We Are in an LGBT State of Emergency

As CNN reported earlier this week, the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT rights advocacy organization in the USA  declared a national state of emergency in the face of growing anti-LGBT right wing extremism and Christofascist efforts to roll back LGBT rights and once again depict LGBT individuals as "perverts" and a threat to children even though the vast majority of child molesters are self-identified straight white males, many of whom are pastors, Catholic priests and church youth group leaders (a blogger friend posts on average four or five cases of clergy sexual abuse per day, seven days a week. Indeed, many fear the civil rights gains for LGBT Americans over the last two decades are now threatened.  Here are excerpts from the CNN piece:

“LGBTQ+ Americans are living in a state of emergency. The multiplying threats facing millions in our community are not just perceived – they are real, tangible and dangerous,” the group’s president, Kelley Robinson, said. “In many cases they are resulting in violence against LGBTQ+ people, forcing families to uproot their lives and flee their homes in search of safer states, and triggering a tidal wave of increased homophobia and transphobia that puts the safety of each and every one of us at risk.”

The historic announcement – just a few days into Pride Month – follows “an unprecedented wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in 2023,” according to the Human Rights Campaign, as violence against LGBTQ people continues and the community’s rights have become a flashpoint in the 2024 election.

Years after 49 people were killed at the Pulse gay nightclub in Florida, Club Q in Colorado in November became the site of a massacre at a beloved LGBTQ “safe space.”

And the Human Rights Campaign just last month issued an updated travel notice for Florida, outlining potential impacts of six bills recently passed there, many already signed by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican contender for president who’s championed “don’t say gay” and pronoun bills.

Across US state legislatures, at least 417 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced in roughly the first quarter of 2023 – a new record and twice the number of such bills introduced all of last year, according to American Civil Liberties Union data. The number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills signed into law so far this year is also more than double last year’s tally, which had been the highest on record, the Human Rights Campaign said.

They include pronoun refusal laws, forced student outing laws, anti-drag bans and “don’t say LGBTQ+” laws.

Meanwhile, the US Supreme Court is poised to issue an opinion in a case over whether a business can deny services to LGBTQ customers.

But even as Human Rights Campaign trumpets warnings, the group insists it will not back down from any attempts to stymie the community: “LGBTQ+ people nationwide will not be erased – not now, not ever,” the group said.

This theme of the dangers now facing the LGBT community is picked up by a column in the New York Times that looks at the unprecedented effort to stigmatize LGBT individuals and to silence us and strip us of civil rights.  The driving force behind the onslaught? Christofascists and evangelicals who continue to seek to erase and/or punish those who do not conform to their myth based writings of Bronze Age herders and who now control much of the Republican Party primary voter base.  Sadly, racial minorities are also finding themselves under attack as white supremacy goes mainstream within the GOP.  Here are column excerpts:

This year there is a pall over Pride. As the L.G.B.T.Q. community celebrates Pride Month, we are besieged by a malicious, coordinated legislative attack.

There’s been a notable rise in the number of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills since 2018, and that number has recently accelerated, with the 2023 state legislative year being the worst on record.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, in 2023 there have been more than 525 such bills introduced in 41 states, with more than 75 bills signed into law as of June 5. In Florida — the state that became known for its “Don’t Say Gay” law — just last month, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation that banned gender transition care for minors and prohibited public school employees from asking children their preferred pronouns. . . . There’s 12 more that are sitting on governors’ desks, so you could be at nearly 100 new restrictions on the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community by the end of this cycle.

I recently spoke with several leaders of L.G.B.T.Q. groups and historians who have documented the community’s history, and they all raised the alarm about the severity of what we’re seeing.

There have been other periods of backlash against the queer community, including with the passage of oppressive legislation, but this one has moved with alarming political calculation and efficacy.

“This is a terror campaign against our community,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and chief executive of GLAAD, the pre-eminent L.G.B.T.Q. media advocacy organization.

The way this kind of terrorism works is that it not only punishes expression, condemns identities and cuts off avenues for receiving care but also creates an aura of hostility and issues grievous threats. It’s like burning a cross on someone’s lawn: It’s an attempt to frighten people into compliance and submission.

The Republican politicians pushing anti-L.G.B.T.Q. laws usually pretend that their principal, if not their sole, motivation is to protect children. But these laws operate in furtherance and protection of the fragile patriarchy, in perpetuation of the twin evils of homophobia and heterosexism and in reinforcement of abusive gender-identity policing.

These politicians play to a segment of the population that sees any divergence from its primitive ideals as deviant. So they build boxes. But for too many people, particularly young people, those boxes can become caskets: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in five gay, lesbian or bisexual high school students attempted suicide in the past year. Last year the Trevor Project found that 45 percent of L.G.B.T.Q. youths seriously considered attempting suicide in the preceding year.

These politicians have Willie Horton-ized the transgender equality movement and, by extension, the whole movement for L.G.B.T.Q. equality.

And there have been some in the queer community who have remained shockingly silent when it comes to trans rights, treating the issue as zero sum. Rather than express solidarity with the trans community, they see the fight for trans rights as an opening for homophobes to erase the hard-earned gains of gay men, lesbians and bisexuals. This is not a hill they chose to die on.

But if you are queer and silent on this issue, you are betraying your own cause. Silence won’t shield you. It will only embolden your adversaries and expose your cowardice.

It’s in this atmosphere of unfamiliarity and ignorance about who trans people are — and are not — that hysteria and cruelty flourish. The maleficent caricature that people conjure in their minds about trans people is one of a predator or “groomer” lurking in bathrooms and locker rooms. They imagine a Frankenstein’s monster in lipstick to justify their pitchforks.

The problem, though, is that once laws are on the books, it can be hard to remove them. Take, for example, H.I.V. criminalization laws and laws against same-sex marriage that still have not been repealed in some states.

That could mean a near future of further bifurcation of the country — some states rushing to oppress the L.G.B.T.Q. community, with others winding up as places to go to try to escape oppression — not unlike the country’s bifurcation in the Jim Crow era. In fact, you could call this era the birth of Jim Queer.