It’s the first time ever that support for the LGBTQ community has dropped.
As a reminder for all those people who talk about how “we survived” Reagan or Bush and will survive Trump, the rhetoric, actions, and policies set by the nation’s leaders have very real, tangible effects on the day-to-day lives of their citizens. On the one hand we can point to the statistics that stand out as obviously wrong: the rates of violence--all too often deadly violence--against LGBTQ folks, especially trans women and POC; but these ideological measurements are equally indicative of a changing cultural climate that marks LGBTQ lives as wrong and not worth protecting or defending, that leaves LGBTQ youth living in a state of fear for their acceptance and their lives.
The Harris Poll, referred to as the “Accelerating Acceptance” report, is released annually in cooperation with GLAAD. This year, one year into Trumps’ presidency, marks “the first time in the survey’s history that support for queer and transgender people has dropped year-to-year.” Not only did rates of individual “comfort”with LGBTQ people drop four percentage points, but the percentage of people who reported being uncomfortable with having an LGBTQ person teach their children, seeing a same-sex couple simply hold hands out in public, and having an LGBTQ family member also jumped an average of three percentage points. These shifts have been bolstered not only by the rhetoric used by Trump and Pence, but also the policies they have put in place--from the rollback of federal protections for trans students, to the creation of a “Conscience and Religious Freedom Division” of HHS that would allow health professionals to deny care to patients in need.
These ideological shifts have real impacts. This is the time to work harder to be better allies, to make our voices heard and let them know that we won’t sit back and watch as years of progress are undone. This is the time to step up in our communities and make sure that we all feel safe, which means listening to more marginalized voices and reacting to stories of violence and discrimination without the insistence that “it gets better.” But now is also the time for radical communities of care and love and support. This is the time for chosen family and being there for one another. This is the time to reach out to younger members of the LGBTQ community and make sure they know that despite the hatred and bigotry that they see in the world around them, there is also a world of love and acceptance and community out there too. I know what it’s like to come out as a lesbian and fear being thrown out of my house; I know what it’s like to walk down the street holding my fiancée’s hand despite worrying about what people might say; I know what it’s like to teach as an out queer woman in conservative communities. But I had also let myself hope and believe that the next generation would have it better; I had hoped that each year more and more of my students wouldn’t have to know that same sense of fear; and I worry that my optimism in the progress I’ve seen over my own lifetime made me complacent. Now is the time to fight that attitude of complacency that suggests things will get better without our fighting harder.
Know your history. Don’t let it be repeated.
