Equal Rights for All!
The ACLU is currently tracking 491 anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S. Twice the number of such bills have been introduced so far this year as were introduced in all of 2022—and ten times as many as just five years ago, in 2018. Included are bills to ban access to gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth, legislation regulating curriculum in public schools—and of course anti-drag bills are now all the rage in GOP-led state legislatures. In fact, participate in a couple “adult cabaret performances” in public in Tennessee, and you could be slapped with a felony charge punishable by up to six years in prison. Efforts by a very vocal minority to enforce an extremely narrow definition of “morality” have spread unchecked, from legislation to book-banning.
PEN America, a nonprofit working to defend free expression in literature, keeps a running tally of titles banned from libraries and classrooms across America and points out that 26% of the books banned in the 2022-23 school year had LGBTQ characters or themes. These books are sometimes even labeled as “pornographic” or “indecent.”
