HARTFORD, Conn. — Kara Murphy, a transgender woman helping to organize the Union County Pride in a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina, is heartened to see Pride celebrations across the country, big and small, shining a spotlight on transgender rights this year.
“When we look and see who’s standing up for us, it kind of signals the strength of the movement,” she said.
Whether it’s transgender grand marshals at the massive New York City Pride parade or a photo display of transgender victims of violence at the much smaller festival in Hastings, Nebraska, many celebrations this June are taking a public stand against state legislation targeting transgender people.
Some Prides are putting transgender people front and center at events where they’ve often been sidelined because of a historical emphasis on gay and lesbian rights, along with the same sorts of prejudice and misinformation held by many straight, cisgender people about trans lives.
People are also reading…
The growing number of new laws and policies, including restrictions on gender-affirming care, public bathroom use and participation in sports, has prompted Pride organizers to more fully embrace a segment of the LGBTQ+ populace that hasn’t always felt included.
While trans activists have always been integral to steps toward greater LGBTQ+ rights, “too often, the larger LGBTQ movement ignored or even actively erased the voices of trans and nonbinary folks,” Kierra Johnson, executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, said in an email.
“Uplifting trans voices and fighting for trans liberation must be at the forefront of our movement” when the rights of transgender and nonbinary people are “under a coordinated attack,” Johnson said.
“We are specifically standing by and being supportive of those who are transgender, because we understand that they’re under assault, that their rights are under assault,” said Jonathan Swindle, organizer of Pride in Corpus Christi, Texas. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed legislation that would make Texas the most populous state to ban gender-affirming treatments for minors. At least 20 others have similar bans.
This year, Swindle said, steps to show solidarity include displaying the blue, pink and white transgender flag, offering Pride T-shirts in just pink and blue, involving trans advocacy groups at events, and offering resources for trans people, including legal help with changing gender designations.
Smaller events are also planned that bring people together, but Swindle said those won’t be widely advertised because of security concerns and potential threats. This year, he said, “the static in the air and the temperament is so much different” from 2022, when Pride seemed more celebratory.
One transgender board member, he noted, abruptly resigned last month and deactivated their social media accounts because they didn’t want to be in the public eye.
“This year, it’s like no, we have to fight through our messaging, as well as reach the young generation to help them understand that it’s going to be OK,” Swindle said. “Yes, they’re doing this, but we will be there. There are resources for you.”
Prides across the U.S. are using the annual event, often held in June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall rebellion in New York City — an uprising partly led by trans women of color — to highlight their support for transgender people.
Many are also supporting the drag community, which has also been the target of protests and legislation.
In Reading, Pennsylvania, Pride organizer Enrique Castro Jr. said that instead of a parade, a march dedicated to both the trans and drag-performer communities was planned. In addition to displays of flags honoring those communities, there will be a rally afterward at which Dr. Ashley Grant, a specialist in gender-affirming care, will speak and march with the group to her clinic.
The recent Pride in Hastings, a central Nebraska city of 25,000, was “edgier” than past years, acknowledged organizer Randal Kottwitz. With the theme “Rise Up” and dedicated to victims of trans violence, it included a speech by state Sen. Michela Cavanaugh, who told the crowd, “You are loved and you matter.” She led the unsuccessful fight against legislation signed into law by Republican Gov. Jim Pillen that bans abortion at 12 weeks of pregnancy and restricts gender-affirming medical care for people younger than 19.
In New York City, where this year’s Pride theme is “Strength in Solidarity,” organizers selected representatives of the trans community to be among the grand marshals of the June 25 parade. There are also plans to have a float carrying transgender people of color.
AC Dumlao, chief of staff for Athlete Ally, a group that advocates on behalf of LGBTQ and intersex athletes, and a transgender, nonbinary Filipino American, is one of the grand marshals. They welcome the attention at Pride this year.
“It’s really important for me to take this opportunity and attention to spotlight kind of what is happening across the country,” said Dumlao, noting how nearly half of U.S. states have banned trans athletes from playing in school sports. With a draw of about 2 million spectators on hand, they said the often-televised parade is a great opportunity to spread the message that trans athletes have “always been here.”
Murphy said the number of expected spectators at her Pride in North Carolina, planned for September, will be tiny in comparison with New York and won’t include a parade — but that the message will be no less meaningful.
