A relentless parade of marchers — some dancing and cheering, others set with a determined purpose — filled Fifth Avenue and the streets of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village on Sunday for the New York City Pride March, even as an ominous backdrop from which local and national threats hang. above the day’s slate of events.
The march, with its flags and bright floats, commemorated the 1969 Stonewall riot that spurred the modern LGBTQ rights movement. It was the largest of its kind in the United States, with 75,000 marchers and nearly two million spectators, according to organizers.
The event was broadcast even today on network television, a reflection of the fact that public support for LGBTQ people has never been higher, reaching between 60 and 70 percent in recent polls.
But the backlash to those victories has grown since same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in 2015. In recent years, each successive Pride Month seems to have come up against new and greater challenges to LGBTQ community.
Last year, states across the country passed laws banning drag shows and transgender health care, while protests and physical attacks on LGBTQ activists and their supporters vandalized gay bars and community centers.
Juli Culling marched with a sign that read, “I’m marching for my daughter” — a fact in more ways than one, crossing the country with her 18-year-old trans daughter from the Southern California in search of a more welcoming home.
“I told him to pick a city,” Ms. Culling to move two years ago, “and he said New York.”
The experience was very rewarding, and her daughter felt comfortable at her new school, Broome Street Academy, but a threat was felt attached to any journey they took.
“We know what the world is like today. It’s scary,” he said. In fact, her daughter was too anxious to march on Sunday, she said.
Rev. Nicole Garcia, the faith work director of the National LGBTQ task force, acknowledges that the current negative atmosphere is weighing on her: “I’m a queer transgender Latina who is ordained,” she said. But he sought to dismiss the fear on Sunday, saying his biggest concern was “my arthritic knees.”
Likewise, a veteran of the LGBTQ community standing next to him in a little shade on a hot morning, David Rothenberg, 89, pointed to the joy of the event. “It has the dynamics of early exit – it’s complicated, but it’s exciting,” he said.
Anania Williams from Chicago, who identifies as fluid fluid and uses the corresponding pronouns, shared her journey to that identity on her popular social media accounts, which led to backlash online. The parade is a respite, a place to be “queer and happy,” they say.
“Everything is allowed to change,” they said.
Conservative-led boycotts against companies that once embraced Pride festivities, such as Target and Anheuser Busch, led to billions of dollars in corporate losses. The backlash also entered the 2024 presidential race, because Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has placed his Republican primary hopes on opposing LGBTQ rights and fighting corporations, such as Disney, that support them.
Heritage of Pride, which organized the march, acknowledged the worsening political climate in an open letter earlier this month signed along with organizers of several other Pride events across the country. In it, they warned that the LGBTQ community is “threatened” and criticized the “friends of fair weather” in corporate America.
“Despite the progress we have made together, we are now surrounded,” the organizers wrote. “An alarming increase in legal disruptions and targeted intimidation by extremist groups at these events, across the United States, has made our celebratory gatherings less safe. The threats have become apparent, scary and can no longer be ignored.
Those threats take many forms.
Across the country, a wave of state legislation is targeting LGBTQ youth in particular, banning transgender health care for minors and prohibiting teachers from discussing gay topics. and transgender in schools.
In a report released last week, two civil rights groups documented more than 350 acts of anti-LGBTQ harassment, vandalism or violence in the United States between June 2022 and April 2023, with more than in half clearly refer to gay or transgender people as pedophiles.
Some of those incidents were fatal. Last week, a man was accused of planning a shooting and bombing at Nashville Pride. That plan was carried out by a Colorado shooter who killed five people and injured 17 others at a gay bar in November, in what prosecutors said was a hate crime.
That same month, concerns were high in New York after a gay bar had its windows smashed four times in one month. Weeks later, the office of a gay member of the New York City Council was vandalized by opponents of Drag Story Time, who vandalized his home and attacked his neighbor.
Even the site of the Stonewall Inn, the site of the 1969 riots, was not spared. Last month, vandals vandalized the national monument outside the bar four times, cutting its many rainbow flags in half.
“Pride feels different this year,” said Erik Bottcher, the City Council member whose home and office were vandalized, and who represents the neighborhood that contains the Stonewall Monument.
“Last year, there was an increase in the level of poison emitted in our community,” he said. “The rhetoric is ratcheted up online, at school board meetings and even in Congress. That kind of rhetoric manifests itself in the real world.
Meanwhile, debates within the LGBTQ community on whether the corporate embrace of Pride has diluted the political roots of the event giving way to a different reality, as brands have turned away from that strategy after the attacks on conservative activists and media figures.
Since April, three companies that have released Pride merchandise or partnered with LGBTQ influencers — Target, Anheuser-Busch and Kohl’s — have lost more than $28 billion in market value, according to an analysis by Axios.
The Los Angeles Dodgers, criticized by liberals and conservatives alike as it publicly wavered on whether to honor a drag troupe this month, saw thousands of protesters descend on its stadium when it decided to invite drag queen afterwards.
And after decorating its stores with rainbow bunting for years, Starbucks declined to decorate for Pride this year at stores in 21 states, according to an employee union.
New York is one of those states. On a recent tour of Starbucks locations in Manhattan, reporters found no Pride decorations in neighborhoods known for their large LGBTQ populations, including Chelsea and Greenwich Village.
Even the Starbucks a block from the Stonewall Inn doesn’t have a rainbow.
Lauren McCarthy contributed to the report.