The New York Times piled on the dramatics while reporting on a “Pride” march in Manhattan on June 25. Religion-beat reporter Liam Stack and Michael Wilson teamed on what functioned as an emotional-support story for a favored left-leaning segment of the population: “At NYC’s Pride March, Worries About LGBTQ Rights --Support for L.G.B.T.Q. people has risen, but so have attacks against them, even in a city known for the strength of its community.”
An unbroken parade of marchers -- some dancing and jubilant, some set with determined purpose -- filled Fifth Avenue and the streets of Greenwich Village in Manhattan on Sunday for the New York City Pride March, even as a foreboding backdrop from threats both local and national hung over the day's slate of events.
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But backlash to those gains has grown since same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in 2015. In recent years, each successive Pride Month has seemed to go on in defiance of new and ever greater challenges to the L.G.B.T.Q. community.
Over the last year, states across the country have passed laws banning drag performances and transgender health care, while protests and physical attacks on L.G.B.T.Q. events and their supporters have cast a pall over gay bars and community centers.
"Ever greater challenges"? These reporters can't acknowledge the Left is constantly pushing new revolutions, like pushing trans women in women's sports, pornographic books in school libraries and "Drag Queen Story Hours" for children.
The Times suggested anecdotes of excessive teenage anxiety said something about the country making transgenders unsafe.
Juli Culling marched with a sign that read, ''I march for my daughter'' -- a fact in more ways than one, having crossed the country with her 18-year-old trans daughter from Southern California in search of a more welcoming home. [Southern California's unwelcoming??]
''I told her to pick a city,'' Ms. Culling recalled of the move two years ago, ''and she said New York.''
The experience has been deeply rewarding, and her daughter felt comfortable at her new school, Broome Street Academy, but a threat feels attached to any traveling they do.
''We know how the world is right now. It's scary,'' she said. Indeed, her daughter was too anxious to march on Sunday, she said.
The Rev. Nicole Garcia, the faith work director at the National LGBTQ task force, acknowledged that today's hostile atmosphere weighs on her….
The "queer transgender Latina" man of God? Not a single voice was cited in dissent, especially someone saying the "LGBTQ" community isn't under threat in America.
Heritage of Pride, which organizes the march, recognized the worsening political climate in an open letter earlier this month that was co-signed with the organizers of dozens of other Pride events across the country. In it, they warned that the L.G.B.T.Q. community was ''under threat'' and criticized ''fair weather friends'' in corporate America.
''Despite the progress we have made together, we are currently under siege,'' the organizers wrote. ''An alarming rise in legal disruptions and targeted intimidation by extremist groups at these events, across the United States, is making our celebratory gatherings feel less safe. The threats are becoming tangible, terrifying and can no longer be ignored.''
Those threats have taken many forms.
And many weren’t actually “threats” at all, just political rhetoric. Stack has a censorious mindset when it comes to social conservatives, which may explain his hypersensitive reporting on "transgender health care" and "gay and transgender topics" for kindergarteners.
Across the country, a wave of state legislation has targeted L.G.B.T.Q. young people in particular, banning transgender health care for minors and barring teachers from discussing gay and transgender topics in schools.
In a report released last week, two civil rights groups documented more than 350 acts of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. harassment, vandalism or violence in the United States between June 2022 and April 2023, with more than half explicitly referring to gay or transgender people as pedophiles.
The groups were GLAAD and the Anti-Defamation League.
