Jean Lewandowski is a retired special education teacher who lives in Nashua.
It’s that time of year again when we celebrate Pride Month. Being part of the LGBTQ+ community brings so many benefits to us as parents and grandparents. From celebrating holidays and birthdays with family to spending lazy Sundays, our joy has only grown over the past year.
But our fears are also growing. On May 31, a cartoon was posted of a rainbow-colored wall of water over a dam marked June 1, with a peaceful little town below. June is drawing to a close again, and we have yet to drown in a flood of pride. In fact, after 50 years of progress in civil rights, the “gay agenda” has yet to produce any of the horrors predicted by the propaganda. And yet, the Supreme Court and the Republican Party seem determined that the sanctity of our family will follow the same path as reproductive freedom.
Why is this happening again? Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Institute, recently reported that support for LGBTQ+ rights has been steadily increasing across nearly all religious denominations since 1970. Data from the institute’s annual survey shows that as it becomes safer for people to “come out,” more people are discovering that they’ve known and loved LGBTQ+ people their whole lives.
But Deckman predicts that in 2023, “support for major LGBTQ rights policies will decline for the first time, support for same-sex marriage will fall by 2 percentage points, [and] Support for anti-discrimination protections fell by four points,” a big drop among Republicans, but stable support among Democrats. “…We’re seeing a lot of Republican leaders in Republican-leaning states trying to speak out on LGBTQ rights, and we’re seeing a push across the country to try to roll back some of those rights.”
Propaganda is often fueled by privileged classes who want to seize or maintain power. The rise of Nazism in Germany after World War I was fueled by blaming the suffering of the war on Jews, the LGBTQ+ community, and non-“Aryan” people. These same groups have been scapegoated throughout American history. McCarthy-era “lavender riots,” “gay bashing,” police raids, discrimination in employment, housing, and every other aspect of civic life were legal, or at least tolerated. During that period, at least 10,000 people took their own lives, facing imprisonment and economic and social ruin.
Now that the Republican Party is the minority party, they need to bring back scapegoats. Some elected officials are using dehumanizing rhetoric and conspiracy theories to justify attacks on LGBTQ+ rights. The Supreme Court has signaled its intention to end marriage equality, and Donald Trump has promised to sign executive orders to roll back federal protections for transgender military personnel, workplace equality, and health care protections for transgender people.
This is not just campaign rhetoric, it is spelled out in the Republican Party’s 800-page playbook, Project 2025. One of its four pillars is “Restoring the family as the center of American life.” It’s all couched in patriotic language like “the inalienable right of self-determination,” but by page five it’s clear that it doesn’t mean families like ours. It calls for the removal of all references to gender identity and sexual orientation from federal laws that protect civil rights. It calls those who support LGBTQ+ rights “child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women.” It calls all publications that call us “porn” “pornography,” and says publishers should be jailed and “distributors” like educators and librarians should be labeled sex offenders. This opens up a McCarthy-esque world where you could be accused of being a predator just for reading a book that features two mothers with their grandchildren.
The Heritage Foundation, which produced the document, has vigilantes waiting to be deployed. Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes recently called on young people to “join American Moment, Project 2025, and the Trump campaign. If Trump wins, we’ll fill the White House with Groypers.” The Groypers are self-described anti-LGBTQ+, anti-Semitic, white supremacist neo-Nazis. Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes is calling on his followers to join Project 2025.
In New Hampshire, Republican lawmakers have once again pledged to “recognize marriage as a legal and sacred union between a man and a woman,” and Speaker Packard has declared May “Natural Family Month.” What does this mean exactly? If Republicans have their way, our daughter and son-in-law’s 15-year marriage will not be recognized in New Hampshire. The short journey from their home to ours means stepping into hostile territory where their legal status as spouses and parents may be denied. The annual Christmas tree-decorating party and end-of-summer weekend fun will be a thing of the past. This is what Republican “family values” are all about.
No one is safe from a political movement rooted in exclusion, dehumanization and the threat of force, fueled by malicious propaganda. It is up to us all to fight to take power from this extremist party and protect ourselves and our loved ones.
