On Friday in NYC, the annual Drag March for Pride Month got under way in Tompkins Square Park. It was the expected array of fabulous, fantastic, and/or delicious people decked out in outrageous finery, crossing and uncrossing gender lines. The march is the cause of the latest right-wing freak out over a perceived LGBTpocalypse because of a portion of a chant.
One part of the marching group chanted, "We're here! We're queer! We're not going shopping!" as an anti-capitalist stance by some queer organizations going all the way back to at least the 1990s. The freak out is because in the video clip that made the rounds of Nutsyzania (and apologies for linking to a right-wing dipshit for this) you can hear one guy and maybe one other person chant, "We're here, we're queer, and we're coming for your children." It's a clever joke playing on the worst fears of the most ignorant motherfuckers out there. It is so insignificant, like a flea fart in a hurricane, but conservative media, including Fox "news" and the New York Post and assorted cockmites of the right have picked up on that little bit of a sound bite and treated it like the entire goal of Pride Month is to force kids to go on puberty blockers or some such shit.
The usual fuckers did the usual fuckery, leaping in to do their best dance of fake outrage. "This movement grooms minors to have mastectomies and castration and fuels a multi billion dollar medical child abuse industry," screamed rat banshee Marjorie Taylor Greene. Lesser animals talked about murdering LGBT people ("There's not a woodchipper big enough" or "Come and try") or "This is what evil looks like" or disgust at the very existence of people in drag or topless women (there's one in the video with nipple pasties) or assertions of "grooming" and pedophilia. You know the routine by now. Truth Toilet has lost its tiny mind over the whole thing. I'm sure we'll hear how this was supposed to distract us from Hunter Biden because every fucking thing seems to have that purpose now.
We are in the midst of an enormous backlash against the rights of queer people in this goddamned country. Things have moved really fucking quickly from drag queens in front of kids to drag queens in general, from trans kids to trans people in general, from banning books with queer characters to banning anything with a friggin' rainbow in general. We're in the midst of an attempt to drag us all back into the closet and lock the door, and lemme tell you, as someone who fought this shit already to get us to where we were before the slavering hatemongers came up with a new way to make bank once the same sex marriage issue seemed to be settled, it's fucking frightening, fucking enraging, and just fucked in general.
Here's some shit that happened in just the last month or so:
In New Hampshire, fucking Nazis showed up outside a coffee shop in Concord to chant and yell slurs while a drag queen story time was going on inside. And then I'm sure they all went back to someone's basement and circle jerked in triumph while talking about straight they are.
Crazed white nationalist protesters showed up outside a school board meeting in Glendale, California, to rant and get violent about LGBTQ content in the district's curriculum. They had Proud Boys, January 6th insurrectionists, and other assorted fucknuts there, and riot police were present to separate the fucknuts from the LGBTQ supporters, parents, and people. And then I'm sure the Proud Boys went back to someone's basement and totally didn't jack off because, no, really, they actually believe that shit.
Nazis also showed up at a drag brunch fundraiser to support LGBTQ+ kids in Columbus, Ohio. That roused Republican Governor and crazy son of a bitch who is actually less crazy than most of the GOP Mike DeWine to pen an editorial condemning the existence of Nazis, even if he didn't offer any support to the queer community.
And then there are the laws that have been passed and stopped by various courts that ban treatment for trans kids or ban people in drag in places where children might be. But that hasn't stopped those same states from banning discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in their public schools. It's not just Florida's Ron DeSantis, who always looks like he's telling someone, "This dick won't suck itself" as he shoves their head into his lap. Oklahoma's governor just approved rules that could take away a school's accreditation if their libraries have "sexualized materials" (which sounds like cum rags, frankly).
According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, more than 200 anti-drag protests, threats, and violent incidents have taken place in the United States in the last year. That's IRL shit. It doesn't count online harassment and hate speech, which is probably so high that it's impossible to register how much of it is out there.
The problem has always been that a small, loud contingent, with politicians who want to fan the flames of fear and hate to get votes, can make life a fucking misery for a lot of people. And that dopamine jolt of getting "likes" makes people believe jump on the hate bandwagon, whether they truly give a shit or not. And you know what? Most of them fucking don't. They just think they're supposed to.
Lemme end this with an anecdote. On the NYC subway right now, you might see ads from the dating site Tinder. Leaving aside whatever you think about Tinder and swipe culture, the ads themselves are fascinating because they show various kinds of couples in romantic situations for various gender combinations: same-sex, opposite sex, even non-binary (with the line "A toothbrush at their place"). I really dig their positivity and, really, sexiness. I sat on the subway on Friday thankful that I live somewhere that this kind of thing causes no issue whatsoever to almost every single one of us. No one gave a shit.
You know who else didn't give a shit, too? The people bringing their kids on the train. No one told their children not to look. No one fucking cared. And that goes for the two obviously tourist families who went on and off (I was on a long ride into Brooklyn). They had southern accents, and each was two straight parents and three kids of various ages. They glanced at the ads and then went about their business, like the rest of us did. If they had given a shit at all, they could have gotten off and gone onto another car. They didn't because it didn't matter that much if they saw two men who love each other. (Yes, I know they could have been southern liberals.)
I fully believe that most people in the United States don't believe any of this is a threat to them or their precious kids. But, like with so many issues, they give into pressure from their peers or their churches to hate where they just don't have that hate. Yeah, that makes them suck, too. But that means they might be persuadable. As we learned with same sex marriage, once it was decided, it went away as an issue (until recently when the Christian nutzoids realized this insane Supreme Court might actually overturn it).
As Pride Month winds down, we need to push the zealots and Nazis back in the closets. That's where hate belongs, not love.
