Why Pride 2024 Will Be Especially Important
Religious nationalist governments don't have a great relationship with queer folks, it turns out. Please don't vote for one in 2024.
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From time to time, our content on Relationship 101 delves into national and international politics. After all, politics and policy impact the ways that people do relationships, especially partnered and family relationships.
Earlier this week, Iraq became the 68th country to outlaw same sex relationships between consenting adults. Many of these countries are governed by some version of religious nationalism, often Islamic, with a few primarily Christian nations (the Gold Coast region of Africa, including Ghana, Togo, and Nigeria, stands out). A few countries, like Qatar and Uganda, function as monarchies (Qatar) or democracies (Uganda), but are strongly influenced by religious nationalist ideals.
Human Rights Watch reminds us:
Human Dignity Trust has reported that 15 countries maintain unequal ages of consent, with a higher bar set for same-sex couples than different-sex couples, or for anal sex as compared to vaginal sex. This includes several countries that otherwise have progressive laws on sexual orientation and gender identity, such as Canada and Chile.
In 11 states of the United States, unenforceable laws prohibiting consensual same-sex conduct remain on the books despite a 2003 Supreme Court decision that found such laws unconstitutional.
You will not be surprised to read that these states are all Bible Belt states, with the exception of Michigan (and western Michigan has a high Evangelical component to it).
This is important because the Republican Party is running openly as a religious nationalist movement, using interpretations of religious texts (the Bible, in this case) to limit and suppress the rights of groups of people (specifically, groups of non-straight White men).
We’ve read in the Project 2025 playbook the following:
“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion. (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists” (p. 4-5).
Would a Trump administration and future Republican leaders stop at erasing the term “sexual orientation” from federal policy? Ron DeSantis and other fellow Christian nationalist leaders have already answered that question “No” by organizing legislation that removes these terms from state-funded educational and academic materials.
Would a Trump administration go so far as fellow religious nationalist states like Iran, Mauritania, Brunei, and Yemen and punish same sex relationships with the death penalty?
Or would a Trump administration go the route of the religious nationalist governments of Afghanistan, Palestine, Algeria and imprison folks for engaging in same-sex sexual activity?
For that matter, would a Trump administration reinstate some version of what happened during the Cold War era, when many states “decriminalized” same-sex sexual activity by making it illegal to solicit same-sex sexual engagements, and then, fueled by the zeal of Joseph McCarthy and fellow homophobes, established systems to bait people (mostly men) into same-sex encounters or spaces (i.e. Stonewall) and arrest them for “solicitation”?
Pride month next month is going to be especially important. Based on the threats from Project 2025 and the behavior of other religious nationalist groups, federal bills that prevent states from discriminating against same-sex sexual activity, such as Lawrence v. Texas, which prohibits states from criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual activity, and Obergefell v. Hodges, the legislation that struck down bans on gay marriage, are at risk.
Criminalizing consensual relationships doesn’t eliminate the existence of those relationships. As queer Americans who grew up in the 50s, 60s, and 70s will tell you, it only drives those relationships underground. The secrecy and ensuing anxiety that shrouds these relationships created their own needlessly challenging relationship dynamics.
Being out, be that as a queer person (by the way, queer is a catch-all term that Julia and I use to describe any sexual relationship that isn’t opposite-sex), a trans or gender diverse person, and/or a sexual person (especially in the face of Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal sexual repression) allows us to have open, honest conversations about how to have successful, positive, life-giving relationships.
In the next two months, we’ll have more content about queer relationships. Next week, we’ll write about:
The process of coming out of the closet.
How religious queer folks attempt to navigate the two-choice dilemma of holding onto their sexual identity and holding onto their religious community.
And our weekly newsletter, which will come out Tuesday, will have part two of our episode with pop-sensation Adaline, who also spearheads the non-profit Bad Believer, which provides resources for queer folks healing from religious trauma.
Here’s part one of our interview. Check it out this weekend, and share it with your friends!
Let’s heal together!
Jeremiah and Julia