4 days ago
Pride 2025: Why we don't have a month dedicated to 'straight pride'
Pride 2025: Why we don't have a month dedicated to 'straight pride'
Show Caption
Hide Caption
Pride flag colors, explained: Meanings behind the rainbow colors
The rainbow Pride flag has become a symbol for the LGBTQ+ community. Here's how the flag came to be and what its colors represent.
For the second year in a row, a bar in Ohio is offering deals for "Heterosexual Awesomeness Month," and lawmakers from the state have proposed a "natural family month" that explicitly excludes LGBTQ+ families and celebrates only families led by straight men with children. Utah passed a bill to become the first state to ban Pride flags from flying on any government property, though Nazi flags were allowed, and Idaho passed a similar one.
More than 500 bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community have been proposed in 2025 alone, about 2 in 5 corporations are decreasing recognition of Pride Month out of fear of retaliation from the Trump administration and hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community, especially transgender people, are on the rise.
In 2023, the Human Rights Campaign declared a National State of Emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans for the first time in its over 40-year history and the FBI reported its highest number of gender identity-based hate crimes to date. Several countries have begun warning their LGBTQ+ citizens about traveling to America and in March, the U.S. was added to the Global Human Rights Watchlist due to declining civil liberties, in part because of the treatment of the LGBTQ+ community.
Still, more conservative groups are pushing for a "straight pride" month as an answer to the traditional celebration of Pride Month.
The LGBTQ+ community celebrates Pride Month during June to commemorate the Stonewall uprising. But amidst a political and social environment that has become increasingly hostile towards queer people, events and promotions celebrating heterosexuality seem to push back on the celebration.
Heterosexuality is the norm, and experts say that creates the need to dedicate a month to LGBTQ+ visibility. Here is more about why America celebrates Pride as a month and why there isn't a month to celebrate straight people.
Why don't we have a month dedicated to straight people?
Imara Jones, a journalist and founder of non-profit news organization TransLash Media, said we have dedicated months, including Pride, Black History Month and others, because those communities have been historically marginalized.
"People have been systemically written out of history and excluded and made invisible," she said. "One of the antidotes to that has been the idea that we will make people more visible and that there needs to be increased visibility in order to counteract that."
She also pointed out that the majority of people in the U.S. identify as heterosexual. According to December 2023 data from the UCLA Williams Institute, 5.5% of adults, or 13.9 million people, in the U.S. identify as LGBT.
The norms of heterosexuality are widely reflected in mainstream media, she said, mentioning shows like "Bridgerton" and "The Bachelor."
She said Pride is about declaring, "This is who I am."
Pride Month commemorates Stonewall riots, celebrates community
Pride Month commemorates the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York and celebrates the LGBTQ+ community and the fight for equal rights.
The Stonewall Uprising began on June 28, 1969, when police raided the Stonewall Inn, a prominent gay bar in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. The protests that followed are credited with a shift in LGBTQ+ activism in the U.S.
The following year saw some of the first Pride parades in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. Despite the pivotal role transgender people and women of color played in the riots, including trans activist Marsha P. Johnson, they were largely excluded from early Pride celebrations.
Today, Pride Month presents an opportunity for visibility and community. In addition to celebrating LGBTQ+ love and joy, it's also a time to highlight important policy and resource issues the community faces.
Anti-LGBTQ+ hate, legislation on the rise
The last few years have seen waves of legislation targeting the LGBTQ+ community.
In 2024, more than 500 bills were introduced in state legislatures and 49 of those were signed into law, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). This year, at least 588 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced and 57 have been signed into law as of May 30.
In 2024, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) saw a 13% increase in the number of anti-LGBTQ+ groups from the previous year and in 2023, it identified an approximately 30% increase in anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups, more than they had ever listed.
FBI crime data from 2022 and 2023 showed that anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes were also on the rise, with 2023 data showing that 2,800 incidents reported by the FBI were classified as bias against the victims' sexual orientation or gender identity, accounting for nearly one in four (22.8%) of total hate crimes committed that year. In 2022, the Human Rights Campaign "sounded the alarm" when FBI data showed a 13.8% increase in reports based on sexual orientation and a 32.9% jump in reported hate crimes based on gender identity.
And in 2024, GLAAD documented 110 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents in June 2024 alone, while the SPLC recorded at least 74 bomb threats targeting LGBTQ people and events in the same month.
Anti-trans bills have specifically been on the rise as the Trump administration has relied on that small population as a major scapegoat in his presidential campaign and, said SPLC, with Texas alone having filed 32 anti-trans bills for the 2025 legislative session.
Jones said the political pushback against diversity, equity and inclusion trickles down into Pride celebrations. She has seen intense anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric online seep into real life with real consequences for the community.
"We can't ignore... the role of intimidation in all of this, to be quite frank about it," she said.
Contributing: Ahjané Forbes, USA TODAY
