“The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.” — Maya Angelou
“If the Supreme Court can reverse Roe, it can reverse anything” — Mary Ziegler
Earlier in June, I began to consider a topic for my next blog post. I often begin my writing process with research, reading online, frequently the subject is politics, culture wars, and/or the news of the day. I also reflect on my lived experience and things that pique my curiosity.
I decided on Rainbow Scare and soon after read an opinion piece by Allison Hope. I also became alarmed when the leak occurred earlier in May of the draft Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade and its potential impact overturning settled law. It raised the possibility that the gains we made in the last decades could be undone. We’d essentially go back in time. We could lose reproductive rights, both access to abortions and contraceptives, and for women, the ability to make decisions about what happens to our bodies, plus our LGBTQ+ community may have our marriages nullified and our relationships criminalized. Oh, my!
On Friday, June 23rd the Supreme Court released their ruling, returning jurisdiction to states to regulate abortion. Though we knew from the leak in May that this most likely would be the outcome, many of us were surprised by how quickly state trigger laws went into effect and that most red states, began taking immediate action to enact new, regressive laws. To add to the potential loss of rights, Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, wrote in his brief that it may open the door to take a new look at rights that were not codified in the Constitution.
Protests Wisconsin State Capitol. Photo Credit: WISC-TV, Channel3000
On June 26th, ironically, it was the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling making gay marriage legal in 2015. Now according to the door Justice Thomas opened, those marriages could potentially be nullified.
Across the country rallies, protests, and marches broke out across the country, beginning on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. Internationally, advanced nations had already, or were enacting protections for a woman’s right to make decisions about their own bodies and family planning. “The whole world is watching!”
Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling protests. Photo credit: Jo Freeman
The Past Is Prologue
ERA March in Washington D.C. some of the Madison, WI contingent
45 years ago, as a second wave feminist, formerly active in the National Organization for Women (NOW), I facilitated Consciousness-Raising (CR) groups in Madison, Wisconsin and trained facilitators across the country on behalf of NOW. I worked to empower women, secure, and protect our rights to make decisions about our bodies and enact the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a constitutional effort to codify those rights. Our rallying cry was “the personal is political.”
We marched in Washington, D.C. for the ERA and lobbied legislators; we held fundraising walks in Madison, and hosted educational ‘rap’ sessions. I attended the NOW Conferences in Wisconsin and Washington, D.C. We worked to secure the necessary number of states for a constitutional amendment. Sadly, our efforts failed.
March on Washington D.C for the ERA. Photographer friend, Megan and I resting with other marchers from Madison, WI
What undermined the Equal Rights Amendment, were conservative, religious-based coalitions, including Phyllis Schlafly and the STOP ERA movement. The organization she led was opposed to feminism, gay rights, and abortion. This, in essence, was the beginning of the ultra-conservative, religious right movement and Republican culture wars. Evangelicals, Catholics, and followed later by members of the Federalist Society, “…an American legal organization of conservatives and libertarians that advocates for a textualist and originalist interpretation of the United States Constitution.”
We continued our fight to protect access to abortion and reproductive rights. Unfortunately, during the efforts to pass the ERA, organizations including NOW, triggered a Lavender Scare, purging lesbians from leadership roles for fear we’d lose support from legislators and middle America. The intersectionality of the rights of women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other marginalized communities based on race, religion, ethnic, and economic status were now vulnerable and disenfranchised.
The Political Is Personal
“The personal is political” became a rallying cry, beginning at the Democratic Presidential Convention in Chicago in 1968 and was soon embraced by second wave feminists, antiwar activists, civil and gay rights movements, and continues today.
Recent legislation by libertarian and Republican conservatives, supported by the religious right and the activist, conservative majority of the current U.S. Supreme Court has made “the political personal.” Our representative democracy has been threatened by the former President, Donald Trump, domestic terrorists like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and conspiracy promotors like Q-Anon and some members of Trump’s Make America Great Again supporters. Republican legislators, both in states and federally, have been coconspirators and enablers, as evidence is uncovered in the January 6th Hearings.
The separation of church and state is eroding, the rights of women and child-bearing men (trans and gender nonbinary), to make decisions about their own bodies and access to reproductive services including abortion, are now at risk in most states, BIPOC people may not be able to access the healthcare services they require due to the prohibitive costs of travel and time off from work, and lastly, LGBTQ+ marriages could be nullified, and or sexual relationships criminalized.
Rainbow Scare
Allison Hope in their opinion piece entitled, Rainbow Scare, writes, “The Rainbow Scare has haunting echoes of the Red Scare and related Lavender Scare (as historian David K. Johnson coined it) from the mid-20th century, when fears about the spread of communism during the Cold War emboldened Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and others in the US government to persecute and ostracize people who were deemed to be “communist sympathizers,” cavorting with the Soviet enemy. LGBTQ+ people were among them – fired from their jobs, forced to undergo psychiatric treatment and institutionalization, including electric shock treatment, and prosecuted as security threats to the nation.”
Hope further posits, “Today, extreme right officials and community leaders are heinously using LGBTQ+ students as pawns to stoke fear (and win votes). Banning books, censoring curricula and silencing LGBTQ+ students and teachers are the latest tactics in the right’s efforts to perpetuate regressive discrimination under the guise of a culture war.”
“The Rainbow Scare is evident in the more than 200 bills in state legislatures that aim to or already have stripped LGBTQ+ and specifically transgender kids of the right to access life-saving health care, to play sports or even to talk about orientation or gender identity in schools. It’s there in the coordinated efforts to ban books in libraries and schools that have LGBTQ+ characters or themes. And in bills like the one passed by the Ohio House of Representatives, which would – in addition to banning trans girls from sports – require a genital exam and verification by a doctor if a student’s sex were questioned.”
As Pride Month winds down, we’re reminded that our work to protect our rights continues year long. The safety of our lives is threatened again, including our LGBTQ+ youth, transgender and nonbinary, and BIPOC communities. Yes, both the personal is political, and the political is personal coexist.
Illustration Credit: Tom Bachtell
We must advocate for our rights, fight the good fight in the streets, the courts, and in our state and federal legislative bodies, protect our democracy, and vote in every local, state, and national election. We must remain visible and continue to coalesce to protect the rights of ALL people.
“The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.” — Maya Angelou
Related Reading from Mixed Metaphors, Oh My!
Scenes from a Marriage: Keys to My Life
Additional Reading on the Topic
2022 is already a record year for state bills curtailing LGBTQ rights
For the Sake of the World, Pride Must Find Its Politics Again
If the Supreme Court Can Reverse Roe, It Can Reverse Anything
Oslo Pride organizers cancel a parade after a gunman kills 2 and wounds 10