United States of hate: mapping backlash Bills against LGBTIQ+ youth

Jones, T. (2024). United States of hate: mapping backlash Bills against LGBTIQ+ youth. Sex Education, 24(6), 816-835. Article 2241136. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2023.2241136 (open access)

Following the recent proliferation of anti-discrimination protections supporting LGBTIQ+ youth internationally, backlash periods have ensued. Whilst liberal-progressive rights models theorize ‘backlash’ as an expected consequence of rights recognition progress, some post-colonial and Queer scholars frame backlash within enduring authoritarian anti-rights tendencies, and question assumptions of progress. To understand backlash more adequately, this paper explores state-level anti-LGBTIQ+ Bills potentially impacting youth proposed in the USA between 2018 and 2022. Critical discourse analysis is used to map the different types, locations, conceptual arrangements, and outcomes of 543 anti-LGBTIQ+ rights US state-level proposed Bills. Bill attempts were mainly concentrated in Republican-governed states, including Tennessee (48), Missouri (40), Iowa (39), Oklahoma (32), and Texas (32). Overly extended claims concerning girls/women’s religious and parental rights were advanced in opposition to LGBTIQ+ youth rights, and as part of wider rights attacks. Bills used anti-rights and pro-rights discourses to mask, as ‘backlash’, the rights claims advanced by elite-led anti-rights mobilizations.