Factually! with Adam Conover - Is Pride Dead?

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

(In addition to your weekly Factually! episode, this week we're bringing you a monologue from Adam. This short, researched monologue originally aired on the Factually! YouTube page, but we are sharing audio versions of these monologues with our podcast audience as well. Please enjoy, and stay tuned for your regularly scheduled episode of Factually!)The right is trying to turn Pride Month into Shame Month.Visit USAFacts.org for unbiased, nonpartisan data that unpacks topics that shape American life and subscribe here https://usafacts.org/signup/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Paid&utm_campaign=Adam+Conover&utm_content=AC1 to receive their free weekly newsletter to get the trendlines behind the headlines. Views are my own—not those of USAFacts See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Better with people, better with Alma. Visit helloalma.com slash factually to get started and schedule a free consultation today. That's helloalma.com slash factually. Well, Pride Month has been over for a couple of weeks, so I've moved on to the next deadly sin. July is gluttony month. I started eating hot dogs on July 4th

and I had not stopped, baby. And you know, all that eating helped distract me from the fact that this year's Pride Month kinda sucked because it brought us the worst Supreme Court decision on queer rights in a generation. Yeah, John Roberts really said, that's right, F-slurs, turn the Lady Gaga off and get back in the closet. In case you missed it, the Supreme Court's decision in the case United States vs. Skirmety

allowed states to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth, and 27 states have now done so. And this ruling could also set up future court decisions that would ban this type of care for trans adults, as well, or honestly, for anybody. And that is, that is bad. Gender-affirming care is a widely accepted medical practice that's supported by basically every medical association in the country and has benefited countless people and kids. I have a lot of trans people in my life

who I really deeply care about, and I have seen firsthand what a difference in their lives it can make to medically transition. But the Supreme Court has decided that you, your family, and your doctor don't get to decide whether that care is right for you. Instead, some dumb f**k bigoted lawyer

in your state capitol gets to decide what happens to your body for you. And now, there are hundreds of thousands of real kids who either have to travel to a different state to get the care they need or go without. Let's be clear. These laws are fundamentally about bigotry. They're not based in any good faith worry about kids or science. They're part of a right-wing movement that is overtly trying to remove trans and other queer people from American life entirely. And you can tell that because the first thing Trump did

when he took office was that he signed multiple executive orders that did exactly that, banning trans people from serving in the military and from getting passports that match their gender. And rather than do anything about it, the Democrats had been throwing trans people under the bus. This notion of gender affirming care for children, that's tough, man. You know, frankly, it's not surprising hearing this bullsh** from Gavin because the dude

is straight up a bully from an 80s movie. Look at his haircut, and also, his name is Gavin. But it is crazy to see the backslide on gay rights in America because it feels like just yesterday that we were all celebrating a Supreme Court ruling that made gay marriage legal throughout America. I mean, remember this? It was just 10 years ago. And at the time, it seemed to usher in a new era of acceptance for queer people in America. Even corporations started waving the Pride flag. I mean, check out Target's 2015 Pride collection. It was gay as hell.

And remember Glee? Kurt and Blaine and Santana and Britney were having hot gay makeout sessions and singing show tunes on network television. Even Kellogg's came out. And yeah, that tracks. Tony is a tiger, but we always knew he's also a bear. Not to mention friggin' snap crackle and poppers over here. But just ten years later, not only has the federal government started overtly attacking trans people, the corporations have abandoned queer people altogether. Have you seen Target's Pride collection this year? It's friggin' beige! Beige isn't the color of pride, it's the color of shame!

You know, the incredible progress America made on gay rights and acceptance during my lifetime was always one of the most positive stories about this country to me. So seeing this backslide and how it has terrified and endangered real people has been devastating. It's enough to make you wonder, was all of that progress, all of that acceptance of queer people just a flash in the pan, a blip in the history of a fundamentally bigoted country? And even if it isn't, how do we move forward from here? Well, in this video, we're gonna explore those questions. But real quick, if you wanna support the channel,

head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. And if you'd like to come see me in person, I just announced my new standup tour. I'm calling it the Big Divorce Energy Tour. And if you wanna know what that means, you gotta come see the show. I'm headed to Indianapolis, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Brea, California, Los Angeles, California,

