The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is the latest target of right-wing ire. Conservatives are currently having a full-blown meltdown because, of the thousands and thousands of participants in the parade, several of them might belong to the LGBTQ+ community.
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has been one of the United States’ most beloved traditions for almost a century. The parade, one of the oldest and biggest in the country’s history, takes place annually in New York City and is presented by Macy’s. Thousands of volunteers work together to organize the huge event, usually drawing in crowds of over a million with massive floats, marching bands, vibrant costumes, and special acts and performances. Those who can’t make it to the spectacle in person still tune in via television. For many of us, it’s difficult to remember a Thanksgiving when the parade wasn’t at least playing in the background on TV.
Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult to enjoy anything without it being accompanied by conservative meltdowns. From McDonald’s ads to Starbucks coffee cups to Snow White, conservatives find a way to turn nearly everything into an excuse to publicly proclaim their hatred and bigotry. Now they are using the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to spread anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
Conservatives throw a fit over Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
The American Family Association organization One Million Moms is calling for a boycott of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. AFA and OMM are fundamentalist Christian conservative organizations that have both been labeled hate groups for devoting much of their work to campaigning against the LGBTQ+ community. OMM is trying to raise hysteria over Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with an inciting article and petition that claims the parade is a “non-binary and transgender extravaganza.” This organization claims that anyone watching the parade will be exposed to the “liberal LGBTQ agenda” and that they must protect their families from “indoctrination.”
Now, the idea of Macy’s going in a new direction and turning its parade into a “non-binary and transgender extravaganza” sounds awesome. It took decades for the parade to feature a transgender performer and to include its first lesbian kiss, so getting a couple thousand members of the community to throw the queerest parade the nation has ever seen is really the least it could. Sadly, this isn’t actually happening—it’s just a false reality constructed by conservative lies and hysteria.
Conservatives are actually having a meltdown because two performers in the entire parade belong to the LGBTQ+ community. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade always welcomes performers from popular Broadway Shows. This year, the casts of & Juliet, Shucked, Back to the Future, How to Dance in Ohio, and Spamalot have been chosen to perform in the parade. However, OMM realized that the award-winning Broadway shows & Juliet and Shucked each feature non-binary actors. Alex Newell is one of the lead performers in Shucked and made history as the first non-binary performer to win a Tony Award. Meanwhile, Justin David Sullivan is a non-binary trans performer who starred in & Juliet as May.
Those not very familiar with Broadway likely won’t even know that Newell and Sullivan belong to the LGBTQ+ community. Of course, their presence is a victory for the community, considering it was only two years ago that the parade featured its first transgender performer. However, it’s not likely those hosting the parade are going to dive into the details of each performer’s sexual orientation and gender identity. So, all of this hatred from conservatives is truly because two non-binary performers will appear subtly somewhere in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
In a disgusting display of conservative hatred, OMM and AFA’s petition has racked up 30,000 signatures. Sadly, this is similar to the response in 2021, when conservatives learned that Kim Petras would be the first transgender performer in the parade. It doesn’t matter that there are thousands of other performers in the parade or that there’s likely to be no discussion of the LGBTQ+ community. Just knowing that two LGBTQ+ performers exist and will be in the parade has sparked intense, irrational hatred from the far-right.
Their tactics didn’t work in 2021 and will likely not work again this year. In fact, their claim that it’s an LGBTQ+ “extravaganza” might actually attract larger audiences to the parade. The LGBTQ+ community should be allowed to perform in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade without hassle, as any other performer can, and we need to condemn this horrific public display of hatred from the conservative Christian community.
(featured image: Dia Dipasupil, Getty Images)
