Another Pride, another June, another sunny…

By Alfred P. Doblin

Another Pride, another June, another sunny honeymoon. That’s been stuck in my head all week. It’s a variant on the classic Walter Donaldson lyric to “Makin’ Whoopee,” a song that skirts around saying the male subject of the song is a sexual hound.

To be clear, the song is not a paean to marriage. The new husband loses interest in his wife and kids, steps out on her, steps into divorce court, and is faced with the choice of paying alimony or staying with his wife. Worth noting, the song doesn’t tell us what he decides.

I’m a single, senior gay man, so what do I know about marriage? I like the option that it exists for same-sex couples, regardless of whether there is sunshine long after the honeymoon. But as we are now a week into Pride month 2026, I wonder how long that option lasts.

I’m not an alarmist by nature, but it surprises me that in a so-called “woke” culture, so many people continue to snooze through alarm bells sounding loud enough to wake the dead.

This past week, U.S. Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) posted on X, “Homosexuality has no place in America.” That was followed by “Happy Nuclear Family Month.”

There was a loud outcry of disgust and later that same day, Ogles wrote, “The post was stupid, hurtful and a complete distraction from my America First focus. The employee has been reprimanded.”

He claims that it was a staffer who did it. Take that part as truth, the consequence was a reprimand? A member of Congress has a staffer with access to his official X account and the staffer writes, “Homosexuality has no place in America,” and he gets a slap on the wrist? Does anyone even remotely think that if “homosexuality” had been replaced with say, “Christians,” a reprimand would have satisfied rightly upset Christians? Please.

The thing is, to now borrow from Sally Fields, “You don’t like me.” Well, maybe not me personally, but the concept of me and other queer people, still bothers a good many Americans.

Those in the mainstream don’t like to hear that. They say, “Look how far you have come” to disgruntled queer folk, a condescending comment if you think about it. Whenever someone talks about “you,” it’s almost always condescending.

The LGBTQ+ community has come far, but we are heading in the wrong direction today. Maybe that’s because there is a lack of leadership in the queer community, I do not know, but we are not moving forward.

This past week, a new Gallop survey revealed that “after two decades of rising support for LGBTQ+ issues, U.S. attitudes have plateaued and begun to slide back modestly.”

The language is telling – “slide back modestly.” It’s actually quaint, but the results are disturbing.

A majority of Americans – 65 percent – still favor legal same-sex marriage, but it’s a six-point drop from 2023. And only 62 percent of Americans now believe same-sex relations are morally acceptable, a number that has not been that low since 2016.

The drop is more pronounced among Republicans

In 2022, 55 percent of Republicans said they favored legal same-sex marriage, but now it’s 37 percent. That is a massive shift. Even worse, on the morality question, only 35 percent of Republicans now believe same-sex relations are moral, a 21-point drop from 2022.

Think, only four years ago, Congress, in a bipartisan vote, passed the Respect for Marriage Act, and now?

Wake up, the times, they are a-changin’.

It’s not just all politics that are local. All life is local.Look around.

As example, in the small New Jersey town of Boonton, the mayor recently vetoed an ordinance that would have allowed a Pride flag to fly in a town park, not above a municipal building, but in a single park. This shouldn’t be a thing any more in 2026, but it is.

The Pride flag came down at the Stonewall National Monument earlier this year. At Stonewall! There was a loud outcry, and it was restored. That it was restored is comfort, yes, but it came down in 2026 and that is a warning.

Last month, the National Trust for Historic Preservation added the Stonewall National Monument to its 2026 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

I cannot escape the feeling that the clock is ticking backward for the LGBTQ+ community. Trans rights became a major wedge issue in the 2024 elections. The late Barney Frank, the former openly gay congressman, said he believed trans issues, particularly, trans women in athletics, was dividing too many possible queer allies.

It’s a complicated issue, and one I don’t intend to jump into, but regardless of where you stand on it, you cannot ignore that 1) there are no articulate, inspirational queer leaders trying to unite a very disparate community, and 2) without that leadership, Andy Ogles and/or his reprimanded staffer, can say “homosexuality has no place in America” with relatively few consequences.

Less than a week after the X post, the story is dead. Prominent democrats are not spending their time on Ogles, but now fear the race to take over the U.S. Senate has been hobbled by a bad case of Graham Platner fasciitis in Maine. Platner’s troubled background doesn’t appear to be a game-ender for prospective Democratic Maine primary voters. The election results will be telling, but my experience is people say and do revealing things when they are at their lowest. A Nazi tattoo is a Nazi tattoo.

Platner is a Democrat. America’s race to the bottom is becoming truly bipartisan. If Democrats can look the other way when it comes to a Nazi tattoo and a past pattern of disturbing behavior toward women, it does not bode well for the LGBTQ+ community.

There are hypocrites in both major political parties. And there are queer people in government, as well as queer allies. But there also are highly placed gay Republicans who appeared to have ignored what was said in a Tennessee congressman’s X post about homosexuality.

Where was the public comment of outrage from openly gay Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent? Republicans pointed to him as a sign that queer people have a place in our society and our current government, but it speaks volumes that Bessent didn’t speak up.

The LGBTQ+ community cannot confuse temporary legislative victories as a permanent change in public opinion. All politics is local. All politicians stand on shifting sand.I have lived in Los Angeles; I know what happens to sand when an earthquake hits.

So, back to the song – another Pride, another June. For now, yes. But we can’t take any of it for granted. The right to marry. The right to be treated with dignity. The right to be.

Until next time, this is Alfred with a P