October 7-8, 2023: LGBT Rights in 2023

[As we beginanother LGBT History Month,this week’s series has highlighted some important moments across Americanhistory in the fight for gay rights and equality. Leading up to this weekendpost on the current state of that ongoing battle!]

On one definitesign of progress, one frustrating regression, and a key battleground.

1)     Cultural Representations: In thisweekend post almost exactly five years ago, I highlighted a trio ofgroundbreaking late 1990s cultural representations of LGBT lives. Theycertainly reflected a changing zeitgeist, but unfortunately it was not changingthat fast nor that much—in a recent rewatch of Law & Order: Criminal Intent (what can I say, I’m a sucker for Vincent D’Onofrio’sBobby Goren, the 2nd bestTV detective of all time), I came upon a 2004 episode where thesolution (semi-SPOILERS) hinged upon two characters being gay and hiding thatfact from their employer (which would, one of the characters made clear, firethem if their sexuality were revealed). Which makes it quite striking that lessthan two decades later, I routinely see LGBT couples featured (withoutcommentary, as it should be) in TV commercials and other everyday media, asjust part of the fabric of culture and society. My teenage sons can’t reallyimagine a pop culture landscape where that wasn’t the case, and that’s a verygood thing.

2)     Educational Repressions: No area of progress canever be taken for granted, however, and if certain prominent forces have theirway future generations of teenagers will not be nearly as collectively aware ofthe presence of LGBT lives in their society. I’m thinking, of course, ofpolitical movements and laws like Florida’s“Don’t Say Gay,” a bill which requires educators to pretend that LGBT peoplequite simply do not exist (and which overtlybans books that feature gay lives in any form). As a public school studentin Virginia in the 1980s and early 1990s, that was largely my experience—I can’tremember a single reading nor lesson that featured LGBT lives, identities,stories, histories, etc. in any way (certainly not overtly, and probably noteven implicitly). Not at all coincidentally, there was not a single out LGBT studentat my high school during my time there, nor was I aware of meeting someone witha sexual orientation other than straight until I attended college. That’s therepressive and abusive world to which these bigots want to return us, andunfortunately they’re making progress.

3)     Legal Protections: Pop culture and education arethus two significant spaces in which to fight for continued and expandedrepresentation of LGBT Americans. But above and beyond them, and indeeddirectly informing those fights as well as many others, is the basic butcrucial fact that LGBT rights are protected under the Constitution, keyelements like the 14th Amendment, and related laws like the CivilRights Act. It’s those protections which advocates of so-called“religious liberty” seek to deny, which are at risk in the aftermathof the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision,which are absolutely being targeted by the anti-LGBT forces in our currentmoment (most blatantly in anti-translaws, but that’s without doubt just the tip of the iceberg). The ongoingfight for LGBT rights is of course a human rights battle, but it is also, andmost importantly for this blog and its author, a foundationally American one.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?