Celebrating 2SLGBTQIA+ Badassery

जून 1, 2026

Writing about Pride Month in 2026 is a real mixed bag. On the one hand, the fascists are at the gate, our civil liberties are crumbling beneath our feet, and 2SLGBTQIA+ people are, once again, the cultural scapegoats for the religious-extremist right wing. That’s bad, but on the other hand, this is also an apex moment of social movement solidarity. Many young people are at their most accepting of each other, accelerating an already increasing trend. Broad popular support has never been closer to the critical mass needed to sustain this progress as a lasting past of our culture. And these are good things, lights in a dark place.

2SLGBTQIA+ history has always been a story of struggle. One of the first Pride events came to be known as the Stonewall Riot. Before Stonewall there were our elders in Harlem and Berlin.[1] Before them, the iconoclasts of the Victorian era like Oscar Wilde and Arthur Rimbaud confronted the ignorant attitudes of their day. Queer and trans people exist, have always existed, and will always exist. The pride we can take in this tenacious, enduring history is part of what we recognize in June.

During the late 1980’s and early 90’s as AIDS burned through the gay community, to complete silence from both political parties, ACT UP forced the issue into public view. In 1989, they shut down the New York Stock Exchange in protest of pharmaceutical corporation Burroughs Wellcome’s lethal price-gouging of lifesaving HIV medication, just to name one total banger of an action. Their bravery, their courage, and their strategic confrontational tactics should inspire deep pride in those of us today facing a new round of state repression.

During the George W. Bush administration, under the weight of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that federally defined marriage as between “one man and one woman,” things looked dark. Marriage equality looked like an impossible fantasy. “Assimilation” was the order of the day. The bargain offered was permission to exist as limited participants in social life with access to civil unions or some marginal, legally tortured equivalent, in exchange for totally abandoning the struggle for full civil rights.

Into the fray walked Gay Shame, a bombastic, wildly controversial loose affiliation of people whose shocking, counter-intuitive name was a deliberate play on the mainstream, pro-corporate Gay Pride. Merging art, activism, protest, and performance, Gay Shame cut through the mainstream to critique the inclusion of banks, cops, and major corporations that draped themselves in the rainbow flag once a year at Pride events. Many saw this as a craven act of opportunistic profiteering on the backs of a community still denied basic civil rights. And those people were right. The first moment it wasn’t politically convenient, those same businesses jettisoned 2SLGBTQIA+ workers and community members, clamoring over themselves to kiss the boot. Gay Shame’s critique, that there can be no long-term trusted solidarity between the cause of liberation and for-profit capitalist corporations has, with the benefit of hindsight, proven to be wise. Gay Shame’s bravery in an era stalwartly resistant to change is something to be fiercely proud of.

Queer history is rife with examples of people who stood up and got active in the face of injustice. The Lesbian Avengers, Bash Back!, The Gay Liberation Front, and countless other examples show again and again the resiliency and the militancy of the political movement—as well as the diversity of tactics used and embraced over the decades. Imagine where we would be now without their contributions and example?

Now, when politicians try to relate “radical pro-transgender” views to domestic terrorism, they are attempting to create the legal pretext to begin restricting individual rights based on category. This isn’t just “going back” to a prior status quo era before marriage equality, it goes far beyond that. Trans people, along with immigrants, are the first targeted for their status. Through them, the fascists will create a legal architecture they can then turn on their perceived enemies more broadly on the left. This isn’t speculation, it’s all in Project 2025. The experiences of our 2SLGBTQIA+ elders and those who came before us contain vital lessons we must understand if we are to adequately defend our civil liberties against fascist attack.

When it seems dark, remember them. Watch Major! Or read about Marsha P. Johnson and take a little pride in what absolute badasses they were. If they can do it, so can we.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/trump-says-he-wants-cancel-elections-here-real-threat

https://cldc.org/the-supreme-court-is-rewriting-historic-rules-of-american-democracy/

https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights-2026

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trends-pub-opinion-lgbt-rights-us/

https://glaad.org/accelerating-acceptance-2025/

https://www.outthere.travel/the-queer-history-of-new-york-city/

https://www.calmigration.org/learn-chapter/early-queer-sf

https://medium.com/@TVRPGhistory/queens-of-the-queer-kind-b18c12840449

https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/oscar-wilde

https://ualr.edu/socialchange/2014/11/23/the-evolution-of-public-discourse-and/

https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/act-up-demonstration-at-the-new-york-stock-exchange/

https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/house-bill/3396