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I'll start this off by saying that the reason why I'm focusing on the Democratic Party is because I don't need to tell anyone about how the GOP is an immensely racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, anti-intellectual political party deeply in love with capitalism/imperialism, that claims to be interested in protecting children yet actively works against the best of interest of children, are on the wrong side of just about every issue imaginable, and whose most favorite leader since Ronald Reagan is all of that plus a narcissistic psychopath con man who literally thinks that he is or should be king of the entire world. They've long been very unsubtle about things and so going into detail about them is basically preaching to the choir or talking to a brick wall, both of which are wastes of time. But many people also still struggle to accept that the Democrats (and some other sorts of political ideologies, like libertarians for example) are not really our friends and allies either, that they are far more similar to the Republicans than people want to admit, and that's something that needs to be gone into. But for the LGBTQ part of it:
The point I'll start at is circa 1950. The history of homophobia and transphobia in not just the United States but the whole world goes a lot farther back than that obviously, but there's not really any reason for me to go back centuries in the past for this thread. In 1950 Sen. Kevin McCarthy started up his infamous witch hunts and kicked off what's known as the Second Red Scare. Everyone familiar with American history has heard of this, I'm not revealing some obscure information here. However, paralleling the "Second" (the first never truly ended) Red Scare was something that gets talked about far less, at least in American K-12 education anyway, which was the Lavender Scare. Basically government employees would be investigated and interrogated by the government on suspicions that they were LGBTQ, the belief being things like LGBTQ people were "communist sympathizers" and/or "mentally deranged" and thus a major "security risk" to the U.S. Many LGBTQ employees ended up losing their jobs, many other would-be government employees ended up never applying for work with the government because of this. It was made official government practice in 1953 by Eisenhower. And while McCarthy was a far-right bastard and Eisenhower a Republican, the Lavender Scare went well into the 1990s, decades longer than what is sometimes viewed as its end. So this meant it was also a thing during Democratic administrations, such as definitely-not-racist-LBJ's, the late Jimmy Carter's, and Bill Clinton's.
And speaking of the 1990s, that brings us to Don't Ask Don't Tell, and the Defense of Marriage Act, two of the most well-known homophobic policies in U.S. history. These were enacted during Bill Clinton's presidency, the latter passing with a veto-proof majority because it had such strong bipartisan support. Clinton grumbled about not being able to veto it, it was not out of support for gay marriage, as he was not in favor of gay marriage. While these were decades ago, if people really believe that being in your 30s is still young, then these really weren't that long ago. I was 2 years old when DADT was enacted, DoMA when I was 4 years old. The Democrats were openly supporting anti-LGBTQ shit within my lifetime, not sometime in an era gone by.
But by now I imagine that people are wondering why I'm bringing up stuff from decades ago, the Dems have clearly changed, right? That's not them anymore, right? People will point to how publicly supporting gay marriage became a common stance for Dems in the 2000s/2010s, how Kamala Harris was among Democrats a particularly early supporter of gay marriage, how Joe Biden a couple of years ago was the first President to formally acknowledge the Lavender Scare, how a couple of Dem Senators last year pushed forth an official apology for LGBTQ discrimination in the federal government, among other examples. However, nominal support for gay marriage is such a low bar to clear and just one piece of the LGBTQ rights puzzle, issuing apologies and acknowledgments decades after the fact are little more than token gestures.
In reality, the Democrats never changed. You look at their actions and see a different story told. Some examples being how Biden issued some federal restrictions on trans athletes, or how he was willing to shield a religious school from consequences for the harassment of its LGBTQ students. How the federal government has seemed to have very little if any interest in even attempting to fight against the horde of anti-LGBTQ laws states have been passing over the past several years and the best we could get out of them was that really pathetic Respect for Marriage Act that practically did nothing to protect gay marriage. Mere days afterorange hitler Trump won the 2024 presidential election, two Democrat congressmen decided to drop the mask and support transphobia, claim that the reason the Dems got their asses beat in the election because the party was "pandering to the far left" (an utterly absurd idea since the far left does not exist in any significant capacity in America, nevermind that the Harris campaign, like many Democrat presidential campaigns, have long made a point of not straying to the left and often moving to the right). How Gov. Gavin Newsom, alleged progressive and LGBTQ ally of deep-blue California has recently taken to thinking that far right shit like Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk should ever be given the time of day and even openly agreed with the latter that trans women should be banned from women's sports, something he got to act on a few days ago by instituting a "partial" ban on trans women in sports in response to one of Trump's psychotic late night social media rants. Then there's Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of also deep-blue New York who was ousted from his position 4 years ago due to a long history of sexual harassment (and never acknowledged any wrongdoing on his part) but now thinks that he can just walk back into politics, seems to be distancing himself from the very same people he once liked to consider himself a supporter of. Just a couple of weeks before the 2024 election, Harris, in an NBC interview, was asked the question "do you think transgender Americans should have access to gender-affirming care?", and her answer was "I think we should follow the law". Someone who has been involved with the law for decades via her time as California AG, as a senator, as a vice president, who was running for one of the highest positions in the entire country and could've continued to shape those laws, basically said "I'm a weathervane, I don't care". Now the law is "well fuck what medical professionals think, no trans healthcare allowed" (1 2), and I don't really get the feeling that the Democrats are truly going to push back against this, especially given how they've acted since the election last year.
