As we celebrate Palm Springs Pride and have our 11th annual Pride Issue on newsstands, I keep thinking back to June 26, 2015.
It was a day I didn’t think I’d see in my lifetime: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples had the right to marry, and states had to recognize same-sex marriages from other states. Legal gay marriage was the law of the land—across our entire country.
I joined hundreds of others that evening at Frances Stevens Park in downtown Palm Springs to celebrate. There was such joy. It seemed like the United States was truly inching toward a better, more loving, more equitable future.
Instead, the country went in the opposite direction.
Last year, the increasingly conservative U.S. Supreme Court threw out years of established law and precedent by reversing Roe v. Wade. Earlier this year, that same court ruled that businesses could legally discriminate (in a case, it turns out, that used various details that were completely made up). It’s possible that the victory we celebrated on June 26, 2015, could be reversed next.
Meanwhile, Republican politicians have set their sights on specific segments of the LGBTQ+ community to use as scapegoats—including drag queens. While there’s no evidence ever cited that a drag queen at a public performance or library story time has ever harmed a child, Republican leaders across the country have riled up concerned citizens and urged them to harass library boards, all while pushing—and, in some cases, passing—legislation outlawing public drag-queen events.
Even worse, bills targeting the trans community have become law in almost half of the states in the U.S.
I recently chatted with Mike Thompson, the CEO of the LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert. He recently returned to the Coachella Valley after a couple of years back in his home state of Oklahoma—and he told me something I can’t get out of my mind: “I talked to a number of trans people who are needing to get out of Oklahoma, because they no longer feel physically safe there because of the political rhetoric, and the social climate that has been informed by the political rhetoric, so they need an escape plan. We want to be a beacon of hope for people living in those communities to get here because of the safety that can be found here.”
I am grateful to organizations like the LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert, Greater Palm Springs Pride and many others that do good work to make sure the Coachella Valley, for the most part, is a place where LGBTQ+ people can feel safe—and a beacon of hope for people in places where, because of discrimination and political persecution, they don’t feel safe.
As people gather to celebrate Greater Palm Springs Pride, we should all make sure we’re doing everything we can to get the United States heading back in the direction of a better, more loving, more equitable future.
Note: This is a slightly edited version of the editor’s note that appeared in the November 2023 print edition. Much of this column was originally published online in the Oct. 19 Indy Digest.
