Pride and protest: A downward trend in LGBTQ+ mobilization this June

23 July 2024

The United States is bracing for a contentious 2024 election cycle. As experts warn of possible political violence, ACLED has relaunched the US Crisis Monitor to track what happens.

July marks the end of Pride month, a month dedicated to celebrating and recognizing the LGTBQ+ community. Traditionally, Pride is commemorated in June and includes parades or marches and street festivals. It is a time for members of the LGBTQ+ community and their allies to celebrate and come together. This longstanding tradition also often brings with it increased protest activity from those within the queer community calling for action, as well as anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrations at Pride events. Because it occurs every June, Pride provides a comparison point across years to better understand shifts in protest trends. Notably, although there was an increased amount of anti-LGBTQ+ activities between 2022 and 2023, this year has been remarkably quiet. This report looks at the trends and provides potential explanations for the steep decline in activity in 2024.

The emergence of Pride month as a catalyst of mobilization

While Pride month was not federally recognized until 1999, the first Pride march occurred in major cities across the United States in 1970 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.¹ Prior to Stonewall, there were numerous gay rights activist groups, mostly created in the wake of the Second World War and in response to the McCarthy era; however, Stonewall marked a turning point in the LGBTQ+ movement.² The event started as a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Police raids on gay bars were common practice at the time as many operated without liquor licenses. As police interrogated Stonewall patrons and arrested those who were in violation of New York’s ‘cross-dressing law,’ a crowd of hundreds gathered outside the bar. While accounts vary as to the exact moment the confrontation turned violent, the patrons resisted police through the night, violence escalated, and protests continued into the following week.³ Stonewall, and the protests that followed, helped ignite the gay rights movement as activists began to demand change to systems of oppression.⁴

In many ways, Pride has always been deeply connected to protest and mobilization activity. For opponents of the LGBTQ+ movement, Pride festivals have long been an opportunity for counter-protests and even anti-LGBTQ+ violence in the US and around the world.⁵ Officials routinely issue warnings of heightened threat levels to promote vigilance during Pride month.⁶ The combined history of mobilization, and visibility of counter-protests, makes Pride month a hotbed for political activities, thus making it ideal for understanding trends around conflict across time.

Recent trends

Pride month has unsurprisingly driven consistently heightened levels of mobilization in support of LGBTQ+ rights, accounting for more than a fifth of all such demonstrations between 2020 and 2023. At the same time, these demonstrations have regularly coalesced around other drivers. Pride events in 2022 turned into impromptu protest events in support of abortion rights following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade. Because the court ruled right before many of the country’s largest Pride events,⁷ many parades included protesters who used the opportunity to show support for abortion access. Dobbs may have sparked further mobilization for reasons more closely linked to LGBTQ+ rights, as the decision left many wondering if the Supreme Court would use the precedent to argue against other protections, particularly to same-sex marriage. In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that the court should reconsider many past decisions, citing both Lawrence v. Texas (which established rights for private sexual acts between consenting adults) and Obergefell v. Hodges (which established the right to same-sex marriage).

In contrast, anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrations were a rare occurrence across the US before 2022, including during Pride month. There were only six anti-LGBTQ+ demonstration events in 2020 and 54 in 2021, compared to 180 in 2022 and 233 in 2023 (see graph below). An uptick in anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrations followed the Dobbs decision.⁸ In June 2022, ACLED records 31 anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrations, including five riots, with anti-LGBTQ+ riots accounting for over a quarter of all riots during the same period. Reports of extremists breaking up Pride events, such as a drag queen story hour in California,⁹ led some Pride organizers to cancel or change plans over concern and threats of violence.

Further, 2022 saw the highest number of reported anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes since the FBI started tracking these statistics in 1991,¹⁰ and an increase of more than 19% between 2021 and 2022. Given these numbers and the increase in violence found at Pride events in 2022, many were prepared for 2023 to outpace mobilization found the previous year. Indeed, anti-LGBTQ+ events increased from 31 events in 2022 to 67 events in 2023. At the same time, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of active anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups grew to record levels in 2023.¹¹ These trends, coupled with a drastic increase in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the country¹² and vocal backlash from conservatives over corporate sponsorship of Pride events,¹³ shined a light on a wave of rising anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment in the US.

