Happy Pride, y’all! I hope everyone celebrated with joy, good hydration (this heat is a bitch), and a healthy dose of anger. Because while we were all marching forward in our celebratory parades, our country, under current mismanagement, has undoubtedly been operating according to the principle of one step forward, eleventy billion steps back. From Day 1 of this dumpster fire of an administration, Trump has been most loudly anti-trans, but still an equal-opportunity hater towards all but white, hetero, cis, males. To him there is no rainbow, he sees but one color: orange. So under the stewardship of Captain Crook and his Crew of Bigots, the US was notably absent from cosigning a statement in support of Pride Day this year. Canada and Australia signed, as did many countries in Europe and South America. But nope, the US sat this one out. Not feeling too proud of my country right now.
The foreign ministries of Canada, Australia, Brazil and a host of European countries issued a statement on Saturday celebrating LGBT rights to coincide with Pride Day.
The United States, which has moved rapidly to dismantle civil rights protections since the election of President Donald Trump, was not among its signatories.
The statement, whose backers also include Spain, Belgium, Colombia, Ireland and other nations, said the countries “are speaking and acting as one to champion the rights of LGBTQI people,” using the abbreviations for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex people.
“At a time when hate speech and hate crimes are on the rise, and in view of efforts to strip LGBTQI people of their rights, we reject all forms of violence, criminalization, stigmatization or discrimination, which constitute human rights violations,” the statement said.
It was not immediately clear why the United States was absent. Canadian, Australian, Brazilian, Irish and U.S. officials did not immediately return messages seeking comment on the Pride Day statement and Washington’s absence from it.
The U.S., once a champion of gay rights abroad, has reversed course under Trump, whose administration has rapidly dismantled longstanding civil rights protections for LGBT people and expelled transgender servicemembers from the military.
Defenders of gay rights are concerned that the backsliding will embolden anti-gay movements elsewhere, especially in Africa, where it could worsen an already difficult situation for LGBT people.
Trump’s right-wing allies have tapped in to anti-LGBT sentiment to shore up their political support.
In Hungary on Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters flouted a law passed in March by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government that allows for the ban of Pride marches. The demonstrators swarmed Budapest with rainbow-colored flags in one of the biggest shows of opposition to the Hungarian leader.
I couldn’t stomach watching all of Trump’s ABC News interview with Terry Moran, the one to mark 100 days (of hell). But one moment I saw has really stayed with me, because it was a soul-crushing instance of being in agreement with the Mango Menace. Terry was grilling Trump on Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the extreme/illegal deportations going on, and Terry relayed that a lot of Trump’s own supporters were shocked by the actions and saying, “What a minute, I didn’t vote for this.” Trump’s response was, “Actually, they did vote for this.” Just as a broken clock is right twice a day, so was Trump on the agreeable side of truth with that answer. Everyone who voted for Trump, voted for the cruelty, the bigotry, and the ever-pervasive stupidity. We knew this is what he’d do; we knew it would be just as incompetent as the first sentence term, but 10 times as sinister. And here we are. When this post goes up, the Republican-led Senate will be in vote-a-rama mode for Trump’s bigly budget bill, which will bigly raise the national debt by $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years, while simultaneously cutting funding to countless lifesaving programs, including many that are LGBTQ+ focused. Like I said above, I’m more than a bit short on country pride, just in time for the Fourth.
Photos credit: Janet Mayer/INSTARimages.com, Jennifer Graylock-Graylock.com/Avalon