Hungary’s strongman Viktor Orban, visiting Mar-a-Lago tomorrow, ” is a great leader and a strong man”, says candidate Trump.

By Charles Francis and Jeff Trammell (updated March 7, 2024)

There is an existential question confronting millions of LGBTQ Americans: How can we help ensure that America’s democracy, the source of our past and future progress, continues? Will our democracy survive the decade’s end? The absolute key to all LGBTQ progress since the 1950s has been our ability to work through our democratic system, sometimes two steps forward and one step backward, but always working toward full equality in a functioning democracy.

Where authoritarian governments exist, from countries like Russia, Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Qatar to heavily gerrymandered, one-party state legislatures like Tennessee and Texas, our community is under a full-blown authoritarian populist assault. International death penalties and whippings run down the same line to American verbal assault: “pedos,” “groomers,” “don’t indoctrinate our children.” It is clear that our community’s basic rights are dependent upon governments that embody pluralism and grassroots democracy. As part of the larger movement to save democracy, we cannot afford to let ourselves be divided internally. The initialism “LGBTQIA+” can fragment queer identities, sometimes baffling even ourselves. Divided LGBTQ citizens make such easy bait for populist assaults.

The Big Bang of LGBTQ political participation in America’s democracy happened with the first homosexual magazine of ideas, ONE. Launched in Los Angeles by members of the original Mattachine Society, ONE was not “beefcake” or porn. In 1954, the Los Angeles Post Office, pressured by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, seized the issues of ONE, declaring it obscene and un-mailable. ONE fought back with the only weapon it had, a historic cover story, “You Can’t Print It!” written by ONE’s legal counsel Eric Julber. Julber successfully argued for the Supreme Court to ignore Hoover’s wishes by ruling in ONE’s favor on First Amendment grounds (ONE, Inc. v Olesen, 1958). No longer “obscene” merely because it was a gay publication, ONE was free to use the U.S. mail like any other publication, paving the way for the first lesbian national publication, the Daughters of Bilitis’ “The Ladder.” Eric Julber, decades later at age 90, told the new Mattachine Society, “In those days, access to the mail was vital; no mail, no speech! I knew this was a vital civil liberties issue.” Julber knew at that moment LGBTQ Americans were free to engage the American democracy. All it took was breaking out of the brown wrappers and into the mail.

Every victory, most recently with the bipartisan passage of the Respect for Marriage Act and the Biden administration’s reaffirming non-discrimination against transgender military service members, is a direct result of speech, years of peaceful assembly and organizing in a liberal democracy.

If America’s democracy were to collapse in a constitutional crisis of the kind we narrowly escaped by attempted coup on Jan. 6, imagine how LGBTQ Americans would fare with American authoritarians who admire Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban? A “great leader and strong man”, according to Donald Trump at a New Hampshire rally, Orban is a new hero to Christian nationalists who consider Budapest a new intellectual capital of their religious liberty. Orban thundered at the 2022 CPAC meeting in Dallas, “Leave our children alone!” Don’t be afraid to call your enemies by name! The war is a culture war!” Sucking up to Texans he shouted, “We don’t need more genders; we need more Rangers.” Orban received a standing ovation. Polish leader Andrzej Duda claims, “LGBTQ ideology is more destructive than Communism.” Fortunately, a record turnout of Polish voters in 2023 soundly defeated his party in parliamentary elections. The dark absurdity of Duda’s populist appeal demeans the millions of Poles deported to labor and concentration camps in the Soviet Union. A recent study by the Williams Institute establishes a strong association between democracy indicators and LGBTQ acceptance. In Poland, the study reports, there are now “LGBT ideology free zones” created by nearly one hundred local governments.”

In 2023 and ’24, more anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced than anytime in American history, mostly by Republican state legislators from districts gerrymandered to prevent competitive elections. It seems whenever democracy is curtailed, we lose. We know our natural predators are populist autocrats and their enabling courts. They stalk queer citizens for their political sport. It is so simple for populist campaigns to chum the waters by “otherizing” us into an Enemy of the People. Without America’s democracy and our tradition of pluralism, LGBTQ Americans — engaged, equal and empowered — are done.

For LGBTQ Americans, history shows we have found our strength and endurance in democracy. Democracy is how we got here. What President Biden said is true, “Democracy is on the ballot” this November. We must put aside all of our various issues, worthy organizational goals and shades of identity to prioritize something larger than ourselves, our precious American democracy.

Charles Francis is author of ‘Archive Activism: Memoir of a ‘Uniquely Nasty’ Journey’ (UNT Press, 2023). Jeff Trammell is a former Rector of The College of William & Mary and served as chair of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund.