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Yomiuri Shimbun
31-05-2025
- Politics
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Joy, Tension Collide as Worldpride Arrives in Trump's Washington
Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post A mural purported to be the longest in LGBTQ+ history was recently installed along 15th Street NW between O and V streets. The WorldPride Parade will kick off here June 7. The welcome signs for WorldPride, the world's largest LGBTQ+ gathering, are out across Washington. Banners hang from lampposts along major roads. Rainbow stripes have been painted on bike lanes and sidewalks. The message from the District to LGBTQ+ residents and visitors has been a cheery and unequivocal, 'We want you here.' At a Pride news conference Thursday, District Mayor Muriel E. Bowser proudly called the District 'the gayest city in the world' and encouraged residents to fly Pride flags in front of their homes. But for many in the LGBTQ+ community, the election of Donald Trump and his return to the presidency has altered the mood – and the outlook – for WorldPride. Less than a year ago, city leaders, LGBTQ+ business owners and Pride organizers said they anticipated the event and its associated panels, parties and parades would bring up to 3 million people to D.C. They projected hotels at full capacity and a revenue bonanza that would more than justify the city's $5 million budget to prep for the festival, which includes the 50th anniversary of Pride celebrations in the District. Now, while many community leaders and business owners remain optimistic that the event will be the success they envisioned, they are also tempering their expectations. They fear that the Trump administration's targeting of transgender rights and attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts have scared off corporate sponsors and discouraged people – especially international visitors – from coming to Washington for Pride. A number of countries have issued travel warnings for LGBTQ+ individuals thinking of coming to the United States, and organizations representing affected groups in Canada and Africa said they are boycotting the event. Ryan Bos, executive director of the Capital Pride Alliance, has spent much of the past five years working to bring WorldPride to D.C. He's thrilled that it is finally here, excited for the city and the LGBTQ community, and ready for the parties to begin. At the same time, he says, 'the executive orders that were directly targeting our community and other marginalized communities created feelings of despair, of anger, of 'what country am I living in?'' Bos has seen corporations and individuals withdraw from the event over their fears of retribution from the administration. His biggest disappointment, he said, 'is not being able to host this WorldPride at a time that we felt we were in a space that the government had our back, that our corporate partners had our back.' Conflicting emotions is a common theme for many in the District's LGBTQ+ community. 'We're excited for WorldPride obviously,' said Stephen Rutgers, co-owner of Crush, a popular gay bar on 14th Street NW that opened about a year ago. 'I think the city will see an influx of people. Will it be the two or three million that were initially projected to come? I don't think so. But at this point just having a normal D.C. Pride is a success. Anything over that is sort of the cherry on top.' With the arrival of the Trump administration, Rutgers says that what was supposed to be a celebration of rights that have been gained is now tinged with worry and anger about what is endangered. 'It's changed the tone and the narrative of what WorldPride could have been and what it's going to be,' he said. 'It could have been a very big, fun celebration and just everyone out and about, but now it's reminding people of the history of what Pride is and that all our rights are still not safe. We need to come out and be loud and proud and celebrate those things.' There are hundreds of official and unofficial parties and events scheduled during WorldPride, which officially began May 17. A welcome concert featuring Shakira at Nationals Park scheduled for Saturday night was abruptly canceled after the artist pulled out Friday, citing production issues for the event. That was an unexpected blow to the festival, but organizers said they were working to reschedule its events. Pride culminates June 7 and 8 with a parade, rally and concerts on Pennsylvania Avenue headlined by Cynthia Erivo and Doechii. Yet attendance projections for WorldPride, which includes celebrations of Trans Pride, Black Pride and Latinx Pride, remain in flux. Hotel bookings, one indicator of attendance, are down 10 percent for the three-week period of WorldPride compared to the same time last year, according to Destination DC, the nonprofit organization responsible for marketing the District to tourists and convention planners. Last year, the District hosted 2.2 million international visitors; that is expected to decline by 6.5 percent in 2025, according to Tourism Economics, which tracks travel data. The firm attributes the drop-off in international visitors to a variety of factors, including the impact of tariffs on prices, concerns about immigration and border policies and an overall negative sentiment. In 2024, about 72 million international visitors came to the United States. Tourism Economics estimates that number will drop by about 10 percent in 2025. Citing new U.S. government policies, particularly ones directed at trans individuals, a number of LGBTQ+ organizations in Canada, Africa and Europe have said they will not send members to WorldPride. Several European countries, including Denmark, Germany, Finland and Ireland, issued travel advisories in March and April alerting citizens that if their travel documents have their gender marked as 'X' rather than male or female, they could face difficulties when trying to enter the United States. Officials from the State Department and U.S. Customs and Border Protection said there are no restrictions against international visitors to the United States based on gender identity or sexuality. Stephanie Carre, general manager of the Dirty Habit restaurant and bar at the Hotel Monaco in downtown Washington, expressed some concern about the political climate affecting attendance. Like other business owners and managers around town, Carre is counting on a big overall turnout for Pride to help her meet her bottom line. The bar is hosting several WorldPride events, including an exhibit of portraits of gay icons by pop artist Wayne Hollowell and a drag brunch on June 8 featuring Alyssa Edwards. Tickets for the brunch start at $150 and Carre said they're hoping for at least 400 people to attend. If she can reach the venue's 800-person maximum, the brunch will be a big win. 'Unfortunately there's been a lot of controversy in the air since January,' Carre said. 'I was thinking it would be a great time to come and celebrate even harder because of that. So I'm hoping we get a huge influx of people coming to town to express their American freedom and be who they are.' Carre is 'cautiously optimistic' the numbers will be there. 'We were hoping for double the numbers of a normal Pride year, but it's kind of uncertain right now,' she said. As with any major event in the District, security and safety will be priorities, Pride organizers and city officials said. In addition to keeping visitors and residents safe at Pride events and on city streets, D.C. police and other law enforcement agencies say they will also be tracking rallies and protests. At various points during the next two weeks, demonstrators celebrating Pride will rally at the Lincoln Memorial, protest DOGE outside a Tesla showroom in Georgetown and gather at the Capitol Reflecting Pool for a Transgender Unity Rally. 'At this time I want to emphasize there are no known credible threats to WorldPride or any affiliated events,' DC Police Chief Pamela A. Smith said at Thursday's news conference. 'That being said we always want to remain vigilant and we always want to be ready. We will continue to evaluate our intelligence and adjust our posture accordingly if necessary.' The city is still reeling from a shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum on May 21 that took the lives of a young couple, both Israeli Embassy employees. The alleged shooter told police, 'I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,' according to an affidavit in federal court. The museum reopened Thursday. Although its leaders are still grieving from the attack, they are encouraging Pride attendees to come see the museum's newest exhibit, LGBTJews in the Federal City, which tells the history of Jewish involvement in LGBTQ struggles and activism as well as the change within the Jewish community with respect to LGBTQ inclusion over the past 50 years. 'The tragic shooting outside our building just reinforces how important it is to be a place where people can come learn about Jewish people, Jewish culture and the richness and diversity of the Jewish community in Washington D.C.,' Beatrice Gurwitz, the museum's executive director said in an interview. 'We have always aspired to bring in people who are Jewish, and who are not Jewish, to relate to what we have here and to better connect across difference.' At As You Are, a coffee shop, bar and self-described queer community space on D.C.'s Capitol Hill, owners Jo McDaniel and her wife, Rach 'Coach' Pike, are planning Pride-themed dance parties, karaoke nights and storytelling sessions at their 3,000-square-foot venue. They acknowledge some of the tension surrounding this year's festival but they also see it as a chance to showcase their city to visitors. 'We're looking forward so much to meeting a bunch of new folks and showing them how D.C. hospitality, there's really nothing like it,' McDaniel said, 'We have just enough small town in our big city to really make it special and caring and warm and I'm excited for folks to get to experience that.'
