Pride Month Marked by 'Unprecedented' Backlash

An unusually contentious Pride Month is drawing to a close.

Not only has it been overshadowed by boycotts of brands that had trumpeted their support for transgender rights in particular, but opinion polls have suggested falling support for the LGBTQ+ community in general after years of growing acceptance.

On June 6, the Human Rights Campaign declared a first-of-its kind national state of emergency for the LGBTQ+ community while leading advocacy group GLAAD has dubbed 2023 "a year of unprecedented challenge," and there's plenty of evidence to back that assertion.

"The threats are becoming tangible, terrifying, and can no longer be ignored," NYC Pride said on its website, noting that an escalation of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is "disproportionately targeting our trans siblings."

The criticism of Pride Month has been led by the political right at a time that LGBTQ+ matters have taken a central place in the U.S. culture wars between conservatives and progressives.

"People are going, 'Enough, enough.' Stop shoving this down everybody's throat," No. 1 podcaster Joe Rogan told his millions of listeners when discussing Pride in mid-June.

A few days later, self-described gay "classical liberal" Dave Rubin, another top podcaster, began his show with: "It is still Pride Month. Pronouns, genitals being chopped off, all of the stuff that comes with Pride is still happening, although it is being pushed back against more and more."

Pride Month had become an increasing opportunity for brands to signal their social awareness, whether through genuine commitment, to show solidarity with staff and customers or for the benefit of big investment firms demanding respect for environmental, social, and governance criteria.

But this year companies and sports teams found themselves under fire for taking pro-LGBTQ+ positions, most prominently Bud Light and Target, with both seen as wavering in the face of boycotts.

"It's a challenging atmosphere with sponsors, as you saw with Target caving in to a small group of extremists," Cathy Renna, the communications director for the National LGBTQ Task Force, told Newsweek. "We're seeing fear on the part of businesses not only for Pride but for year-round support. That's a real shift. The backlash is impactful."

It was trans rights that prompted opponents to mobilize against Bud Light and Target, the latter having featured a display of Pride items, some of which appeared aimed at children. It also included "tuck-friendly" swimwear for male genitalia and "binding" items for female breasts, as well as some clothing with satanic imagery, one with the slogan, "Satan Respects Pronouns."

While the criticism has been spearheaded by conservatives, there is much more questioning of trans rights among Americans than of longer standing LGBTQ+ rights such as gay marriage—but there are even signs of a shift on that.

A DailyMail/J.L. Partners survey found that 59 percent of Americans, including a majority in every age group, believe that the promotion of trans and gender ideology has "gone too far," even as the same poll found that Americans are largely split down the middle on whether businesses such as Target should celebrate Pride Month.

And a Gallup Values and Belief poll released in June found that the number of Americans who believe same-sex relationships are morally appropriate dropped to 64 percent from 71 percent a year earlier.

Vocal opposition to trans rights has appeared over questions such as allowing transgender women to compete in female sporting events and use female restrooms and locker facilities. Also targeted have been gender-affirming hormones, puberty blockers and surgery for minors.

"I call BS on that," said Renna. "Gender-affirming care saves lives," she told Newsweek.

Medical professionals tend to agree. The American Medical Association, has recommended that "sex" designations be removed from birth certificates and has pledged to advocate against restrictions on gender-affirming care.

GLAAD says there are nearly 500 "anti-LGBTQ+ bills" that have been introduced in state legislatures and at least 75 of them have already passed this year. Many of those bills deal with transgender rights. The group notes that a poll from Data For Progress taken in May indicates that 47 percent of LGBTQ+ adults feel "less safe" in the past few years, compared with 31 percent who feel safer.

Laura Becker, a woman who transitioned to a man as a teenager then back to a woman in her 20s and is featured in No Way Back, a documentary described as anti-transgender by its opponents, told Newsweek that blowback against Pride Month was inevitable.

"A lot of the Pride celebrations are adult-themed but marketed to children," Becker said. "It's gone from being proud to be gay to marketing drugs and surgery to kids."

In addition to the cultural pushback that has seen some businesses reining in their support, Renna said Pride events have taken a financial hit due to inflation, a more stringent regulatory environment and surging costs of insurance and security due to "the very threat of attack that requires us to need protection," as NYC Pride puts it at its website.

