Front Burner - Anti-LGBTQ threats loom over Pride

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

It's Pride month, but a string of violent threats and extremist confrontations are looming over the celebrations. Police arrested 31 members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front near a Pride event in Idaho, saying the men were planning a riot. Proud Boys and other extremists have protested and stormed drag performances. And a teen in Mississauga, Ont., was arrested and charged for allegedly threatening a mass shooting at an event in Florida. Today, a conversation about the forces behind a right-wing surge in anti-LGBTQ sentiment, and how the rhetoric is driving real-world threats. Guest Parker Molloy spent years with progressive media watchdogs, and she's been covering recent threats in her newsletter The Present Age.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem, brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Pussall. And before we start, just a warning. We're going to be detailing the hatred that's being aimed at LGBTQ people today, which includes violent threats and profanity. I did six months fucking locked up, motherfucker. I'll fucking do it again, happily. You're not doing anything. We're not letting you walk back that way. You're blocking the sidewalk?

For a pedophile, yeah, citizen's arrest. This is video from Arlington, Texas, earlier this month. And it shows a confrontation during this year's Pride celebrations. A group including Proud Boys and other extremists is rallying against a Disney-themed drag brunch, claiming they want to protect children, despite the fact that the performance is a 21 and over event. This same day, near a Pride event in Idaho, police arrested 31 members of the white supremacist and anti-LGBTQ group Patriot Front. Investigators say they were planning a riot. These guys stopped at U-Haul full of dudes, masked up.

We received a telephone call from a concerned citizen who reported that approximately 20 people jumped into a U-Haul and, quote, looked like a little army. Police say they also recovered at least one smoke grenade and paperwork similar to a military operations plan. We've talked on the show about how U.S. Republicans have increasingly gone after LGBTQ rights. You may remember our recent episode talking about the Florida education bill critics call the Don't Say Gay bill. It's being pushed by the state's Republicans. But the rhetoric has escalated so fast in recent months

with accusations that this, quote, queer agenda is targeting children. Failed Republican congressional candidate and Trump supporter Pastor Mark Burns has called for violence. You need to hold people for treason, start having some public hearings, and start executing people who are found guilty for their treasonous acts against the Constitution of the United States of America. Right-wing media like Fox provoked fear and talked about violence too. Some teachers pushing sex values on your third grader?

Why don't you go in there and thrash the teacher? Some of this is scary stuff. Here's a prominent anti-masker and anti-vaxxer. Today we're going to be going hunting for LGBT pedophiles and non-binaries and groomers. LGBT, we're hunting for you. We're going to hunt you down. This is Pride Month. It's supposed to be a celebration of diversity and the community's victories and a protest for continued injustice. But looming over all of it, you have Baltimore

investigating whether fires at homes with pride decorations were arson. And two weeks ago, Proud Boys stormed into a drag storytelling event in a San Lorenzo, California library, hurling all sorts of slurs that I won't repeat here. This is disgusting. What the hell is wrong with you people? These poor children. What is wrong with you sick people? Get out of here, you pedophile. Get out of here. It's happening in Canada, too. A drag event in Victoria, B.C. was cancelled after the venue received threats. The caller said that someone should come to the event and shoot up the cafe and everyone in it. It's the first time the cafe has received threats, despite hosting this monthly event for three years.

the cafe has received threats, despite hosting this monthly event for three years. And earlier this month, a teenager in Mississauga was arrested and charged for allegedly threatening a mass shooting in Florida. That 17-year-old tonight in custody in Canada. Now, the teenager reportedly was on a video chat site and brandished what appeared to be a handgun while threatening to shoot people at a Sunday Pride on the Block event in downtown West Palm Beach. That last threat in particular has sent chills through the LGBTQ community in Toronto. Our producer Derek spoke with Sherwin Modest,

the executive director of Pride Toronto. There were so many red flags that was raised. This threat was made by a Canadian, someone from the GTA. So there is definitely a level of fear, anxiety, panic that immediately came upon me. He says Toronto Pride events haven't been directly affected yet, but there's this fear. We have received several calls at Pride Toronto offices of folks who are concerned, you know, and wanting to know what we're doing to make sure that they're safe, who are scared and are very, very, very concerned. Sherwin says organizers are working with a security firm to make sure events are safe. We asked him whether he thought law enforcement is doing enough too.

whether he thought law enforcement is doing enough too. Historically, I think a lot of these threats, especially towards the 2SLGBTQ communities, have not been taken serious, but it has to be taken serious. And definitely there is a lot more that law enforcement can do to address those issues. But Sherwin says this is a community that has always looked out for each other.

