Who Needs Pride?

We all do. And we need it now, more than we have in decades.

The LGBTQ community is going through some dark times.

It’s not just that the MAGA crowd is homophobic. It’s the glee with which they revel in their homophobia. With the awesome power of the federal government at their disposal, they’re emboldened to be as cruel and mean-spirited as possible, up to and including violence.

LGBTQ folks are hardly the only targets of the Trump/MAGA vitriol. But there seems to be a special place in their rotting hearts for anti-LGBTQ hatred and, within the LGBTQ community, a truly dark streak of viciousness aimed at trans folks. Hundreds of pieces of anti-trans legislation have passed or are pending in legislatures around the country.

Federal courthouses have become a nexus between the government’s anti-trans hatred and anti-immigrant zeal. Around the country, ICE agents have been detaining trans asylum seekers fleeing sexualized violence in their countries of origin when they are following the prescribed process for seeking asylum. As with so many actions of the Trump administration, intentional cruelty is the point.

Anti-LGBTQ action on the part of the government is always cruel and unnecessary, but taking these actions during Pride month is particularly odious. And that’s exactly why they do it.

This is where this administration’s energy is directed — making life more difficult for the already disenfranchised. This is where they are spending taxpayer dollars. For example, instead of acknowledging and honoring the struggles and progress of the LGBTQ community, they’re expending energy on backtracking and undoing existing rights. Here’s a sampling

• Cancelling LGBTQ events at the Kennedy Center

• Passing scads of anti-trans legislation

• Removing the name of Harvey Milk from the USS Harvey Milk

• Closing Dupont Circle Park in D.C., an LGBTQ gathering place for decades, during the World Pride celebration.

• Working to overturn SCOTUS’ 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which would leave the marriage equality issue (and same-sex marriages themselves) in utter chaos

• Systematically turning DEI initiatives into a negative for government agencies and for private companies, to the extent that many companies have rescinded their DEI policies to avoid retribution by the administration

But this should come as no surprise to anyone. Even Evel Kneivel couldn’t get across the chasm between what Trump said about LGBTQ folks on the campaign trail in 2016 and what he actually did in his first term. Here’s a sample of his 2016 campaign rhetoric:

“Only weeks ago in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. This time the terrorist target [sic] LG [pause] BTQ community. No good. And we’re gonna stop it. As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LG [pause] BTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.”
— Donald J. Trump, 07.21.2016 speaking at RNC re. Pulse nightclub shooting

He shamelessly pandered to the LGBTQ community by holding up a rainbow flag at a rally in Greeley, CO:

He tweeted his support, insisting that he would be better for LGBTQ rights than Hillary Clinton would, a common talking point on the campaign trail:

Compare that rhetoric with some of his actions in the first term:

• Banned flying the rainbow flag at U.S. embassies around the world

• Forced the Federal Bureau of Prisons to hold trans women in facilities that aligned with their biological birth, placing them at extremely high risk to become victims of prison violence and rape

• Implemented a ban on transgender troops

• Revoked guidelines implemented during the Obama presidency that required public schools to allow trans students to use locker rooms and bathrooms that aligned with their gender identity

• Ended the practice of issuing G-4 visas to same-sex domestic partners of foreign diplomats or employees of international organizations (i.e., the U.N. and the World Bank) who work and live in the United States

(GLAAD provides an LGBTQ Trump Accountability Tracker that provides an up-to-date listing of Trump’s and the Repulbicans policies, laws, and executive orders aimed at marginalizing or punishing LGBTQ people for simply existing.)

Despite his campaign lies about supporting LGBTQ citizens, a privileged segment of the LGBTQ community still believes that their own proximity to power and the promised (but not yet delivered) prosperity is more important than the lives of the very folks who fought and sometimes died for their freedom to be open and out. (I was going to say “out and proud,” but I can’t imagine any of them have much in the way of actual pride.)

They traded their pride for access to power — as long as they can pay for it:

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It’s been 52 years since I first marched in an LGBTQ Pride parade. There have been numerous ups and downs in those years. But never in more than five decades have we witnessed such blatant, overt homophobia and transphobia being foisted upon the LGBTQ community by our government. Never before has our government publicly fomented this level of anti-LGBTQ sentiment.

Prior to this year, there were people who were beginning to wonder whether Pride celebrations were still necessary, because we’ve made so much progress over the years. Some in the LGBTQ community were critical of Pride parades because they had become so commercialized.

Corporations leveraged the buying power of a huge segment of the population, and they marketed their support of Pride as though they were allies of the community. We’re seeing their “true colors” (to repurpose a phrase) emerging as some of those corporations have retreated, pulling back their financial support because the political winds have been blowing in a different direction in the Trump era.

So, yes, we need Pride more than ever. The Trump administration has drastically underestimated the tenacity and determination of the LGBTQ community. They may be able to frighten some Fortune 500 CEOs away from supporting the LGBTQ community. But the community itself is not about to be frightened.

We’ve lived through the “lavender scare,” Stonewall, the AIDS epidemic, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” loss of jobs, loss of families, the struggle for marriage equality, and countless other individual and collective indignities. We’re not going to stop our progress because some pathetic fast-declining petty tyrant somehow made his way into the White House.