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What's At Stake In The Supreme Court LGBTQ+ Schoolbooks Case
Montgomery County is the nation's most religiously diverse county and the largest in the state of Maryland. Credit - Sarah L. Voisin—The Washington Post via Getty When the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on Tuesday, April 22, justices will be answering questions about one of the most contentious topics of conversation today: school curriculum. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, six parents—both Catholic and Muslim—seek to opt-out their children from classroom reading of books that have LGBTQ+ characters because they say it violates their First Amendment rights. 'We want the Supreme Court to recognize that parents have a right to direct the religious upbringing of their kids,' says Colten Stanberry, counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the plaintiffs. 'This will not be a seismic shift throughout our country.' But advocates say that mere exposure to these characters is not in violation of parents' rights, and fear that if the Supreme Court grants such exceptions, it will lead to self-censorship in school curriculums and stigmatize queer parents or children. Montgomery County Public Schools, where the issue being contested arose, did not reply to TIME's request for comment. The lawsuit is one of a set of cases scheduled to be heard this term that could expand religious liberty in education, and arrives as scores of parents seek to boost parental rights, or control over their children's education. Already, school curriculums have received greater attention due to state 'Don't Say Gay' laws, which bar classroom instruction on gender and sexuality. Such laws have passed in Florida, Ohio, and at least seven other states, according to the Movement Advancement Project. While the case alone does not constitute a book ban, PEN America, an organization that champions the freedom to write and express ideas, filed an amicus brief in favor of the respondents, asking the nation's highest court to consider the case against the backdrop of the 10,000 book bans that have been recorded in the 2023-2024 school year. A quarter of those books featured LGBTQ+ people, the organization found. Here's what to know. Montgomery County is the nation's most religiously diverse county and the largest in the state of Maryland. At the start of the 2022-2023 school year, Montgomery County Public Schools added a set of LGBTQ+ storybooks to its classroom curriculum for children from prekindergarten to the 12th grade to promote 'equity, respect, and civility,' according to the schools' court brief. The books were not meant to be used to teach about gender and sexuality, but instead were made available for students' own reading, classroom read-alouds, or other activities. Among others, the books under question feature a puppy getting lost at a Pride parade, and a girl nervous to give a valentine to her crush, who happens to be the same sex as her. The school contends that while it initially permitted opt-out policies to exempt students from hearing the book read aloud, the increasing number of requests led to 'high student absenteeism, the infeasibility of administering opt-outs across classrooms and schools, and the risk of exposing students who believe the storybooks represent them and their families to social stigma and isolation,' per court documents. Such concerns prompted a policy change in March 2023, barring any opt-out measures for these books. In May 2023, parents sued alleging that their rights had been infringed upon. Stanberry says that plaintiff parents are not asking the school to change the curriculum, but want accommodations to exempt their children from any instruction concerning gender and sexuality, which includes the LGBTQ+ community. 'If they discover those areas of the curriculum that are contrary to beliefs, they can raise their hand and say, 'Hey, can I step out of the classroom for a minute?'' says Stanberry. The trial court and Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Montgomery County in May 2024, the latter of which found that there has been no record of how 'any teacher or school employee has actually used any of the Storybooks in the Parents' children's classrooms, how often the Storybooks are actually being used, what any child has been taught in conjunction with their use, or what conversations have ensued about their themes.' An amicus brief filed in March by several organizations that represent state school board associations and administrators argues that the types of opt-outs parents are considering would lead to broader chaos in the classroom. Opt-outs from certain holiday celebrations are a 'far cry from constitutionally mandating that schools allow parents to prevent their children from being exposed to any reference to these holidays around the classroom,' the brief says. 'Teachers could be prevented from reading books referencing the existence of divorced or same-sex parents to children whose parents' religions do not condone those family structures.' 'This isn't a sex education class,' says Eileen Hershenov, chief legal officer and deputy CEO of PEN America. 'These are books that are teaching learning comprehension and reading showing a family and some activity. A family here in some of these books is two dads, or two moms, or a kid who has a crush on another kid who's the same sex…You're talking about reading comprehension, but showing the kind of families and contexts that all of these kids are going to grow up into, and that in fact, are already in their very own district.' The issue of religion in public schools has a long history in the courts. Nelson Tebbe, a law professor at Cornell Law School, says that typically, religious opt-out claims regarding evolution, for instance, have been consistently defeated in the courts. 