A Pride Month marked by grief, rage and resilient joy

As a teacher, Kyle Casey Chu, 33, harbored reservations about sharing his sexual orientation with his students for many years. But the first time the San Francisco-based educator presented his drag queen persona, Panda Dulce, at a Drag Queen Story Hour in 2017, he realized he didn't have to choose.

"It was the first time I felt comfortable bringing my whole self to my youth work. It was the first time my identity was welcomed, and even encouraged," he said.

In June, Dulce was reading the children's book "Families, Families, Families" at a Drag Queen Story Hour at a library in the San Lorenzo suburbs when things took a scary turn for her and the kids. (Dulce goes by she/her pronouns when in drag.)

The Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, stormed the San Lorenzo Library and disrupted the reading, shouting homophobic epithets. Dulce hid in a locked room as the group circled the library, searching for her.

"I didn't know if they were armed, but the shirt with the assault rifle on it, accompanied with the message 'Kill your local pedophile,' made me immediately think gun violence was a looming inevitability," she said. Eventually, law enforcement removed them from the library.

Since the incident, Dulce has been in the spotlight, she said, bombarded with death threats and racist, homophobic and transphobic messages. And she has had to relive the horrors of that day with every media interview, she added.

But she has also used her new platform to advocate for diverse role models - people like her who are unapologetically themselves and can inspire children to do the same, she said.

"They truly messed with the wrong queen."

For many LGBTQ individuals and communities across the nation, Pride 2022 has been unlike any other in recent memory. Celebrated every year in June, Pride commemorates the Stonewall riots of 1969, when trans and queer New Yorkers fought back against police who raided a popular gay club. Since then, the month of June has expanded into a global demonstration of joy, resilience and visibility for millions of LGBTQ people and their allies.

But this year - amid a surge in anti-LGBTQ legislation and harassment and violence targeting queer and trans people - Pride events around the country have come under attack.

In Baltimore, two neighboring homes decorated with Pride symbols were set on fire, injuring three people. In northern Idaho, police arrested 31 members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front for planning to riot at a local Pride event. In a Dallas suburb, LGBTQ supporters formed a "human shield" against Proud Boys who were trying to storm a Family Storytime event.

The vitriol and violence spiking online and in person has marked a "terrifying sea change" for LGBTQ individuals in the United States, said Alejandra Caraballo, a civil rights attorney and instructor at Harvard Law School. Caraballo, a transgender Puerto Rican woman, said the scale and speed at which anti-LGBTQ attacks have escalated is alarming.

Coupled with recent suggestions from the Supreme Court that fundamental rights, such as marriage equality and same-sex intimacy, could be struck down, Caraballo believes that the events of this year will "alter the shapes of our lives for potentially decades." Watching these events unfold, Caraballo feels like "a watchman on the Titanic, seeing the iceberg while everyone is inside happily dancing."

But the wide range of emotions that LGBTQ individuals have expressed this past June - the fear, the defiance, the anxiety, the anticipation, the sadness, the joy - have always been baked into Pride, Caraballo added.

The first Pride in 1970 was then referred to as a Gay Liberation March. Sorrow coursed through the Pride celebrations of the 1980s and 1990s, when the HIV/AIDS epidemic tore through the gay community. And the 2016 Pulse night club shooting, the deadliest single attack on the LGBTQ community in U.S. history, happened during Pride.

"There has always been this sense of grief, but also joy and conflicting emotions with Pride, because as a community, we've dealt with so many setbacks," Caraballo said.

Caraballo has been marching in New York City Pride since 2017. This year, New York City Pride came on the heels of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the nationwide right to an abortion, a ruling that has stirred fear among LGBTQ Americans who believe their rights are now at even greater risk.

Caraballo's Pride weekend typically begins at 7 a.m. on Saturday, so she can get dolled up with enough time to take her position as a parade marshal. For the Dyke March, usually held the Saturday before the city's Pride parade, Caraballo favors a pair of faux leather combat boots with "giant block heels." Her go-to outfit has been a blazer with nothing underneath; on her eyes, she applies pink, blue and white makeup - the colors of the trans flag.

