The decision to observe Pride did not spark street brawls last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hundreds of furious demonstrators. Police in riot gear. Barricades on the street and helicopters overhead. This was the scene outside a suburban California<\/a> school board meeting this week, as the board planned to vote on whether the district should officially recognize June as LGBTQ+ pride month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A year ago, the decision to observe Pride at schools in Glendale, a suburb about 20 minutes from downtown Los Angeles<\/a>, did not spark street brawls or result in multiple arrests. But this year things were different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maebe Pudlo, a trans nonbinary activist and drag queen who has run for US congress in the district, was among those who showed up to the Glendale unified school district\u2019s meeting. She says local advocates supporting Pride were greeted by people calling them \u201cgroomers\u201d and \u201cpedophiles\u201d, and were accused of trying to \u201cindoctrinate\u201d children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Footage of the violent demonstration in Glendale showed groups of men in the streets in identical \u201cLeave our kids alone\u201d T-shirts and crowds of people shoving and punching<\/a> each other. The Glendale police said their attempts to de-escalate the situation failed, even after arresting three people and they declared an unlawful assembly and ordered the crowd outside the school to disperse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though the board ultimately voted to recognize Pride month, as they have done since 2019, the experience was \u201cterrifying\u201d, said Pudlo, who said she has faced a wave of online harassment since. Anonymous accounts are \u201csaying that folk like me should be killed and hanged\u201d, she said. California \u201cis supposed to be a safe state\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Local journalists and advocates said that multiple rightwing activists<\/a> with a history of violence were present at the Glendale incident. The unrest came less than a week after protesters and police clashed outside a North Hollywood elementary school during a demonstration over a planned Pride assembly<\/a>. There, too, protesters were seen wearing T-shirts reading \u201cLeave our kids alone,\u201d and a trailer with a \u201cleave our kids alone\u201d banner drove through the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rhetoric at the protest was \u201cugly\u201d and \u201chateful\u201d, said Reverand Pat Langlois, who attended the North Hollywood demonstration in support of LGBTQ+ families. While she has been to many protests in the past four decades, \u201cThis was something different,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A transgender teacher\u2019s pride flag was previously set on fire at the same school, prompting a police investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe think of these things happening in the deep south, or in some very conservative rural areas. This happened a few minutes away from one of the epicenters of gay liberation,\u201d said Roland Palencia, a co-founder of Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos, and a longtime activist in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur allies \u2013 they need to speak out,\u201d Palencia added. \u201cThis is the time when they need to say, \u2018Enough is enough.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On 6 June, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an advocacy group, announced that it was declaring a \u201cstate of emergency\u201d for LGBTQ+ people in America<\/a>, hoping to galvanize politicians and other allies to take more action to defend queer people amidst an \u201cunprecedented and dangerous spike\u201d in legislative assaults, as well as literal ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far this year, HRC has documented nearly 20 different acts of intimidation targeting Pride and drag events across the US, from violent protests to bomb threats to extremists showing up to children\u2019s drag story hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More than 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced across the country, with at least 76 signed into law as of early June \u2013 the most of any year on record \u2013 and more than twice the number of anti-LGBTQ+ laws passed last year, the organization said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The majority of these bills target trans people, especially trans youth, with a focus on laws \u201cthat make it impossible for transgender minors to be able to access medically necessary, best-practice gender-affirming care\u201d, said Sarah Warbelow, HRC\u2019s vice- president of legal policy. Some of these anti-trans laws target healthcare workers, attempting to criminalise them if they try to provide gender-affirming care, and many \u201care going after the parents of transgender children, as well\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There has also been \u201can incredible uptick\u201d in bills \u201cthat would make it impossible for school personnel to support LGBTQ+ youth in classroom\u201d, she added, from Florida\u2019s \u201cdon\u2019t say gay\u201d law, to attempts to force schools to out students to their parents in the name of parental rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under \u201cdon\u2019t say gay\u201d laws in public schools, many teachers \u201cfeel that they can no longer be open about their sexual orientation or gender identity and they have to hide who they are out of fear that a parent will single them out, target them, sue their school\u201d, Warbelow said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of federal civil rights protections, teachers might ultimately win those lawsuits, but that doesn\u2019t matter, Warbelow said: \u201cMany folks feel like they don\u2019t have a meaningful choice, even if the law technically protects them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just three years ago, a surging QAnon conspiracy theory movement claimed that Democrats and other elite figures were torturing and violating children as part of satanic rituals, lurid allegations that helped galvanize the January 6 attack on the US capitol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, those same kind of political \u201cconspiracies\u201d are being applied to LGBTQ+ people, Bamby Salcedo, the president of the TransLatin@ Coalition in Los Angeles, noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As cities across the country roll out Pride parades, marches and parties, meant to commemorate the June 1969 uprising against police violence at the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan, many people are on edge, worried about increased harassment or being the targets of deadly attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During Pride month in June 2016, a gunman opened fire at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, leaving 49 people dead in what is still one of the deadliest mass shootings in US history. Last November, Club Q, an LGBTQ+ bar in Colorado, which was hosting a drag event, was the target of another deadly shooting which left five people dead and 17 wounded<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the political atmosphere, many LGBTQ+ Americans say that, while they\u2019re paying more attention to their safety in public, they do not want to give up on Pride events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe need to be reminded that we are beautiful and resilient people,\u201d Salcedo, the president of the TransLatin@ Coalition, said. \u201cWe are not going to let all this negativity take us away from celebrating ourselves and letting the world know that we exist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After decades of advances, including winning the legality for same sex marriage, many LGBTQ+ Americans, especially those in more Democratic states, had come to think of their fight for equality as a linear and unbroken march of progress, Palencia said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re realizing is that there are going to be more twists and turns for us to get to full recognition as citizens and as human beings,\u201d Palencia said. \u201cThe reality is that the hate never went away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n