'The long standing settlement is that religious parents don't have a right to opt out of elements of the public school curriculum that they disagree with,' says Tebbe. 'One way of putting this is that your mere exposure to ideas is not itself considered a burden on religion under these precedents. There has to be something more tangible than that.' Plaintiffs argue that the Maryland case hinges on the 1972 Wisconsin v. Yoder lawsuit brought forward by Amish parents who were seeking exemptions from Wisconsin state law that required all students to attend public school until age 16. The parents, who were prosecuted by the law, argued that sending their children to school after grade eight infringed on their religious beliefs. The Supreme Court unanimously agreed, ruling that the family's First Amendment rights were being infringed upon because the additional schooling was "in sharp conflict with the fundamental mode of life mandated by the Amish religion,' Chief Justice Warren E. Burger said in his opinion. 'Yoder is about the parents' right to control the religious education of their children,' says Douglas Laycock, University of Virginia Law professor who specializes in religious liberty. But Tebbe says that the case differs from the Maryland case in that it focuses on a general release from public education as a whole, as opposed to opt-outs from specific parts of classroom instruction. In Parker v. Hurley, a court ruled in 2008 that schools did not violate parents' or students' free exercise rights—allowing them to freely practice their religion—by introducing children to materials seeking to increase the tolerance of queer couples. And in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, in 1925 the Supreme Court set out a rule that parents have a constitutional right to pull their kids out of public school and send them to private school if they object to elements of the public school curriculum. Tebbe says that this was the general compromise the nation's highest court came up with for religious parents who did not want a specific type of instruction for their child. But other Supreme Court cases make the potential outcome of this week's case even murkier. Plaintiffs cite the 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which the court ruled in favor of a baker who did not want to make a cake for a same-sex couple. Part of the reason why the justices ruled in their favor had to do with 'religious animus,' or anti-religious comments made by state officials. The Becket Fund is claiming in this new case that comments made at a school board meeting constitute that religious animus. 'There's a basic idea in American law that judges should be neutral,' says Tebbe. But unlike the state officials in the 2018 case, 'the school board is not acting in an adjudicatory capacity.' While justices could decide to send the case back to the lower courts to tell them to apply a specific standard, recent rulings on issues concerning religious freedom point towards the likelihood that the justices will rule in favor of the plaintiff parents, according to both Tebbe and Laycock. The scope of the court's decision could make an impact. Justices may decide that school board comments do constitute religious animus and rule in favor of plaintiffs, which would specifically change the opt-out policy at Montgomery Public Schools. But a broader decision by the Supreme Court could allow religious families all over the country to file opt-out claims and broaden parental rights. 'The school board and its supporters say there's just gonna be chaos,' says Laycock. 'But there's no proof at this point that the opt outs are so unworkable that the school board has a compelling interest in saying no.' Compelling interest is a strict standard that must be met in order to create an exception to a subject's First Amendment rights. In order to file a free exercise claim, however, plaintiffs have to prove that there is a real measure of coercion that attempts to steer kids into adopting a certain belief. Advocates in favor of the school district argue that teachers and administrators aren't forcing students to go against their religious beliefs. PEN America says they fear a decision in favor of plaintiffs will 'turbocharge book bans.' And they add that opt-out policies for LGBTQ+ books stigmatizes children and families who identify as a part of that community. Stanberry denies that the opt-outs for this sort of instruction will be wide-ranging. 'The state has an interest in getting people ready to be members of society, but we just don't think that this type of instruction in elementary school forwards that interest,' says Stanberry, specifically referring to gender identity and sexuality. 'It seems like the court is implementing a program of really changing our law around the constitutional rules for religious freedom, both by strengthening free exercise claims—the claim that people have to be exempt from general law and general regulations, and also on the establishment clause side,' says Tebbe. The establishment clause prohibits the government from establishing its own religion, or favoring one religion over another. Still, it's possible the court draws the line for this case. 'You don't get an exemption from the public school curriculum," says Tebbe, "just because you disagree with the idea that the teachers are putting forward to students.' Contact us at letters@
