Pride in the West Wing

The West Wing was not afraid to cover a share of controversial topics. One topic that the show covered many times, especially in the Sorkin years, was the LGBTQ+ community and their rights. Given the fact that this is Pride Month, it is the perfect time to revisit what the show covered and look at where the LGBTQ+ community is today.

The death of Lowell Lydell was one of the biggest arcs in the show concerning LGBTQ+ issues. Lowell Lydell was a gay teenager who was beaten to death by his peers for being gay. This causes the staff to revisit hate crime legislation, and they later have to deal with potential fallout in the press from Johnathan Lydell, Lowell Lydell’s father, who does not support the president because he is not taking a strong enough stance on Gay Rights. Recently, Hate crimes have been rising across the board, with LGBTQ+ people seeing a 70% increase in hate crimes from 2020 to 2021. A reason for this spike is increasing rhetoric targeting LGBTQ+ people, mainly from the far right and social conservatives. In recent campaign cycles being anti-trans has become a part of many Republican’s platforms.

In another episode, Sam is in discussing with military leaders "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", a policy that was in effect from 1993 to 2011 where homosexual people could remain in the military so long as they did not declare their sexual orientation, and others could not ask about it. The problem with this policy, as Sam points out in the episode, is that it did not work. Gay and Lesbian soldiers continued to be discharged, and by 2008 over 12,000 officers had been discharged for being unwilling to hide their sexual identity. Eventually “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed in 2008.

Just yesterday the Human Rights Campaign, America’s largest gay rights organization, declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans. The reason for this is the growing amount of anti-LGBTQ+ state legislation. The Human Rights Campaign pointed to over 500 pieces of state legislation that have been proposed in state legislatures this year as anti-LGBTQ+, with legislation targeting Transgender people being the most prevalent. 76 of these have been signed into law, already more than double the amount in 2022, the highest year on record. However, Judicial Review has been able to block some of these measures. At an event celebrating Pride Month at the Pentagon, Senior DOD leaders also warned of this, saying that the trend is hurting the United States Armed Forces, specifically citing that polling shows 20% of a key recruiting demographic, those born between 1997 and 2004, Identify as LGBTQ+, and that when service members’ family members are being targeted with hate or are being discriminated against it can distract them.