By Ann Rostow—
Tough Times
There’s no doubt that the GLBT community is better off today than it was two decades ago, let alone three. But, as someone who remembers the Pride weekends of an earlier time, it doesn’t feel that way. There was an underlying strength and exhilaration in a fight for civil rights that was bringing us all together and making progress. The March on Washington in the spring of 2000 was a celebration. That is because, while we were still subjected to sodomy laws, still far from the right to marry, still banned from military service for being gay or lesbian, we were moving in the right direction. We could feel it.
Now, we are much further along, but we are slipping backwards. It’s not only the transgender community that’s under attack. According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who approve of marriage equality has stopped rising and has begun to slide. A 65 percent majority now supports same-sex marriage, down six points in the last four years. Only 62 percent think that same-sex relations are “morally acceptable,” the pollsters say. That’s the lowest it’s been since 2016. As for our transgender brothers and sisters, only 38 percent think transitioning is morally acceptable, down eight points over five years.
As Gallup looks back, only 27 percent of our countrymen and women approved of marriage equality in 1996, (coincidentally, the year when I started writing news reports for the San Francisco Bay Times). Twenty-five years later, in 2024, 71 percent approved, an astonishing improvement and the high-water mark for this poll. Most of the recent drop off has come from Republicans; since 2022, for example, Republican support for gay relationships has dropped 21 points, from 56 percent approval to 35 percent. Independents, by contrast, dropped 8 points to 64 percent, while Democrats stayed at 81 percent.
But enough of the numbers and polls. This is what happens when bigotry is unchecked and encouraged. This is what happens when cruel caricatures meet ignorance, when brute strength meets fear. By brute strength, I refer to the bellicose ravings of men who lack the brains to hold onto power without force or tricks. By fear, I refer to those who shrink in front of strangers; those who seek protection from things they don’t understand. With cowards on both sides, we have to fight until they self-destruct and then slowly build our country back. Meanwhile, let’s try to enjoy ourselves again.
Their Private Idaho
The end of June is not just Pride, of course; it’s also the end of the Supreme Court’s session, and the release of the most difficult or controversial opinions of the year. There’s usually a GLBT case, and this year is no different as we await the verdict on whether or not Idaho and West Virginia can ban transgender girls from joining their high school or college sports teams.
As you recall, we’ve lost all our recent GLBT cases. Last year, the Court gave the green light to states that wish to ban hormone and other treatments for transgender minors. We also saw a victory for an anti-GLBT counselor in Colorado, who successfully challenged the Mountain State’s law against so-called conversion therapy. Before that one, we had the website designer who wanted to refuse gay and lesbian clientele in violation of Colorado’s anti-discrimination code. The Court thought that was hunky dory. Then there was the ruling from the shadow docket, allowing Hegseth to fire transgender troops, and the red-carpet rollouts for the Christian Right, allowing anyone with a hint of a faith-based claim to run ragged over the First Amendment. Where once we all looked forward to the Court’s pronouncements, now we dread them.
But the lower courts, on the other hand, have often claimed the high ground. On June 16, U.S. District Court Judge Amanda K. Brailsford ruled that Idaho cannot enforce the worst parts of its draconian anti-transgender bathroom bill, which was set to go into effect July 1. The Spud State enacted the harshest bathroom bill in the entire country, a law that effectively banned the use of both public and private facilities for transgendered men and women. Unlike other laws of this ilk, this one had no option for an officer to ask the person to vacate the bathroom. Instead, an “offender” would be arrested on the spot. There was no accounting for how someone’s birth sex would be determined, and who would be making that determination. The law bizarrely applied to one-room bathrooms in addition to those with stalls—and repeat offenders could be charged with a felony and face up to five years behind bars.
Exceptions to the law included “dire need” and situations where no other bathroom was “reasonably available.” Although the plaintiffs challenged the law on several grounds, Judge Brailsford ruled that the law was unconstitutionally vague. After all, who decides if a person was in “dire need” to use the john? When is a bathroom “reasonably available” or not? Since the six plaintiffs (along with the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal) only raised the portion of the law that applied to bathrooms, Judge Brailsford issued a preliminary injunction against part of the statute, allowing transgender Idahoans to use a single room bathroom of any designation, and use a multi-person bathroom of their lived gender if a single was not around. Got that?
Note that Idaho already prohibited transgender residents from using public school bathrooms and locker rooms, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit refused to issue an injunction against that law, deciding last year that the plaintiffs in that case were unlikely to win a claim against the changing room ban. The lower court promptly upheld the law, and, according to a release from the Attorney General’s office, the case was eventually dropped.
