Pride Month No More?
It will be scrutinized, demonized, and sanitized to the point where it won’t be recognized as an expression of inclusion and liberation.
Well, it’s Pride month, or should I say months, since San Diego’s events are in July.
Things for this annual cultural/political are going to get tougher in coming years by way of financial, cultural, and non-science being treated as credible by legacy media.
Today’s column will touch on each of those areas, hoping that readers will recognize the coming chaos is one part of a push to drive LGBTQIA+ humans back into the closet, based on what ideologues claim is “natural law.”
June’s festivities commemorate the 1969 Stonewall uprising, a watershed moment in the movement for lesbian, gay and transgender rights. The first-ever pride parade was a protest held the following year on the anniversary of the riot.
Pride events throughout the country have grown in popularity and acceptance. They are decked out with corporate sponsorships, official proclamations, and generally feature events aimed at a wide spectrum of audiences.
Observances and festivities this year carry more of an uneasy undertone against the backdrop of the current political climate. Sponsors have pulled out of celebrations and international travelers are not coming due to fear they will have difficulties with law enforcement.
Popular Information’s research highlights 19 companies that have pulled support of Pride parades, in whole or in part, this year:
Lowe's, Dyson, Nivea, Tiffany & Co., Toyota, Capital One, UPS, Disney, DoorDash, Live Nation, Anheuser-Busch, Diageo, PepsiCo, Nissan, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Citi, Mastercard, Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte
In recent years there have been controversies about the inclusion and participation of various entities who can be associated with distasteful-to-illegal activities. It does seem to me that the rebellious fervor of the early years has been replaced with the sort of smug transactional attitude reflective of the era generally.
The campaign to erase away the gay isn’t quite there yet, what with vicious alien invaders washing dishes in restaurants, lurking behind bushes as groundskeepers, and the need to acclimate the public to seeing government agents dress in battle garb on the streets.
This year reactionaries are just working around the edges, trying to stoke outrage about the six tenths of one percent of the US population who identify as transgender and the perhaps FIVE trans student-athletes playing in varsity high school sports. Indeed, the path to techno-monarchy we’re currently following does not include consideration of anything more than biological ‘hes’ and ‘shes’.
How big is the “problem?” It’s so big that the Trump administration is changing the designation of June as Pride Month to Title IX Month. This renaming is about the legal mechanisms being pursued to accompany propaganda in otherizing a teeny-tiny slice of the population. It’s SUCH A BIG problem that the House of Representatives made cracking down on transgender humans one of its first orders of business this year.
The "Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act" of 2025 (passed in the House, Senate TBD), restricts transgender students from playing on women’s sports teams. The measure amends Title IX, a federal education law that bars sex-based discrimination, to define sex as based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.
Donald J Trump’s campaign for president was built around ginning up hate toward otherized Americans. After he finished with tales of fear and loathing about immigrants invading the country, the focus shifted to transgender people.
Repeating falsehoods blaming segments of society for problematic issues does work, unfortunately. Pew surveys have found that public acceptance of transgender people has declined over the past two years. Repeat those lies often enough and people will buy into it.
Smart people know that the right’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is just a first step in implementing a white nationalist agenda; next up will be the birthright question, then it's on to an apartheid system of laws. And the campaigns against trans humans are just warm ups for ridding the country of those unwilling or unable to participate in a patriarchal order.
In campaign rallies last fall Trump alleged that opponent Kamala Harris wanted to perform “transgender operations on illegal aliens” in prison, that the US education system is now “mostly transgender” and that school pupils are undergoing gender-affirming surgeries during the school day. Any “wow” meme floating around on Facebook was a potential talking point.
The Trump administration is using June as the time to announce the renaming of Naval ships as part of erasing otherized humans from the culture. First up will be the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment oiler named after the slain gay rights leader and Navy veteran.
Via The Advocate:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the name change, Military.com reports. The timing during Pride Month is intentional, an official with the department told the outlet. The official announcement is set for June 13, but Military.com obtained a memo from the Office of the Secretary of the Navy that outlined plans to rename the ship. The Defense Department source said Hegseth instructed Navy Secretary John Phelan to implement the renaming in keeping with the restoration of so-called warrior culture.