And all this hate surrounding Pride Month really underscores why pride is still so important. Because pride is not just a celebration. It is also an opportunity to educate. It's an opportunity to remind the world that there are two LGBTQ members who are still not free, who are still cannot be themselves. And when this level of hatred continues to be part of, you know, some individual's daily life, we have to remind the world that we're still not safe. We need our allies. We need community to really join with us to send that message. Today, I want to understand what forces have led to this rise in anti-LGBTQ sentiment, in particular in the U.S., but also here at home. I'm joined by Parker Molloy. spent years with Progressive Media Watchdogs, and she's now the author of the newsletter The Present Age, which last week was titled The Anti-LGBTQ Right Is Going to Get People Killed.

Hi, Parker. Hi, thank you for having me. I know that this is a very happy and upbeat title to the newsletter that I had. Yes, yes. And I really want to thank you so much for joining us. We heard from the executive director of Toronto Pride just now about some of the fear the recent threats have been causing this month. And what are you hearing from people in your communities about how this recent hate has been affecting them? Well, I think that there are a lot of people who, you know, especially younger people who may have

sort of lived in this more accepting world, generally speaking, who are scared and shocked and maybe haven't ever felt this scared and shocked. And it feels like things have taken a few steps backwards. I mean, we've talked about, for years, it was always, oh, these corporations, they're all pretending to be big allies and they roll out with the rainbow merchandise in june and all all of that sort of stuff but now it seems like there's this this pullback i think that that sort of you know the the corporate hesitation is having an effect on on regular people who are just like is it safe safe to be myself anymore? Because there seems to be a big movement on the political right to really crack down on acceptance of LGBTQ people.

That's something that I think Democrats on the left-ish aren't necessarily doing enough to fight back against. Republicans have always been, generally speaking, anti LGBTQ. But we're seeing this, they're implementing their policies, and they're getting away with it. And Democrats aren't doing much. And they're going, okay, we'll take it a step further. And we'll take it a step further. And what they found is that, I mean, trans people especially make good targets. And so I think that after in 2015, when our Supreme Court ruled that marriage equality was a constitutional right, that there was a lot of shifting on the anti-LGBTQ side of things and the groups that had been fighting marriage adjusted their strategies to try

to find an easier way in to attack rights more broadly. So trans people have kind of served as that, that endpoint. And so then they kind of branch out from that a little bit. So I know a lot of people who are, who are very worried about where things are headed, and they're very worried about whether they will be physically safe in Pride events, especially in places that aren't necessarily known as LGBTQ hubs of acceptance. Take me through a little bit what we've been seeing on the right of late. You talked about sort of this anti-trans movement. We've talked on the show before about anti-trans bills from Republican lawmakers, bills against trans people receiving gender-affirming medical care or competing on sports teams that align with their gender identity. medical care or competing on sports teams that align with our gender identity. But lately, what have we been seeing from conservative politicians when it comes to anti-LGBTQ rhetoric getting more extreme? You know, this year alone, there have been 320 bills

targeting LGBTQ people in various state legislatures. And at the federal level, you also have Republican lawmakers introducing bills that they know that the current makeup of Congress and, you know, Joe Biden being the president aren't going to make it through, but it's sending a message about where they're headed, where they're signaling. And that is frightening. I think that one of the clearest examples here is that the Texas Republican Party just last weekend, met, met up to work on their their party platform. And on it, it calls being gay and abnormal lifestyle choice. And that's one of the phrasing there, the framing of it as an abnormal lifestyle choice is just it's so

unnecessarily mean and dehumanizing. There's also a another line in there about saying that they oppose all efforts to validate transgender identity, which is is scary. I mean, these are this sort of rhetoric is saying you don't exist to us. And we, we can't necessarily be trusted to protect you. And I think that after the the massive school shooting recently in Uvalde, Texas, I think that it's you have to worry about what happens when your own government or your own, you know, the police won't protect you? You know, we 19 kids died, because their police were waiting in hallways. So I these are these things where I know that there are people who are very concerned, very worried about what happens

if and when Republicans take control at a national level. I mean, they already have control of a number of state legislatures and governors, governorships. But that is that is something that is going to get, I think, a lot worse. And you mentioned Texas, some Republicans, I'm thinking of Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida, right? Like, just this past week, he announced he's considering investigating parents who bring their children to drag shows. We have child protective statues on the books. That is totally inappropriate. That is not something that children should be exposed to. And so we probably, we may have the ability to deal with that if something like that happens. Yeah, that's a new one that's kind of been popping up lately on the right.

