For those in the LGBTQIA+ community, Pride month is a chance to be out, loud and proud. But in the United States, there's been an uneasy quiet hanging over this June. Big brands who once didn't think twice about cashing in on the pink dollar have scaled back support. The American offshoot of Target reduced the number of its stores carrying Pride-themed products this year after getting backlash in 2023. Nike, who became the subject of boycott calls last year over its marketing partnership with a transgender influencer, has also pulled back after offering Pride collections since 1999. The silence too has been felt in other ways. A Maryland council chose not to fly a pride flag outside its city office for the first time in five years, with its mayor citing "neutrality". And for many queer Americans, the month of celebration and commemoration has instead been left overshadowed by a record number of legislative attacks.
Record rise in anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says it's currently monitoring 523 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills across the country. Over 300 of these bills were introduced in the first three weeks of 2024 alone, and 149 are still advancing or have been passed into law. The majority of these bills relate to educational measures, through school sports bans, school facilities bans that prevent transgender students from using communal rest rooms, or curriculum censorship around in-school discussions of the queer community. Increasing anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric has also seen bills introduced that would forcibly out teachers and staff. Trailing slightly behind is healthcare restrictions, where more than two-thirds of the bills (69 per cent) are aimed at limiting the accessibility of gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth. This is despite the American Medical Association resolving to "protect access to evidence-based care for transgender and gender-diverse youth" in June last year. 2023 also marked the first time the ACLU saw drag bans introduced across US states. The bans also overwhelmingly target transgender and gender non-conforming people. As academic and gay rights activist professor Dennis Altman puts it, the "situation in some US states at the moment for trans people is far worse than anything we've experienced in Australia in the last 20 years". "I mean, we're going back to essentially the sort of views around homosexuality that were held in countries like Australia in the 50s and 60s, in a period of social media hysteria and a possible president who essentially has no interest in protecting basic civil liberties."
So how did the US get here? Professor Altman points to a two-pronged answer: the growing rights and visibility of LGBTQIA+ people and the vote of US fundamentalist Christians. The religious affiliation of the US is noticeably different to Australia's. Christians make up about 64 per cent of the US's population, versus Australia's 43.9 per cent seen in the 2021 Census. It should be noted there's no clear insight into how many fundamentalist Christians make up that 64 per cent. "You have over the last decade an assertion of trans identities to a much greater extent than we've ever seen," Professor Altman said. "Many more people publicly identifying as trans, talking about themselves as trans, and I think that's given a particular ammunition to the right. "I think we have to distinguish between the true believers who are essentially fundamentalist Christians, and those politicians who see this as a very useful issue for drumming up political support." Donald Trump, Professor Altman says, is the latter. "The anti trans-measures really begin in the Trump era and he's very clearly indicated that they would be strengthened were he re-elected," he added. Justin Ellis, criminology lecturer at the University of the Newcastle's School of Law and Justice, says compared to the 1970's anti-LGBTQIA+ crusade led by Florida campaigner Anita Bryant, the issues now are "more multifaceted." "This creates greater opportunity to confuse issues," he says. "For example, over drag queen story time with transgender identity." He also points to a growing organisation of anti-LGBTQIA+ groups on social media — whether that is fringe political actors, extremist conspiracy theorists or local activists — who use the platforms to coordinate the "amplification of anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment" and misinformation. "What they also might be doing — and this might be inadvertent or intentional — is spreading anti-LGBTQIA+ information across social networks," he says. "Which moderation is not adequately addressing, and timeliness is one of the issues there." Notably, Dr Ellis points to billionaire Elon Musk's October 2022 takeover of X — formerly Twitter — which saw the mention of grooming slurs against the LGBTQIA+ community jump by 119 per cent, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate. The social media sphere also saw anti-LGBT
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