It appears that this original challenge to the public schools’ bathroom law has now been supplanted by the current litigation, which targets the new state-wide felony. Judge Brailsford also granted the case class-action status, meaning the outcome will flow to all transgender people living in or visiting the state. Idaho may have enacted the cruelest anti-trans law, but it wasn’t alone. Some 20 other states have their own restrictions and several other lawsuits are underway around the country.
Me Too!
Speaking of good rulings, Maine Superior Court Justice Deborah Cashman has invalidated a petition drive that aimed to put a ban on transgender girls’ sports on the November ballot. The petitioners, a group called “Protect Girls’ Sports in Maine,” initially passed muster, submitting some 71,300 signatures to the Secretary of State in March. But the number of signatures was contested and, armed with new information, the Secretary took a second look, dropped some 3,883 names, and found the group short by 532. Justice Cashman evaluated the four categories of the, um, bad signature collecting, and agreed with Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ final tally.
I read the justice’s 13-page explanation, but please don’t ask me to describe it. You’re just lucky I can’t cut and paste from the pdf file because I’d love to charm you with some of the impenetrable legalese that appears to govern the initiative process in Maine. You remember, of course, that Maine is where Donald Trump insisted he would hold back federal funds unless the state took transgirls off the sports field. “I’ll see you in court,” Governor Janet Mills told him during a public soirée of some sort. I vaguely recall that Trump was obliged to drop his threat, but I don’t feel like looking that up. Now Janet Mills has dropped out of her bid for a Senate nomination, leaving our chances in the hands of oddball oyster fisherman Graham Platner.
I applauded Janet Mills and was happy she decided to contest the Senate nomination until I read that she was born in 1947. Not only is it time for Baby Boomers to get off the stage, but how the hell is the frigging Silent Generation still fumbling with the levers of power? Meanwhile, Mr. Platner with his Nazi tattoo, the unpleasant combat persona he has since abandoned, and now his creepy sexting history, is hardly the paragon of Blue State Politics we’re all looking for. Still, I’m definitely rooting for him. That sexting stuff was back in the day. Plus, I was just as bad in my own time except we didn’t have sexting back then. We only had plain old sexual harassment, or what I liked to call “persistence.”
Plus, oysters! I love a man who loves oysters.
Money Grubbers
I just got really annoyed by the Equality PAC, a political action committee run by GLBT allies, aiming to elect more GLBTs to office and promote community goals in Congress. That’s all fine and dandy, even though we also have the Victory Fund and the Human Rights Campaign serving both those purposes. But I’m sick of various gay fundraisers who pitch unlikely or even impossible doomsday scenarios as a way to separate us from our hard-earned cash.
“Heart-wrenching News,” they announced in an email. “’Supreme Court formally asked to overturn landmark samesex marriage ruling.’”
First of all, this statement was given in quotations, without a citation. A note later on says that “Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have both called for Obergefell v. Hodges, the historic case that legalized samesex marriage, to be OVERTURNED,” which seems to be the rationale for the quotes, although one, it’s not a quote, and two, the neanderthal opinions of Thomas and Alito are not formal requests to the Court. Further, the Court has been petitioned to overturn marriage equality, and hasn’t taken such a case. Plus, Alito himself said that the abortion reversal had no implication for marriage equality (not that we necessarily put our faith in Alito).
But, let’s go on. “Now extremist Republicans are commanding the Supreme Court to send marriage equality back to the states (just like abortion),” we’re told. Who? What do you mean “commanding” the Supreme Court?
And here’s their plan: “So we’re starting a massive petition to demand the Supreme Court protect marriage equality from farright attacks—because it’s the law of the land.” A signature petition has no impact on the High Court whatsoever. This is nonsensical. It infantilizes GLBT voters and it preys on low-information readers who may be legitimately frightened by these remote possibilities.
Could the High Court repeal Obergefell? Well, yes, technically. I suppose the High Court could announce that Donald Trump will be President for Life, using a legal rationale concocted out of thin air and magic. Many of the seemingly unconstitutional conclusions of the recent past would have seemed impossible a few years back, so it’s not unfair to ask why anything should be considered “too far” for these justices.
But the fact is that some things are too far, even for these guys. It’s flat out wrong to speculate on the end of marriage equality, but the Court will surely continue to whittle away at our status. As previously mentioned, the justices recently ruled that a wedding website creator can refuse to serve gay men and lesbians. There’s a chip out of marriage equality right there, and more will come.
So say that! Don’t make up a story. Tell the truth. It’s just as bad as the ridiculous exaggerations, but it’s honest. Marriage equality is safe, but we are still under threat.
Forget the fake “massive petition” that you claim to be planning. I don’t see any line items for “signature gathering” on your financial accounts, and, when I clicked to sign up, there was a bit more blah blah blah and a donation screen at the end. Anyway, I unsubscribed.
I have my pride!
GLBT Fortnight in Review
Published on June 25, 2026
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