As the nation continues to mark the month of June with festivals and parades, it is undeniable that Pride has gone mainstream. With events in even the most conservative parts of the country and corporate America eagerly participating, it’s worth celebrating how much progress we’ve made on this front. LGBT individuals can be open about who they are to an unprecedented degree.



The deadly stigmatization that was once so prevalent has not entirely dissipated, but it’s not nearly as bad as it was within living memory for so many Americans. We now have full legal equality including marriage rights, which seemed a distant dream as recently as a decade or two ago. It was as recently as 2003 that the last state laws criminalizing homosexuality were struck down by the Supreme Court.



But not everyone is so accepting of this change in social norms and the advance of legal equality. A remarkable event last Saturday served as a reminder of this, as 31 members of a white nationalist group were arrested with the apparent intent of rioting and assaulting people at a Pride festival in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.



Anti-LGBT rhetoric is not entirely confined to the fringes, either. Mark Burns, a pastor running for Congress in South Carolina, recently called for the government to start executing people to fight “the LGBT transgender grooming our children’s minds.” He’s since lost the June 14 Republican primary, but came very close to forcing a runoff against incumbent Rep. William Timmons.



The conflation of public visibility and acceptance of LGBT people with sexual obscenity and threats to children is a long-standing, despicable tactic, and one which often leads to calls for violence. Troublingly, there has also been a recent resurgence in such talk among some Republicans, even if most don’t carry it as far as Burns and his plan for mass executions.



The reality is that gay and trans people still face violent assaults at a much higher rate than the general population. It is precisely for that reason that the rights of self-defense, including armed self-defense, can be especially important for them.



That’s why our Cato colleague Tom Palmer, who is gay, was one of the original plaintiffs in what became District of Columbia v. Heller, the landmark Supreme Court ruling affirming an individual right under the Second Amendment. He was later dropped from the case on procedural grounds, but his interest in the topic wasn’t just academic. As litigator Alan Gura explained, he had once “fended off a hate crime using a firearm that he happened to have on him. He is alive today, or at least avoided serious injury, because he was able to have access to a gun when he needed it.”



Palmer and his partner were accosted by nearly two dozen assailants, making threats such as “They’ll never find your bodies.” But the incident ended without injury when he drew his handgun and the attackers dispersed without the need to fire a shot, as is the case in most defensive uses of a firearm.



Growing up in a very conservative part of the country, I also learned what it’s like to live in an environment of widespread, vicious homophobia, up to and including a constant risk of violent assaults. I obtained a concealed carry permit as soon as I was legally allowed. I had even started carrying a handgun illicitly before then, when I was still a teenager (I trust the statute of limitations has expired on that!). The relatively remote risk of legal consequences paled in comparison to the prospect of being the next Matthew Shepard. As the LGBT gun group Pink Pistols puts it, “Armed gays don’t get bashed.”



To be sure, not all gay people and activists share this positive view of the Second Amendment. Some are advocates of more restrictive gun control laws. Like any other group, it would be a mistake to assume LGBT political opinions are uniform, on this or any other topic. It’s probably even the case that support for gun rights is a minority view. It certainly hasn’t helped that so many politicians who talk about the Second Amendment have also fought against LGBT equality at every turn.



But the most marginalized and threatened in a society need the right to defend themselves most of all, including against a potentially large group of assailants. It’s that equalizing power that let one gay couple with a handgun fend off twenty attackers. For many LGBT Americans who’ve faced the stark reality of living in fear, including when local law enforcement has often been less than reliable in protecting our rights, the conclusion is clear: gun rights are gay rights.


[Update, 6/24/22] In his concurring opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. v. Bruen, Justice Samuel Alito mentions the following example in striking down New York’s restrictive “may issue” regime for concealed carry permits.

One night in 1987, Austin Fulk, a gay man from Arkansas, “was chatting with another man in a parking lot when four gay bashers charged them with baseball bats and tire irons. Fulk’s companion drew his pistol from under the seat of his car, brandished it at the attackers, and fired a single shot over their heads, causing them to flee and saving the wouldbe victims from serious harm.”