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.”
U.S. House and Senate Democrats have reintroduced their respective versions of the Equality Act, a landmark civil rights bill prohibiting discrimination against people based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The act, which passed the House of Representatives in previous years under Democratic-led leadership, would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to enshrine protections for LGBTQ people.
But it has never been able to gain the 60 votes needed to start debate on the bill or overcome a potential filibuster in the Senate.
It stands little chance of currently passing either chamber as long as Republicans control Congress.
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously revived a 2020 lawsuit by Marlean Ames, who claims she was discriminated against for being heterosexual by the Ohio Department of Youth Services.
The 61-year-old had worked for the department since 2004. A decade later, she was promoted to administrator of the Prison Rape Elimination Act. But she claimed that the conflict started after she began reporting to a lesbian woman, according to The Hill.
In 2019, Ames interviewed for another position within the department but was not hired. Her supervisor suggested she retire, and days later, Ames was demoted, with a significant pay cut. A 25-year-old gay man was subsequently promoted to her old position. Months later, a lesbian woman was chosen for the position for which she had applied.
Police in the Australian state of Victoria have arrested 35 individuals -- primarily males aged 13 to 20 -- for allegedly targeting victims using gay dating apps.
According to police, over the past eight months, the alleged perpetrators deployed fake profiles on dating apps to lure gay men to locations where they were then assaulted, robbed, and subjected to homophobic abuse.
In some cases, the attacks were filmed and shared on social media, reports the Star Observer.
"These incidents have occurred in various suburbs across Melbourne, including Manningham, Casey, Hume, Moorabbin, and Knox," Victoria Police said in a statement.
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