Tacoma, Washington, Spokane, Washington, Des Moines, Iowa, Atlanta, Philly, Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The incredibly funny comic Sammy Mowry is opening for me. And they are very gay, so if you like this video, you're gonna like their comedy. Head to adamconover.net for all those tickets and tour dates, and I'll see you out there. So when I think about the progress America has made on gay rights in just my lifetime,

it is pretty mind-boggling. You know, when I was in high school, a few decades ago, unfortunately, there was one out-gay person in my entire school. She was a friend of mine, and she started a chapter of the Gay Straight Alliance at our school publicly, which took a lot of bravery on her part. But I remember when I asked another friend of mine

if she wanted to go to the meeting with me, she told me that no, she didn't want to go because she was uncomfortable with the very idea of gay people. And that was honestly a normal response for the time. A lot of high school students would have answered the same thing. So if you told me back then in 1999, of gay people and that was honestly a normal response for the time, a lot of high school students would have answered the same thing.

So if you told me back then in 1999 that just 15 years later, gay marriage would be legal throughout America, I would have been shocked. And if you look at the history of the LGBTQ rights movement, it's amazing to see how much has been accomplished in less than one lifetime. You know, only 70 years ago, being gay was considered a sociopathic personality disturbance,

and gay and trans people were literally hunted within the U.S. government and fired during a period called the Lavender Scare, which sounds like a perfume from a horror movie but was actually a gay witch hunt. But in response, beginning in the 1960s, queer people started organizing against unjust laws like these. They staged sip-ins at bars that refused to serve gay patrons, and they rioted against police harassment and violence, most famously at Stonewall.

Now, this story has been told a lot, but I want to recap it really quick because it is really f***ing worth telling. The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in New York City that was routinely raided by the police, and in June of 1969 the patrons there were fed up with being harassed by the cops. So what they did was stage a six-day rebellion against police brutality. The uprising was headed by badass trans community activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. One witness saw Marsha P. Johnson drop a heavy object on a cop car, which honestly, goals. I would love to do that to a Waymo, today's symbol of oppression.

In response, the cops got violent, beating, and tear-gassing participants. But so many queer people fought back that the cops eventually had to barricade themselves inside the gay bar, where, I don't know, maybe some of them learned something about themselves in there. The Stonewall Uprising was such an inspiration to queer people across the country, that it inspired the first gay liberation marches

a year later, which became Pride marches. And from then on, the gay rights movement used unapologetic visibility as a political strategy. After Harvey Milk became the first openly gay elected official in California, he famously urged other queer people to come out as a form of activism, literally saying, come out, come out, wherever you are. That's because he and other activists believed that by living proudly and openly, they could reduce the stigma of being gay.

And they were right. This strategy ultimately worked. It wasn't without risk, of course. Harvey Milk was assassinated, but it resulted in huge strides for gay rights. And that is why the movement used it over and over again. When Ronald Reagan and his government refused to even mention the HIV AIDS epidemic

that was killing tens of thousands of Americans, many of them gay, because of the stigma about the disease. Queer activists from ACT UP fought back by storming the NIH and staging protests called die-ins in which they lied down in public holding gravestones. They even did one at George H.W. Bush's vacation home, which really fucked up his day of yachting,

but you know, it saved lives. Eventually, so many gay people came out that they started showing up on the census in large numbers, and major celebrities came out extremely publicly. Susan, I'm gay. I mean, look, as someone who lived through the Ellen coming out moment, it is difficult to overstate how big of a fucking deal this was in American culture. Ellen took enormous abuse for this.

People were like, ugh, why is she shoving it down our throats? Right-wing groups pressured ABC to not even air the episode. And yet, a record-breaking 42 million people watched Ellen come out on her own sitcom. It was fucking historic. I mean, don't look up anything Ellen did after that, but it was a big deal. Now again, none of this was easy.

Countless gay people, a lot less famous than Ellen, were harassed, abused, and even killed for coming out. But slowly and surely, it worked. It changed Americans' attitudes. As more Americans knew a queer person in their lives and saw that they were just people trying to live like anybody else, public opinion of gay people began to change.

