LGBTQ communities to decisionmakers who support dangerous legislation: “You can’t Pride with us!”
Pride Month is here, and this year we’re drawing a line in the sand with our so-called “allies” in Washington, state legislatures, and civil society.
Every year, lawmakers and organizations don rainbow avatars, post hand-waving platitudes, and show up to our Pride marches as symbolic gestures of solidarity. As queer and trans people face unrelenting attacks from the Trump administration, it’s time to tell them that the only way to support the LGBTQ community is with action—not just showing up for photo-ops.
That’s why we’re sending a letter demanding that lawmakers and civil society shut down three kinds of dangerous censorship bills, all of which promise to give Trump and his allies more power to target our communities and eviscerate our rights to free speech online.
To Lawmakers and Civil Society Organizations,
We are a coalition of LGBTQ+ activists, artists, and community organizers writing with one simple message: if you support the dangerous censorship bills that are threatening our community, seeing you at Pride this year is going to be a gut punch.
Queer and trans communities are facing unrelenting attacks on all fronts. We can’t keep making space for those who betray us—not at our Pride parades, and not in our movement. Since the beginning of this year, a record-breaking 901 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced across the country, with the vast majority targeting transgender people specifically. To make matters worse, a host of dangerous internet bills are threatening to erase us from the Internet by destroying access to lifesaving LGBTQ+ information online:
- The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would give the Trump administration the ability to censor LGBTQ+ content online simply by claiming it can harm children by making them “anxious” or “depressed.”
- Age verification bills—currently being considered in dozens of states—would restrict access to any website that bigoted state politicians decide is “harmful to minors,” setting the stage to require invasive surveillance of queer and trans people of all ages when they access LGBTQ+ health information and online community spaces.
- A proposed sunset of Section 230 would eliminate long-standing legal protections for social media and other platforms that let people share and organize, meaning these companies would probably just institute nationwide bans on any content or people one state’s government dislikes, including queer and trans creators and organizers.
It’s painful to see politicians and so-called civil society allies show up at Pride every year saying they support our community, then return to Washington and support harmful legislation in an effort to score political points with the very people who are hell-bent on erasing us from public life.
As the Trump administration continues its unprecedented assault on LGBTQ+ rights, there is no longer any doubt that these bills would be used to surveil, silence, and isolate our communities. Some of the groups supporting this legislation, like the Heritage Foundation, have even admitted publicly that they would use these new laws to do exactly that.
These dangers are real, and we need real allies to oppose them—not people who use us as props for their photo ops at a parade.
It’s exhausting to entertain and to share our spaces with anyone who would give the Trump administration and its allies even more weapons to attack and divide us. We are calling on all lawmakers and organizations that consider themselves true LGBTQ+ allies to oppose these dangerous censorship bills, and stop Trump and his cronies from further encroaching on our rights to speak, organize, and create freely.
And if you can’t do that, please stay home.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned