Ahead of New York Pride Parade, LGBTQ rights concerns

Cheering protesters will fill the streets of Manhattan on Sunday for the New York City Pride March, but the shadow of gathering storm clouds — both literal and figurative — was unmistakable.

The march, which commemorates the 1969 Stonewall riot widely regarded as a catalyst for the modern LGBTQ rights movement, is the largest of its kind in the United States, according to organizers, with 75,000 demonstrators and about two million spectators.

The event is now even broadcast on network television, reflecting the fact that public support for LGBTQ people has never been higher. between 60 and 70 percent in recent polls.

But opposition to those benefits has grown since same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in 2015. In recent years, each successive Pride Month has seemed to go on in the face of new and growing challenges for the LGBTQ community.

Over the past year, states across the country have passed laws banning cross-dressing performances and transgender health care, while protests and physical attacks on LGBTQ events and their supporters have left gay bars and community centers in disarray.

Conservative-led boycotts against companies that once embraced Pride festivities, such as Target and Anheuser Busch, have resulted in billions of dollars in business losses. The backlash has also made its way into the 2024 presidential race, as Florida Governor Ron De Santis has pinned his Republican primary hopes on opposition to LGBTQ rights and clashed with companies, such as Disney, that support them.

Heritage of Pride, which is organizing the march, acknowledged the deteriorating political climate earlier this month in an open letter co-signed with the organizers of dozens of other Pride events across the country. In it, they warned that the LGBTQ community was “threatened” and criticized “fair weather friends” in corporate America.

“Despite the progress we have made together, we are currently under siege,” the organizers wrote. “An alarming increase in legal disruptions and targeted harassment by extremist groups at these events, in the United States, is making our celebratory gatherings feel less safe. The threats are becoming tangible, terrifying and undeniable.”

Those threats have taken many forms.

Across the country, a wave of state legislation is targeting LGBTQ youth in particular, banning transgender health care for minors and barring teachers from discussing gay and transgender topics in schools.

This is according to a report released last weekBetween June 2022 and April 2023, two civil rights groups documented more than 350 acts of anti-LGBTQ harassment, vandalism, or violence in the United States, with more than half explicitly calling gay or transgender people pedophiles.

Some of those incidents were fatal. Last week, a man was charged with plotting a mass shooting and bombing at Nashville Pride. One such plan was carried out by a gunman in Colorado who killed five people and wounded 17 others at a gay bar last November, in what prosecutors say was a hate crime.

That same month, concerns were high in New York after the window of a gay bar was smashed with bricks four times in one month. Weeks later, the office of a gay member of the New York City Council was vandalized by Drag Story Time opponents, who then vandalized his house and attacked his neighbor.

Even the site of the Stonewall Inn, site of the 1969 riots, has not been spared. In the past month, vandals have smashed the national monument outside the bar four times, breaking dozens of rainbow flags in half.

“Pride feels different this year,” said Erik Bottcher, the city councilman whose home and office were vandalized and who represents the neighborhood where the Stonewall Monument stands.

“In the past year there has been an increase in the level of poison being spewed into our community,” he said. “The rhetoric has been picked up online, at school board meetings and even in Congress. That kind of rhetoric manifests itself in the real world.”

Meanwhile, debates within the LGBTQ community about whether corporate embrace of Pride diluted the event’s political roots have given way to an entirely different reality, as brands back away from that strategy following scathing attacks from conservative activists and media figures.

Since April, three companies that released Pride merchandise or collaborated with LGBTQ influencers — Target, Anheuser-Busch and Kohl’s — have lost more than $28 billion in market value. according to an analysis by Axios.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, who have been criticized by liberals and conservatives alike for publicly questioning whether or not to honor a drag troupe this month, saw thousands of protesters descend on the stadium when it decided to invite the drag queens anyway.

And after years of decorating its stores with rainbow bunting, Starbucks this year refused to decorate for Pride at stores in 21 states, according to an employee union.

New York was one of those states. During a recent tour of Starbucks locations in Manhattan, reporters found no Pride decorations in neighborhoods known for large LGBTQ populations, including Chelsea and Greenwich Village.

Even the Starbucks a stone’s throw from the Stonewall Inn was rainbow-free.