0:00

The date? June 28,

0:03

1970. Thousands of people marched in

0:05

New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago

0:07

on the one-year anniversary of the

0:09

Stonewall uprising. Here's what it

0:11

sounded like on what was called Christopher

0:13

Street Liberation Day. This

0:16

was the first Pride March, more than 50 years

0:19

ago. The Pride Month, as we

0:21

know it today, was first recognized federally in 1999

0:25

when then-President Bill Clinton declared June

0:27

as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.

0:29

And a lot has changed since

0:31

then. The repeal of the Don't

0:33

Ask, Don't Tell policy, marriage equality,

0:36

increased visibility, and even the name

0:38

which expanded to LGBTQ Pride. But

0:43

that momentum seems to have slowed

0:45

down in recent years. Here's New

0:47

York Congressman Richie Torres, the co-chair

0:49

of the Equality Pack. We are

0:51

witnessing unprecedented fear-mongering

0:54

and scapegoating against

0:57

LGBTQ people, against members of the trans

0:59

community in particular. As of May, half

1:01

of U.S. states have bans on trans

1:03

healthcare for minors. And that's just one

1:05

example. The ACLU says it is tracking

1:08

527 bills

1:10

that it frames as anti-LGBTQ

1:12

across the U.S. legislation

1:14

that would limit trans healthcare access,

1:17

ban drag shows, or censor curriculums

1:19

at schools, among other things. There

1:21

are a handful of bad actors

1:23

that have created these bills,

1:25

and they are really targeted toward

1:28

the trans community and gender nonconforming

1:30

community. And when we think about

1:32

that, you know, 30% of

1:34

Americans say they know someone who's transgender, which

1:36

means 70% of Americans don't

1:39

or don't think they do. And so

1:42

they are learning about these people primarily

1:44

through cable news right now

1:47

in these anti-trans bills. It's

1:50

fear-mongering. leading

2:00

the charge are a small but vocal

2:02

group of the American public. Like

2:05

the people who kicked off last year's

2:07

backlash against corporate pride campaigns that ended

2:09

up making headlines. Bud Light

2:11

drinkers took to social media to

2:13

mobilize a boycott against Anheuser-Busch after

2:16

it partnered with a popular trans content

2:18

creator. Among other moments, musician

2:20

Kid Rock posted a video of him shooting

2:22

at cases of the beer. Bud

2:28

Light and f***ing Anheuser-Busch.

2:31

And after the outdoor brand North Face partnered with

2:33

the drag queen to promote their Summer of Pride

2:35

events last June. Hi, it's

2:37

me, Patagonia, a real life

2:39

homosexual. And today I'm here with the North

2:41

Face. The company saw a

2:43

similar boycott. Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor

2:46

Greene took to social media calling on

2:48

her followers to quote, not waste

2:50

money on labels that are, quote, grooming

2:52

our children. Target ended up

2:54

pulling some merchandise from its 2023 Pride

2:57

collection after a wave of complaints,

2:59

harassment, and even threats of violence against

3:01

its employees. But Ellis argues

3:03

the reality is more nuanced, that these

3:05

were only a couple of examples among

3:07

hundreds of other successful corporate pride campaigns.

3:10

Warperts have not stepped away from

3:12

the LGBTQ community and nor are

3:15

they going to. Honestly, in

3:17

order to future proof their business, they

3:19

have to include our community. When

3:22

you look at Gen Z reporting

3:24

30 percent identify

3:27

or our LGBTQ, that's the

3:29

future consumer and the future

3:31

employee. Ellis' outlook is shaped by that

3:33

future. She says that a

3:35

few bad actors come with increased visibility.

3:38

I am wildly optimistic. I think

3:40

10 years ago, Americans didn't even

3:43

know transgender people like Laverne Cox

3:45

was not on the cover of

3:48

Time magazine. All of these stories

3:50

that we've been able to work

3:52

with Hollywood to have told with

3:55

and for and of trans people have

3:58

been out there. has

4:00

caused this backlash in a lot of

4:03

ways. Visibility comes at a price. Consider

4:06

this, more than 50 years of

4:09

gay pride marches, parades, festivals, and now

4:11

partnership deals with major brands, it's

4:13

increased LGBTQ visibility in community, and

4:15

as a result, it has also

4:17

become the target of backlash. After

4:22

the break, we talked to the founder and

4:24

host of the podcast, Making Gay History,

4:26

about how LGBTQ pride has evolved into how

4:28

it's known today. From

4:34

NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. This

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your first month. I'm

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Rachel Martin. On this week's episode of Wild

