Pride celebrations vital amid attacks on LGBTQ community

Carolyn Pinta and her family have been busy constructing a float and getting rainbow-hued decorations ready for the Buffalo Grove Pride Parade on Sunday, an annual event launched in 2019 by her daughter Molly, who was 12 at the time.

Yet the mom describes an undercurrent of worry and tension surrounding this year’s Pride celebration as much of the national political climate grows increasingly hostile to the LGBTQ community.

The mounting discrimination, however, has only elevated her commitment to walking in Sunday’s parade — a symbol of LGBTQ acceptance and inclusion amid a wave of political and legal attacks across the country.

“It’s terrifying,” she said.

Roughly 500 anti-LGBTQ bills are pending in state legislatures across the country, predominantly in the South and many Midwestern states outside of Illinois, according to an American Civil Liberties Union report that was last updated in late May.

The record-breaking number of measures includes attacks on the freedom of expression of those who identify as LGBTQ, attempts to censor discussion of LGBTQ topics in schools, prohibitions on transgender access to public spaces such as bathrooms, and bans on gender-affirming health care for trans kids.

“While not all of these bills will become law, they all cause harm for LGBTQ people,” the report stated.

After facing recent backlash, Target announced last month that it would be removing certain items and making changes to its LGBTQ merchandise, as well as moving Pride items from the front to the back of some stores in Southern parts of the country.

Customers reportedly knocked down Pride displays and angrily confronted employees at some locations. Threatening videos taken inside the stores were also posted on social media, according to the company.

“Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work,” the company said in a written statement. “Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans.”

In contrast, Illinois is often considered an LGBTQ haven in the Midwest. While elected leaders in other parts of the country have worked to restrict LGBTQ freedoms, lawmakers recently passed several bills aimed at increasing gender inclusivity and protecting LGBTQ rights.

But even here, some businesses have come under attack.

Earlier this year, a man yelled homophobic slurs and used a hammer to break the window of a Rogers Park bar, according to police.

And a McHenry County bakery that faced harassment and vandalism after advertising a kid-friendly drag show closed on Wednesday. UpRising Bakery and Cafe in Lake in the Hills discussed the recent backlash — and invoked LGBTQ activism — in its goodbye message to customers on social media.

“As queer activists, employers/employees, innovators, healers, and most importantly people, we live and breathe pride 365 days a year,” the business said in a Facebook message announcing its last day. “This is not goodbye. I promise you will be seeing A LOT of our faces and good outcomes will sprout from the hideous actions of so many against us here. This will not continue to happen to people, not while I have a voice and a beating heart.”

The climate has shut down or restricted some Pride events that were slated this month: In Florida, several Pride celebrations have been canceled or limited to attendees 21 and over, citing a law targeting drag shows recently signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

But tens of thousands of LGBTQ folks have flocked to Florida for Disney World’s annual Gay Days festivities. The leader of the event, which runs through Sunday, encouraged a large turnout to send a message opposing the state’s discriminatory legislation and policies.

“Right now is not the time to run. It’s not the time to go away,” said Joseph Clark, CEO of Gay Days Inc. “It’s time to show we are here, we are queer and we aren’t going anywhere.”

The governor has championed a slew of anti-LGBTQ measures, including a so-called don’t say gay law passed last year, barring instruction of sexual orientation or gender identity through third grade. This year it was expanded to all grades.

To Pinta, the Florida governor’s emergence as a major Republican contender in the 2024 presidential election is a particularly troubling prospect for the future of LGBTQ rights in the nation. She fears his viability as a potential leader of the nation threatens to shift anti-LGBTQ ideology from a fringe minority to the mainstream.

“It somehow gives validity to what these people are saying,” she said. “It’s very scary.”

She’s heard that some folks who previously came to Buffalo Grove’s Pride Parade have expressed anxiety about attending this year — a fear that’s exacerbated by recent local parade violence: A shooter on a rooftop opened fire at the July Fourth parade about 10 miles away in Highland Park last summer, where seven people were killed and more than a dozen were injured.

Pinta said law enforcement will have a stepped-up presence at the Buffalo Grove parade to ensure the safety of attendees. And if some supporters feel they should stay home, she understands.

“Those who can stand with us will stand with us,” she said.

A rainbow Pride flag waves above Buffalo Grove, a northwest suburb of about 43,000.

A few dozen community members, state officials and local leaders gathered Thursday at a public park in Buffalo Grove for a flag-raising ceremony to kick off Pride month, which is celebrated in June to commemorate the Stonewall riots, a 1969 uprising spurred by a police raid of a gay bar in New York.

