As elected officials, sports teams, and many Americans across the country celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride Month, some red states have chosen to not only ignore it, but counter Pride by promoting fidelity and one-man, one-woman nuclear families. Some of these actions portray the nuclear family and traditional values as under attack.

“Today, I proclaimed June as Nuclear Family Month in Indiana,” Republican Governor Mike Braun wrote on Monday. “As a father of four and grandfather of seven, I have seen firsthand the impact that loving, committed families can have across multiple generations.”

But Governor Braun’s proclamation offers a very specific — and exclusionary — concept of family.

It says, “the nuclear family, consisting of one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children, is God’s design for the family structure and has been the foundation of society since the creation of the world.”

In Tennessee, GOP Governor Bill Lee signed a resolution declaring June “Nuclear Family Month.” It includes wording similar to Indiana’s proclamation.

“The nuclear family is God’s perfect design for humanity and is aligned with the long-held traditional values of Tennessee,” it says, according to WSMV. “The nuclear family is under attack in our beloved State and nation.”

Utah’s Republican Governor, Spencer Cox, signed a proclamation dedicating June as Fidelity Month. It warns of a decline in support for traditional values, and says that “a majority of Americans no longer esteem values like faith, family, patriotism or community involvement.”

Cox defines fidelity as “dedication to faith, family and country,” and says the “survival of the United States depends on the shared bonds of faith, family and patriotism.” He concludes that it is “fitting to observe one month each year to rededicate the United States to its core values.”

In Arkansas, Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders also signed a declaration proclaiming June as Fidelity Month.

“Cultivating fidelity to God, family, community, and country contributes to human flourishing and supports a healthy, stable, well-ordered society,” it reads. “Practices that encourage virtue, commitment, responsibility, and shared moral foundations strengthen both individuals and their communities.”

The New Republic says it’s “hard not to see the move as a direct attack on the LGBTQ+ community and everything it’s achieved.”

Calling it “Counter-Programming Pride Month,” the right-wing Daily Wire reported, “Another red state is kicking Pride Month to the curb. In Arkansas, Republican Governor Sarah Sanders is instead declaring June as Fidelity Month.”

ABC affiliate 40/29 News reports that some view Arkansas’s new proclamation “as a means of attempting to overshadow Pride Month.”

Amy Erickson, president of NW Arkansas WClub, a “women’s-focused group for the local LGBTQ+ community,” told 40/29 News, “I don’t think that recognizing Pride, Gay Pride, LGBTQ Pride, takes anything away from anybody else’s, you know faith, beliefs, traditions.”

“You know, honoring our history and where we’ve come from and what we’ve overcome, there’s just no reason why stripping that away is necessary as far as I’m concerned,” Erickson added.

Images of Bill Lee, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mike Braun all Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons 

The Department of Defense is facing sharp criticism over its latest policy that bans reporters from the Pentagon press office, which it has now designated as a classified space.

“The change creates a new barrier compared with previous administrations, under which the office was an open room where reporters could stop by the desks of military public affairs officials without escorts,” The Washington Post reports.

“The Pentagon Press Office has been redesignated as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility due to speechwriters from the Office of the Secretary of War sharing the facility,” acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez said in a statement to The Washington Post, the paper reported.

“These speechwriters routinely handle classified material and require SIPRNet access,” Valdez added. “As a result, journalists will no longer be permitted to enter the office space.”

This “latest designation,” the Post also reported, “creates a scenario in which even if journalists are able to access the Pentagon, their ability to interact with the department’s spokespeople will be reduced.”

Critics blasted the move.

“The administration seems very committed to setting itself up to continue losing in court,” wrote legal analyst Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney. Vance appeared to be suggesting the Pentagon would face another court battle over its move to ban reporters.

Rhetoric professor Matthew Boedy simply called the move “Orwellian.”

Some of the most targeted criticism came from journalists themselves.

Kevin Baron, a longtime defense reporter and the founding executive editor of Defense One, explained that the Pentagon press office is a “giant, open-plan office space, that was specifically designed 20+ years ago to facilitate informing the public by locating Department of Defense public affairs officers and media together.”

“Is it really a press office without the press?” asked WFMY editor Jeremy Vernon.

“Banning journalists from the *press office* in the Pentagon, where they worked professionally in previous administrations, is simply a sign that current DOD leadership fears accountability,” charged The New York Times’ Trip Gabriel.

“The leaders of the ‘biggest, most badass military on the planet,’ in Pete Hegseth’s words, want a safe space from basic public questioning,” observed the Washington Post’s Drew Harwell.

“That Pete Hegseth, what a tough guy. He can do push-ups in photo ops but can’t handle questions from real reporters,” wrote Chris Bury, a DePaul University journalist in residence.

“Taking steps to further restrict press access in the Pentagon during the midst of a war strikes me as a bad thing,” noted The Bulwark’s Sam Stein.

Image via Reuters 

A federal judge on Monday issued a temporary restraining order against the National Park Service, ordering it to not interfere with a group that had been flying an “8647” flag in Washington, D.C. Common restaurant slang for “eighty-six” goes back nearly a century, the judge noted, saying that it meant “to throw out” or “to get rid of.”

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss issued the two-week restraining order at the request of Accountability Now USA, an anti-Trump group that had been protesting the president “for months at a site in front of the federal courthouse on Constitution Avenue,” Politico reports. The judge “says the banner can’t plausibly be read to threaten violence against President Donald Trump.”

Judge Moss agreed that the group’s goal is to have Trump lawfully removed from office via impeachment, “and that ’86’ is not an unambiguous call to political violence — and certainly not the kind of ‘imminent’ violence that would be necessary to justify restrictions on speech,” Politico noted.

“The Court does not doubt that political violence is on the rise and that it poses a grave threat not just to the targets of the threats but to the country as a whole,” Moss wrote. “But the enormity of that problem does not change the meaning of Plaintiff’s speech, which by any reasonable measure merely advocated for the President’s impeachment and removal from office — that is, ‘to throw [him] out.’”

Anita Carey, an organizer with Accountability Now USA, said that the group was “pleased that the court saw through the government’s baseless accusations about our 8647 flag.”

“We want to lawfully, peacefully, and constitutionally impeach and remove the President from office. We will now resume proudly flying our 8647 flag, and we encourage everyone who agrees with us to do the same,” she said, according to the ACLU of the District of Columbia.

Judge Moss did not mention the Trump DOJ’s case against former FBI Director James Comey, who had posted to social media a photograph of shells arranged in the form of an “8647” message — Comey later deleted the message and apologized, but was indicted in late April. The indictment alleges that any reasonable person would have seen the “8647” message as “a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States.”

Last month Trump called Comey a “Dirty Cop.”

Politico notes that Judge Moss’ “determination underscores questions about the genesis of the charges against Comey.” Comey has denied that his “8647” post was intended to provoke violence.

Image via Reuters