and have it “not affect their bottom line,” he said.
In other words,trans people make fora much less attractive marketing demographic than their cis gay counterparts. So a bill attacking health care for trans kids, for instance,could be less enticing to lobby against than defending the employment rights of the greater LGBTQ community.
Topping points out that companies often see a direct connection between the need to protect their LGBTQ employees from discrimination and the ability to attract and retain talent, but often miss that connection when the potential children of their employees are the subjects of political attacks.
But not every corporation is sitting out the fight for trans kids. Topping noted a campaign the Equality Federation is running this month with the cosmetics company the Body Shop. As part of the company’s Pride campaign, it’s set up a resource page that directly answers commonly asked questions about thorny political issues like transition care for trans youth. They’ve also set up a petition that allows customers to send a personalized note to their members of Congress asking for passage of the Equality Act, a bill that would add LGBTQ people to existing federal civil rights law. For every signature gathered, the Body Shop donates $1 to the Equality Federation to help fight back against anti-trans legislation.
Topping would like to see more corporate campaigns like the Body Shop’s, and not just during Pride Month. “We don’t need the visibility from you,” she said of companiessupporting LGBTQ people.“We need you to fund our work. We need you to fund trans-led organizations. We need you to help lobby for the Equality Act. We need you to help lobby against anti-transgender bills when we ask you to.”
Pride month is a chance for LGBTQ+ people to be proud and visible in a world that tells us not to be. Pride month is a chance to celebrate and honor the work of LGBTQ+ people as we fight every day for equity and inclusion in society, in the law and in our workplaces.
Thanks to the tireless work of advocates, we’ve had many recent encouraging wins at the national level:
Last June, in Bostock vs. Clayton County, the Supreme Court affirmed that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects employees from discrimination based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.
In January, President Biden issued Executive Order 13988, Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation, and another executive order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities through the federal government, which includes LGBTQ+ persons. He also rescinded a 2020 executive order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping that had a chilling effect on diversity and inclusion training programs among federal agencies and contractors.
The Biden-Harris administration has stated strong support for the Equality Act, which would amend existing federal civil rights laws to expressly include non-discrimination protections on the basis of sex (including gender identity and sexual orientation), providing security and equality to LGBTQ+ people in accessing housing, employment, education, public accommodations, health care and other federally funded services, credit and more.
In March, President Biden became the first U.S. president to recognize the Transgender Day of Visibility.
In the past year, anti-racism protests have sparked important conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Department of Labor has recommitted to being an inclusive workplace, and continues to offer trainings related to sexual orientation and gender identity, including those related to the use of gender-inclusive language and pronouns. I’ve been proud to provide these trainings and support those efforts as a vice president of Pride at DOL, an affinity group for the department’s LGBTQ+ employees and contractors and our allies.
As part of the department’s efforts to implement the sexual orientation and gender identity executive order, our Civil Rights Center – a member of the Title VI/Title IX Interagency Working Group led by the Department of Justice – will serve on the Title IX and Executive Order 13988 Committee. This committee will serve to provide opportunities for interagency collaboration to advance EO 13988’s goal of protecting individuals from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, ensuring the Bostock decision is applied to Title IX and other relevant statutes, and making federal agencies welcoming to LGBTQ+ people.
The department is also working to reverse the impact of the prior administration’s executive order on diversity training. Our Office of Federal Contract and Compliance Programs is examining promising practices for diversity training as one component of broader efforts to eliminate bias from employment practices. In addition, the department is conducting an equity review to better understand how well our policies and programs are reaching historically underserved populations, and launched a related data challenge.
But there is still more work to do, and our pride can come at a price. Being visible sometimes means being exposed to harassment, discrimination, and violence. This is especially true for transgender people, particularly those who are women and people of color. Equity and inclusion require creating an environment — through language, policies and practices — that not only tolerates but recognizes and affirms people’s identities and relationships. Only with this can employers create a sense of belonging and value in their organization.
So as we celebrate Pride month this year and every year, let’s recognize all the work that has been done and that is necessary to keep pushing forward.
B.A. Schaaff (they/he) is an attorney in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of the Solicitor and is vice president of Pride at DOL.
As Pride Month comes to a close, the NFL has released a new commercial that makes clear its support and embrace of the LGBTQ+ community.
The 30-second spot begins with the line, “Football is gay” as light cheering plays in the background.
