Russell T Davies, creator of the British TV series Queer as Folk and the current showrunner of the BBC phenom Doctor Who, says gay society is facing dire peril ever since the presidential election of Donald Trump in November, 2024.
“I’m not being alarmist,” Davies told the British newspaper The Guardian. “I’m 61 years old. I know gay society very, very well, and I think we’re in the greatest danger I have ever seen.”
Davies said the rise in anti-LGBTQ hostility is not limited to the United States, where Trump has signed various anti-LGBTQ executive orders, many geared to diminish and seemingly eradicate the transgender community.
Rather, he notes, anti-LGBTQ sentiment has become more pronounced in the United Kingdom in recent years. That hostility appears to be part of a larger backlash against LGBTQ visibility and gender nonconformity occurring across the globe.
While Trump’s election is not the sole cause of the backlash, the cultural influence of the United States, especially through social media has made it more socially acceptable to hate, ostracize, and call for the elimination of sexual and gender minorities.
“As a gay man, I feel like a wave of anger, and violence, and resentment is heading towards us on a vast scale,” Davies told the British newspaper. “I’ve literally seen a difference in the way I’m spoken to as a gay man since that November election, and that’s a few months of weaponizing hate speech, and the hate speech creeps into the real world.”
He added, “I think times are darkening beyond all measure and beyond anything I have seen in my lifetime.”
Davies was honored with the Gaydio Icon Award at the Gaydio Pride Awards in Manchester, England, last Friday. He used his acceptance speech to criticize Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the “unofficial” head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
“We’ve had bad prime ministers and we’ve had bad presidents before. What we’ve never had is a billionaire tech baron openly hating his trans daughter,” he said, taking a dig at Musk, who owns (and controls) the social media platform X. “We have never had this in the history of the world. It is terrifying because [Musk] and the people like him are in control of the facts, they’re in control of information, they’re in control of what people think, and that is what we’re now facing.”
Davies detailed how, when he left home at age 18 in 1981, the gay community began to confront the nascent HIV/AIDS epidemic that would eventually claim millions of lives. And yet, he noted, the community banded together to fight back, demanding that governments take action to curb the epidemic, lobbying for groundbreaking advances in medicine, and seeking to educate people about HIV/AIDS to allow them to protect themselves from transmission of the virus.
Davies warned that the peril the gay community is now facing is greater than it was in the 1980s.
“The threat from America, it’s like something [from] The Lord of the Rings,” he said. “It’s like an evil rising in the west, and it is evil.”
He told The Guardian that the gay community would have to respond by doing “what we always do in times of peril,” by organizing under the radar to fight back against the erosion of LGBTQ rights and efforts to silence or erase the LGBTQ community.
“What we will do in Elon Musk’s world, that we’re heading towards, is what artists have always done, which is to meet in cellars, and plot, and sing, and compose, and paint, and make speeches, and march,” he said. “If we have to be those rebels in basements yet again, which is when art thrives, then that’s what we’ll become.”
Tammy Baldwin, Angie Craig, and Mark Pocan were among the Democrats named by the alleged shooter, a right-wing pastor with a history of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
At least three out LGBTQ Democrats in Congress have been told their names appeared on a list kept by Vance Boelter -- a right-wing preacher suspected of shooting two Minnesota state lawmakers, killing one.
The LGBTQ lawmakers -- Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and U.S. Reps. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) -- were among several dozen Democrats at all levels of government whose names appeared on Boelter’s alleged "hit list."
Boelter is accused of killing Minnesota Democratic State Rep. Melissa Hortman (Brooklyn Park) and her husband at their home on June 14, and of shooting Democratic State Sen. John Hoffman (Champlin) and his wife at their home. Hoffman and his wife are expected to recover.
Pop star gushes over romance with Big Brother co-star Chris Hughes while saying she felt pressured to identify as a lesbian — fueling right-wing backlash.
Last weekend, queer pop star JoJo Siwa abruptly canceled her upcoming performance at a Chicago Pride event scheduled for Sunday, June 29.
Back Lot Bash Chicago, host of the two-day outdoor event, announced on Instagram that Siwa would no longer be performing, citing a "scheduling conflict," according to the Daily Mail.
No further explanation was given for the cancellation.
Siwa, 22, recently released her latest single, "Bulletproof," independently after parting ways with Columbia Records, which had issued her 2022 EP Guilty Pleasure. Neither she nor the label commented on the split.
In another swipe at the transgender community, the national monument honoring what is widely seen as the seminal event of the modern LGBTQ rights movement has erased all mention of transgender and queer people.
Each June, the Stonewall National Monument in New York City typically decorates the fence surrounding Christopher Park -- the small park adjacent to the historic Stonewall Inn and part of the official monument -- with various Pride flags.
In past years, the display has featured a mix of flags -- the familiar six-stripe rainbow Pride flag, the blue, pink, and white transgender Pride flag, and the "Progress" flag, which adds stripes for Black and brown communities and a chevron design incorporating transgender and intersex Pride colors.
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