The Fight Of A Generation - Editorial
We could not help but notice that this year, Pride Month was different. In years past, Pride was met with such an onslaught of support (read: commodification) from companies and brands that a term was actually coined for it: rainbow washing, the act of slapping a rainbow on a logo and masquerading as an ally for 30 days in the name of capitalism without actually doing anything for the community.
This June, though, we’ve seen the opposite: companies like Target, for example, have pulled most (if not all) Pride items off the shelves in response to violent backlash, including credible violent threats, from right-wing conservatives. Target is not the only company or organization to fold to this bigoted kickback—Bud Light, the Los Angeles Dodgers, PetSmart, Major League Baseball and Xbox have all dealt with vitriolic reactions from the right in response to their respective Pride campaigns.
Now there is nary a rainbow-washed logo to be found. What was once a monthlong collective celebration of the queer community and how far it has come since the days of Stonewall has, at least this year, become a sobering reflection of the dismal reality queer people in America exist in.
These first six months of 2023 have seen literally hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills introduced to state legislatures across the nation—the ACLU is currently tracking 461 of those bills as of this writing. June itself kicked off on a dismal note when six days in, the Human Rights Campaign declared its first ever official “State of Emergency” for LGBTQ+ Americans in the organization’s 40-year history.
We feel the need to emphasize this bit: the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization said that America has become such an “increasingly hostile and dangerous” environment that it poses an “imminent threat” to the health and safety of anyone who is not heterosexual. That should alarm all of us.
That national warning was accompanied by the organization’s official handbook for LGBTQ+ people traveling or living in America, stuffed with important information on protecting themselves in a nation that has largely criminalized their existence. It is shameful.
But there is some good news: earlier this week, Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts) held a press conference in Boston’s Nubian Square to announce two pieces of legislation intended to defend LGBTQ+ rights.
The conference was on June 26, which is largely recognized within the LGBTQ+ community as Equality Day due to the laundry list of gay and queer rights-affirming SCOTUS decisions handed down on that day throughout the years: Lawrence v. Texas, Obergefell v. Hodges, United States v. Windsor and Pavan v. Smith, to name a few.
The Gender Affirming Care Access Research for Equity (CARE) Act, one of the bills introduced by Sen. Markey, would authorize $25 million annually over five years for the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research barriers to gender-affirming care and the impact of those barriers on health.
It would build upon the Transgender Bill of Rights—a landmark resolution calling on the federal government to codify and protect the rights of trans and nonbinary people—introduced in March by Sen. Markey and US Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington). Together, the two bills will fund research and dismantle systemic barriers to both basic and gender-affirming health care for LGBTQ+ individuals, while also ensuring their access to necessities like safe shelter and economic security.
Sen. Markey also announced the LGBTQ+ Panic Defense Prohibition Act, a bill he reintroduced along with US Representative Christopher C. Pappas (D-New Hampshire). This bill, Sen. Markey said, would ban the use of “bigoted” panic defenses that “blame the victim’s gender identity, expression or sexual orientation to excuse violent acts.”
These panic defenses are textbook exercises in victim blaming, an attempt to excuse violent crimes by blaming the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Sen. Markey said the bill to prohibit these defenses is being filed in memory of Matthew Shepard and 17-year-old Nikki Kuhnhausen, two victims of LGBTQ+ hate crimes whose perpetrators evoked the “gay panic” defense. Matthew was a 21-year-old gay man who was beaten and left for dead in 1998; Nikki was a transgender teenage girl who was murdered in 2019.
The introduction of these two bills, Sen. Markey told the crowd, is in response to the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation being pushed nationwide. These anti-LGBTQ+ politicians, he said, are using a “decades-old playbook on discrimination to punish and dehumanize people for who they are using the force of law.”
In the face of these attacks, Sen. Markey said that Massachusetts must be a leader in the nation and step up to defend and fight for LGBTQ+ rights. Considering more than 75 of these bills have been signed into law in 2023 alone, we think this announcement is a restorative move that has been a long time coming.
We think that Sen. Markey’s remarks and outlook are both spot on, and we could not have said it better ourselves. For that reason, we’d like to leave our readers with another quote to reflect on from Monday’s press conference.
“We’re in the midst of this generation’s fight for equality, using the legacy of those who marched and boycotted and fought and died for a better future as our guide,” Sen. Markey said. “We must stand with the people who live at the intersections of oppression embedded in the fabric of our society.”