While Pride organizers say backlash has resulted in record turnouts for their events, InterPride, which tracks such things, says 22 percent of organizers report declines in corporate sponsorships in the U.S., NBC News reported.

In addition to Pride Month, there are other events to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community—or for their detractors to boycott them.

July 14 marks the beginning of Nonbinary Awareness Week. Two days later is International Drag Day. In August there is Gay Uncle's Day, also known as "Guncles." The following month there are seven days of Bisexual+ Awareness Week, then 31 days of LGBTQ History Month in October, which includes International Pronouns Day on the third Wednesday.

In all, there's roughly 125 days, including overlaps, each year dedicated to celebrating gay, lesbian, transexual and non-binary Americans, according to the LGBTQ Calendar created by GLAAD.

Pride Month traces its roots back to 1969 with rioting over a June police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York. A year later, the first Pride marches began in multiple cities to mark "Christopher Street Liberation Day," named for the address where the original Stonewall Inn was located.

In June, 1999, President Bill Clinton declared June would be "Gay and Lesbian Pride Month" and in 2011 President Barack Obama widened it to include the transgender community.

"Americans are tired of divisive activism from companies, media outlets, government agencies and everything else in between," said Jeremy Tedesco, senior VP of the conservative campaign group Alliance Defending Freedom.

But the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center, which lists the ADF as one of 1,225 hate groups in the U.S., says that is wrong. The goal of such groups "is the total suppression of LGBTGQ+ people from American public life," SPLC deputy director of media Evan Lowell told Newsweek.

Spurred by the arrest last year of 31 members of a white nationalist group who allegedly conspired to disrupt a Pride event in Idaho, a civil rights group called Western States Center this June published for the first time a toolkit dubbed, Protecting Pride, with advice on keeping celebrations safe.

Citing data from Princeton University's Bridging Divides Initiative, Western States Center director of programs Lindsay Schubiner told Newsweek that there were 79 anti-LGBTQ demonstrations in 2020 and 2021 combined, but three times that many in the following 15 months. The Anti-Defamation League and GLAAD say there were 356 anti-LGBTQ acts of harassment, vandalism and assault in the first 11 months since the beginning of last year's Pride Month.

"Do we want to be a country of basic rights for all, or do we want bigotry and hate?" Schubiner asked. "What we are seeing this Pride Month is that a lot of people don't want LGBTQ people to participate in public life with their full identities."

Chadwick Moore, who authored the book So You've Been Sent to Diversity Training, told Newsweek that the backlash to Pride, including from some in the gay community, had been prompted by a focus on gender and queer theory.

Pride Month has become "anti-family, anti-God, anti-science, anti-woman, and pro-corporatist," Moore said.

"People are on to it, especially my fellow gays, even though they are all too afraid to speak up," he said. "These repulsive activist types are not only sucking all the fun out of Pride Month but reversing decades of progress by foisting their bizarre agenda on children and in corporate America."

Nonsense, said Renna. "If you don't want to celebrate Pride Month, then don't. But don't impose your views on others."

Asked to respond to those who are banning Pride flags and complaining that there are too many LGBTQ holidays on GLAAD's calendar, she said: "They are quite literally trying to erase our community. Straight pride is every day. We live in a heteronormative culture."

Below are some of the challenges to Pride Month this year:

— On June 2 at Marshall Simonds Middle School in Burlington, Massachusetts, children were encouraged to wear rainbow clothing for a Pride celebration, but a group of eighth-graders wore red, white and blue and chanted, "My pronouns are USA." The episode made national news and a group called Burlington Equity Coalition demanded "consequences." Michael Espejo, a Select Board Member in Burlington, told reporters that a "bad light has been cast over our town" by the students who chanted pro-USA slogans.

— On June 6 at a school board meeting in Glendale, California, ahead of a vote to officially proclaim June as Pride Month, hundreds of protesters showed up and a brawl ensued, with three people arrested. Some were there to support the measure while others opposed it. The vote passed unanimously.

On the same day, also in California, the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted to limit which flags could be flown on county property to only government and POW/MIA flags, in essence banning the Pride flag, and others followed suit. A week later, for example, Hamtramck, Michigan, banned Pride flags from flying on public property and the Chino Valley Unified school board in California banned the flag in district classrooms.

