The far-right Christian group One Million Moms says the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will be a “nonbinary and transgender extravaganza,” prompting queer people across the country to say in unison, “Don’t threaten us with a good time.”
OMM, a division of the fundamentalist nonprofit American Family Association, which is categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has for years attempted to remove anything related to LGBTQ+ people from mass media through a string of pressure campaigns, usually without success. Their latest campaign this week, however, took the group’s mission several steps further by calling out two individual nonbinary and gender-nonconforming Broadway performers by name.
Actors from five Broadway musicals are slated to perform during the November 23 procession, but OMM focused on just two: Justin David Sullivan, a nonbinary actor currently performing in & Juliet, and Alex Newell of Shucked, who is gender-nonconforming. OMM’s petition called their participation “liberal nonsense” and evidence that the Macy’s parade “does not have our children’s best interests in mind” — a clear reference to the far-right myth that trans people “groom” and predate on children.
OMM reinforced that message by also targeting Kim Petras and her 2021 parade performance, describing it as another time when Macy’s “featured gender non-conforming performers.” (The crime of including Petras appears to be self-evident for the group’s intended audience.)
One Million Moms is, without a doubt, a very funny organization, especially because they do not represent any number like one million actual moms; as of publication, the petition had only gathered a little more than 22,000 signatures. But with targeted anti-LGBTQ+ violence on the rise across the U.S., right-wing groups that target LGBTQ+ individuals by name pose an ever-escalating safety threat. According to data released earlier this month from the watchdog group Media Matters for America, more than 30 schools, hospitals, and individuals have reported bomb and death threats after being targeted in posts by prominent anti-LGBTQ+ organization Libs of TikTok and its founder Chaiya Raichik since 2022.
Even if OMM’s latest anti-trans salvo doesn’t end up inspiring any physical harm, we’ll still be a little bummed out that — just like usual — very few things are actually as decadently, offensively queer as our least favorite pearl-clutchers think they are. Maybe we’ll find this fabled “trans extravaganza” in a secret vault somewhere, next to the “blatant LGBTQ+” cut of Thor: Love and Thunder and the diabolical DuckTales indoctrination school. This timeline could be so much cooler.
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