Pride Month, the global celebration of LGBTQ+ culture and rights, kicks off Saturday with events around the world.
But this year’s festivities in the United States will take place against a backdrop of dozens of new state laws targeting LGBTQ+ rights, particularly transgender youth.
Here are things to know about the celebrations and the politics surrounding them.
The month-long global celebration began with Gay Pride Week in late June 1970, a public celebration marking the first anniversary of the violent police raid on New York’s Stonewall Inn, a gay bar.
At a time when LGBTQ+ people largely kept their identity or orientation under wraps, the June 28, 1969 raid sparked a series of protests and catalyzed the rights movement.
The first Pride Week featured marches in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, and it has been growing ever since. Some events take place outside of June: Tokyo Rainbow Pride took place in April, and Rio de Janeiro has a major event in November.
In 1999, President Bill Clinton proclaimed June Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.
Pride’s iconic, rainbow-laden parades and festivals celebrate the progress made by the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement.
In the United States, in April, a federal appeals court ruled that North Carolina and West Virginia’s refusal to cover certain health care for transgender people with government-funded insurance was discriminatory.
In a March settlement, a settlement of legal challenges to a Florida law called “Don’t Say Gay” specifies that teachers can have photos of their same-sex partners and books with LGBTQ+ themes on their desks. It also says books with LGBTQ+ characters and themes can remain in campus libraries and that gay-straight alliance chapters in schools should not be forced into hiding.
Greece legalized same-sex marriage this year, one of three dozen countries to do so, and a similar law approved in Estonia in June 2023 took effect this year.
Rights have been lost around the world, including harsh prison sentences for gay and transgender people in Iraq and the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” in Uganda. More than 60 countries have anti-LGBTQ+ laws, their defenders say.
The tightening of these laws has contributed to the influx of people from Africa and the Middle East seeking asylum in Europe.
In recent years, Republican-controlled US states have adopted policies targeting LGBTQ+ people, and particularly transgender people, in a variety of ways.
Twenty-five states now have laws banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors. Some states have taken other steps, with laws or policies primarily preventing transgender girls and women from accessing restrooms and athletic competitions corresponding to their gender.
GOP state attorneys general have challenged a federal regulation, set to take effect in August, that would ban bathroom bans in schools. There have also been efforts to ban or regulate drag racing performances.
Most policies face legal challenges.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, leading to restrictive abortion laws in most GOP-controlled states, LGBTQ+ advocates also fear losing ground, said Kevin Jennings, CEO of the nonprofit civil rights organization Lambda Legal. On the eve of Pride, the organization announced a fundraising goal of $180 million to enable more lawyers to challenge anti-LGBTQ+ laws.
Advances such as the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide could be lost without political and legal vigilance, Jennings said.
“Our community looks at what happened to reproductive rights thanks to the Dobbs decision two years ago and is extremely concerned about whether we are about to experience a massive rollback of what we have gained over the past 55 years from Stonewall,” Jennings said.
While major companies from Apple to Wells Fargo sponsor events across the United States, there was a backlash last year at a major discount retailer.
Target was selling Pride-themed items last June, but pulled some of them from stores and moved the displays to the back of some locations after customers knocked them over and confronted workers. The company then faced additional backlash from customers upset that the retailer had caved in to people with prejudice against LGBTQ+ people.
This year, the store said it will not carry these items in all of its stores. But the company remains a major sponsor of NYC Pride.
Keeping events safe is the top priority, organizers said, but challenges could arise.
The FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued an advisory in May that foreign terrorist organizations may target events associated with Pride. That same month, the State Department renewed its security warning for Americans abroad, particularly LGBTQ+ people and global events.
Law enforcement officials noted that ISIS sympathizers were arrested last year for attempting to attack a June 2023 Pride parade in Vienna and that ISIS messages last year called on his supporters to attack “soft targets”.
Agencies say people should always be careful of threats made online, in person or by mail. People should be careful if someone attempts to enter a restricted area, bypass security or impersonate law enforcement, call 911 in an emergency, and report threats to the FBI.
NYC Pride has a strong security presence and works with city agencies outside the perimeter, said Sandra Perez, executive director of the event. The group expects 50,000 people to march in its June 30 parade and more than 1.5 million people to watch.
“The struggle for liberation is not over,” Perez said. “The need to be visible and the need to be aware of what we need to do to ensure that future generations don’t have these struggles is really a priority.”
ABC News
