Unpacking the Backlash against LGBTQ+ Rights in the United States

• In Event: 50 Years of LGBTQ Scholarship at APSA Mini-Conference: The Global Backlash to LGBT Rights

Abstract

In this paper, I draw on two bodies of scholarship—the literature on moral panics and the literature on citizenship—to consider the current deluge of bills, laws, and policies targeting LGBTQ+ people in the United States.

More than 500 bills targeting LGBTQ+ people were introduced across 46 state legislatures in 2023; by the end of the year, 75 had been signed into law across 22 states. 2024 promises more of the same: by the middle of January, the ACLU was tracking 285 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced across 35 states. The great majority of these bills, laws and policies attack trans and nonbinary people, especially youth, commonly through prohibitions on gender-affirming health care, school sports participation, and bathroom use. Other measures, both proposed and enacted, are aimed at limiting the ability of students to learn about and/or express non-normative sexualities and gender identities. The Movement Advancement Project, which tracks LGBTQ+ policies, calls the current political environment “a war against LGBTQ+ people in America and their very right and ability to openly exist.”

I argue that the current backlash against LGBTQ+ people is a paradigmatic example of a moral panic. Moral panics are moments in time when public fears—and state interventions—about a “new” threat to societal values greats exceeds any object threat posed by the individuals or groups who are treated as creating the threat. Moral panics share several key elements, including the existence of moral entrepreneurs who seek to shape public opinion and influence policy by framing an issue in hyperbolic moral terms; the creation of folk devils who are treated as the embodiment of evil; media amplification of the narratives created by moral entrepreneurs; and political actors who draw on those narrative to justify criminalizing or otherwise restricting the rights of folk devils. Central to the concept of moral panics is that the creation of a folk devil is mutually advantageous to moral entrepreneurs, media actors, and state officials. Drawing on analyses of legislative bills, public statements made by states legislators, media coverage, and the messaging developed by anti LGBTQ+ activist groups, I show how the current backlash is the product of a deliberate effort by countermovement actors to instigate and stoke a moral panic, an effort adopted and advanced by right-leaning media sources and predominantly Republican legislators and public officials.

I then draw on the literature on queer citizenship to argue that the current political moment is usefully conceptualized as a debate over the civic status of LGBTQ+ Americans. Drawing in particular on the work of Stephen Engel and Shane Phelan, I argue that citizenship is more than a legal status or an accumulation of rights, it is a claim on the public’s attention and concern, a claim that necessitates that members of the polity recognize the claimant as a legitimate member of the polity. From this perspective, the current backlash against LGBTQ+ people—and particularly transgender people—is fundamentally an argument about whether they should be recognized as legitimate members of the polity.

Bringing the two literatures together, I conclude by suggesting that some moral panics—perhaps many—are at their heart, arguments over civic status.

Author

• Ellen Ann Andersen, University of Vermont