“Football is lesbian. Football is beautiful. Football is queer. Football is life. Football is exciting. Football is culture. Football is transgender. Football is queer. Football is heart. Football is power. Football is tough. Football is bisexual. Football is strong. Football is freedom. Football is American. Football is accepting. Football is everything. Football is for everyone.”
“I am proud of the clear message this spot sends to the NFL’s LGBTQ+ fans: This game is unquestionably for you,” NFL senior director of diversity, equity and inclusion, Sam Rapoport, told Outsports. “I will be playing its first line over and over in my head all season.”
Rapoport told USA TODAY Sports last week: “It’s OK to not fully understand the LGBTQ+ experience for you to be an ally. You don’t need to be an expert in all the terms. You just need to try.”
Along with his announcement last week, Nassib donated $100,000 to the Trevor Project, a leading national organization that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention help for LGBTQ+ youth. The NFL followed suit with its stated support of The Trevor Project in the commercial, while reiterating the fact that LGBTQ+ youth with at least one accepting adult in their lives have a 40 percent lower risk of attempting suicide.
“If you love this game, you are welcome here,” @NFL wrote on Twitter. “Football is for all. Football is for everyone. The NFL stands by the LGBTQ+ community today and every day.”
President Biden on Friday named Jessica Stern as the State Department’s U.S. special envoy to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons, an announcement that coincides with the White House’s celebration of Pride month.
The position was left vacant under the administration of former President Trump. Biden will introduce Stern during remarks in the East Room Friday afternoon outlining his administration’s agenda to advance rights of LGBTQ+ people in the United States, the White House said.
Stern is currently the executive director at OutRight Action International, a group that advocates for human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer people around the world and works to stop discrimination and violence that they face.
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up the issue of whether the nation’s schools must allow students to use the bathroom that match their gender identities.
The court declined, without comment, to hear the case of Gavin Grimm, who has been at the center of a long legal battle with the school board in Gloucester County, Virginia. Grimm was born female but identified as male after his freshman year in high school, legally changing his name and beginning hormone therapy.
The principal at first gave him permission to use the boys’ bathroom, but the school board later adopted a policy saying restrooms were “limited to the corresponding biological genders.”
“For school officials, as for parents, the question how best to respond to a teenager who identifies with the opposite biological sex is often excruciatingly difficult,” lawyers for the school district told the Supreme Court. But the privacy rights of millions of students are at risk if their transgender classmates are allowed to use bathrooms matching their gender identities, they said.
Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, representing Grimm, told the court that treating him differently by requiring him to use separate single-stall bathrooms singled him out “and stigmatized him as unfit to use the same restroom as his peers.”
They said there was no need for the Supreme Court to take up the appeal, because the lower courts that have considered the issue reached the same conclusion — that treating transgender students differently violates a federal law, known as Title IX, that bans sex discrimination in school programs.
Monday’s order denying review in the case means Grimm’s victory in the appeals court remains intact.
The American Civil Liberties Union celebrated the action.
“This is an incredible victory for Gavin and for transgender students around the country,” said Josh Block, a senior staff attorney.
Grimm said he is glad the legal fight is over.
“Being forced to use the nurse’s room, a private bathroom, and the girl’s room was humiliating for me, and having to go to out-of-the-way bathrooms severely interfered with my education,” he said. “Trans youth deserve to use the bathroom in peace without being humiliated and stigmatized by their own school boards and elected officials.”
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said the Supreme Court should have taken the case.
Related issues may soon be headed to the Supreme Court, including disputes over allowing transgender students to play on the school sports teams matching their gender identities.
Grimm originally went to court in 2015, arguing that the school board’s policy made him feel ashamed and isolated, and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Richmond, ruled in his favor. It said refusing to let students use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity would violate the federal law.
That ruling cited an Obama-era Education Department letter that said “a school generally must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity.” The appeals court found that to be a reasonable interpretation of Title IX, and the school district appealed to the Supreme Court.
Two things have changed since the first time the case came before the justices. The Supreme Court ruled last year that a federal civil rights law bans employment discrimination on the basis of gender identity, and now the Biden administration has interpreted that ruling as applying to Title IX as well.
“A school’s policy or actions that treat gay, lesbian, or transgender students differently from other students may cause harm,” a legal memo from the Department of Education said.
Pride season is here. Tens of thousands of ATMs across the country will sport rainbow adornments, Target and H&M will devote sections of their stores to a panoply of rainbow trinkets and garments, companies from nearly every business segment in America will wish the LGBTQ community a “Happy Pride.” Rainbow flags will be festooned across storefronts nationwide and then disappear.
What many companies fail to realize is this annual ritual known as ‘rainbow washing,’ can have unintended negative consequences. Pride is 24/7/365 and companies that relegate their LGBTQ outreach to one month a year are often perceived as pandering and “tokenistic.”
What forward thinking marketers understand is the need for brands to talk to the LGBTQ consumer on a year-round basis. So time to move off of the Pride-month-only strategy.
A $1 trillion spending engine, LGBTQ consumers are recognized as having the highest discretionary household income, estimated to be 23% above the national average. Recent surveys say that a whopping 20% of trendsetting millennials ages 25-34 identify as LGBTQ. The math speaks for itself.
The LGBTQ segment is not homogenous or monolithic. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, creating the need for nuanced outreach efforts. Fully, 61% of respondents in a recent poll found that diversity in marketing and advertising was highly important, positively impacting a brand’s bottom line. All aspects of marketing messaging can be customized and delivered to segments and subsegments of the LGBTQ consumer sector through multiple mediums.
LGBTQ consumers are highly enthusiastic, recognized as the earliest adopters and greatest influencers representing disproportionate control of a brand’s profitability. Brands should develop emotional connections. Qualitative research shows that ‘positive image enforcement’ leads to positive purchasing decisions. Oreo’s “Proud Parent” outreach and commercial is an of-the-moment illustration, making this connection. This community responds favorably to the perception of being treated equally, as friends or family, rather than as outsiders.
Savvy marketers must carefully navigate a fine line, necessitating tactile communication, devoid of stereotypes, while staying laser focused on brand messaging. LGBTQ relatable lexicon and imagery should be employed, wherever possible, to create a stronger bond between a brand and this consumer. This consumer understands sincerity and authenticity.
Not to be underestimated is the power and outsize impact of social media ‘influencers’ on brand building and purchasing decisions. LGBTQ influencers have surged on all main platforms, including Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. More than 92% of those aged 18-34 respond that they seek recommendations from a trusted source. Choosing relatable influencers that connect with consumers on emotional levels is key. Impactful LGBTQ ‘champion’ Tyler Oakley, reaching more than 7.5 million followers, connects daily with core consumers’ values and aspirations.
The pandemic has forced companies to be creative in their marketing outreach. For example, many alcohol companies are hosting online happy hours and dance events with prominent DJs. A prime example is Jack Daniels’ drag queen hosted virtual entertainment parties.
Recently, companies such as Budweiser, Walgreens, IBM and Microsoft, to name a few, have launched consumer specific campaigns representing the ‘world around us.’ Geico’s affectionate portrayal of a male couple is another example of how these slice-of-life moments are all encompassing, reflecting a melting pot of the USA.
Sponsorships are also highly effective ways to bond with the LGBTQ consumer. Molson Coors’ Vizzy Hard Seltzer’s $1 million sponsorship of the Human Rights Campaign is extremely visible, as is Kellogg’s collaboration with GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) on its “Together with Pride” cereal launch.
When Pride season comes to an end, farsighted companies will cease the 11-month hibernation, and will use 2021 to create a holistic approach to the LGBTQ consumer, talking to them throughout the year. One thing will become crystal clear: These visionary companies will jump over the rainbow into a pot of gold.
Today, 70 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage. But on June 24, 2011, when the New York Legislature passed the state’s marriage equality measure, only 46 percent did, barely surpassing the 45 percent who opposed the right of gay couples to wed.
Five years earlier, in 2006, the New York Court of Appeals had determined the state constitution did not guarantee same-sex couples the right to marry. That left advocates with only a legislative remedy.
Failed attempts to pass marriage equality measures in 2007 and 2009, however, left supporters deflated.
Christine Quinn, an out lesbian who served as speaker of the New York City Council during both attempts, said the 2009 defeat in the state Senate felt “like the rug had been pulled out from under us.”
“It was so personally painful and so, really not to be dramatic, but devastating,” Quinn said. “And it gave strength to the other side. New York is seen as a progressive state … so us not having marriage equality, it made a great excuse for other states not to do it.”
