I have never, in my adult life, felt less safe to be gay in public in the US
When I came out of the closet in rural, upstate New York almost two decades ago, I never thought I’d go back in. I was wrong. In the last few months, I’ve started to change my appearance to accommodate a growing hostility toward the LGBTQ+ community in the US – even in New York, a state often touted as a beacon for queer communities.
I wear a baseball cap when I’m out of the house to hide my bright, blonde hair, as if that’s a shade exclusive to gay men. I’ve ditched brighter, lighter colors that pop when I wear them for darker shades that mask any expression of what could be considered femininity.
I speak differently when I’m in public, leaving out the excessive niceties I’d usually exhibit in hopes of throwing strangers off the scent of who I actually am.
I started to change how I present myself in public this spring, when someone approached my open car window in traffic, screamed a slur in my face, and walked away without another thought.
I was shaken. It was far from the first time I’d been called a slur, but the aggression and confidence with which he confronted me were startling. The next day, I bought a baseball bat, which now lives in my car in case I’m ever followed and attacked.
It’s difficult to understand how we got here and why our perception of safety in public has changed so rapidly in just a few years, but it has.
But we can find clues in polling data related to the LGBTQ+ community and how others feel about the country’s queer population.
A recent Gallup poll found the sharpest decline in acceptance of samegender relationships among adults in the US since at least 2001, the earliest data available from the polling firm.
While about two-thirds of adults in the US – 64% – consider same-gender relationships to be morally acceptable, according to the poll, 33% do not. That’s a jump of eight percentage points compared with last year, when 25% of US adults felt the same way.
At the same time, more people now identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community than ever. A separate poll from Gallup last year estimated that about 7.1% of US adults identify with our community – double the 3.5% recorded in 2012.
That means more people are coming out at a time when acceptance of same-gender relationships has gone down, creating a recipe for hostility and – in some cases – danger for queer people, and their allies.
Laura Ann Carleton, a 66-year-old woman from California, was shot dead in August after her killer took issue with an LGBTQ+ pride flag that was hung outside the store she’d owned and operated for the last decade. She had a
husband and a family.
At least 15 transgender and gender non-conforming people have been violently killed this year alone, according to data compiled by the Human Rights Campaign, in some cases in possible hate crimes.
Those are the instances we know about; because not everyone is out, and because data collection on LGBTQ + adults can be difficult, researchers from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics say we don’t have a clear picture of how severe the situation is.
In just the past year, threats of violence against the LGBTQ+ community have been on the rise, according to the US Department of Homeland Security. The agency even warned that public spaces, and healthcare sites, could be the site of an attack.
And now, Canada is warning its LGBTQ+ residents that some states in the US have enacted laws and policies that may affect them, creating a new, unspoken guidance for our queer neighbors to the north: be careful.
Those laws were born from culture war in the US, but their impetus remains unclear.
The catalyst appears to be the false, decades-old trope that queer people, men in particular, are more likely to act inappropriately around children.
It’s an idea that researchers have debunked repeatedly, according to the Zero Abuse Project, a non-profit geared toward ending child sex abuse.
And in New York, where the state legislature recently allowed decadesold claims of child sex abuse to be revived in civil court, no pattern emerged that showed members of the LGBTQ+ community as the likely perpetrators of those acts.
Opponents of the LGBTQ+ community have also claimed that children will be indoctrinated into a different sexual orientation or gender identity if they spend time with us.
Queer people will be the first to tell you that argument is asinine. For one, it implies that children will be able to choose, or change, who they’re attracted to after they’ve reached puberty, which just isn’t possible.
If it was, it would raise a question for every person who advocates against us: when did you experience same-gender attraction and how did you reject it? Curious minds would like to know.
The notion also presents the false idea to children that they could be happy and loved if they just stopped being themselves – a cruel notion that can manifest into a trauma that some don’t recover from, myself included.
This doesn’t have to be a partisan issue; compassion, empathy, and understanding are ideas that hold value for everyone, regardless of their political affiliation.
And if you disagree with that, there’s a good chance you’re part of the problem.