Various parades, picnics and festivals supporting LGBTQ acceptance are scheduled this month throughout the Chicago area, including the Chicago Pride Parade on June 25.

At the Buffalo Grove flag-raising, resident Hetal Wallace described a sense of “urgency” to hosting and attending these kind of Pride events this year, because of the wave of discrimination and bigotry facing the LGBTQ community.

“We’re trying to protect what we created here,” said Wallace, who is also a member of the Buffalo Grove Park Board of Commissioners. “I think there’s an urgency to make sure that we protect it with all our strength.”

While LGBTQ discrimination has been on the rise, this is not “indicative of a nationwide shift on attitudes toward queer communities,” said Ryan Wade, assistant professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, whose research areas include a focus on LGBTQ communities.

“Acceptance of, and support for, LGBTQ rights has steadily risen over time, with more and more individuals identifying as LGBTQ themselves,” he added.

A Gallup poll released last year found just over 7% of American adults self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or “something other than heterosexual,” more than double the percentage that reported an LGBTQ identity a decade prior. The poll forecast that this will increase to more than 10% of the nation “in the near future,” based on previous data.

The majority of adults in the United States oppose discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, according to a survey released in December by NORC at the University of Chicago. About three-quarters of those polled were in favor of civil rights laws that protect LGBTQ folks from discrimination; more than 70% supported marriage equality and adoption rights for gay and lesbian couples.

Fifty-eight percent of respondents approve of allowing parents to allow gender-affirming health care for transgender children, the survey said.

“These findings continue to demonstrate that the majority of Americans support key civil rights for LGBTQ people,” a senior research scientist at NORC said in a statement about the survey.

Wade attributes the wave of recent LGBTQ discrimination to “certain policymakers” who are “looking for easy targets to scapegoat, and have manipulated their constituents into believing that LGBTQ communities (and others) are some sort of nebulous threat.”

The goal, though, is to distract voters from “real structural problems, and the lack of policy solutions to these problems,” Wade said.

The uptick in anti-LGBTQ legislation and political attacks can also be ascribed in part to the looming contentious 2024 presidential election, said Susan Burgess, senior professional lecturer in political science at DePaul University and the author of the book “LGBT Inclusion in American Life,” which was released earlier this year.

“That’s particularly the case for the Republican base,” where some elected officials are using anti-gay rights legislation and rhetoric to try and “distinguish themselves within their party,” she said.

This doesn’t reflect the values and politics of the nation’s majority, she said.

“It’s a loud minority, but it’s a minority, nationally,” she said. “What’s more troubling is we can expect it to grow louder as we move into the 2024 elections.”

The Buffalo Grove Pride Parade was the brainchild of Molly Pinta.

In sixth grade, she started a gay-straight alliance at her middle school and came out to her family and friends. Then she became inspired by attending a Pride parade in Aurora.

She and her family organized the first Buffalo Grove Pride Parade four years ago, attracting thousands; they moved to a social-distanced version of the event during the COVID pandemic and returned to hosting an in-person parade last year.

“We want to help people become more accepting and more aware,” Molly Pinta, who is now 17, told the Tribune in 2019. “We want to do as many Pride events as possible and make them as public as possible. People often are afraid of what they don’t understand.”

While her parents were supportive when she came out, the family knows that many LGBTQ kids don’t find acceptance at home; the parade was designed with them in mind as well, to help them feel less alone, according to the Pintas.

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The negative political climate is taking a toll on the mental health of LGBTQ youth, according to a national survey by The Trevor Project released in late May.

Nearly 1 in 3 LGBTQ young people reported that “their mental health was poor most of the time or always” due to anti-LGBTQ legislation and policies; nearly 2 out of 3 of those surveyed said their mental health worsened from hearing about potential laws banning people at school from discussing LGBTQ individuals, the poll found.

Wade believes it’s important to celebrate Pride “in general” but also “as an act of collective resistance against forces that seek to further marginalize historically disenfranchised communities,” he said.

He added that it’s equally critical to remain vigilant for threats of violence during these celebrations.

“It’s extremely important, as it always has been, for LGBT people and their allies to be out and proud of who they are, who we are,” Burgess said. “Because it’s politically activating, and it helps people to understand that people they know are queer. And when people understand people they know and love are queer, they open up more to the LGBTQ community and accept it more.”

The Associated Press contributed.

eleventis@chicagotribune.com