The US Supreme Court Can’t Repeal Our Pride
They didn’t give it to us, and they sure as hell can’t take it away
As the Supreme Court upholds a ban on gender-affirming healthcare that will set a precedent for many more cases to come, I’m sending love, rage and solidarity to all trans and queer people and to the people who love us.
The US Supreme Court case, US v Skrmetti, involves the families of Tennessee trans youth and a Tennessee doctor who provides gender-affirming healthcare. Tennessee is one of 26 states that have passed bans on medical treatment for trans youth. Such healthcare literally saves lives. As Allison Peters wrote in an earlier post about the case on our Substack:
“Access to healthcare is a vital need for trans people, and gender-affirming care is evidence-based and has been shown to have hugely positive impacts on the health and well-being of trans people. Access to healthcare is one of the primary things that allows trans people to exist in public space, and a wealth of research supports the safety and efficacy of this care. Every major US medical association advocates for transgender youth to have access to meticulously tailored, developmentally appropriate gender-affirming care—proven to reduce suicide risk and improve mental health.”
In upholding the ban, the Supreme Court paves the way for trans youth to lose access to life-saving medical care in more than half of the country, as MAGA-dominated legislatures strip trans youth, their families, and their doctors of the ability and autonomy to make their own informed decisions about their lives, identities, and medical care. Beyond that, it opens the door for future cases that may extend the denial of gender-affirming care to trans adults, and deepens MAGA’s attacks on the rights of all LGBTQ+ and gender-oppressed people more broadly.
Coming right in the middle of Pride Month, the ruling felt like a particularly pointed "fuck you."
I was up in DC for World Pride a few weeks ago. What a strange moment it was. On the one hand, joy and celebration, with millions chanting and marching together. On the other, visa denials from the Trump administration prevented many speakers, activists, and performers from attending, which was compounded by additional cancellations from international participants terrified of facing fascism at the border. Although DC’s historic 14th Street Pride Parade drew what felt like the entire city of DC—plus a few million national and international visitors—the International Rally and March on Washington the next day was considerably smaller. One of the reasons? Unlike the 14th Street Parade, which is patrolled by metropolitan police, marches on the Washington Mall fall under the purview of federal law enforcement, and both World Pride organizers and participants worried Trump might order a repressive crackdown.
Instead, the military crackdown that weekend ended up happening 3,000 miles away, in Los Angeles, as Trump illegally ordered the National Guard to bring military force to bear on largely peaceful protestors—against the will of the Los Angeles people, their local government and the California Governor—as they mobilized to defend immigrant communities against ICE’s gestapo-like raids and MAGA’s campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Back in DC, I was encouraged that a majority of speakers at the International Rally and March on Washington referenced what was happening in LA, and drew connections between defense of immigrants, defense of trans people, and the broader struggle to defend democracy against fascism and autocracy. Multiple speakers quoted Bayard Rustin, the principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, who was denied a speaking role because of concerns over his Communist past as well as his advocacy for the LGBQT+ community as an openly gay Black man. One of the speakers shared a quote of Rustin’s that I had not heard before, and which he delivered in a speech at a gay rights rally not long before his death: “We are all one. And if we don’t know it yet, we will find out the hard way.”
In a dark moment of multi-pronged attacks on our communities, it felt like we were all living into Rustin’s words—developing a shared vocabulary to draw connections between our different struggles, both within the US, and internationally.
As I listened to the speakers, I was filled with love and sorrow, pride and rage. Then, amidst drizzling rain and intermittent downpours, we marched. As we passed the US Supreme Court building, participants booed and jeered, but also danced and vogued and exhibited all the beauty and resilience and creativity of our community.
At the terminus of the march route across the Washington Mall, a small group of PSL members were leading a chant: "No Pride While Genocide."
And I thought to myself: "that's the wrong slogan."
Make no mistake. We must rage and fight against genocide—the genocide in Palestine, the genocidal ethnic cleansing campaign being carried out against US immigrant communities, and the genocide against trans existence and life. Beyond that, we must both understand and help others to understand the connections between these and other fronts of struggle that on the surface might seem very different. As Rustin said, we are all one. And if we’re going to resist, defeat, and unseat this fascist MAGA movement, we’d better damn well figure that out.
But none of that can take away our fucking pride.
The machinations of the US military industrial complex did not give us our pride. This political system did not give us our pride. Neither politicians nor legislatures nor corporate sponsors gave us our pride. And the US Supreme Court certainly did not give us our pride.
We gave us our pride. Our ancestors gave us our pride. Our struggles give us our pride. Our queer chosen families give us our pride. Our choice to love ourselves and each other in the face of attacks and adversity gives us our pride. Our solidarity with other peoples and struggles gives us our pride. We gave—and give—each-other our pride. Every damn day.
Billionaires, their bought politicians, and this corrupt and illegitimate Supreme Court can take many things from us. They can strip us of legal rights, deprive us of healthcare, fire us, imprison us, deport us. Kill us. But there’s one thing I know for sure that they can’t take from us. The US Supreme Court did not give us our pride. And they sure as hell can't take our pride away.
Bennett Carpenter (they/them) is a queer Southern organizer, trainer and movement strategist. They are a member of the National Executive Committee of Liberation Road.