Deep red states across the country have rolled out anti-Pride alternatives to Pride month recently, inspired by so-called Christian values, and riding the Trump administration’s own anti-LGBTQ+ crusade. However, legislation to create a federal “family month” in June has not gained any serious traction, even amongst Republican Congress members.
But advocates for the same anti-Pride messaging are coming up short in Congress, after Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) said the quiet part out loud: “Homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month.”
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Overt homophobia is now tied up with legislation for a federal “family month” in June.
Over the last several years, “family month” designations have been, by degree, subtler forms of anti-LGBTQ+ animus than Ogle’s, with Republican-dominated states conjuring alternatives to Pride Month in support of “traditional” values. In Arkansas and Utah, June is now Fidelity Month. In Alabama, it’s called Strong Families Month. Both Indiana and Tennessee officially celebrate the antiseptic Nuclear Family Month, Semafor reports.
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For Fidelity Month in Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) collaborated with Princeton-based conservative intellectual Robert P. George, who has been pushing for that designation across the country in state and local governments. Like Moms for Liberty with their book-banning cut-and-paste campaigns, or copycat “Don’t Say Gay” measures in red state legislatures, George provides advice and pre-packaged campaign “toolkits” promoting “practices that encourage virtue, commitment, responsibility, and shared moral foundations,” to quote the Arkansas resolution.
In Utah, the Fidelity Month proclamation endorsed “dedication to faith, family and country” as a Pride Month alternative. Gov. Spencer Cox’s signature was not only more evidence of the growing movement to push Pride to the sidelines, but Donald Trump’s toxic effect on previously supportive LGBTQ+ allies.
Ten years ago, Cox, a moderate Republican, was lieutenant governor when he addressed a Pride event in Salt Lake City in the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub mass shooting in Orlando. Cox welled up as he apologized for not treating gay people “with the kindness, dignity, and respect — the love that they deserved.” He went on to declare “LGBTQ+ Pride Month” in 2021, 2022, and 2023, as governor.
But in 2024, with Trump ascendant on the campaign trail and Cox facing a primary challenge to his right, the governor backtracked, substituting a “Month of Bridge Building” designation for June. Later, he acquiesced to a GOP legislature ban on Pride flags on public property.
Cox hasn’t commented on the Fidelity Month designation beyond his signature, but Indiana Gov. Mike Braun (R) has denied LGBTQ+ animus in his state’s proclamation naming June Nuclear Family Month.
“There’s no message, other than that the nuclear family is important,” Braun said. His own lieutenant governor, Micah Beckwith, however, was more transparent: he thanked Braun for “sharing heaven’s truth” and helping to “take back the rainbow.”
Others have been even more explicit in their campaigns to quash Pride Month for good; Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s signature on a Nuclear Family Month resolution in April led directly to Ogle’s public declaration week that “Homosexuality has no place in America.”
But with midterms looming, that unvarnished take was a bridge too far even for some of the House’s most right-wing members, and a likely setback for a Fidelity Month designation in Congress.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called Ogle’s post “untoward.”
“We’re supposed to love our neighbors, everybody, supposed to treat every single person with dignity and respect, whether we agree with them or not,” he told reporters. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) called the comments “reprehensible” and said the post should have never been shared. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called the statement “idiotic.”
Like Ogles, Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL), who sponsored the House resolution to designate June as a federal “family month,” sees Pride and homosexuality as an anti-family affront.
“The left hijacked June to present perversion, to cause gender confusion, and basically to give license for individuals to be indecent in public,” she’s said.
Her resolution is supported by Ogles and 21 other Republicans, but the small number reflects a lack of appetite even among hard-right Republicans to be associated with the overt homophobia now tied up with the legislation. The same measure in the Senate from Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R) has no cosponsors.
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