Then came 2011: Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo was sworn into office in January after making same-sex marriage a key plank in his campaign.
“Previously, we had Gov. [Eliot] Spitzer, and he kind of crashed and burned. Then we had Gov. [David] Paterson, and he had no political juice,” Assembly Member Daniel O’Donnell, who introduced five marriage bills over four years, said. “Then we get Cuomo: Here was a guy who was willing to make marriage a priority.”
Cuomo had first publicly supported same-sex marriage when he successfully ran for attorney general in 2006.
“I don’t want to be the governor who just fights for marriage equality,” he told attendees at an Empire State Pride Agenda dinner in fall 2010, the Observer reported then. “I want to be the governor who signs the law that makes equality a reality in the state of New York. And we’re going to get that done together.”
Attempting a ‘herculean feat’
On Jan. 5, 2011, in his first State of the State address, Cuomo promised same-sex marriage legislation would pass that year. With that mandate, activists got to work: The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, partnered with Freedom to Marry, a national organization, and Empire State Pride Agenda, a statewide LGBTQ group, to form New Yorkers United for Marriage, an umbrella group laser-focused on getting legislation passed. They targeted regions across the state, from the Hudson Valley to the Capital Region, to garner support from constituents.
“We built this huge campaign over time, over six months,” David Contreras Turley, then-associate regional field director at HRC, told City and State New York in 2019. “We ended up harnessing about 125,000 constituent contacts for what I know is one of the largest grassroots campaigns in terms of numbers, especially in the LGBT civil rights movement.”
The time was right, but advocates knew they had to strategize differently. Not only had they lost in New York in 2009, but that same year a same-sex marriage bill signed into law in Maine was overturned in a voter referendum.
“We had the opposite of momentum,” said Brian Ellner, who left then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office in 2011 to help lead New Yorkers for Marriage Equality. “No one thought that we could get it done with a Senate that was controlled by Republicans. They didn’t even think the Senate majority leader would bring it to a vote. And we needed to find four Republican yeses, two years after we lost in a Senate that was controlled by Democrats? It was quite a herculean feat.”
For O’Donnell, one of six openly LGBTQ lawmakers serving in the state Legislature at the time, the way to win was to make it more personal: Previously, he said, state Sen. Tom Duane, Assembly Member Deborah Glick and other gay legislators had kept their partners out of politics.
“I knew that that wasn’t going to work,” O’Donnell said. “If I wanted my colleagues to see John and I as part of a couple that deserves equal rights, I had to show them my relationship.”
Daniel J. O’Donnell, democratic member of the New York State Assembly, left, kisses his husband John Banta, right, as supporters of same-sex marriage rally on Christopher Street after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and declined to rule on the California law Proposition 8 in New York, on June 26, 2013.Michael Nagle / Bloomberg via Getty Images file
O’Donnell and his now-husband, John Banta, met on the first day of classes at Catholic University in 1978 and began dating two years later.
“I brought John around to a much greater degree than my colleagues had,” he recalled. Banta, the director of special events for the Metropolitan Opera, was a name on his own, and the pair made something of a power couple in Albany.
“It didn’t hurt that he was tall, thin and good looking,” O’Donnell joked. “But, more importantly, he was there, and people saw it as voting against us, rather than just voting against an issue.”
Duane also decided to start bringing his then-partner to Albany more often.
Preaching to the unconverted
They worked diligently to garner Republican support because they didn’t want marriage equality to become a party-line issue, “even though in my heart I knew it clearly was going to be,” O’Donnell said. He also sent weekly letters to his colleagues, with appeals coming from many different angles.
“One might be a poll, one was a letter from a California state senator who went from a ‘no’ to a ‘yes’ and got re-elected anyway,” he recalled. “One was a letter from Mildred Loving — who was, of course, the plaintiff in Loving v. Virginia, which took down anti-miscegenation laws at the Supreme Court — saying this is the same thing. We went around and around pivoting from the moral issue, to the legal issue, to the political issue, to try to give people enough cover to feel that they could vote for it.”
At the end of each letter, O’Donnell wrote, “John and I thank you for taking the time to consider this.”
For Ellner, a new approach meant reaching a new audience and changing the message.
“We couldn’t just talk in an echo chamber if we wanted to convert people to the cause,” he said. “At the time, support for marriage equality was barely at 50 percent in New York, I think, and we really wanted to get it to a majority, if not supermajority, before the vote.”