Also up for renaming are the USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, USNS Harriet Tubman, USNS Dolores Huerta, USNS Lucy Stone, USNS Cesar Chavez and USNS Medgar Evers. CBS News couldn’t find a December 2024 web article from Naval Sea Systems Command about laying the keel of the Thorogood Marshall, it’s been wiped from the internet.
Cities around the country are discovering that official displays of Gay Pride flags have become an issue all over again. In Montana, with a 9–2 vote, the Missoula city council formally designated the Pride flag as an official city flag, getting around a legislative attempt at prohibiting such displays. The same thing happened in Boise, Idaho.
An attempt to close off DC’s Dupont Circle by the National Park Service was reversed yesterday. Having lived near that part of the nation’s capital, I can tell you closing the Circle during Pride would have been at best challenging for authorities.
Via the Washington Post:
“A plan to bar people from celebrating Pride in the park at Dupont Circle this weekend has been canceled following pushback from local elected officials, according to two D.C. council members. The change comes less than 24 hours after the closing was announced by the National Park Service Monday evening. The park is at the center of Washington’s historic LGBTQ+ neighborhood, and an announcement by the Park Police that it would be closed during this weekend’s WorldPride parade and parties was another blow to a celebration that has gotten off to a rocky start.”
Locally, the City of Oceanside government had a flip flop experience, going from yea to nay on raising the Pride flag for the month of June.
Via the North County Pipeline:
In a move shocking the LGBTQ community, Oceanside City Councilman Jimmy Figueora reversed his position on raising the Pride flag in June.
The council had previously approved a first reading of a resolution to raise the flag several weeks ago with Figueroa in support. However, during the council’s May 21 meeting, Figueroa flipped his position, which has led to a flurry of visceral reactions from residents across the region.
Meanwhile, down the road in Vista:
Last week, the mood was much different in Vista as the council voted 3-2 to raise the Pride flag every June for Pride Month. For about one hour many residents and LGBTQ allies spoke during the council’s meeting on Tuesday in support of raising the flag.
Vista has raised the flag the past three years and also declared June LGBTQIA+ Month.
Councilwomen Corinna Contreras and Katie Melendez, who are gay and dating, expressed relief after the vote. When it came time for Contreras to speak, she paused for several moments before singing the lyrics “we shall overcome,” and giving an emotional and heartfelt speech through tears about what it means to have the Pride flag raised
While cities have experienced increasing pressures aimed at Pride events, small towns in conservative areas in the US have been having a breakout couple of years.
Via Slate:
All over the country, just like in Nampa, Pride organizers are doubling down on celebration in the face of right-wing threats. In Franklin, Tennessee, two years after conservative residents tried to shut down a Pride festival held at a local farm, organizers are expecting 10,000 attendees at this June’s event. Queers in Morehead, Kentucky, recently held their second annual Pride celebration in spite of a disparaging cancellation campaign from a local church. And in Coeur d’Alene, the site of the most famous right-wing assault on Pride, the annual event has rapidly expanded since the 2022 Patriot Front plot, with paid staff, year-round programming, and more vendors, sponsors, volunteers, and attendees each year.
In Prattville, Alabama, organizers staged the first-ever Pride—a small, unpermitted picnic by a creek—in 2023, only to have it ambushed by a white nationalist group. “So we kind of said, ‘Hold our beer,’ ” said Caryl Lawson, vice president of Prattville Pride. “Y’all thought you were gonna scare us and intimidate us into never doing this again in Prattville, and you really just lit a fire under us to want to do it bigger and better.”
The New York Times appears ready to add to its already impressive load of damage to public perception of the medical issues connected with transgender humans and the process of transitioning. And, to nobody’s surprise in the LGBTQIA+ world, they’re doing it during Pride month.
It’s dropping all episodes of a six-part podcast titled The Protocol, promising to examine "how the care got pulled into a political fight that could end it altogether."
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Times track record on the subject, it boils down to framing and an insistence on two “sides” which gives the same weight to zealots as it does to every major medical association supporting gender-affirming care.
