The Right’s Goal is to Erase the LGBTQ Community from Society

The GOP doesn't care if they incite hate crimes

Today marks the first day of Pride month, which for decades now in the United States has been known for a joyous celebration of the lives, experiences, achievements and the progress made by the LGBTQ+ community.  But this year is different—and that is because the GOP has made the LGBTQ+ community their number one target heading into the 2024 presidential election campaign from passing discriminatory laws to spewing lies ginning up hate to boycotts. 

Bluntly, the goal of many on the right is to erase any visible sign of the LGBTQ+ community from society.  And very alarmingly, the GOP’s words and actions in furtherance of this goal will lead to more violence and hate crimes directed against the LGBTQ+ community. I can attest to that firsthand because in the 2016 presidential campaign, the GOP made the Muslim American community—that I’m part of--their top target and that is exactly what we endured.

Look what we are seeing in terms of the GOP’s laws and rhetoric. As The Washington Post recently documented, “Four months into this year’s state legislative sessions, more bills targeting LGBTQ rights…have been introduced and become law than at any other time in U.S. history.”

The ACLU has also provided a detailed list of the GOP championed bills and laws targeting the LGBTQ+ community--the sheer breadth of which is bone chilling. A great deal of media coverage has been about the GOP legislation enacted  that bans gender affirming care for transgender teenagers—which experts note can literally be lifesaving.

But the GOP’s goals go far beyond targeting the transgender community. The ACLU explains that there are two other big buckets of laws Republicans are championing that will impact everyone in the LGBTQ+ community. First, there are “civil rights” bills that “attempt to undermine and weaken nondiscrimination laws by allowing employers, businesses, and even hospitals to turn away LGBTQ people or refuse them equal treatment.”

For example, GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed a sweeping law that legalizes discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community by enabling “doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, pharmacists, mental health professionals, or lab technicians, as well as nursing home workers and hospital administrators” to refuse to provide care to patients if doing so would violate their “moral, ethical, or religious” beliefs. As Kara Gross of the ACLU put it, “This bill is shocking in its breadth, vagueness, and government overreach into the private sector and regulated businesses.”

Another bucket of laws address “freedom of expression.” As the ACLU explains, “Despite the safeguards of the First Amendment’s right to free expression, politicians are fighting to restrict how and when LGBTQ people can be themselves, limiting access to books about them and trying to ban or censor performances like drag shows.” These GOP laws are literally about erasing the LGBTQ+ community from society.

What is especially alarming is that the debate surrounding these bigoted laws often see Republicans demonizing and even dehumanizing the entire LGBTQ+ community. For example,  Ron DeSantis’s press secretary in 2022 attacked those opposing DeSantis’ original “Don’t Say Gay” law as being in favor of “grooming” young children to have sex with them.  That “groomer” lie has also been peddled by other visible Republicans--like the always vile Marjorie Taylor Greene--against any who stand up as allies for the LGBTQ+ community.

It is in this climate where we now see leading right-wing voices waging a concerted campaign to make anything LGBTQ related “toxic,” including simply Pride month displays. Just last week we saw this with the right’s backlash to Target’s Pride display that caused the company to remove some items or hide displays.

Popular right-wing commentator Matt Walsh wrote on Twitter in connection with this effort, “The goal is to make ‘Pride’ toxic for brands.” That exact sentiment was reiterated by conservative Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles who urged his listeners, “To make that symbol toxic, the pride flag symbol, we need to make that toxic.”

Charlie Kirk—the head of an influential right wing group that organizes young conservatives— declared on his show said about companies like Target who celebrate the LGBTQ+ community: “The only thing they understand is force.” He called for supporters to not only bankrupt Target but added, “Pain is a teacher and the pain of crossing the line to perverting our children and grooming them, it's going to be a lesson I hope corporate America watches because ordinary America is pushing back.”

It's no surprise that in this climate we saw threats of violence by some outraged by Pride related merchandise at Target directed against Target employees. Some people even knocked down Pride displays in the store. Keep in mind, Target had been celebrating Pride month for a decade but as the company noted, “Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and wellbeing while at work.”

This is the climate the GOP and their media allies have nurtured.  And they won’t stop as long as they believe weaponizing hate against the LGBTQ+ community helps them politically--even if hate crimes spike against the LGBTQ+ community. I can say that with great certainty because I saw the GOP do this to my community, Muslim Americans.

In the past, the extreme voices of the right did their best to make anything Muslim inherently toxic. For example, GOP Members of Congress in 2009 claimed that America Muslim organizations were planting “spies” as interns in congressional offices. Other anti-Muslim bigots like then GOP Rep. Michelle Bachmann claimed that Muslims were “infiltrating” the government.

Some on right even demanded in 2007 that Urban Outfitters stop selling the Arabic headscarf known as a kaffiyeh because they claimed it was tied to terrorism. And like Target, Urban Outfitters gave in to the bigots, pulling the item “due to the sensitive nature” of the scarf while apologizing “if we offended anyone.”

It wasn’t long until GOP officials and activists began to peddle the lie that Muslim Americans wanted to impose Islamic law (Sharia law.) In response, Republicans in state legislatures introduced a swath of anti-Sharia law legislation.  (Muslim Americans never wanted to impose our religious beliefs as law as opposed to the GOP that is literally doing that today with their abortion bans.)

By the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump took anti-Muslim bigotry to new dangerous lows from his lies that Muslims in New Jersey cheered on 9/11 to calling for a ban on Muslims entering the country. The very alarming result was that hate crimes against Muslims in 2016 reached a higher level than in the year after 9/11—from attacks on our places of worship to physical assaults against our community to bullying in school.

That is why it’s not surprising that we are already seeing alarming uptick in violence being directed against the LGBTQ+ community. For example, in March, armed white supremacists and members of several extremist groups—including some offering Nazi salutes—targeted a drag queen storytelling event in Ohio. In California, members of the Trump loving Proud Boys disrupted a similar event screaming anti-LGBTQ slurs. The physical confrontation at Target of employees or knocking down of Pride month displays is another warning sign. 

The voices on the right know all of this. We must assume they either seek violence to help them achieve their hate-filled goals—or at least tolerate it because no leading Republicans have denounced it.

This GOP has come, and will come again, for any of us if it helps them win elections—regardless of the cost to our respective communities. As Martin Luther King Jr. famously stated: “The greatest tragedy…was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”  It’s time that all “good people” stand up against the GOP’s hate directed against the LGBTQ+ community. By uniting as allies, we are no longer simply “minorities” that the right believes they can bully. Instead, we are a united political powerhouse that will crush them come 2024.

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