But on the last Pride weekend of 2022, Caraballo felt a palpable, and at times literal, emptiness. Her favorite lesbian dive bar, a small, vibrant home away from home for Caraballo, was not as packed as it normally was - probably because people were protesting instead of celebrating, she said.

"There was definitely kind of this chill in the air," Caraballo said. "We're trying to celebrate our joy, our queer joy. And yet it's hard because we know what's coming."

Erica Ciszek, a 36-year-old assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said Pride felt "anti-climactic" this year.

Ciszek can still recall the exuberance and energy of their first Pride in Boston in 2005. At the time, debates about legalizing same sex marriage dominated state politics, which galvanized and energized Pride-goers, Ciszek said.

Since then, Ciszek has tried to attend at least one Pride event each year, now with their partner and two elementary-age children in tow.

But this Pride felt different - like a "placeholder" on their calendar rather than the emotional catharsis it usually was, they said. Ciszek didn't want to drink cocktails and dance to 1990s playlists, they said. They needed a space "for the mourning and the rage."

In Alabama, Travis Jackson, a 37-year-old social justice and reproductive rights activist, has found a way to channel his outrage alongside his joy at Pride - like "a rainbow with fire mixed in."

Jackson, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual (also referred to as "bi+"), was discharged from the military in 2009 under its "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which permitted queer and trans people in the armed forces as long as they did not express their sexual or gender identity.

"This is like 'don't ask, don't tell' all over again," said Jackson of the past six months: The fear of being criminalized or personally harmed for one's identity is ever-present.

This year, Alabama lawmakers passed laws criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors and restricted educators from talking about gender and sexuality in elementary-school classrooms. Politicians championing these laws have argued they are meant to protect children from harm.

Pride is typically a time for celebration and personal reflection for Jackson. It is also one of the few places Jackson feels they can safely express their rage - an emotion that Black men like him say can be dangerous to share publicly.

He funnels his anger into his speeches and chants. In Montgomery last month, Jackson led a boisterous call and response: "When I say Alabama, you say 'gay!'"

"The crowd loves that one," Jackson said.

For Dustin Martinez, a 35-year-old human resources worker in Austin, celebrating Pride has never been more important.

Martinez, a gay Mexican American originally from San Antonio, said that since coming out as a teen, he has been embraced by his family and community. The Texas of the last two years, where conservative lawmakers have championed some of the most restrictive anti-transgender policies in the country, is not one he recognizes, he said. He's especially worried for those more vulnerable than him - trans people and drag queens, for example.

But he sees Pride parades and rallies are a way of signaling the LGBTQ community's solidarity and defiance: "We're here. We're not going anywhere. We're still fighting."

In many parts of the country, their communities are fighting alongside them.

David Zealy-Wright, 45, of Hickory, North Carolina, said he encountered challenges when he tried to host an LGBTQ family event last month. He wanted to replicate the success of the drag brunch and show he helped organize last year at L.P. Frans Stadium, home to the minor league baseball team, the Hickory Crawdads.

But after weeks of planning and discussions, Zealy-Wright's husband, Derek, was told that the Texas Rangers, which owns the local team, had a change of heart this year, he said. Zealy-Wright believes it was because of a recent kid-friendly drag queen show in Dallas that was deemed inappropriate.

The Hickory Crawdads general manager told The Washington Post that the event was never fully confirmed, and staffing shortages and supply chain issues were to blame.

In the past year, the Zealy-Wrights' celebrations have provided a safe, family-friendly environment for people to learn about queer affairs and give back to the community through local charity donations, he said.

After the cancellation this year, the community stepped in. A neighboring church offered to host the show. The rescheduled event, now called the Whosoever Story Hour, will be held in late July.

Zealy-Wright said the event's new name is a nod to the Bible verse John 3:16, considered foundational to Christianity because of how it describes God's love for humanity: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life."

For her part, Caraballo, the trans civil rights attorney, said she tries to ward off cynicism about Pride by remembering what it means to people discovering acceptance and community for the first time, as well as the struggles past generations of LGBTQ people have endured.

"We survived," she said. "For so many people, that's such a huge thing."