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

Abstract

Following the recent proliferation of anti-discrimination protections supporting LGBTIQ+ youth internationally, backlash periods have ensued. Whilst liberal-progressive rights models theorise ‘backlash’ as an expected consequence of rights recognitions 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 mobilisations.