Given the increase in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, violence, and legislation in recent years, the lead-up to Pride 2024 seemed notably quiet. Indeed, there has been a steady decline in anti-LGBTQ+ events since June 2023. While June 2023 accounted for 67 events out of 233 total anti-LGBTQ+ events throughout the year, this June saw only 10 events, which accounted for under 5% of all anti-LGBTQ+ activity in the past year. However, Pride events did attract other forms of mobilization this year. Specifically, there have been several reports of pro-Palestine events held during Pride. In some cases, protesters blocked parade routes and displayed signs with slogans such as “No Pride in Genocide.”¹⁴ However, in other instances, such as Denver’s annual Pride, protestors were welcomed on stage, where the emcee recognized the protestors and others discussed the longstanding history of Pride and protest.¹⁵

Declining mobilization: An expected outcome?

Given the steady increase in anti-LGBTQ+ activity from 2020 to 2023, it may be surprising that this mobilization appears to have faltered thus far in 2024. Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has also taken an unexpected turn: Though a similar amount of anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced in state governments across the country in 2024 as in 2022 and 2023, only a fraction were enacted, in contrast with previous years.¹⁶ Thus, a decline in anti-LGBTQ+ demonstration activity has accompanied a similar reduction in state and federal anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.

However, analysts have varying explanations for these seemingly related developments. Some suggest that a drop in anti-LGBTQ+ activity reflects reduced urgency around an anti-LGBTQ+ agenda, largely because so much of this agenda was accomplished through the passage of anti-LGBTQ+ — and especially anti-transgender — legislation around the country in 2022 and 2023.¹⁷ Proponents of this explanation suggest that anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment has been normalized in law and society and has, therefore, become a poorer motivator for demonstration activity.

However, a hardline conservative agenda around anti-LGBTQ+ issues has not yet been enacted. Much of the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation proposed over previous years has promoted a specific set of anti-LGBTQ+, and specifically anti-transgender, policies. The most common of these policies include banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth, requiring schools to report students asking to be called a different name to their parents, and preventing transgender students from playing on sports teams or using bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.¹⁸ Perhaps most infamously, Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, which was signed into law in May 2023, prohibits discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms (though judicial challenges have significantly weakened this measure).¹⁹

Though these policies already have a profound impact on the LGBTQ+ community, conservative politicians and thinkers have routinely called for much more expansive restrictions. For instance, in February 2023, Donald Trump called for a federal definition of “gender” restricted to “male and female” as assigned at birth and, in his Agenda47 manifesto, claimed that the “radical left” had “invented” transgender people “a few years ago.”²⁰ Likewise, the 2025 Presidential Transition Project (also known as Project 2025), an initiative organized by highly influential conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, promotes baseless claims that “transgender ideology” is linked to pornography and the “sexualization of children,” that gender-affirming care for transgender youth amounts to “child abuse,” and thus that being transgender has “no claim to First Amendment protection.”²¹ From these writings, it is clear that influential conservative voices hold anti-LGBTQ+ views that extend much further than what has been enacted thus far.

A legislative shift away from anti-LGBTQ+ legislation may therefore represent a strategic move by conservative leaders, resulting in a lower level of anti-LGBTQ+ demonstration activity. Pro-LGBTQ+ activists have been increasingly successful at mobilizing to defeat such legislation, and some have suggested that the anti-LGBTQ+ agenda represents an “overreach” by conservatives that has mobilized legislative and demonstration activity.²² This explanation seems to match the data, as a drop in successful anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and demonstration activity corresponds with a drop in pro-LGBTQ+ demonstrations. At the same time, Republicans may be reacting to a relatively poor showing in the 2022 midterm elections — though their party manifesto is still openly anti-transgender, it has softened its rhetoric on abortion and same-sex marriage.²³ Though more extreme anti-transgender policies are popular within a harder core of the conservative base, polling shows that most Americans support protections for LGBTQ+ people and specifically transgender people.²⁴

Another piece of this explanation may come from the shifting activity of extremist groups, who have been outsized participants in anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrations in recent years. These groups have seen a very steep drop in all activity in 2024 compared to previous years, largely due to struggles with leadership following a law enforcement crackdown after the 6 January riots. At the same time, LGBTQ+ groups have prepared more extensively for extremist activity targeting Pride-related events and drag shows.²⁵

Each of these explanations contributes to the overall picture. Anti-LGBTQ+ demonstration activity has decreased alongside a decline in successful anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, recent conservative successes in enacting anti-LGBTQ+ policies, a strategic shift away from some anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric during the 2024 election cycle, increased vigilance from the LGBTQ+ community, and a decline in extremist group mobilization. Many of these are temporary phenomena related to the critical November presidential election. As conservative writing like Project 2025 and Agenda47 indicate, many conservatives hope to further strip protections for LGBTQ+ people in the future.