I thought gay rights were safe. Now I know I was wrong. - The Washgton Post

Contents:

• AFTER YEARS OF PROGRS ON GAY RIGHTS, HOW DID THE US BEE SO ANTI-LGBTQ+?
• AMERI MOVED ON FROM ITS GAY-RIGHTS MOMENT—AND LEFT A LEGAL MS BEHD
• GAY RIGHTS, RELIGN AND WHAT’S WRONG WH PRCIPL
• I THOUGHT GAY RIGHTS WERE SAFE. NOW I KNOW I WAS WRONG.
• THE STGGLE FOR GAY RIGHTS IS OVER

AFTER YEARS OF PROGRS ON GAY RIGHTS, HOW DID THE US BEE SO ANTI-LGBTQ+?

A rash of laws ncerng the teachg of human sexualy school curricula, banng trans stunt athlet and strippg parents of the right to help their genr-variant children obta appropriate re have popped up numero red stat this same-sex marriage is now part of the fabric of Ameri, nservativ have chosen to explo Amerins’ unfaiary wh trans people and piggyback on parental anger over the perceived overreach of Covid-era school closur, nflatg wh an sid sense of “wokens”, the hop of fdg an electorally viable sluiceway for anti-LGBTQ+ most famo of the anti-LGBTQ+ laws is the piece of Florida legislatn banng stctn on sexual orientatn or genr inty schools between krgarten and third gra, the so-lled “don’t say gay” law.

He was followed by Arizona’s ernor, Doug Ducey, who, after barrg mors om genr-affirmatn treatment, wouldn’t even state for the rerd that trans people were Florida lawmaker Michele Rayner-Goolsby, left, hugs her wife, Bian Goolsby, durg a march at cy hall St Petersburg agast the ‘don’t say gay’ bill. Photograph: Bob Daemmrich/Zuma Wire/Rex/ShutterstockPolicians are supported the media by mentators like Tucker Carlson, who claimed “no one had heard of this trans thg four years ago”, or Charlie Kirk, channelg 1980s fears sayg “gays want to rpt your children” rejuvenated, the right wg is poised to make transphobia and homophobia rnerston of the midterms and 2024 electns, wh promis to liver “don’t say gay” legislatn stat cludg Michigan and New Perks, the print of the Fay Rearch Council, a nservative lobbyg group, veighed agast the ernors of Indiana and Utah for vetog legislatn banng trans women om participatg sports, llg the bills “timely, mastream protectns”.

AMERI MOVED ON FROM ITS GAY-RIGHTS MOMENT—AND LEFT A LEGAL MS BEHD

The Republin US reprentative Marjorie Taylor Greene vowed to troduce a feral “don’t say gay” bill if Republins w the Hoe this November, only to one-up herself days later by tweetg that for people to be pro-trans is to be pro-pedophilia. ”The bs-iendly wg of the GOP that would quietly team up wh Democrats to scuttle rabidly homophobic bills is now outnumbered, and legislators a dozen or more stat that lean even farther to the right than DeSantis are takg, the Natnal Center for Lbian Rights legal director, believ Florida is the tt se for a renewed ph for an aggrsive, Christian-natnalist program.

“I’ve seen this movie before over the last 30 years: The right wg cid to target the LGBTQ muny, whether ’s around marriage or adoptn or trans kids playg sports or bathrooms, ” says the California state senator Stt Wiener, who is gay. “I thought was really important to ph back on the policy level, and to send a clear signal that California and other stat really re about the kids, ” he believ that “don’t say gay” is “patently unnstutnal” but also ntends that relyg on the judicial system to protect human rights may no longer be a sound optn. In this view, human rights n be nsired to be a regulatory and ernance enavour that produc a “tolerable homosexual” rather than a project that mov the directn of lastg eedom or brgg about a radil transformatn of the sexual orr.

In a Febary poll, Gallup found that more people self-intified as lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr – or “somethg other than heterosexual” – on an anonymo survey nducted 2021 than any other pot the last , a change largely driven by young people. Ameri Moved On From Its Gay-Rights Moment—And Left a Legal Ms BehdHalf a after the Supreme Court’s same-sex-marriage cisn, the jtic and Congrs are still tryg to figure out what feral law should say about LGBTQ JonRoughly half of Amerins thk feral law bans discrimatn on the basis of sexual orientatn. But they’ve faced ristance om their right, wh proment pastors and nservative legal groups opposed to any kd of bill that would mark sexual orientatn and genr inty as special legal Ameri has largely moved on om s gay-rights moment, wh many Amerins believg everythg got taken re of wh same-sex marriage, legal advot on both sis have been left wh bter disagreements about where the untry should go next—and the possibily that the stat quo will perpetually rema place.

GAY RIGHTS, RELIGN AND WHAT’S WRONG WH PRCIPL

Ask LGBTQ people themselv, however, and they nsistently see discrimatn their daily liv: A recent study om the Williams Instute at UCLA found that lbian, gay, and bisexual people reported much higher rat of beg bullied, fired, or nied a job, promotn, or lease pared wh heterosexual people. In the past 30 years, the Supreme Court has led sex stereotypg illegal; clared sodomy bans unnstutnal; stck down state measur blockg civil-rights protectns for gays, lbians, and bisexuals; and, of urse, legalized same-sex marriage all 50 stat. But even as the evabily of legalized gay marriage was beg clear the early 2010s, “the narrative really began to take hold that you uld be married on Sunday and fired on Monday and lose your hog on Tuday, ” Sarah McBri, the natnal prs secretary at the Human Rights Campaign, a proment LGBTQ-rights advocy group, told me.

I THOUGHT GAY RIGHTS WERE SAFE. NOW I KNOW I WAS WRONG.

The Equaly Act specifilly bars any group om g the Relig Freedom Rtoratn Act, known as RFRA, to try to opt out of the bill’s relig groups and stutns that teach that homosexualy is a s, and that men and women were created as such by God, the prospect of this kd of legislatn is worryg. ” The signers clud Frankl Graham, the evangelist Billy Graham’s son, who has been known to make flammatory ments about homosexualy; but also Rsell Moore, the head of the Southern Baptist Conventn’s polil arm, who is often seen as a moratg voice the evangelil world. The term “homosexualy, ” while sometim nsired anachronistic the current era, is the most applible and easily translatable term to e when askg this qutn across societi and languag and has been ed other cross-natnal studi, cludg the World Valu Survey.

Dpe major chang laws and norms surroundg the issue of same-sex marriage and the rights of LGBT people around the world, public opn on the acceptance of homosexualy society remas sharply divid by untry, regn and enomic velopment. And Poland, supporters of the erng PiS (Law and Jtice), which has explicly targeted gay rights as anathema to tradnal Polish valu, are 23 percentage pots ls likely to say that homosexualy should be accepted by society than those who do not support the erng party. But even untri like France and Germany where acceptance of homosexualy is high, there are differenc between supporters and non-supporters of key right-wg populist parti such as Natnal Rally France and Alternative for Germany (AfD).

For every highly publicized act of vlence toward sexual mori, such as the recent mass shootg at a gay nightclub Orlando, there are many more physil and verbal asslts, attempted asslts, acts of property damage or timidatns which are never reported to thori, let alone publicized by the media. Commissn on Civil Rights spoke for many when clared that proposals for relig acmodatn “reprent an orchtrated, natnwi effort by extremists to promote bigotry, cloaked the mantle of ‘relig eedom, ’” and “are pretextual attempts to jtify naked anim agast lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr people. The bakery is argug to the Supreme Court jtic that the Constutn protects their right to refe to serve gay people, to tell people like me, like Dave and Charlie, and untls others that they object to our relatnships and therefore refe to serve .

THE STGGLE FOR GAY RIGHTS IS OVER

“We pos that this is bee the Inter facilat workg and people-to-people munitn, which turn n brg about shifts societal views as people learn that people who are close to them may be gay, ” says Jenifer Whten Woodrg, a polil scientist at the Universy of Massachetts, Lowell, who helped nduct the study. In their book, Listen, We Need to Talk: How to Change Attus about LGBT Rights, rearchers Brian Harrison and Melissa Michelson offered their own mol for how public acceptance towards homosexualy has advanced so quickly—one that emphasiz -group learship om people like Portman.

They found that “relig participants exposed to the quotatn attributed to Reverend Lawrence were more likely to say that they supported marriage equaly, more likely to say that they would likely vote for a ballot measure their state tablishg marriage equaly, and more likely to approve of gay and lbian parentg.