— Also on June 6, America First Legal, representing a conservative group called the National Center for Public Policy Research, which owns shares of Target, fired off a letter to the chain's board of directors demanding to inspect its books and records.

The lengthy letter included dozens of photos of Pride and trans clothing items for children. One example of alleged reputational harm included in the letter is the description of a rap song that reached No. 1 on iTunes sales in the U.S. "The song features a rapper showing sexualized merchandise aimed at children in an actual Target store and then encouraging customers not to shop at Target," the letter states.

— At the June 12 Pride event at the White House, transgender model and influencer Rose Montoya, who has chronicled her surgical procedures on social media, bared her augmented breasts in front of guests and cameras shortly after meeting President Joe Biden.

Already backlash had been brewing due to the Pride flag being hoisted between two American flags. But video of Montoya sent the backlash into hyperdrive, including from some transgender people, who accused her of alienating allies, fueling detractors and setting the movement back by years.

Montoya initially defended her actions in an online video, but later deleted it. The White House called Montoya's behavior "unacceptable," "inappropriate" and "disrespectful." Montoya later apologized, saying her indiscretion had "been weaponized by vile people of the opposition."

— On July 13 media reports said that Allen Waters, a Democrat running for Congress, was refusing to attend his party's candidate forum hosted by the Rhode Island Democratic Women's Caucus because it was to be moderated by Donnie Anderson, a transgender reverend who chairs the caucus.

"I do not recognize Reverend Donnie Anderson, a biological male, as a woman in the Democratic party," Allen wrote to the Women's Caucus, according to WLNE-TV in Rhode Island. "As a dedicated father of two beloved, Black teenage daughters, I do not want biological males to compete with them as women in traditional biological female spaces."

That night during an ABC 6 News interview, Anderson accused Waters of "mimicking the lines of these radical right-wing philosophies" and urged him to reverse his decision and apologize to the transgender community. He did not.

— Johns Hopkins University faced backlash for an update to its online glossary of LGBTQ+ terms to define the word "lesbian" as a "non-man attracted to non-men." Among critics were tennis star Martina Navratilova, a lesbian, and Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. After about five days, Johns Hopkins on June 14 announced that "the language in question has been removed pending review."

— The brouhaha over Bud Light engaging trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney to help sell its beer predated this year's Pride Month, though a subsequent boycott came to a head on June 15 when sales data indicated that, after more than two decades as America's top-selling beer, Bud Light had fallen to second behind Modelo Especial, a Mexican lager, according to Nielsen and Bump Williams Consulting.

— On June 15 the backlash against Pride touched Canada, where students at Longfields-Davidson Heights High School in Ottawa used Instagram to organize a protest against rules allowing trans students to use restrooms based on their gender identity.

The organizers called for a peaceful walkout in order to "display the message that teaching about Pride in schools isn't what students want," and to demand the installation of gender-neutral bathrooms for the transgendered.

The group said it stands with "Muslims, Christians, Jews, Sikhs and students in pushing against agendas being forced onto us." Demonstrators on both sides of the issue protested in front of the school that day.

— The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team ran into a buzz saw of controversy for a Pride celebration that featured an award ceremony for The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group known for its "Hunky Jesus" and "Foxy Mary" contests and features men dressed as nuns with names like Sister Porn Again pole dancing on a cross.

Dodgers ace pitcher Clayton Kershaw told the LA Times that the faux nuns were "making fun of other people's religions," and Washington Nationals pitcher Trevor Williams told a Catholic TV network that the Dodgers were violating their own code of conduct by doing so. On June 16, the faux nuns received their award at a mostly empty Dodger Stadium an hour before game time while in and around the parking lot roughly 2,000 demonstrators protested.

— At New York's annual Drag March on Saturday that ended at the Stonewall Inn, some participants chanted, "We're here, we're queer, we're coming for your children." After video was widely circulated online, many characterized the chant as a joke on detractors, some of whom pounced on the opportunity to react. "This movement grooms minors to have mastectomies and castration and fuels a multi billion dollar medical abuse industry," tweeted Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican.

"When people march down the streets yelling out they're going to come for my children, I'm inclined to believe them," tweeted Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, also a Republican. "Now, don't get mad when we refer to you and anyone who doesn't denounce this garbage as 'groomers'."