And a lot of that kind of comes back to these social media-led movements. That sort of panic, I think, kind of arose out of this account, this libs of TikTok Twitter account. What in the hell has a drag queen ever done to make you have so much respect for them and admire them so much? Other than put on makeup and jump on the floor and writhe around and do sexual things on stage. I have absolutely no idea why you would want that to influence your child. It started off as an account where what they would do is they would have, oh, here's here's someone who's on the left who's being ridiculous, and we're going to post their video on our Twitter feed. And we'll make fun of it. And we'll all get a laugh out of it. That was kind of their

how they presented themselves. But in recent months, it's kind of taken this, this darker turn where, you know, they'll hear about a school policy that they don't like, it will usually be something that's like a school policy meant to include trans kids or something like that. And they will put that school on blast on social media and, you know, send their followers to harass these organizations, these groups, you know, whether it's a school or a bar or, you know, an LGBTQ group, and it's putting targets on people's backs. So I think that what you're seeing Republicans do is adopt that sort of language, adopt that sort of messaging that, oh, children shouldn't be around drag queens, or, oh, trans children shouldn't be allowed to compete in sports or trans children shouldn't be allowed to exist. Like these these are all they're sort of, you know, right wing ideas that really play well with their base that are very scary to me. I mean, that they're very scary, I think should be for for anyone, because it's not going to just stop with just it's not about drag queens and it's not about trans kids and it's not about trans athletes.

It's about their overriding sense that LGBTQ people should not exist in society as we currently do. And that, I think, is the broader point that gets missed in a lot of these discussions because someone could show up and say, I have reasonable concerns about trans women in sports. And that is fine. That is fair. You know, you can you can have these concerns. Because as I've written on this in the past, you know, when it comes to the question of do trans women have an advantage in sports? The answer is, it depends. I mean, there are so many factors at play, that any any one policy is going to, there are going to be valid arguments against it one way or another. But the way they're using these things, you know, when they say, oh, we're worried about fairness in sports, so we're going to call for a bill to ban kindergarten through 12th grade trans students from participating in school sports. That's not about fairness, because we're not talking about elite sports. We're not talking about the Olympics or, you know, professional sports. We're talking about second graders playing field hockey or something like that. It sends a signal that that is what their broader policy goals are.

And I think that a lot of people watching from the outside who maybe aren't LGBTQ, maybe aren't, maybe don't know that many LGBTQ people are seeing that and going, those seem like fair concerns, but they're using those as a way to wedge themselves in. And the way that we know that is because they've said as much. In 2017, at a Family Research Council event, which they're an anti-LGBT group, at its annual Values Voters Summit, they had this panel where they talked about their strategy for trying to roll back LGBT rights. Our first non-negotiable, divide and conquer. For all its recent success, the LGBT alliance is fragile.

Trans activists need the gay rights movement to help legitimize them. Gender identity on its own is a bridge too far. And their main point there was to create, to drive a wedge between LGB and T. to drive a wedge between LGB and T. And their framing was to try to frame their arguments as progressive, feminist-sounding, you know, oh, we don't have a problem with gays or lesbians, but oh, we have a problem with trans people. Gender identity is the ultimate misogyny,

and it's the erasure of women. Lesbians in the group are concerned that transing masculine girls is a kind of lesbian eugenics. That was kind of their argument to try to get some people who otherwise would stand up and fight back against this say, no, maybe they do have a point on the trans issue. And I think that that's going to be really scary for, I think, not just trans people, but for LGB people as well, because you're going to have, you know, these groups use the gains that they've made to fight back against trans people to also fight back against gay people and lesbians, bisexuals and anyone else who doesn't fit this neat little mold of what they should be in society. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

