Last summer, Pride festivities around the country were met with protests, not just by anti-queer bigots (though these familiar faces were not in short supply), but also by young queer and trans people demanding that weapons manufacturers responsible for arming Israel’s genocide in Gaza not be allowed to sponsor Pride.
I joined such a protest at Fair Park, where we chanted things like “Lockheed Martin, you can’t hide/There’s no Pride in genocide.”
While many Pride attendees supported the anti-genocide protests, some were angered by the disruption to their celebration. Some LGBTQ+ leaders wrote op-eds and posted on social media about how such protests were antithetical to Pride and harmful to LGBTQ+ people.
In response to these critics, in a July 2024 op-ed in the Dallas Voice, I asked members of the LGBTQ+ community to consider directing their anger not at the protesters, but at the war profiteers who seek to use our Pride celebrations to soften their public image.
Weapons manufacturers have no place in Pride parades.
Countless scholars, human rights experts and international aid organizations have called Israel’s campaign in Gaza a genocide. We have seen this genocide live-streamed on our phones for the last year-and-a-half, the violations of international law and basic human decency on full display.
We have seen the bodies of Palestinian children ripped to pieces. We have seen the snipers killing Palestinian women who stand with their hands raised. We have seen the sexual violence against Palestinian men, stripped and humiliated.
We have seen the hospitals, mosques, schools and universities decimated, the bags of dismembered limbs, the mass graves, the burning refugee tents, the assassinated journalists, medical professionals and aid workers.
We have seen the intentional starvation. We have seen Israeli politicians like Moshe Feiglin and others insist “Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy,” as they advocate for the complete annihilation or forced removal of a people.
We have seen the bullet-riddled car in which five-year-old Hind Rajab begged for her life before her body was torn apart by weapons that we paid for.
We have seen these things, but only if we have chosen not to look away.
Many have argued that we should support the war crimes in Gaza in the name of “liberating” LGBTQ+ people. Queer anti-imperialist organizers and scholars refer to this sort of argument as “pinkwashing.” Pinkwashing is the deliberate and cynical use of “LGBTQ+ rights” discourse as a justification for settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
In the logic of the pinkwasher, any place on earth that does not have corporate-sponsored Pride parades, rainbow flags and gay nightlife can be bombed in the name of liberal democracy.
As an example, I recently watched an interview by a famous gay content creator in which the interviewer laughed when his guest repeated this popular anti-Palestinian talking point: “‘Queers for Palestine,’ that’s like saying ‘Chickens for KFC!’”
The logic of the joke is simple: Queer people in the United States should not care about Palestinian life because anti-queerness exists in Palestinian civil society (as it exists in every culture around the globe, including the United States and Israel).
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared this joke with an enormous audience when he addressed a joint session of congress last summer, highlighting the strategic political work such “humor” accomplishes — trying to use an image of “LGBTQ+ inclusion” to justify violence against a group of racial Others.
It is our moral obligation as queer people to resist this racist logic. In the wake of Israel’s assault on Gaza, the fierce and relentless anti-Zionist Jewish organizations Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now have made their mantra “Not in Our Names,” insisting that Jewish safety will not be secured through violence against Palestinians. It is time that the LGBTQ+ community follow their lead and refuse to have our Pride celebrations used as propaganda to justify genocide.
Even as this Pride Month draws to a close, as we continue to resist Trump’s fascism (which includes his infamous plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza and build luxury real estate on the Mediterranean), let us do so as people who understand, fundamentally, that every human life is sacred beyond measure.
Celebrating the beauty and irreplaceability of each human being is what makes Pride such a radical act of love and protest. We show up every year, in the face of anti-queer hatred and the purveyors of the so-called anti-gender ideology movement, to insist upon our own dignity and the dignity of queer and trans people whom we will never meet. This year, when you see your queer siblings showing up to Pride with Palestinian flags and keffiyehs or protesting the inclusion of weapons manufacturers as Pride sponsors — in the tradition of queer ancestors like June Jordan, James Baldwin, and Jean Genet, who stood in solidarity with Palestinians decades ago — know that what they are demanding is nothing less than the recognition of full humanity that we all deserve.
Dr. Nino Testa is a visiting scholar at the Women’s Institute at Chatham University in Pittsburgh. His teaching and research are on histories of queer arts and activism. He lived and worked in North Texas for eight years and is a former board member of The Dallas Way: An LGBTQ History Project.