And once it did, it changed almost surprisingly rapidly. By 2015, when the Supreme Court finally ruled that same-sex couples have the constitutional right to get married no matter what state they live in, it felt like along with that decision came a mainstream acceptance of gay people in American life. I mean, we went from a world where the liberal president Barack Obama had been against gay marriage to one in which just a few years later his Veep was officiating gay weddings. And

suddenly every company and institution started tripping over themselves to show their support for LGBTQ rights, no matter how weirdly or off-puttingly they did it. Chipotle started making gay burritos, the NSA went NS Gay, Raytheon went Gaytheon, and the M&Ms, well, they were basically scissoring. The future transphobe, J.K. Rowling, was making sure everyone knew that Dumbledore let dark wizards into his chamber of secrets, and even the U. the US military started to taste the rainbow. And even though trans people weren't as visible in this big national corporate pride

parade, there was an assumption that the new era of acceptance would extend to them too. You know, they were the tea in LGBT. Openly trans characters were starting to show up in film and TV. Vogue declared 2015 the Year of Trans Visibility, and the public was initially really supportive. When conservatives tried to pass bathroom bills that would force trans people to use the wrong bathroom, there was massive pushback from mainstream America. When North Carolina passed a bathroom bill in 2015, the frickin' NCAA boycotted the entire state, PayPal canceled a 400 job project, and even the Nazi-founded company Adidas moved a factory out of the

state. Discriminating against trans people was so expensive for North Carolina that HB2 was estimated to cost the state almost $4 billion. And the corporate pressure campaign was effective. The state repealed the bill. So it seemed like corporate and mainstream America was ready to protect the rights of trans people. But you know, the past couple years have made clear

that we have a bit more work to do on trans rights in this country, no matter how many M&Ms are buying Subaru's. So what the fuck happened? Well, what happened is the right-wing movement decided to demonize trans people to win elections. That's it. Trump ran an entire campaign on,

one, he hates immigrants, two, he likes McDonald's, and three, he really hates trans people. Kamala's for they, them. President Trump is for you. But why was this even effective as a political strategy after 10 years of growing acceptance for queer people in America?

Well, the unfortunate fact is, there are just less trans people in America than there are other groups, and that makes them a more vulnerable target. According to our data partner, USA Facts, less than 1% of the US population identifies as trans. USA Facts, by the way, is a nonpartisan nonprofit that makes government data easily accessible

for anyone who needs it. So if you want the real facts about America, you can find that stat and many others at usafacts.org, and I thank them for sponsoring this video. Also, we have to remember that even though trans people have always existed and have always been a vital part of the queer rights movement, their visibility in mainstream American life

lagged behind other queer people. Like, just speaking for myself, in the early 2000s, I knew dozens of cis gay folks, but my first friend who came out as trans was in 2013, and the first mainstream media figures to transition publicly did so a decade or two after Ellen came out. So the right wing made a bet that trans people

would be a more vulnerable target because they were less well known in the average straight normie Americans' heart and mind than, you know, the cast of Will and Grace. And they attacked trans people by doing the same thing that bigots have always done. They said that the big bad out group they're demonizing is coming for your kids.

And sadly, this campaign of overt discrimination and bigotry has had a noticeable effect on the acceptance of trans people in America. According to Pew, more Americans have started supporting restrictions like bathroom bans and gender affirming care for minors. Anti-trans legislation has been passed across the country, and hell, Trump even took the T

off the official government website memorializing Stonewall. Oh, and remember J.K. Rowling? Well, she used all of her gay Dumbledore money to criminalize trans people in the UK. Yeah, her Miami can turn herself into a goddamn cat, but she better not change her pronouns or J.K. is sending her to Azkaban.

And here in the U.S., Trump is quite literally using the federal government to persecute trans people, even in blue states. After he threatened to remove federal funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care, multiple hospitals have preemptively stopped offering that care, meaning that thousands of trans children are losing access to their health care. This is a real concrete harm that is being done to the most vulnerable people in the queer community.

Some of the most vulnerable people in America. And you know what? The Democrats aren't doing sh-t to stop it. After Kamala Harris lost last year, a lot of Democrats rushed to blame her loss on trans people, even though Kamala didn't actually say sh-t in their defense during the campaign. I mean, why don't you blame your loss on ghosts and unicorns?