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Is it fair for me to say that this fear that you have of this backslide, that it could be so severe that, you know, essentially we could see the most basic rights and accepted norms, stuff that seems so normal curtailed, right? Like, I'm thinking about what's happening now in the US with reproductive rights. I mean, that is all tied together. Because trans rights and abortion rights are all about the same thing at their core. They're about bodily autonomy. And that's why I think it's important that trans people be strong supporters of abortion rights. But with this, I think that the biggest concern, the biggest thing that scares me here is that the Supreme Court of the United States is very, very conservative right now. It's a 6-3 conservative majority, and it's going to be

that way for a very long time. And they're being pretty clear that they don't see a problem with overturning older precedents. And, you know, that's we're expecting to see Roe versus Wade overturned. A number of states already have laws on the books that will go into effect if it's overturned. But then you'll also see an attempt to push for a national abortion ban, which is something that these groups have been talking about. And so so a lot of these conservative groups, they know that they have the court on their side right now. And they are trying to use that to their advantage. LGBTQ people were lucky in the sense that when there was a case two summers ago, where it was about whether it's legal to discriminate against someone on the basis of them being gay or trans. And the ACLU argued that case and won.

But I don't know that if they argue that case today, that they would win. Who's to say if five years from now, that ruling will still be treated as legitimate? Who's to say five years from now, if the marriage equality ruling will be treated as legitimate. I don't know how, from a legal perspective, you know, as far as getting laws passed and getting them upheld by the court, how that's going to work for LGBTQ people. I think that it might very well be difficult to exist as an openly gay or openly trans person within the next decade. That's my fear. Because everything that we have, everything that we have hinges on society's acceptance of us. You know, because without that, you have laws and laws only matter when they're being enforced in a way that is equal to everyone. So that is, that's, that's why I think this is

really one of those moments that I hope that people who consider themselves allies to LGBTQ causes will see what's happening. And we'll stand up and we'll advocate on our behalf to help us out. Because that's why it's so easy for anti gay anti trans groups to take these positions. It's work, by comparison, a very, very small portion of the population, especially when you when you look just at trans people, and you can have, you'll have, you know, someone like Tucker Carlson on Fox News, night in and night out, airing these stories after story after story about, oh, well, here's this trans athlete who won an event, you know, why they don't cover women's sports ever, but suddenly they're the biggest fans of

one specific race in the NCAA national championships. You know, it's one of those things where they're only paying attention to this in the first place because they can use it as ammunition against trans people. And the reason that they target trans people is so they can use us as ammunition against gay people. So it's all tied together. There are different things happening all at once. And you kind of have to come together to help people you don't know. And that I think is the message that I really hope that people get from any of this from seeing any of these stories. There was there was another story just just yesterday in North Carolina carolina a group of members of the proud boys organization they went to a library because they saw a flyer that said like pride family reading event and they

went in there and started yelling about drag queens and there weren't drag queens. It was just, it was just an event where they were reading LGBTQ friendly books. I can't help but notice that a lot of this language sounds like what we heard from big conspiracies like QAnon, which centered around like, remember this pedophilic cabal, right? And so what's the dynamic that you think might be at play here? Well, I think it all plays into that. I mean, the Republican Party kind of, for lack of a better term, they, you know, embraced those people as part of their base. And those people sincerely believe that there is a cabal of pedophiles trying to, whether it's sacrifice children or convert children, it's something that's just part of their party now. And so when they will make these sorts of attacks,

Republican lawmakers are not speaking out to condemn them. there weren't any lawmakers speaking out against the proud boys for showing up at these events. No, because they know that they're attacking their base if they do that. The arguments, as I mentioned, are old. I mean, you have Anita Bryant back in the 70s. Her whole thing was save the children. That's the same argument that the QAnon folks and the anti LGBT folks and Republicans are pushing now save the children. Oh, stop them from grooming children. You know, back back then it was, oh, they're trying to recruit your children. I mean, that's the same same sad, old busted story that keeps getting rolled out. And it's happened here. It happened in the UK with Section 28. It happened in Russia with the anti-gay propaganda law. I mean, these things,

they're essentially, they were meant to drive LGBTQ people out of public life. And I worry that here we are in 2022 and the United States is kind of headed in that direction. You know, I think that we're a few years off from things being really bad. Parker, I really I want to thank you so much for coming on to the show and sharing your thoughts. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. I want to leave you today with one more note from Sherwin Modest, the executive director of Pride Toronto. To reassure the community there, Sherwin looked across history. Our community have been there for each other.

Our community have supported each other. You know, whether it was in the 40s, in the 50s, in the 60s, the 2SLGBTQ community have a history of looking out and protecting each other. And we will continue to do that. And, you know, as the organizer of this Pride, we are going to do everything in our power to make sure that it is a safe event. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.