On March 9, 2011, Cuomo held a meeting with legislators, lobbyists and other major players inside the Capitol’s Red Room. After the disastrous 2009 vote, he wanted to be certain they weren’t working at cross purposes.
“He called a bunch of us to Albany to have a meeting about all of us who were working to get this done, to make sure we were aligned and coordinated,” Ellner recalled. “He made it very clear that this was a very, very high priority for him, if not his top priority that session. I don’t think he could have leaned in any harder to use all of his popularity and his influence.”
What many people don’t understand, O’Donnell said, is that “part of New York is more like Ohio” than New York City.
“We have very rural areas, we have very poor areas, we have some beautiful places. It’s a wonderful place to visit, but it’s not all liberal New York City people,” he said.
As he lobbied for the bill, O’Donnell said, “many senators said to me privately, ‘I think it’s the right thing to do, but my voters won’t tolerate it.’”
Ellner said he had senators, both Democrats and Republicans, telling him they needed to hear from their constituents that there was support. Legislators claimed that, in 2009, voter contacts “were running something like 3 to 1, or even 4 to 1, against marriage,” Ellner said.
So New Yorkers for Marriage Equality launched an enormous field effort with volunteers working across districts — knocking on doors, standing outside supermarkets — to talk to constituents and get postcards signed.
“When you talk to these senators, it’s about voter contact from within the district,” Ellner said. “They don’t care about a national email petition. They don’t care that Brian Ellner from Chelsea wrote to a senator upstate. They want to hear from their constituents, either by phone or preferably by mail. The mail gets counted and weighed, and that has a huge impact, because many politicians are focused on survival.”
Ellner said his team would get intelligence about a senator they had a shot at winning over, and then they would flood that lawmaker’s district with workers to get signatures.
“And if we heard that someone was definitely a ‘no,’ we would move everyone out of that district and into another one,” Ellner said. “We had really dedicated young people throughout the state who were couch surfing.”
That was the less glamorous part of the campaign, he admitted, “but there was no way we were going to let these senators hear more ‘nays’ than ‘yeas.’”
New Yorkers for Marriage Equality also launched a massive video campaign, with famous New Yorkers making the case for same-sex marriage. Directed by documentarian Annie Sundberg (“Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work”), the videos featured celebrities (Julianne Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Anna Wintour), athletes (New York Ranger Sean Avery and Michael Strahan of the Giants) and establishment types (Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and police Commissioner William Bratton).https://iframe.nbcnews.com/ZZoTZob
“We really wanted to broaden the support and show that there was widespread support across all different communities,” said Ellner, who knew Sundberg from Dartmouth College. “We just wanted this drumbeat of constant positivity, especially toward the end of the session when the legislature really slows down and there’s all kinds of deal-making going on. And frankly, we didn’t want to give the media the opportunity to write negative stories — to say that this was being derailed.”
Advocates turned up the heat on state senators, pressing their friends, relatives, even their rabbis, to track their vote and bring them to a “yes.”
But the clock was ticking. Cuomo had made his declaration in January and called everyone together in March. By late May a bill still hadn’t come forward, and the session ended in June.
Finally, on June 13, 2011, three Democratic state senators who had opposed same-sex marriage in 2009 — Joseph Addabbo Jr., Shirley Huntley and Carl Kruger — announced they would vote “yes” this time.
The final countdown
The Marriage Equality Act was introduced in the Assembly on June 14, and the following day, it passed the chamber 80 to 63. Though a healthy margin, it was a smaller one than the 2009 measure enjoyed.
A vote in the Senate was delayed while Cuomo negotiated with Republican leadership. For more than a week, thousands rallied outside the Capitol on both sides of the issue.
Finally, on June 24, the last day of the legislative session, Republican state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos announced that “same sex marriage legislation will be brought to the full Senate for an up or down vote.”
O’Donnell and Banta went to the Senate floor to watch the proceedings.
“The Capitol was entirely filled with people, so it’s hot as hell, and there are thousands of people on the stairways, in the hallways, everywhere,” O’Donnell said. “As each vote was taken, John was there. All my colleagues knew who he was. He was sitting in the audience, and many of the senators knew who he was. So we’re standing on the back of the floor of the Senate, and people are walking up to him and I and giving us both hugs and kisses.”
