Acknowledgement of the community has also broadened. The vast majority of MLB teams now offer specific Pride celebrations at home games.Įxperts who follow the national conversation over LGBTQ rights say the growing acceptance of gay and lesbian people has forced opponents to target a new minority group - the transgender community. Just over a decade ago, fewer than half of Americans favored same-sex marriage today, 70 percent do. The vitriol and bloodshed come after a decade of stunning advancements for LGBTQ rights, as more Americans accept and embrace marriage equality and as more states adopt anti-discrimination legislation. Those arrests came hours before a group of Proud Boys, the far-right militia, disrupted a children’s book reading in San Lorenzo, Calif., given by a local drag queen who is also a social worker.īaptist ministers in Idaho and Texas have gone viral in recent weeks for calling on the government to execute gay people.Īnd three people were assaulted as they left a Pride event in Salt Lake City last week, while flags celebrating Pride were vandalized along a major arterial in Boise On Saturday, 31 members of a white supremacist group called the Patriot Front were arrested in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where they allegedly planned a riot to disrupt a Pride event. (The Hill) – Pride Month celebrations across the country are playing out against a backdrop of growing threats to the LGBTQ community from conspiracy theorists and far-right extremist groups, and the results have already turned violent.