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Lakie Derrick was about to graduate from East Tennessee State University three years ago when she saw an intriguing piece of news from Italy.
Giorgia Meloni, the country’s conservative prime minister, had attended a “Family Day” celebration of traditional values. Some news outlets, bungling the translation of the event’s title, claimed that Meloni was proclaiming a “nuclear family celebration” or “Family Pride Month” for June — the month that LGBTQ activists have long claimed for their own Pride.
“I thought: Why can’t America have a nuclear family pride month? These are the values we were founded on,” Derrick, 24, told Semafor. “We are celebrating what God created.”
Derrick and a fellow leader of the local Turning Point USA chapter wrote a Nuclear Family Month proclamation, honoring every family that consisted “one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children.” They gave it to state Rep. Bud Hulsey, “one of the strongest defenders of Tennessee values,” and this year the resolution passed.
Tennessee became a hub in a national effort to recognize a specific type of heterosexual family, not LGBTQ rights, for the month of June. That effort inspired Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles to post on X declaring that “homosexuality has no place in America,” sparking blowback that forced him to delete it.
But the pressure Ogles faced belies a real, growing effort to promote Pride alternatives in red states. Four more of them that don’t recognize LGBTQ Pride in June have proclaimed alternatives that support “traditional” values: Fidelity Month in Arkansas and Utah, Strong Families Month in Alabama, and another Nuclear Family Month in Indiana.
It comes as the Republican Party embraces a campaign against transgender rights, and as polls show outspoken GOP support for broader LGBTQ rights has declined since President Donald Trump’s first term. The president, who endorsed “LGBT Pride Month” in 2019, has never done so again.
This week, Gallup found just 35% of Republicans agreeing that “gay or lesbian relations” were “morally acceptable,” down 21 points from its high in 2022.
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In red states, Republican leaders have moved with their voters — and with social conservative leaders who did not always get traction as support for gay rights surged.
In 2023, as Derrick was brainstorming her Tennessee resolution, the conservative intellectual Robert P. George launched a campaign for “Fidelity Month” in June. On his now defunct podcast, future Speaker Mike Johnson endorsed the idea as a “thoughtful response to Pride Month.”
George himself didn’t put it like that, but Republican governors and legislators who’ve commemorated a pro-family month have been criticized by LGBTQ groups. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders collaborated with George for her state’s proclamation, which endorsed “practices that encourage virtue, commitment, responsibility, and shared moral foundations.” (It didn’t specify what those practices were.)
“She pursued this initiative to highlight Arkansas’ commitment to the values that make America great: not pride in oneself but fidelity to family, country, and God,” said Sam Dubke, the governor’s spokesman.
Utah’s proclamation, which endorsed “dedication to faith, family and country,” was also somewhat unspecific. But activists saw it as Gov. Spencer Cox’s latest shift on support for LGBTQ rights.
Ten years ago, then-Lieutenant Governor Cox tearfully addressed a Pride event in Salt Lake City, apologizing for not having treated gay people “with the kindness, dignity, and respect — the love that they deserved.” Elected governor in 2020, he declared “LGBTQ+ Pride Month” in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
But 2024, when he faced a serious primary challenge, Cox skipped the declaration and commemorated a “Month of Bridge Building.” One year later, he allowed the GOP legislature to ban Pride flags (and other “political”) flags on public property.
Cox did not make further public announcements about the Fidelity Month decision, and his office did not respond to questions about it.
Other Republican governors have been similarly quiet about the reasons for their Pride Month alternatives. After Indiana Gov. Mike Braun signed the Nuclear Family Month proclamation, he denied that it was a veiled answer to LGBTQ Pride.
“There’s no message, other than that the nuclear family is important,” Braun told reporters. Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith had a different spin on it, thanking Braun for “sharing heaven’s truth” and helping to “take back the rainbow.”
The Trump administration has shown more of its cards, and more openness about erasing some pro-LGBTQ decisions by prior administrations. Last year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth renamed the USS Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment oiler named for the late LGBTQ icon, explaining that he was taking “politics” out of the process.
The president has proclaimed “Title IX Month” twice now with a message that “the days of allowing men in women’s sports and private spaces are over.” And when asked about a potential Pride Month declaration, the White House has ignored the rainbow-skeptical premise of the question.
“I can tell you this president is very proud to be a president for all Americans,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last year.
David’s view
Trump’s administration has generally taken an “LGB without the T” approach to policy. He appointed the highest-ranking openly gay official in American history, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
At the same time, he reversed the transgender rights positions of the Biden administration, from biological sex markers in passports to mentions of trans activism at Stonewall.
Where does the negation of Pride Month fit in? The administration and red-state Republicans are recognizing LGBTQ rights, but not celebrating them. This isn’t the table-thumping anti-LGBTQ campaigning of the Bush years, but it’s a more subtle means to a similar end.
Consider that one backer of the House’s Family Month push, Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., has explicitly described it as a way to combat Pride: “The left hijacked June to present perversion, to cause gender confusion, and basically to give license for individuals to be indecent in public.”
The drive for Pride Month alternatives comes from the same place, though — a worry that the wrong behavior is being celebrated, and declining marriage and birth rates might be related to that.
Room for Disagreement
Miller’s formal legislation on Fidelity Month is supported by Ogles and 21 other Republicans, but it’s unlikely to advance. A Senate counterpart that would commemorate June as Fidelity Month, sponsored by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, has no cosponsors.
“In fact, Andy, you have family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and constituents who are gay and lesbian,” Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., posted in response to Ogles’ since-deleted statement. “It doesn’t make them less than or somehow unworthy of being an American.”