A Disappointing End To A Difficult Pride Month
This Pride Month was a tough one. The Supreme Court's decision in 303 Creative LLC vs Elenis was a terrible, infuriating, but galvanizing way for it to end.
Hello, friends,
Last week we talked about prison abolition and why that’s a great goal. This week, we’re celebrating Pride Month! We’re going to start with a reminder that Stonewall was a riot and Pride is more-or-less inherently an affirmative protest of our right to exist, so we’re going to talk about the Queer side of things - the Pride-related events that have happened in the past month.
I’m sorry it can’t be a better story. While I try to always put the positive first, Pride Month ended today with a devastating legal blow that cannot be ignored.
And to be honest, I’m having a hard time writing this without being angry, so I promise I won’t make it a long one to read.
The Big Defeat
Today’s disaster took the form of a Supreme Court ruling against Queer peoples’ rights to be served by website designers - and, assumingly, any other business owners who “sincerely” believe they have a right to discriminate against us.
As Skylar Baker-Jordan (linked above) put it: Queer people are now second-class citizens, in part because of potentially-falsified evidence that created an imaginary legal standing. Legal expert Elie Mystal referred to this as a new Plessy Vs Ferguson,
Now, according to my not-much-reading of this court opinion, this means I have a legal right to refuse to serve any Fascist in a red hat who supports this and similar rulings, as they violate my religious creed of “An it harm none, do as ye will.” They do harm, thus I can refuse to serve them.
But since that would do harm to someone, I am - unlike the Fascists - obligated to provide my services should they be requested.
Anyhow, enough with the negatives. Let’s examine the positives.
The Victories In The Face Of Defeats
We’ve talked before on this publication about Transphobic laws and the harm they do both to Queer people and to bystanders. Well, many of these laws are failing in court. That doesn’t mean that regressives won’t continue trying, but it does mean that their first - and presumably ‘best’ - strategies are falling on deaf ears.
Another thing to take note of is that Queer people turn out to be a significant boost to the economic health of the areas we live in. Wells Fargo (of all organizations) found that LGBTQIA+ people tend to have better economic outcomes. This can be coupled with the growing number of states establishing themselves as sanctuaries for Trans healthcare in a sort of lifeboat arrangement for those who feel they need to flee their states.
Then there’s data that shows that there’s still very much a fight worth bringing. For example, a recent Gallup poll found that 71% of people support same-sex marriage. While those numbers might not translate towards support of all aspects of LGBTQIA+ life, such as support for medical transitioning, it does make clear that the vast majority of people, other than the Fascists, support at least some Queer rights.
Considering the decades-long struggle it took to bring people like President Obama from “Marriage is between a man and a woman” to where he is today?
That progress is incredible.
Back To The Point Of Pride Month
Like I said at the start, Pride is all but synonymous with protest. We are, by virtue of celebrating a month dedicated to our existence, in fact affirming that existence. That affirmation, in turn, galvanizes others to accept us when - in a system controlled by oppressive forces - they might instead forsake us.
Yes, that leads to things like “Rainbow Capitalism.” For example, LEGO sells a Progress-Flag style Pride set called “Everyone Is Awesome.” I have one, and if it weren’t for an ongoing trail of family semi-emergencies, medical issues, and inexplicable explosions of glass shelving, I would have put mine together this week and made a video about it. Alas, minor surgeries disrupt entire months.
My hometown of Freeport, New York had its first Pride event, “Pride On The Mile,” which it turns out was the first medium-to-large-scale Pride event I’ve been to. It was put together in part by people I grew up with, and I couldn’t be happier to have seen it be such a success.
Suffice to say that we won’t surrender any time soon - and the more rights that Fascists strip away, the more we’ll fight back.
In Other News…
Keeping with the Supreme Court, on Thursday, the Supreme Court gutted affirmative action with respect to college admissions. Apparently there’s been no impact to its good ‘ol friend, the Legacy Admission.
Still keeping with the Supreme Court, and continuing with the higher education theme, the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan. Biden apparently plans to refocus his effort through a different law, the Higher Education Act, but whether or not that meets the same result at a Fascist-dominated SCOTUS is another story.
Virginia has joined the growing list of states that have been blocked by internet pornography giant PornHub, on account of those states passing laws that require age verification in unsafe ways. No word on whether or not any other sites have blocked these states, given that many other sites probably don’t operate under U.S. law.
Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe. If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list. This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.