In many ways, LGBTQ+ rights, visibility and acceptance have come a long way in the last twenty years. Marriage equality, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the federal hate crimes law are just some of the victories that LGBTQ activists have secured and that Washington Blade editor and co-owner Kevin Naff includes in his new book “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality: and How Our Enemies Could Take it All Away.”
Composed of a compilation of Naff’s Blade editorials over the course of his 20-year career, the book lays out the LGBTQ civil rights that the community has won in recent history, including the big issues like marriage equality, as well as sections on race, religion, the police, and LGBTQ representation in sports and entertainment. Naff frames this progress within today’s political landscape of conservative attacks against LGBTQ coomunities, and how legislation targeting queer and trans people can dismantle many existing LGBTQ rights.
PGN spoke with Naff to discuss the book and the current state of LGBTQ rights.
In addition to the big civil rights cases like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the marriage fight, what other LGBTQ topics do you cover in the book?
Each chapter is a different topic. There’s a chapter on religion; there’s a pop culture chapter, which I always try to emphasize because this is not a kind of typical dry history lesson type of book. It has a lot of juicy stories from behind the scenes. There’s a lot of celebrity dish that I included, [such as] taking celebrity dates to the White House Correspondents Dinner, and so forth. There’s some dishy stuff kind of mixed in with hardcore politics and more serious chapters.”
Why did you decide to publish your book now?
Two reasons. One: I was commemorating the 20th anniversary of my time editing the Washington Blade, so I thought it was a good time to look back. But more importantly, I feel like we are really at a crossroads in terms of the movement. We’ve accomplished so much, so fast. What we’re seeing now is a frightening effort by the right wing to roll back all of that hard-fought progress over the last two decades. From attacks on trans youth, and now we have attacks on drag performances and drag queens. More than 400 bills have been introduced across the country attacking LGBTQ rights.
We’re really entering a frightening time between these state legislative attacks and an activist right wing Supreme Court that has already struck down Roe v. Wade and has the Obergefell marriage ruling in its crosshairs. I think it’s a very precarious moment for our LGBTQ movement.
Why do you think right wing attacks on queer and trans rights have ramped up momentum in the last few years?
I think it’s a couple of things really. Certainly there is a cynicism about it. They’ve discovered that attacks on, for example, marriage equality, are resonating less and less and less, especially with independent voters. They’ve moved on and discovered that they can attack the trans community, and they’ve done it effectively by framing it as a parental rights issue. Glenn Youngkin in Virginia deployed this tactic in his [gubernatorial] campaign, campaigning on the platform that parents should be able to have a say in their kids’ curriculum; parents should be able to ban books in school libraries. Those messages unfortunately resonate with a lot of suburban independent parents.
It’s just a terribly cynical, cruel thing to do, especially what we’ve seen in Florida. They’re working to expand that [“Don’t Say Gay” law] to 12th grade. You could potentially have a situation where you could be 18 years old and a senior in high school in Florida, and you’re a legal adult and not allowed to learn about a gay-themed book.
I think it’s incumbent upon all of us to stand up for the trans community because we need to come together and fight these attacks. I like to remind the cisgender white male gay folks that with marriage equality, ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ these things didn’t happen because we were fighting for it and wanted it, they happened because we put together coalitions of like-minded people, of Black pastors and immigration rights groups who marched with us.
The other thing that I think is at play here is that the right wingers have spent 50 years waiting for this moment; they’ve wanted a right wing activist Supreme Court and they now have it thanks to Donald Trump. They’ve already used it to get rid of Roe v. Wade, and make no mistake, they’re going to go after marriage, they’re going to go after privacy rights; the Lawrence v. Texas decision I think is in jeopardy. Anything could happen.”
How have you seen LGBTQ rights and representation flourish in recent years?
Let me answer that in the context of the title of the book because some people have said that the title is a little ambitious, but I want to clarify. The title is “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality.” But the subtitle is, “And How Our Enemies Can Take it All Away.” That’s the key part. How we won is going back 20 years and the movement has outlined four big goals. At that time we wanted to get included in the federal hate crimes law; we wanted to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell;” we wanted to fight for relationship recognition, and then the big one — workplace rights, workplace protections.
Very quickly into Obama’s first term, we got the hate crime law — we’re now included in the federal hate crimes law. Shortly after that, we overturned “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The next big battle was marriage, which we ultimately won in the Supreme Court. And the workplace [protections] is the one that’s kind of incomplete. But the Bostock Supreme Court ruling really does extend employment protections to most LGBTQ workers across the country. [The ruling] doesn’t apply to religious institutions or small businesses with fewer than 15 employees, and it doesn’t include public accommodations and so forth. If you judge the movement based on those four goals, they got 95% of it done.
On those fronts we won incredible victories in the courts, in legislatures, in pop culture. Twenty years ago, Anderson Cooper wasn’t out, Robin Roberts, all these media figures who are now openly gay or lesbian, we didn’t have any of that. There were very few openly gay celebrities, media figures. Today all those folks and many, many more are out and thriving. It’s really a 180 from where we were just 20 years ago.
What would you like LGBTQ readers and general readers to take away from the book?
I hope it’s a call to action, number one, to get engaged, to vote, to be informed, for young folks to learn their community’s history because not only is it not taught in schools, but it’s now actively being banned in schools. My hope is that this book is an easy crash course in recent LGBTQ history, to learn how we got here over the last 20 years.
Bigger than that, I hope that it’s a template; I hope that future generations will find it useful to be able to look back and see how my generation fought back. Here were the lawsuits we filed, the public officials that we pressured and here’s how we pressured them, and here’s what we did to encourage Hollywood to be more inclusive. It’s a bit of a blueprint for how to fight back.