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5:49

It's Consider This from NPR. It's

5:52

the final day of LGBTQ Pride Month,

5:54

but for some, this year's Pride was

5:56

a complicated one. On the

5:58

one hand, there's increased visibility for the

6:00

community. But some say there is a

6:02

backlash to this visibility. In the spring,

6:04

South Carolina became the 25th state to

6:06

ban gender-affirming care for minors, as one

6:08

example, continuing a major recent trend in

6:11

state houses. And this year,

6:13

there's been a pullback from Pride merchandising

6:15

from brands like Target and Bud Light

6:17

after pushback from working with

6:19

LGBTQ influencers. So how

6:21

do we square these two realities? For that,

6:23

we called Eric Marcus, who is the founder

6:25

and host of the Making Gay History podcast.

6:28

He says that LGBTQ history is

6:30

filled with moments of progress and

6:32

backlash. And he began by telling me

6:35

about the very first Pride parade. The

6:37

first march in 1970, which took nearly

6:39

a year of planning, it

6:41

was a protest march. It was not a

6:43

celebration. It was mostly a protest march, marking

6:45

the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising of gay

6:48

people fighting back against oppression. And

6:50

the people who organized it had no idea

6:52

how many people would actually show up for

6:54

it. It was a very different time. People

6:56

were afraid of being visible. And

6:58

I remember interviewing one man who had been there. And

7:00

he said he was terrified that it would be five

7:03

of them, or 10 of them, marching

7:05

up Sixth Avenue from Greenwich Village.

7:08

And he said he looked back at one point, and

7:10

there were hundreds. And then there were thousands. People came

7:12

in from the sidelines, and people cheered. They

7:14

were afraid that they would be attacked, that people would

7:16

throw rocks at them. And by the

7:18

time they reached Central Park, there were

7:20

thousands and thousands of what

7:23

we would call today LGBTQ people. It was

7:25

the largest gathering of LGBTQ people, probably, in

7:27

the history of the world. And that was

7:29

1970. And they were

7:31

shocked. They didn't expect it to go as well as

7:33

it did. They were so scared, actually, that they joked

7:35

that it was called not a march, but a run,

7:38

because they moved so quickly up Sixth Avenue. And

7:40

over time, it's evolved into something bigger. And

7:42

today, to bring it up to the present

7:45

day, in New York, we have two marches.

7:47

One is the classic Pride march,

7:49

which is now, it's got a lot of corporate sponsors, and it's

7:51

the music, and the kind of thing you see on the news.

7:54

And a few years back, one of my friends

7:56

helped organize what's now called the Queer Liberation March,

7:58

which was meant to end. echo those

8:01

original protest marches because there are things to

8:03

protest and they were not so happy with

8:05

the corporate sponsorships. Yeah, and I've had so

8:07

many conversations and heard so many different views

8:09

on that. On one hand, it is a

8:11

sign of progress that so many big companies

8:13

feel like the thing they need to do

8:15

is take part in the Pride Parade. Another,

8:17

it feels cynical, it feels pandering, it feels

8:20

like it takes the authenticity off of it.

8:22

How have you thought about this? I

8:24

think it's both. Some of the comments I've

8:27

heard over the years about corporate sponsorship have

8:29

made me laugh because I'm old enough to

8:31

remember when the idea that a corporation would

8:33

associate itself with homosexuals was absolutely ridiculous. We

8:36

were considered a marginal group of people

8:39

and certainly not well-respected. We were sick,

8:41

sinful, and criminal. So a

8:43

corporation wasn't gonna sponsor one of our

8:45

marches. Target wasn't cozying up. No, no,

8:47

in the earliest days, it was Subaru

8:49

and American Airlines that took the leap

8:52

to be sponsors, to be supportive. But

8:54

it didn't just come from the outside

8:56

in the idea or the belief that

8:58

there was a significant market out there

9:00

of LGBTQ people to market to. A

9:03

lot of the pressure came from inside, from employees.

9:06

Most major corporations now have employee

9:08

resource groups for LGBTQ people. So

9:11

when Target decided to pull back their

9:13

pride displays, they also had to deal with employees

9:15

on the inside who would not be happy with

9:18

that. So I think it goes

9:20

both ways. I remember a few years ago, I live

9:22

in a neighborhood in New York City where a lot

9:24

of the floats were set up prior to the march.

9:27

And I walked around the corner and there was a

9:29

float for patio furniture in

9:31

rainbow colors. And I thought, I

9:33

think this has gone a step too far. And

9:35

what is the relationship between patio furniture

9:38

and LGBTQ people? Let me ask that

9:40

the public perception of LGBTQ issues has

9:42

changed so dramatically in so many different

9:44

ways in recent decades. Oh my goodness,

9:46

yes. Just talking about how far lifetimes.