You didn't say sh** about them on the campaign trail either. And since then, formerly pro-gay rights Democrats like Gavin Newsom and Seth Moulton have literally started parroting right-wing talking points about trans people. These guys have no spine, and that one has no neck. If you can talk about other people's bodies, I can talk about yours, bitch. The sudden abandonment of queer people by the Democrats, by corporate America, and by our very government has been incredibly disheartening and frankly terrifying to a lot of queer people in this country. After years of fighting for their rights,

a lot of folks are no longer sure if they're safe here anymore, and that is really real. I have trans and non-binary friends who I care about, who are wondering if they need to leave the country, but are also unsure of whether they'll be able to travel with their fucking passports now. So the question is, what can we do about this? Can the backslide be reversed, or are the forces of intolerance and bigotry

going to win the day? Well, look, I'm just sound f***ing comic, alright, but I do want to remind us all, first of all, that none of this is new. We've been here before. Before the Obersfeld decision, before gay Dumbledore gargled on Grindelwald's Sorcerer's stones, George W. Bush won an election by using cis gay people as a wedge issue. He pledged that he would ban gay marriage to energize evangelical voters, and he rode that pledge to victory, just like Trump rode hatred of trans people.

And just like today, after that loss, Democrats and the press blamed gay people, with strategists and senators saying they went too far on gay rights But they were wrong just like they were wrong today We do not need to give up on what is right in order to win and the proof of that Is that it was only ten years between that election and the day gay marriage became legal across? America a decade. That's all it took

But you know, it wasn't the Democrats or Johnson and Johnson who got that done. Obama didn't get gay marriage passed. He literally ran away from the issue. Queer people did it themselves. The movement did that itself. And we can do it again. You know, there are people out there

who say that trans folks are asking for too much, that it's too revolutionary, that Americans will never accept them. Well guess what? The fight for gay rights was always f***ing revolutionary. You know, just 60 years ago, when the Stonewall Uprising began, queer people were considered by most Americans to be so immoral, filthy, and reprehensible that our government's literal policy was to send the police to beat the shit out of them and throw them in jail.

But today, look, you know where I was this Pride weekend? I walked down to Stonewall with my friend Joey. Joey's a dear friend of mine. He's one of the first people I ever knew who came out to me back when we were both in college in the year 2000 which I'm sure was hard to do because it was a very different time back then but Today Joey is married and he has a beautiful son and when we got to Stonewall We saw that it was just a normal bar full of people trying to have a normal drink in peace

Which is what it always was. And next door, there is now a national monument to it, where you can see pictures of all the people who fought for their rights at Stonewall. And you can see that, again, they were just average people making the radical demand to live openly as themselves in peace. And even though Trump has tried to take the T off of that monument,

the monument is still there and the bar is still there and the people are still there. The refusal to hide, the insistence on living your life openly and with pride is politically powerful all by itself. It worked then and it will work now. And you don't need politicians or big corporate brands. They will jump on the bandwagon after the battle has already been won.

But winning in the first place, that just takes enough people being who they are and refusing to go away no matter what those in power throw against them. And it takes everybody else having their backs. You know what else I did that Pride weekend? I went to a live taping of Going Down with Ella Yerman, an incredibly funny late night show,

written, performed, and produced by an almost entirely queer cast and crew in New York City. Check out the show on YouTube, it's incredibly funny. I love it so much. And I went to an amazing event in Brooklyn called the Twinks vs Dolls Olympics. This event was held in a warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront where I joined a crowd of thousands as we watched a full day of performances by trans entertainers culminating with a wrestling match between Twinks and trans women in a vat of nacho cheese.

It was one of the most punk rock, coolest f***ing things I have ever seen. It was sweaty, it was ridiculous, and it was absolutely unapologetically, pridefully queer in a way that Target and Smirnoff and the Democratic Party simply could never. The people who put on these shows didn't let the fact that Trump hates them

or the Democrats abandoned them or their own government is persecuting them slow them down or stop them. They said, fuck that, I'm gonna get a vat of nacho cheese and joyfully kick some twink ass because that's what I fucking wanna do.

And that is how we win. Because yeah, we shouldn't have to fight for anyone's rights, but unfortunately we still fucking do. And we will do it by crawling out of the hole that they want us to stay in and insisting on standing proudly together in the light. We have done it before, we will do it again, and we will win again. And this time, we're going to do it covered in nacho cheese.