We have reached the end of Pride Month...hopefully everybody celebrated how far LGBTQ+ rights have come, as well our own role in the LGBTQ+ community (or the role of others if you're an ally). Everything that makes us uniquely us is something that should be cherished and celebrated, and at least in the Western world it's surreal to know how quickly these particular traits have gone from being literally unspeakable to being largely accepted in society.
However, we would have to be blind not to recognize that all is not well. LGB rights in America, which we can celebrate now being accepted by a vast majority of society, are in peril following the Supreme Court ruling announced on the last day of Pride: that businesses have a legal right to deny service to gay people under the guise of "religious conviction". Without even elaborating on the obvious potential impact this ruling may have on all minority groups, how long could it be before we see "No Gays Allowed" signs in storefront windows if we go down that slippery slope?
But even that doesn't compare to the terror that our transgender members are going through in many places, as states attack their very right to exist: bans on gender-affirming care, bans on education about gender identity issues, and in some cases bans on school staff even referring to minors by their preferred pronouns...the most basic recognition of who someone is. These laws are galvanized by opportunistic politicians who seem personal gain by demonizing an entire group of people...by claiming that transgender people are mentally ill, are groomers who want to mutilate children's' genitals, or even that they're "imps and demons" as one legislator in Florida openly claimed.
I recently read a sobering
article about the backlash to this year's Pride Month:
- A DailyMail/JL Partners survey found that 59% of Americans believed that "the promotion of trans and gender ideology has gone too far", including a majority in every age group.
- A Gallup poll found that the number of Americans who believe same-sex relationships are "morally appropriate" dropped for the first time in years, from 71% to 64%. Upon researching this further after a question from Leesbra, I found this drop was entirely among Republicans...from 56% to 41%, a sweeping drop over the course of a single year.
- According to GLADD, nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced in state legislatures this year, and 75 have already passed.
We could discuss topics like bias in polling questions and issues in sampling, which are all relevant, but there's no doubt that things are not good. It's why the Human Rights Campaign issued a
state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans as well as a
guidebook for members of the community living in or travelling to hostile states.
The question is where do we go from here? The following is merely my personal opinion:
The LGBTQ+ community *should* be united under one principle That's the right to be who you are, safely and comfortably. I've read a lot in the past month, including in the article, from LGB people who claim that transgender people have hijacked the gay rights movement and even that transgender people are the cause for the backlash against gay rights. But this simply isn't true, from the beginning the community has stood for the right to be who you are, and beyond that a belief in the human rights of all, because when any person's rights are oppressed we're all damaged.
Winning Hearts and Minds As I've said before, I strongly believe that most people who stand against LGBTQ+ rights and acceptance don't do so out of malice or hate, but out of ignorance and fear. Declaring these people deplorables and throwing them away, attempting to ostracize them from society, is not going to advance our cause. More to the point, it's simply not going to work if we're talking about a majority of people, as one poll suggests. It just makes people further closed-minded about the issue, pushes them into the arms of extremist groups that prey on people's feelings of alienation, and opens them up to radicalization.
What I believe is needed here is education, compassion, and patience, which I know not everyone wants to hear. Study after study has shown that when a person gets to know an actual member of a group they're biased against, that bias disappears and they become more accepting of that group. Just recently, I read another article suggesting that just putting out information about real people in a group that breaks stereotypes may be enough to reduce prejudge and promote understanding.
Of course, I don't mean to say that anybody in the community should take up the responsibility of winning hearts and minds if they don't feel comfortable doing so. We have to recognize that people who are facing trauma, oppression, and actual violence against them aren't exactly going to be comfortable having a dialogue with those who oppose them, nor should that be expected of anyone. But this can be the work of members who are in a better place to do so as well as allies and organizations that are dedicated to fighting prejudice and discrimination. We also have to recognize that that while dialogue is desirable
in general, doing so may conflict with the safety of people in a particular space (web community, group, etc.) and may not be desirable in the context of that particular space for that reason.
Agree or not, I believe that we all can recognize the challenges ahead in the fight for LGBTQ+ acceptance and rights, and we can only hope that next year we can point to actual good progress in that direction.
