Pride Month: The State Of LGBTQ Protection In Arizona

ARIZONA — Arizona is far from the only state in the U.S. that passed anti-LGBTQ legislation this year, which could contribute to more passion and urgency during June Pride Month celebrations and demonstrations across the nation.

Pride Month, observed June 1-30 in the U.S., pays homage to those who participated in five days of riots following a raid on the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan in 1969. The Stonewall Uprising quickly became a watershed moment for gay rights. Before the uprising gay sex was illegal in every state except for Illinois, and the government could force bars and restaurants to close just for having a gay employee or serving a gay patron.

While Phoenix's big pride celebration is set for Oct. 15-16, and Tucson's is set for Sept. 30-Oct. 2 to avoid the June heat, there are other pride events going on locally this month.

Mesa is set to celebrate from 5-10 p.m. Saturday, with Pride at Market on Main which will include music, food, vendors and other entertainment.

Some other local June pride events include:

• A pride bar crawl set for June 18 in Scottsdale.
• A celebration of human connection, acceptance, togetherness and diversity in honor of Pride Month at Sutra Studios in Phoenix.
• Go to the Visit Phoenix website for a list of more local pride events.

The uneasiness hanging over this year’s celebration stems from a wave of legislation ranging from “don’t say gay” laws — prohibiting public schools from using curriculums addressing gender identity and sexual orientation, introduced in 20 states and now law in Florida and Alabama — to trans athlete sports bans in 15 states, including Arizona.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, legislation targeting transgender and nonbinary people also bars or criminalizes health care for transgender youth; prohibits transgender persons from using facilities, such as restrooms, corresponding with their gender identity; allows religiously motivated discrimination against transgender people; and makes it more difficult to get identification documents with their name and gender.

In Arizona, LGBTQ rights have been diluted in recent legislative sessions, according to the ACLU.

Arizona Senate Bill 1165, signed by Arizona's conservative Republican Gov. Doug Ducey March 30, prohibits transgender girls and women from playing on girls sports teams for public K-12 schools and colleges. It does not stop transgender men and boys from playing on boys teams.

House Bill 2161, signed by Ducey on April 29, would obligate public school teachers to tell parents if a child comes out to them or asks to be called a name different than the one given to them by their parents.

Bills introduced in the Arizona Legislature but not yet passed include House Bill 2608 which would prohibit doctors from providing gender transition procedures to anyone younger than 18. Another is House Bill 2285 which would force Arizona public schools to emphasize biological sex when teaching sex education instead of gender identity.

On LGBTQ policy, Arizona got a rating of low from the Movement Advancement Project, or MAP, an independent, nonprofit think tank that researches equality legislation.

That analysis looks at laws and policies that help drive equality for LGBTQ people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the five populated territories. The major areas represented in the policy tally covered relationship and parental recognition, nondiscrimination, religious exemptions, LGBTQ youth, health care, criminal justice and identity documents.

Per the MAP analysis, Arizona got a -3.5 out of 22 points for its gender identity policies and a 5.75 out of 25 for its sexual orientation policies.

While things at the state level don't look great for LGBTQ rights in Arizona, there has been more progress at the local level, Jeanne Woodbury, policy and communication director at Equality Arizona told Patch. Equality Arizona is a non profit based in Phoenix that focuses on improving the everyday lives of LGBTQ people by working in elections and policy making at all levels of government.

Arizona doesn't have a statewide nondiscrimination law protecting people in the LGBTQ community, but city nondiscrimination laws apply to about 50 percent of the state's residents.

That's progress that has happened over the past 10 years, starting with Phoenix's LGBTQ nondiscrimination law, passed in 2013, Woodbury said.

"It’s really mixed, because we’re seeing a lot of real victories, not just in terms of the law but in terms of communities coming together and, I think, doing some real collective healing," Woodbury said. "But at the same time we’re seeing more attacks on LGBTQ rights in Arizona and across the country than we’ve seen potentially ever if you just look at the sheer volume of it."

The laws passed earlier this year that ban transgender girls from playing on girls sports teams, and possibly forcing teachers to out their students to parents are concerning to Equality Arizona, along with proposed legislation that would ban discussions of gender identity in sex education.

These laws have the potential to send the message to LGBTQ kids that they can't be themselves at school or that they don't belong, Woodbury said.

"That can be hugely developmentally destructive to kids," Woodbury said. "The emotional toll is really terrible."

But Woodbury is hopeful about Equality Arizona's efforts at the federal level and said its representatives had been meeting with U.S. senators weekly to work together on a federal LGBTQ nondiscrimination law.

"Right now it’s really a tenuous position that we’re in, and moving forward all we can really do is hope for best and work to make that happen," Woodbury said.

LGBTQ advocates’ concern stems not only from what has happened in statehouses, but also the very real concern that a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court could return the issue of same-sex marriage to states to decide, just as the court’s majority is expected to do with abortion rights, according to a leaked Supreme Court opinion draft of the decision expected later this month or next.

Legal experts are divided on whether the Supreme Court’s watershed ruling legalizing same-sex marriage is in jeopardy with the expected ruling striking down constitutional protections on a woman’s right to an abortion.

University of Texas law professor Elizabeth Sepper, an expert on health care law and religion, told Reuters that Americans are right to worry.

“The low-hanging fruit is contraception, probably starting with emergency contraception, and same-sex marriage is also low-hanging fruit in that it was very recently recognized by the Supreme Court,” Sepper said.

In his dissent of Obergefell v. Hodges, the case at the center of the 2015 same-sex marriage ruling, Justice Samuel Alito used language similar to that in the leaked draft on abortion.

In his same-sex marriage dissent and the leaked opinion draft, Alito mentioned neither right is guaranteed in the Constitution and both issues should be left to states to decide, Jordan Woods, faculty director of the LGBTQ Law & Policy Program at the University of Arkansas, told The Washington Post.

Opponents of same-sex marriage could use Alito’s logic in attempts to overturn Obergefell, Woods said, noting that judges dissenting against a 2003 opinion striking down the Texas sodomy ban relied on similar reasoning.

“Ultimately, what the court will do, nobody knows,” Woods said. But Alito’s “draft absolutely provides a blueprint for the court essentially eroding or even overturning important constitutional precedents that are in this area of privacy that clearly this draft opinion is hostile towards.”

Katie Eyer, a professor specializing in anti-discrimination law at Rutgers University, told The Post she doubts there’s much appetite even in conservative states to begin the appeal process. Although divisions exist, about 61 percent of Americans strongly favor same-sex marriage, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center poll.

For his part, Alito tempered those concerns, asserting in the draft majority opinion on abortion leaked to Politico that his reasoning was not intended to apply to any right beyond abortion.

“We emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right,” wrote Alito, who was appointed to the court by President George W. Bush. “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

Yale Law School professor Douglas NeJaime, who has expertise in sexuality and constitutional law, told The Post that the precedents in Roe v. Wade — the 1973 case that affirmed a woman’s right to an abortion — the Obergefell same-sex decision and the Texas sodomy ban are “fundamentally different.”

“I think the draft opinion is actually trying to say Obergefell is not a target,” NeJaime said. “And I don’t know that that’s true, but it’s at least saying that.”