The fact that they're willing to flip-flop on LGBTQ rights signals that they never gave a fuck about us in the first place, that their public support of LGBTQ rights years ago was simply superficial and only when when they felt it might be politically convenient--we have always just been things to use for their own political gain and discarded the moment we become not useful to that end. I would caution people in other countries to not put any faith in your neoliberal politicians either.
Always remember that Stonewall was not a peaceful protest, but people literally fighting back against cops sent to enforce anti-LGBTQ laws 🏳️🌈
The point I'll start at is circa 1950. The history of homophobia and transphobia in not just the United States but the whole world goes a lot farther back than that obviously, but there's not really any reason for me to go back centuries in the past for this thread. In 1950 Sen. Kevin McCarthy started up his infamous witch hunts and kicked off what's known as the Second Red Scare. Everyone familiar with American history has heard of this, I'm not revealing some obscure information here. However, paralleling the "Second" (the first never truly ended) Red Scare was something that gets talked about far less, at least in American K-12 education anyway, which was the Lavender Scare. Basically government employees would be investigated and interrogated by the government on suspicions that they were LGBTQ, the belief being things like LGBTQ people were "communist sympathizers" and/or "mentally deranged" and thus a major "security risk" to the U.S. Many LGBTQ employees ended up losing their jobs, many other would-be government employees ended up never applying for work with the government because of this. It was made official government practice in 1953 by Eisenhower. And while McCarthy was a far-right bastard and Eisenhower a Republican, the Lavender Scare went well into the 1990s, decades longer than what is sometimes viewed as its end. So this meant it was also a thing during Democratic administrations, such as definitely-not-racist-LBJ's, the late Jimmy Carter's, and Bill Clinton's.
And speaking of the 1990s, that brings us to Don't Ask Don't Tell, and the Defense of Marriage Act, two of the most well-known homophobic policies in U.S. history. These were enacted during Bill Clinton's presidency, the latter passing with a veto-proof majority because it had such strong bipartisan support. Clinton grumbled about not being able to veto it, it was not out of support for gay marriage, as he was not in favor of gay marriage. While these were decades ago, if people really believe that being in your 30s is still young, then these really weren't that long ago. I was 2 years old when DADT was enacted, DoMA when I was 4 years old. The Democrats were openly supporting anti-LGBTQ shit within my lifetime, not sometime in an era gone by.
But by now I imagine that people are wondering why I'm bringing up stuff from decades ago, the Dems have clearly changed, right? That's not them anymore, right? People will point to how publicly supporting gay marriage became a common stance for Dems in the 2000s/2010s, how Kamala Harris was among Democrats a particularly early supporter of gay marriage, how Joe Biden a couple of years ago was the first President to formally acknowledge the Lavender Scare, how a couple of Dem Senators last year pushed forth an official apology for LGBTQ discrimination in the federal government, among other examples. However, nominal support for gay marriage is such a low bar to clear and just one piece of the LGBTQ rights puzzle, issuing apologies and acknowledgments decades after the fact are little more than token gestures.
In reality, the Democrats never changed. You look at their actions and see a different story told. Some examples being how Biden issued some federal restrictions on trans athletes, or how he was willing to shield a religious school from consequences for the harassment of its LGBTQ students. How the federal government has seemed to have very little if any interest in even attempting to fight against the horde of anti-LGBTQ laws states have been passing over the past several years and the best we could get out of them was that really pathetic Respect for Marriage Act that practically did nothing to protect gay marriage. Mere days after
The fact that they're willing to flip-flop on LGBTQ rights signals that they never gave a fuck about us in the first place, that their public support of LGBTQ rights years ago was simply superficial and only when when they felt it might be politically convenient--we have always just been things to use for their own political gain and discarded the moment we become not useful to that end. I would caution people in other countries to not put any faith in your neoliberal politicians either.
Always remember that Stonewall was not a peaceful protest, but people literally fighting back against cops sent to enforce anti-LGBTQ laws 🏳️🌈
