“Homosexuality has no place in America, happy Nuclear Family Month”. This is how Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles kicked off Pride Month. The same week, the Governor of Indiana, Republican Mike Braun, released a statement proclaiming June to be “Nuclear Family Month”.
A few weeks before, the White House released a National Counter-terrorism Strategy which lumped in drug cartels and terror groups with “the rapid identification and neutralisation of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
While both instances have come from the US right-wing, in a crisis of its own with the failing war in Iran and the cost of living, the attempt to enforce the gender binary and nuclear family has become a crusade for capitalist politicians as a whole. While the far-right and capitalist governments globally have made attacking trans rights a key aspect of their agenda under the guise of protecting women and femininity, this is also combined with a moral panic about falling birth rates resulting in increases in ‘pronatalism’, and attacks on abortion rights.
The fake friends of LGBTQ+ people…
Pride month, far from being the celebration that it was thought to be in the 2010s, has become a weapon for attacks on LGBTQ+ people. Every year, June has become a way for right-wing politicians to one-up themselves to see how far they can take their homophobia and transphobia, and these are just a very few examples over the past few days. This has real impacts on LGBTQ+ people, and on the lives of trans people in particular, as at least seven trans people were killed in March, April, and May alone in the US, with racialised trans women facing the brunt of these attacks.
Violence against trans people, and trans women in particular, has become normalised in society, so much so that Sean Strickland, the UFC Middleweight champion, posted an AI-generated video of him attacking trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney with no response or repercussions. It’s no surprise that increases in such violence take place at a time when there’s an increase in attacks from the media and governments. A transActual survey released in March showed that media-driven transphobia negatively impacts the behaviour of strangers (96 per cent), family members (91 per cent), colleagues (85 per cent) and friends (74 per cent).
As anti-trans attacks become more significant, companies are showing themselves to be the fake friends of the LGBTQ+ community that they always were. In the UK social media posts from the 10 biggest UK-listed or headquartered companies about pride have decreased by over 92% since 2023. In the US, it’s declined by 54%. Amazon and Meta pulled out of sponsoring Amsterdam Pride, in Dublin, over a quarter of US-based corporations that supported Dublin Pride withdrew support last year after Trump’s anti-DEI policies.
…And the real ones
While this isn’t surprising, as companies will always prioritise profits over standing with oppressed communities, this also has an impact on maintaining pride marches every year. In Durham, the annual pride was under threat due to the Reform-led council cutting funding, and companies pulling out. If not for trade unions, who donated over £25,000 to the Pride, it would have been threatened with going under. If companies and governments want pride to go away, it’s up to the LGBTQ+ communities and their true allies in trade unions to step up to keep pride alive.
In order to keep pride alive during the time of severe anti-trans attacks, Pride needs to become a protest now more than ever. Alternative prides, such as Trans and Intersex Pride Dublin and Trans Pride London, have become more politicised and radical over the past few years, while corporate prides have had large blocs in solidarity with Palestine and against the attacks on trans rights. Only through mass protests and an anti-fascist movement that takes on the far-right can the anti-trans attacks be defeated.
Queer liberation is incompatible with capitalism; it’s not possible for LGBTQ+ people to truly live freely in a system built on the rule of the super-wealthy and profit-driven motive. In order to truly fight for queer liberation, we need to fight to end this system built on oppression and exploitation, we need to fight for a socialist alternative based on equality and solidarity.