by Olivia McLaughlin
Northbridge, MA
Pride 2023 saw anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment become more extreme and increased threats of violence. On the last day of June, the Supreme Court released a decision allowing businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ customers. This decision rolls back hard-won protections and opens the door for re-legalizing discrimination based on race, gender, and other identities. Members of the Independent Socialist Group (ISG) joined protests and events around the country during Pride month to advocate a socialist approach to defend and extend LGBTQ+ rights.
The court’s decision follows nearly a year of open attacks, largely at the state level, by far-right politicians emboldened by the overturn of Roe v. Wade. States are attacking transgender people’s right to gender-affirming care, including medical treatments that help reduce the mental health crisis among trans youth. Legislatures have also restricted medical treatment and the right to transition for adults.
The number of attempted book bans increased nationwide, disproportionately targeting LGBTQ+ and race-related topics. Similarly, the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ effort to ban LGBTQ+ topics from being discussed in schools is an additional attempt by conservatives to erase LGBTQ+ people from their communities. Right-wing groups have targeted drag events for protests and physical attacks. These incidents have escalated and turned violent, as seen at their recent protest in Washington, D.C. Pro-LGBTQ+ counter-protesters were met with slurs and physically assaulted. None of the far-right offenders were arrested. The far-right seeks to redirect blame for the struggles working people face toward LGBTQ+ people (and others) in order to disorganize the working class and keep us divided so we are powerless to fight back against the capitalist system.
The corporate Democratic Party fails to protect LGBTQ+ workers by standing on the sidelines and claiming they can’t do anything about far-right attacks. In addition, they create declining living standards by eroding public services—services vulnerable workers especially rely on—and by pushing through legislation that actively hurts LGBTQ+ people. Benefit cuts to public programs like SNAP and Medicaid, such as those pushed through by the Biden administration in the debt ceiling deal, harm the community due to their higher-than-average poverty and unemployment rates—LGBTQ+ people of color being especially vulnerable.
We must work together, fight for union rights and protection against discrimination, and oppose discrimination in healthcare and housing to ensure working-class LGBTQ+ people can improve their lives. LGBTQ+ rights are a class issue, and our job as the working class is to defend and extend them.
Together in solidarity, we can force the far-right out of public spaces through coordinated mass demonstrations. Unionized workers such as educators and healthcare workers can make key demands like raising wages to ease the cost-of-living crisis, which acutely affects the LGBTQ+ community. The rights of the LGBTQ+ community are a class issue, and together we can defend and expand them. After the Republican Party in Florida and many other states passed legislation banning gender-affirming care, it’s important to band together and fight to prevent the further loss of rights.
Mass unionization can combat prejudice with workplace protections and help end school-based and workplace discrimination. The unions can help build a movement to win universal trans-inclusive healthcare, inclusive sex-ed for all, and reproductive rights like access to abortion on demand. We bring socialist ideas to Pride because we cannot achieve true liberation under capitalism; winning these demands would be a victory not only for the LGBTQ+ community but for the working class as a whole.
The Independent Socialist Group, alongside thousands of other activists and other organizations, stands in solidarity with working people in Pride events every year. In June, we participated in the Boston Trans Resistance and Dyke marches, Rhode Island PrideFest, Pride and the Dyke March in Portland, Maine, and the NYC Queer Liberation March. Pride is a protest! Our slogans raise demands popular with working-class people, like rent freezes, public housing, wage increases, universal healthcare, union rights for all, and a workers’ party. We aim to organize and connect the working class in the struggle to create a society based on workers’ democracy, free from capitalist oppression. If you like the ideas we are putting forward, we urge you to get involved and join the fight!
Independent Socialist Group 