“You can do so much just person to person, just walking around, meeting people at Pride,” she said, noting how the festival becomes an opportunity for people to tap into an informal network of people who might know a therapist or doctor or have a trans child who is trying to make friends.
“At this kind of a rural area, you don’t get the big demonstrations. You get the little assistance, person to person to person to person, that kind of starts to add up,” she said.
12 important moments in the history of the gay rights movement
Early organizing
In 1924 the Society for Human Rights was founded by Henry Gerber in Chicago. It was the first documented gay rights organization in the United States, and meetings were held in his home.
The Henry Gerber House, pictured, is now a National Historic Landmark.
Talking about transgender
Christine Jorgensen, a former U.S. Army private, made headlines in the 1950s after having sex reassignment surgery and talking widely about her experience, one of the first people in the U.S. to do so. Her gender conversion began with hormone injections in 1950, when she was 24, and was completed in 1952 with surgery at the Danish State Hospital in Copenhagen.
On the front lines
Barbara Gittings, pictured at a rally, was a prominent gay and lesbian rights activist who, a decade before the Stonewall rebellion of 1969, was battling for the rights of homosexuals.
In the late 1950s she founded the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first national organization for lesbians, The New York Times reported.
In the early 1970s she helped lobby the American Psychiatric Association to change its stance on homosexuality; in 1973 the association rescinded its definition of homosexuality as a mental disorder.
Fighting back
Early on June 28, 1969, New York police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in Greenwich Village. The raid set off a riot among bar patrons and neighborhood residents as police roughed up customers, leading to six days of protests and clashes with police.
The Stonewall riots were a defining moment for the nascent gay rights movement and the reason behind June being chosen as Pride Month.
PFLAG is started
The idea for PFLAG, which originally stood for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, began in 1972 when Jeanne Manford marched with her son, Morty, in New York's Christopher Street Liberation Day parade, the precursor to today's pride parades. In March 1973 the first meeting of what would become PFLAG was held.
The group went national as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays in 1982. Since 2014, PFLAG is no longer considered an acronym but rather the entire name of the organization.
Pride parades are born
The first pride parade was held in New York on June 28, 1970, one year after the Stonewall raid on Christopher Street. A few thousand people took to the streets in New York, and gay activist groups on the West Coast held a march in Los Angeles and a march and gay-in in San Francisco. In Chicago people marched the day before New York and marked the Stonewall anniversary with a week of events.
Today, millions around the world march and rally for LGBTQ pride around the world, including in West Hollywood, pictured, which has one of the biggest and best-known pride events in the country.
Winning elected office
Gays and lesbians also made strides in the 1970s by running for office. Kathy Kozachenko became the first openly LGBT American elected to public office when she won a seat on the Ann Arbor, Mich., City Council in 1974. Elaine Noble was the first openly gay candidate elected to a state office when she was elected to the Massachusetts legislature, also in 1974.
And Harvey Milk won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Milk was loud and unapologetic about his sexuality, earning widespread attention. His remarkable career was cut short when he was gunned down about a year after taking office.
Pop culture representation
Billy Crystal, pictured in 1998, played one of the first openly gay characters in a recurring role on a prime-time television show on "Soap," which ran from 1977 to 1981.
Making noise
Writer and AIDS activist Larry Kramer's work with ACT UP and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis brought attention to the AIDS crisis at a time when many people preferred ignorance. He loudly demanded attention for the disease that was felling thousands of gay men, and his writing, including the play "The Normal Heart," captured the ordinary lives caught up in the ordeal of AIDS.
Political action
The Democratic Party added “sexual orientation” to its platform’s anti-discrimination protections at the 1980 convention in New York. It was the first American political party to officially incorporate such a plank. Jimmy Carter and his running mate, Walter Mondale, along with their wives, are pictured at the convention.
Same-sex marriage
In 2004 Massachusetts became the first state to make it legal for same-sex couples to wed. It followed a controversial decision from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
Nooni and Alicia Hammarlund, pictured, were among the couples securing a license on May 17, 2004, the first day for legal marriages.
Supreme Court ruling
On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that the Constitution guarantees a person's right to same-sex marriage.
“No longer may this liberty be denied,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority in the historic decision.
