Pride Month, the global celebration of LGBTQ+ culture and rights, kicks off on Saturday with events around the world.
But this year’s festivities in the US will take place in a context of dozens of new state laws that target LGBTQ+ rights, especially transgender youth.
Here are things you should know about the celebrations and politics around them.
The month-long global celebration began with Gay Pride Week in late June 1970, a public celebration that marked the first anniversary of the violent police raid in New York’s Stonewall Inna gay bar.
At a time when LGBTQ+ people largely kept their identity or orientation private, the June 28, 1969 attack triggered 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 grown ever since. Some events take place outside of June: Tokyo’s Rainbow Pride was in April and Rio de Janeiro has a big event in November.
In 1999, President Bill Clinton proclaimed June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.
Pride’s signature rainbow-filled parades and festivals celebrate the progress the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement has made.
In the US, in April, a federal appeals court ruled that North Carolina and West Virginia refusal to cover certain health care for trans people with government-sponsored insurance is discriminatory.
In a March commitment, resolving legal challenges a critic of the Florida law called “Don’t Say Gay” clarifies that teachers can have photos of their same-sex partners on their desks and books with LGBTQ+ themes. He also says that books with LGBTQ+ characters and themes can remain in campus libraries and that gay-straight alliance chapters in schools do not need to be forced underground.
Greece this year legalized homosexual marriageone of three dozen nations around the world to do so, and a similar law approved in Estonia in June 2023 came into force this year.
Rights have been lost around the world, including heavy 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, advocates say.
Tightening these laws contributed to the flow of people from Africa and the Middle East seeking asylum in Europe.
In recent years, Republican-controlled states in the United States have adopted policies that target LGBTQ+ people, and particularly transgender people, in a variety of ways.
Twenty-five states now have laws prohibiting gender-affirming care for transgender minors. Some states have taken other steps, with laws or policies keeping mostly transgender girls and women out of harm’s way. outside the bathrooms and sports competitions that align with their gender.
Republican state attorneys general have challenged a federal regulation, set to take effect in August, which would ban bathroom bans in schools. There were also efforts to prohibit or regulate drag performances.
Most policies face legal challenges.
Since Roe v. Wade was voided in 2022, leading to restrictive abortion laws in most GOP-controlled states, LGBTQ+ advocates are also worried about losing ground, said Kevin Jennings, CEO of the civil rights nonprofit Lambda Legal. On the eve of Pride, the organization announced a $180 million fundraising goal for more lawyers to challenge anti-LGBTQ+ laws.
Progress like the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide could be lost without political and legal oversight, Jennings said.
“Our community looks at what happened to reproductive rights thanks to the Dobbs decision two years ago and has enormous anxiety about whether we are about to have a massive rollback of what we gained in the 55 years since Stonewall,” Jennings said.
While major companies from Apple to Wells Fargo sponsor events across the U.S., pushback caused repercussions last year at a major discount retailer.
Target was selling Pride-themed items last June, but removed some of the stores and moved windows to the back of some locations after customers knocked them down and confronted workers. The company then faced additional backlash from customers who were upset that the retailer pandered to people prejudiced against LGBTQ+ people.
This year, the store said it would not sell the 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 there can be challenges.
The FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security issued a statement in May that foreign terrorist organizations could target events associated with Pride. In the same month, the State Department renewed a security alert for Americans abroadespecially LGBTQ+ people and events around the world.
Law enforcement authorities noted that ISIS supporters were arrested last year for trying to attack a June 2023 Pride parade in Vienna and that ISIS messages last year called on followers to attack “soft targets.”
Agencies say people should always be alert to threats made online, in person or by mail. People should take note if anyone tries to enter a restricted area, bypass security or impersonate law enforcement and call 911 for emergencies and report threats to the FBI.
NYC Pride has a strong security presence and works with city agencies outside the perimeter, said Sandra Perez, the event’s executive director. The group expects 50,000 people to march in the June 30 parade and more than 1.5 million people to watch.
“The fight for liberation is not over,” Perez said. “The need to be visible and to be aware of what we need to do to ensure that future generations don’t have these struggles is really a priority.”
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