The vote was a nail-biter till the end, O’Donnell said — a rarity in Albany, where most bills don’t come to the floor unless passage is practically guaranteed.
State Sen. Stephen Saland of Poughkeepsie, a Republican who voted against same-sex marriage in 2009, announced he would vote “yes” the same day the bill came to the Senate floor.
“I have defined doing the right thing as treating all persons with equality,” he said during the debate on the measure. “That equality includes the definition of marriage. I fear that to do otherwise would fly in the face of my upbringing.”
‘All New Yorkers are equal under the law’
Late in the evening of June 24, 2011, the Marriage Equality Act passed the GOP-controlled Senate 33 to 29, with all Democrats and four Republicans voting in its favor. Cuomo signed it into law the same night at five minutes to midnight.
“With the world watching, the Legislature, by a bipartisan vote, has said that all New Yorkers are equal under the law,” Cuomo said in a statement. “With this vote, marriage equality will become a reality in our state, delivering long overdue fairness and legal security to thousands of New Yorkers.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs the Marriage Equality Act, with Harry Bronson, Matthew Titone, Daniel O’Donnell, Bob Duffy, Tom Duane and James Alesi, on June 24, 2011.Judy Sanders / Office of Andrew M. Cuomo
The New York Marriage Equality Act amended New York’s Domestic Relations Law to affirm that “no government treatment or legal status, effect, right, benefit, privilege, protection or responsibility relating to marriage shall differ based on the parties to the marriage being the same sex or a different sex.”
Quinn, who was in City Hill at the time trying to pass the city’s budget, remembers getting word during a press conference with Bloomberg. A staffer gestured wildly from the sidelines with a giant thumbs up.
“Oh God, as a New Yorker, it just made me so proud,” Quinn said, “and gratified that, finally, a discriminatory fact had been erased from the record. It meant a lot. It’s hard to hold your head up higher as a New Yorker, because we’re a pretty arrogant group, but I felt I could hold my head up higher.”
Ellner, who was in Albany as the vote was taken, said his only regret was not celebrating at the Stonewall Inn with the thousands of LGBTQ people and allies who had gathered there.
“It was kind of bittersweet to see it on CNN,” he said. “But, no, honestly, it was amazing.”
Banta stayed with O’Donnell in Albany that night, then the two returned to New York City the following morning. It was gay Pride weekend, and they marched in the parade with O’Donnell’s 5-year-old nephew.
“He told all his friends he was going to ‘Uncle Danny’s parade,’” O’Donnell said. “Literally, when the march would stop moving, people would chant my name on Fifth Avenue. But really, there was such a sense of euphoria — and relief.”
‘It felt miraculous’
The New York Marriage Equality Act took effect Sunday, July 24, 2011, and couples started getting married that same day.
One of them was Jonathan Thompson and Jonathan Polansky, who got married at the Queens courthouse in Forest Hills, after dating since 2002.
“We’d been together so long at that point that once the vote happened, we just sort of looked at each other and said, ‘So, we’re doing this, right?’” Thompson said.
It wasn’t a big romantic gesture, he said, but they were acutely aware of how monumental the moment was.
“It had been such a long push for marriage in New York, and we’d all been disappointed so many times before,” Thompson said. “When the bill actually passed — and during Pride Month, no less — it felt miraculous. There was just this communal feeling of emotion, and we just wanted to be a part of it.”
That wasn’t the only reason, though.
“If I’m being honest, I was also a little distrustful,” he said. “We wanted to do it right away, before anyone could take it away.”
The city had initially announced a lottery for the first day — Thompson and Polansky applied and won. Then officials decided to let everyone who had entered the lottery get a marriage license.
“So it ended up being a big, huge event,” Thompson said. “I remember it was extremely hot. We wanted to dress up, but it was stifling. So, we just went with business casual.”
It was a Sunday, when normally the courthouse would have been closed. But clerks and judges volunteered to work that day.
“Just to know that everyone there was rooting for us was a monumental thing,” Thompson said. “We took a number and sat in the waiting area, where we ran into some friends who were volunteers. Everyone there was talking to each other and taking pictures. It was definitely a sense of community and excitement.”
As a council member, Quinn didn’t have the power to perform ceremonies, but she was determined everything would go smoothly.
