He was followed by Arizona’s governor, Doug Ducey, who, after barring minors from gender-affirmation treatment, wouldn’t even state for the record that trans people were real.Īda-Rhodes Short holds a sign as trans youth, parents and several Democratic lawmakers rally at the south steps of the Texas capitol against several anti-LGBTQ+ bills last year. “It started escalating and escalating.”įor her, the catalyst was when Texas Republicans such as Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton, the governor and attorney general, not only banned gender-affirming medical care for trans youth but reframed their parents as child abusers, Paxton signing a 13-page legal opinion that parents or doctors who helped children transition were abusers who should be investigated by law enforcement. “At first, it was like 2015 again, with the bathroom bills, and I thought, ‘There’ll be a little pressure from national orgs and it’ll stop,’ but it didn’t,” says Ada-Rhodes Short, a roboticist and trans rights activist. Such vehemence has caught even veteran LGBTQ+ advocates by surprise.
To be gay, in their view, is to be inherently sexualized, a threat to innocence in a way that straight Americans are not. DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, for example tweeted: “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.” The governor and his supporters have labeled as a “groomer” anyone who believes children can learn LGBTQ+ people exist, arguing that simply by talking about gay relationships to a child, you are sexualizing that child. Laying groundwork for a potential 2024 presidential campaign, Florida’s Trump-like governor, Ron DeSantis, has positioned the state as the last stronghold of liberty in America. “Like many other people, I thought there was no way they would, because it’s so draconian and obviously unconstitutional.” “A state hasn’t passed a law like this in more than 20 years,” said Shannon Minter, the legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and a trans man. Supporters of Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ bill gather outside Walt Disney World this month. The most famous of these anti-LGBTQ+ laws is the piece of Florida legislation banning instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in schools between kindergarten and third grade, the so-called “don’t say gay” law. A rash of laws concerning the teaching of human sexuality in school curricula, banning trans student athletes and stripping parents of the right to help their gender-variant children obtain appropriate care have popped up in numerous red states this year.Īs same-sex marriage is now part of the fabric of America, conservatives have chosen to exploit Americans’ unfamiliarity with trans people and piggyback on parental anger over the perceived overreach of Covid-era school closures, conflating it with an insidious sense of “wokeness”, in the hopes of finding an electorally viable sluiceway for anti-LGBTQ+ hysteria. Yet in the past few months, those victories have come under threat as the US has witnessed a pronounced acceleration of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and legislation, fueled chiefly by misinformation about what it means to be trans and hysteria over so-called grooming. In 1985, 89% of parents said they would be sad if they discovered their child was gay or a lesbian. For all the terrible crises of our century, LGBTQ+ people’s rights were solidly enshrined, and attitudes were shifting in line with legislation. As recently as 2020, the court, then with two Trump appointees, ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protected gay, lesbian and transgender workers. Widespread acceptance of same-sex marriage rights, gay people serving in the military and the need for protections for LGBTQ+ people followed. The demise of the homophobic Defense of Marriage Act in 2013 was followed by the end of the federal ban on marriage equality in 2015. At that time, it seemed as though the US supreme court would hand down a landmark ruling immediately before Pride Weekend every couple of years. It came towards the end of a slew of political victories for the LGBTQ+ cause. Written by the rightwing academic James Kirchick, the piece was obviously meant as a provocation, but its argument that “for those born into a form of adversity, sometimes the hardest thing to do is admitting that they’ve won” was at least considered cogent enough at the time to publish.
I n 2019, the Atlantic ran an opinion piece titled “The struggle for gay rights is over”.