Along New York’s Christopher Street in the West Village neighborhood which last weekend saw the largest Pride celebration in the country, there are still fragments of rainbow confetti in sidewalk crevices. But the mood on Friday, hours after the US supreme court dealt a major blow to LGBTQ+ rights, no longer aligned with those festivities.
Stasha Wyskiel, at the bar of the landmark Stonewall Inn, said her community was under attack: “It’s interesting we’re still calling our parades celebrations and not marches, because I think we’re going to return to making clear how under duress our community is in the United States and in places around the world.”
Others offered a similar, if nuanced, interpretation of the ruling – which opens the door for businesses to refuse service to some couples based on their sexuality. Taking down the institutions of power, including marriage, was more important than the owner of a marriage website refusing to take the business of a same-sex couple.
“I get the importance of this,” said a New Yorker named Chris. “But in some ways we gave this woman the power instead of just telling her to fuck off and burn it down.” His partner Francis, referring to the Colorado wedding cake shop legal fight that kicked off a legal escalation to the supreme court, added: “I bet the cakes suck and the decor is horrible. They probably need a gay touch.”
Kamala Harris had made a surprise visit to the old pub four days before the ruling came down, urging Americans to continue to battle for equality in the face of fresh waves of anti-LGBTQ+ action and rhetoric by conservatives.
The US vice-president went there to mark Pride month and 54 years since the bar was the epicenter of riots sparked by patrons resisting police harassment that ushered in the modern LGBTQ+ protest and celebration movement.
Further down Christopher Street after Friday’s development, at Janie’s Life-Changing Baked Goods, the manager, Diana Garcia, said she would never refuse a customer: “We’re not going to judge – we totally accept, 100%, whoever walks through the door. It’s antisocial for a store selling sweet things to be so sour.”
Many feared the ruling could ultimately lead to individuals being denied employment on the basis of sexuality. The ruling upheld the rights of Lorie Smith, the owner of 303 Creative, a web design company, to refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples because of her religious beliefs.
“This ruling specifically targets creative expression and [in] our community, the queer community, creative expression is really important,” said Jace Farber, a 30-year-old trans man. “Creativeness is essential to our community and to being ourselves. Who is to say this will stop at queerness?
“The ruling opens up the realm of possibility that other courts will interpret it in different ways, extend it to intellectual property, to goods and services that you’re providing of your own free speech. It’s absolutely a possibility that this is a step one and that right-to-deny-service is just the low-hanging fruit. Pretty soon we’re going to see more invasive attacks.”
As the news began to sink in on the latest ruling by a reactionary court, Rhonda Patillo, a horticulturalist meeting a girlfriend at Cubbyhole on West 12th St said it was beginning to seem the queer community was going to have to fight for rights over and over.
“It’s infuriating. It’s like we’re going back 400 years. Marriage equality was fantastic but now they want to take rights away from us. It’s a war,” she said.
Patillo, who is Black and gay, asked what made her choices so important to others: “Why do they care what I do? I’ve been fighting for equality all my life. I can’t give up because it is my life. But why should I fight for something that should have been given freely. Why does anyone care who I choose to have sex with?”
