Let’s take our movement back. A Pride Month letter to our allies

A Pride Month letter to our allies

Right-wing groups have infiltrated digital rights activism.

It’s time to take our movement back.

The following is an open letter from queer and transgender staff members at Fight for the Future.

To our allies in the fight for human rights and tech justice:

Every Pride Month, we celebrate LGBTQ+ people’s strength, resilience, and diversity. For the last few years, however, a specter has loomed over the marches, fairs, and festivities. Even as cultural acceptance of queer identities remains strong, a moneyed and powerful anti-LGBTQ+ movement has moved from the margins to the center.

The prospect for the coming years looks dire: members of this backlash now occupy the highest rungs of power in the United States. They are enacting policies that directly target queer and trans people’s safety, healthcare, legal recognition, and access to government services. These policies, in turn, are linked to a rise in hate crimes, an increase in youth suicidality, and a mass migration away from the most repressive states.

The people responsible for this dramatic rise in anti-LGBTQ+ activism are not hard to locate. They are the leaders of a right-wing network that was born in opposition to the civil rights movement and the Equal Rights Amendment.

This network’s central figures include NCOSE (formerly Morality in Media), the Heritage Foundation, the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), and Phillis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum. Through model policies, litigation, and grassroots organizing, the Religious Right is banning books like Gender Queer and All Boys Aren’t Blue, revoking healthcare from transgender kids and adults, banning or criminalizing bathroom use, and protecting torturous practices like conversion therapy.

These groups are successful, in part, because they are shapeshifters. And, troublingly, they have infiltrated movements for digital rights and online safety.

These groups have begun lobbying for Internet bills like the Kids Online Safety Act, the App Store Accountability Act, and various age-gating laws. They cloak their bigotry in the language of concern, but they are not innocent advocates for children’s digital safety.

We write you because you have appeared in coalition with the above-listed groups in your public-facing materials. And we write you in a time of urgent need. Help us unmask these groups and eject them from our movement.

If you receive this letter, we ask of you three things:

Commit to never again working with the following anti-LGBTQ+ Religious Right groups: the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (formerly Morality in Media), the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Heritage Foundation/Heritage Action, the Institute for Family Studies, Concerned Women for America, the Family Policy Alliance network, and the Eagle Forum network.
Apologize to your supporters and followers for previously working with LGBTQ+ hate groups.
Make and publish organizational plans for integrating input from LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations into your public policy work.

The last time the Religious Right held so much political power was during the Reagan and Bush I administrations. During that time, their hatred and homophobia led to the decimation of an entire generation of queer and trans people from HIV/AIDS. Although the names within these organizations have changed, their mission remains clear: they wish to eradicate queer and trans people from public life, and they do not care if we live or die.

Let this Pride Month be the start of tech justice movement that unequivocally rejects anti-LGBTQ+ hate. Examining our coalitions closely and taking accountability for past relationships with the Religious Right is a powerful first step.

In solidarity,

Fight for the Future

Sign the Open Letter

Comments

Our organization supports Equity for All. Although we do welcome engaging in open and sincere dialogue, we also carefully vet our sibling organizations in order that no one chooses to see any or all of our community members disappeared.

I don't want to live in an Orwellian nightmare.

We need decisive, clear commitments from every organization, entity, business, candidate, lawmaker and person who says they care about LGBTQ+ people, in real solidarity. We ALSO need clear commitments to roll back mass surveillance, and to stand WITH us to block every effort these anti-LGBTQ+ organizations bring forward to harm us, our communities, and our families (blood AND chosen); enact digital and offline censorship, and attempts to exclude us from public life! The way we overcome the challenges our nation faces is when people and organizations commit to fighting WITH us, which often means backing up OUR leadership, as we fight for our futures, together. Maya Morales, WA People's Privacy

This oppression and censorship is unacceptable. I'm signing in honor of fellow queer and trans survivors, as well as those who died because of hatred and oppression. I stand in support of Fight For The Future's message. We deserve safety, security, and justice.

These horrible groups have been lobbying for WWW bills like the Kids Online Safety Act, the App Store Accountability Act, and various age-gating laws. They cloak their bigotry in the language of concern, but they are not innocent advocates for children’s digital safety. I write you because you have appeared in coalition with the above-listed groups in your public-facing materials. And I write you in a time of urgent need. These cruel groups need exposure to remove them from our movement, because they do not belong here.

We don't need these right-wing hate groups dictating us and tell us what to do or how to live. This is supposed to be a free country where ALL of us get a chance on life.

Collaborating with hate groups is unacceptable, especially as LGBTQ+ people are being targeted by a government partially staffed by Religious Right figures. Everyone deserves a baseline level of privacy and respect, regardless of political, sexual, or other orientation. Censoring and removing these groups from public discussion and restricting their rights is unconstitutional and un-American.

Any involvement of religious bigotry is unacceptable. The religious right is the most anti-freedom mainstream force in politics. It cannot be trusted or safely aligned with.

Stop nonprofits from working with the hateful right wing ideology groups! Hate has no place here

Queer people deserve to exist peacefully just as any other human being on Earth. We are not a threat to humanity.

Gay people have always existed and will continue to exist forever, and blacklisting us will not make us disappear. We will always fight back.

Human rights are paramount, and these groups intend to take away the humanity of people who have harmed no one, and instead create a mentality of us vs them. Their cruelty is the point, and they always have some new bogeyman to chase. Innocent peoples lives have been ruined by the bigotry of these groups, and they seek to police even the bodies of straight people if they don't measure up to their criteria. Please, boycott these organizations and keep away from them.

Please be aware of the right-wing groups you are collaborating with. Prioritize equality and human rights. Properly vet the groups you are sharing digital spaces with!

As someone's work in children's advocacy has been used for the past quarter century to legitimize and rationalize bills that censor, surveil, and harm innocent people, I do not support such things. I, in fact, stand against them. Politics make for strange bedfellows but I agree with FightForTheFuture that a stand should be made here and now.

NCOSE, Heritage Foundation, Ethics and Public Policy Center: you have no right to tell other people how to live their lives!

anti LGBTQ+ organizations are fascistic and support censorship, which is fundamentally opposed to a free and open internet.

I don't want to live in a nightmare

It's evident now more than ever that these laws are not aimed at keeping children safe, but rather wise spread censorship, hate , and isolation of the youth.

To non-profits: stop collaborating with right-wing groups like NCOSE, the Heritage Foundation, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

As a young trans woman, these bills are seriously harmful to people of all walks of life. Children and adults alike will have to bear with the burden of a nanny state if any of these bills are signed into law.

Enough with the intolerance, the bigotry, the othering and the hate!

You cannot stand for human rights while allying with groups that lobby to restrict rights based on a narrow view of who is and isn't deserving of them.

The harm that is being done to the LGBTQ+ community by technology surveillance companies cannot be overstated. All Americans should be horrified and ashamed. Just because you don't perceive yourself to be in the crosshairs doesn't mean your group won't be targeted next.