“My office, the speaker’s office, asserted itself into the full planning process,” she said. “I went to four of the five boroughs to congratulate and meet people who were getting married and also to thank the council staff that were there. I’ll never forget this one intern we had that summer. … He was holding up this huge sign that said, ‘This way to photos.’ Just the joy on his face and the joy of the people who were following him. I told him it looked like he was leading a parade.”
She recalled seeing City Clerk Mike McSweeney conducting the first ceremony in Manhattan, for Connie Kopelov, 85, and Phyllis Siegel, 76. The women had met in the mid-1980s volunteering with SAGE, an advocacy group for LGBTQ older adults.
Phyllis Siegel, right, kisses her wife, Connie Kopelov, after exchanging vows at the Manhattan City Clerk’s Office with New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn in attendance, back left, on July 24, 2011.Michael Appleton / Pool via Getty Images file
“It was magical,” Quinn said. “It was really, like, you couldn’t believe that a law, which on some level is just a piece of paper, could have such an impact. But it did — and it has.”
Everything had happened so fast that the offices of the city clerk hadn’t even had time to change its paperwork.
“The forms still had ‘man’ and ‘woman’ on it,” Thompson said. “It wasn’t embarrassing, though. It was amusing. It was nice. It was this feeling of, ‘We’re not gonna wait to fix it; let’s just get going, and we’ll all figure it out as we go.’ That was exciting.”
More than 800 couples registered to get married in New York City that first day alone, according to The Associated Press.
“People were booking flights to New York to get married,” O’Donnell said. “We didn’t have a residency requirement, so anybody could come here from anywhere in the world and get a marriage license and bring it back to where they’re from.”
‘Tremendous momentum’
For O’Donnell, the writing was now on the wall for federal marriage equality. Vermont, New Hampshire and the District of Columbia had already passed marriage laws legislatively, but New York was by far the largest state.
“Even in places like Mississippi or Alabama, at some point they were going to have a problem with the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution if they say, ‘We’ll accept straight marriages from New York but not gay ones.’” he said. “So it was coming.”
Ellner recalled “tremendous momentum” among activists coming out of the victory in New York.
“It felt like it was a matter of time,” he said. “It all shifted radically and so quickly. It was really the velocity that was surprising, but we felt, ‘As New York goes, so goes the nation.’”
A group walks down Fifth Avenue during the New York City gay pride march on June 26, 2011.Stan Honda / AFP via Getty Images file
It wasn’t a bloodless victory, though: The four Republican state senators who crossed the aisle to support the bill all were out of office within the next few years.
In September 2012, Sen. Roy McDonald, who represented conservative Saratoga County, was defeated in a Republican primary by Kathy Marchione. During the race, Marchione questioned McDonald’s conservative bona fides, claiming he backed same-sex marriage to secure campaign donations.
“I could have found an easier way to get re-elected,” McDonald countered during a primary debate, insisting he supported the bill as “a human being that cared.”
“You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing,” he told reporters. “You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, f— it, I don’t care what you think. I’m trying to do the right thing.”
But an undeniable tipping point had been reached: In 2012, Maine, Maryland and Washington all enacted same-sex marriage measures at the ballot, and, for the first time ever, the Democratic National Convention adopted a political platform endorsing same-sex marriage. That May, then-Vice President Joe Biden came out in favor of same-sex marriage, quickly followed by President Barack Obama.
The following year, a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act was struck down by the Supreme Court, and nine more states recognized same-sex marriage — five through legislation (Rhode Island, Delaware, Minnesota, Hawaii and Illinois).
“We showed that you could do it,” O’Donnell said of New York’s LGBTQ advocates. “I offered to help anybody out there who wanted to know how to do it, because it takes work. In the House, I flirted with some colleagues, I threatened others. I promised every single one of them if they voted ‘yes’ that I would invite them to my wedding, which I did — our wedding had 450 people at it. They all came.”
O’Donnell said he had toyed with getting married on that first day, but July 24 was Banta’s birthday, “and I didn’t need to be the first,” he said.
The pair married on Jan. 29, 2012, at Guastavino’s in Manhattan, with both Democratic and Republican legislators, the state comptroller, Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy and Cuomo all in attendance.
“If you’ve never thought you could get married, you never spend any time thinking about what your wedding would be,” O’Donnell said. “The two things that I wanted were a wedding cake and an actual honeymoon. So we had our wedding, we had our cake and then we went to Paris.”