9:48

Are there, whether it's forward progress

9:50

or backsliding, what are the one or two

9:52

moments that really stick out to you where

9:54

it was just crystal clear in your mind

9:57

that something's different here? Oh God, that's a very good

9:59

question. The world has changed

10:01

so dramatically. And I can look back

10:03

now, I'm 65, and I can

10:05

see key moments. I really wasn't very familiar

10:08

with the history before I started my work in the late

10:10

1980s. But I was

10:12

very aware of the movement in 1977 when

10:15

Anita Bryant, who was a popular singer, launched

10:17

an anti-gay campaign. It was the first

10:20

national anti-gay campaign called Save Our Children.

10:22

And she worked at rolling back the newly

10:25

passed gay rights bill in Dade County, Florida,

10:27

and then took her campaign across the country.

10:30

She used to say, "'Homosexuals can't reproduce,

10:32

so they recruit.'" So now

10:35

we're back to that language again, except it's

10:37

slightly altered now. The accusation is that gay

10:39

people are groomers and pedophiles, that's

10:41

such old stuff. So a key moment for

10:43

me was that turning point, because it compelled

10:45

me to come out and be visible, because

10:47

I heard these people saying terrible things about

10:49

me as a teenager. The

10:52

AIDS crisis as well, as painful as that

10:54

was, and as much of a backlash that

10:56

inspired at the time, it

10:58

made us visible in a way that I don't think

11:00

we could have ever imagined. And what people got to

11:02

see was a community coming together to take care of

11:05

each other. What's the best way that you explained, because

11:07

I'm thinking about milestone moments where I saw

11:09

something and felt something was different. Right now,

11:12

I was a reporter in California when the

11:14

2013 Supreme Court ruling legalized same-sex

11:16

marriage in California a few years

11:18

before the national ruling. And I remember that

11:20

outpouring of emotion in pop-up

11:22

marriages in San Francisco and Sacramento and

11:24

covering that. Then 10 years later,

11:27

this year, I've been, I'm

11:29

just curious every time a pro sports

11:31

team posts a Pride post on social

11:33

media about Pride Night at the stadium,

11:36

going to the comments and seeing not

11:38

only the backlash, but people just saying

11:41

statements that you would think just a

11:43

few years ago, people would never say

11:45

in public, just anti-gay slurs and attacks

11:47

of how dare you do this for

11:50

a pretty innocuous like somebody throwing a

11:52

first pitch type outing. Yeah, we live

11:54

in a moment when people, I think,

11:56

feel perfectly privileged to say whatever they

11:58

feel, even if it's awful. And it's

12:00

not just about gay people. But

12:03

I also lived through a time when I first was out

12:05

promoting my first book, The Male Couple's Guide to Living Together

12:07

in 1988, a rather innocuous

12:09

book. I was on CNN

12:11

News Night Update, an overnight call-in show, and

12:13

I had people call up and call me

12:15

on the air, and one person

12:17

called up and said, I have my rights, I have the right

12:20

to be chained to their truck and dragged down the highway. Another

12:22

caller said I had my rights to serve as

12:24

target practice in his backyard. So,

12:27

which is, we're not used to it because things had

12:29

changed so much. But we see

12:31

political leaders now who say

12:33

those things, and so

12:35

it gives people permission to say

12:37

that. But what the people

12:40

who lead these backlashes don't understand

12:42

is that every time they go

12:44

after us, it inspires more people

12:46

to come out and be visible.

12:48

But I'm hopeful, I'm actually hopeful. It's easy for

12:51

me, as a white, cisgender gay man of a

12:53

certain age living in New York City to say

12:55

that, that I also hear from kids who

12:57

live in places where it's really rough. But

12:59

I'm hopeful, I'm hopeful. That's Eric Marcus,

13:01

host and founder of the Making Gay History

13:04

podcast. Thank you so much. A delight, very

13:06

glad to speak with you. Happy Pride. You

13:08

too. This

13:10

episode was produced by Erica Ryan and

13:12

Avery Keatley with reporting from Barbara Sprunt

13:14

and audio engineering by Neil T. Vault.

13:16

It was edited by Tinbeat Ermias, our

13:18

executive producer is Sami Gennigan. And now,

13:20

just a reminder, you can now enjoy,

13:22

consider this in newsletter form. Just

13:25

like other podcasts will help you break down the major

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13:41

Consider This from NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.

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A way, way don't tell me our celebrity interviews

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13:58

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