As homophobic and transphobic rhetoric ramps up as the far-right tries to pin society’s problems on LGBTQ people, it’s looking like people beyond the GOP’s base are fighting back.
On Saturday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis claimed that the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Pride Night celebration Friday was a bust.
“The virtually empty stadium for the game itself was a powerful image – Americans are fed up with the nonsense and are fighting back,” DeSantis wrote. And though an estimated 2,000 people turned out protest the inclusion of LGBTQ activist group The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, photos of a nearly empty stadium didn’t show the true story. Those pictures were taken about an hour before the game started.
In fact, the Dodgers sold just over 49,000 tickets—about 87% of the stadium’s total capacity, and 1,200 more than the average Dodgers home game, according to Queerty.
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Or, take the town of Grand Haven, Michigan. Though the town is conservative, and local groups opposed the town’s first ever Pride festival, the city council unanimously approved the plan. Though the event was expected to draw 500 people, according to the Associated Press, about 4,000 came. Even before the event, organizers raised almost double the amount of money they were hoping for and three times the number of vendors expected signed up for the event.
Attempts by Republican politicians to ban drag shows and gender-affirming care have recently been struck down in court. Earlier this month, a Trump-appointed judge struck down a Tennessee law that would have banned drag shows in public where children are present. U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker ruled the ban unconstitutional, saying it violated the First Amendment. Parker added that the law’s stated intent of protecting children from indecency was likely unnecessary, due to the existence of anti-obscenity laws, Newsweek reported.
Florida’s ban on gender-affirming care was also struck down this month, according to the AP. U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Hinkle, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, sided for the parents of transgender children, ruling that there was no reason to deny treatment.
“Gender identity is real. The record makes this clear,” he said, adding that those who think gender is a choice “tend to disapprove all things transgender and so oppose medical care that supports a person’s transgender existence.”
“The treatment will affect the patients themselves, nobody else,” Hinkle said, “and will cause the defendants no harm.”