Parker Molloy has been one of the loudest voices critical of Times coverage, which he says demonstrates it has forgotten the difference between neutrality and accuracy. His recent The Present Age substack goes after what he thinks will be the content (based on the claims made in pre-release marketing) and the timing of this podcast series:
If the Times wants to rebuild trust with transgender people and their allies (it’s not clear they actually care about this at all, to be clear), it needs to do more than promise better coverage — it needs to actually deliver it. Until then, we should treat "The Protocol" with the skepticism it deserves, recognizing it for what it likely is: another chapter in the Times' troubling relationship with transgender truth. The timing says everything. During Pride Month, when we should be celebrating progress and resilience, the New York Times is giving us six hours of content that will likely undermine both. That's not journalism — that's cruelty with a byline.
A non-pride propaganda effort that will be unfriendly to LGBTQIA+ humans is coming via Leonard Leo, whose claim to fame is based on his ability to harness billionaire money to yank the judiciary to the right. Although Leo has recently been the object of Trump’s scorn, he is busy fleshing out another long term project, namely using the $1.6 billion foundation he controls to reshape the cultural norms of the US.
Via ProPublica:
In late 2021, Leo took over as chairman of a “private and confidential” group called the Teneo Network. In a promotional video for the group, Leo sits on a couch in a charcoal jacket, no tie. Over upbeat music, Leo says: “I spent close to 30 years, if not more, helping to build the conservative legal movement. At some point or another, I just said to myself, ‘Well, if this can work for law, why can’t it work for lots of other areas of American culture and American life where things are really messed up right now?’” Leo went on to say his goal was to “roll back” or “crush liberal dominance.”
Part of this crushing liberal dominance involves reshaping pop culture via bankrolling Wonder Project, the Texas-based studio responsible for the popular series [‘House of David’]. The Wall Street Journal reports Leo hopes the funding will yield “a string of Christian and conservative-leaning shows so slick they can go head-to-head with other big-budget entertainment.”
In short, the influential and wealthy people driving American politics these days have LGBTQIA+ humans and inclusive culture on their list of things that need to be done away with to ensure a more pliable mono-culture for them to rule over. Pride hasn’t made it to the top of the list yet, but it's coming.
Gay culture won’t go away; it will be scrutinized, demonized, and sanitized to the point where it won’t be recognized as an expression of inclusion and liberation.
"It’s Not You, It’s... Actually, It Is You": Breakup Letters/Texts from Disenchanted Voters via Will Robinson at Substack (h/t Eva Posner)
…But People do want to believe in something again.
They want to feel heard.
They want to know we’re in this for them—not just for power.So yeah. I took dating advice from a Teen Vogue article.
And weirdly?
It might be the most honest roadmap we’ve had in a while.Let’s stop obsessing over “what to say” and start focusing on how we behave.
Because no message—no matter how well-tested—can fix a broken relationship if we don’t mean it.
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Encrypting San Diego police calls protects privacy, withholds info about police activity by Thomas Fudge at KPBS
“Law enforcement agencies are using this concern about people’s privacy to withdraw a variety of information that’s really the bread and butter of how people know about — not just what police do in their communities but also active emergency situations,” said Aaron Mackey, one of the litigation directors with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
Mackey points out police scanners have long been a valuable resource for the media who cover crime and other emergencies. Monitoring police communications can inform the public of dangerous situations in their neighborhoods, whether it’s a shooting or a wildfire.
Mackey said the possibility of broadcasting personal information needs to be weighed against that. He adds that alternatives already exist in many departments, including the selective use of existing channels that are already encrypted.
***
Musk Goes Scorched Earth by Jay Kuo at The Status Kuo
GOP House members, who must ultimately vote again on the bill once it comes back with changes from the Senate, might now fear facing a well-funded primary opponent—one backed by Musk’s resources and social media power. And that could prove too risky for a critical number of them. All Musk would need is two votes to switch.
On the flip side, if Republicans respond to Musk’s threat with a collective yawn, that means Trump administration officials such as Susie Wiles, Marco Rubio and Scott Bessent have successfully neutralized Musk as a threat. This would be a hard lesson for the billionaire: that no amount of money in the world, or clout on the internet, is worth attaching yourself to someone so politically toxic.
The national stage was always going to be too small for two men like Trump and Musk to share. Because Everything Trump Touches Dies, as the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson reminds us periodically, is a rule that has yet to be disproven, it was really only a matter of when and not whether Musk would bow out, his reputation in tatters.
