A celebration — but there’s still need for action

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/05/2023 (886 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On June 28, 1968, The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar located in New York City’s Greenwich Village, was raided by police. When the cops became violent, the patrons — many of them drag queens and LGBTTQ+ people of colour — rose up and fought back.

What happened at Stonewall has been called a riot, an uprising and a rebellion. It was a transformational event for the gay liberation movement in the United States, and the commemorative marches that took place in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco the following year are considered the birth of what we now know as Pride.

June is now widely recognized as Pride month. It’s a celebration of LGBTTQ+ liberation, survival and expression, punctuated by festivities and parades wrapped in rainbows.

But amid rising violence, discrimination and hate against the LGBTTQ+ community — and, in particular, the trans community — and hard-won rights coming under siege in the United States, Pride’s roots of resistance and liberation must not be forgotten.

One doesn’t need to look long or hard for recent examples of anti-LGBTTQ+ legislation getting on the books across the United States. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is now seeking the Republican presidential nomination, signed a list of anti-LGBTTQ+ bills into law, including those that restrict gender-affirming care.

Physicians in Alabama, Arkansas and Idaho could be convicted of a felony for offering gender-affirming care to youth.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum signed a bill that allows teachers to ignore the pronouns of their students, following Florida, Arkansas, Indiana and Montana. North Dakota State government employees can ignore the pronouns of their colleagues. Anti-trans bathroom bills — which denies a transgender person’s access to public facilities — are proliferating.

Target, one of the biggest, most visible retailers in the U.S., acquiesced to far-right transphobic bullies and removed some of their Pride month merchandise or relegated it to the back of the store. Bud Light also came under fire from conservatives for working with a trans influencer.

Drag Queen storytime events at libraries have been a site for threats and attacks amid a quest to ban books about gender and sexuality — a misguided movement that has reached Manitoba.

But then, a glimmer of hope. Last week, hundreds of people packed out the gym at Vincent Massey High School in Brandon and also gathered on the legislative grounds to protest after a former school trustee and her supporters asked the Brandon School Division to ban books that serve some sort of imagined “sexualization agenda.” Many people in Winnipeg held up signs that said “don’t” — a nod to Brandon University’s one-word statement in response to the call to remove books with gender, sexuality and queer content from schools — or “ban hate, not books.”

As a result, the Brandon School Division will not be moving ahead with the removal of books.

It’s in that spirit of protest and activism that Pride month was built. The fight for LGBTTQ+ liberation continues and the stakes are incredibly high, especially for LGBTTQ+ youth who are being repeatedly told — through legislation, through backlash on marketing campaigns, through calls to ban books — that their very existence is shameful. For people who claim to worry about children, conservatives don’t seem to care about the very real harm they are inflicting on queer youth.

Pride month should be a celebration — a celebration of resilience and survival, a celebration of being exactly who you are, and loving whomever you love, out in the open, a basic human right that many heterosexual and cisgender people take for granted.

But Pride month should also serve as a reminder to LGBTTQ+ allies to be full-throated in their support. Silent majorities must become vocal majorities. They must show up and keep showing up. Because look at what can happen when they do.