“I stopped reading Facebook feeds,” one of my queer Jewish American friends told me. I won’t say their name, but they are one of the many who showed similar sentiments.

We were speaking about increasing antisemitism among the LGBTQ community, and they were devastated.

Unfortunately, recent events in the Gaza Strip caused a peculiar situation when all Jewish people are blamed for the brutal response of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government; and LGBTQ Jews faced microaggression and direct violence, get insulted and attacked, even at Prides. 

First and foremost, I want to say that indiscriminate slaughtering of Gazan civilians is definitely a war crime that should be condemned and avoided in the future, but there are a lot of articles written on this topic by others who are more competent on this topic. This time I deliberately wouldn’t discuss Hamas and Israeli politicians here, because this story is not about them — this story is about the way the LGBTQ community is treating their Jewish siblings right now.

There are not so many visible queer politicians among Netanyahu supporters, and they are not spending time in social media queer groups. 

Moreover, right-wing LGBTQ people with connections to the Israeli government don’t care much about LGBTQ communities in the US, the UK, or Russia. 

LGBTQ people who suffer from everyday antisemitism are the ones who need community the most. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many families don’t accept their LGBTQ children, and for many queer people, the LGBTQ community became the only family support they had. 

And now antisemitism is taking this support away.

Why political opposition toward the Israeli government turned into Middle Ages-style bigotry is a very good question that doesn’t have a simple answer. 

Double standards

For a person who is not deeply into political and social issues, this situation may seem quite typical. After all, people are often used to judging the whole nation based on what their government did, right? Actually, wrong.

As a person from Ukraine, I may say that I spoke a lot about the Russian-Ukrainian war with LGBTQ and progressive activists in the West, and most of them showed enormous levels of compassion to “ordinary Russians,” despite the fact that the vast majority of the Russian population supports the Russian-Ukrainian war. Moreover, even after Russia in 2022 deliberately bombed the Mariupol Theater with Ukrainian children inside, Russians en masse weren’t called “child killers” by the American and European LGBTQ communities, and Russian activists still welcomed at Prides.

So it is definitely not about bombing children.

Also, all LGBTQ organizations in the US, UK, and European Union known to me that now openly support Palestine and call themselves anti-Zionists have never openly spoken up against concentration camps, ethnic cleansing, and the genocide of Muslim Uyghur populations in East Turkestan, which is under Chinese occupation right now. 

But LGBTQ groups and activists have never called themselves anti-Chinese, didn’t create a “queer for Eastern Turkistan” movement, and didn’t push Chinese LGBTQ people on campus to condemn the actions of the Chinese government.

So, it is also not about fighting Islamophobia.

What is it about? I have been a refugee in three different countries, and I have been involved in LGBTQ activism in some way in Russia, Ukraine, the UK, and the US, and I may say that antisemitism in LGBTQ communities exists in all those countries in some way. 

And in different cultural contexts, antisemitism represents itself differently among LGBTQ people. 

Eastern European antisemitism 

Me and three other LGBTQ activists in 2018 held a small demonstration in the middle of St. Petersburg on Victory Day, a big state-promoted holiday when Russians celebrate the Soviet victory over Nazism. We were holding posters about the common threats between Nazi Germany and the modern Russian Federation, including the persecution of LGBTQ people.

Suddenly, a very respected-looking man came to us, blaming us for an anti-Russian Western conspiracy just because we criticized the Russian government, and then started to say that the Holocaust never happened. When I yelled back at this man, telling him that I’m partly Jewish and daring him to repeat his antisemitic accusation, the man announced that Jews “paid to live in Auschwitz, so later they would create their own state.”

No one said anything against this man, but Russians were angry with me for “spoiling a holiday.”

Holocaust denial and everyday antisemitism are extremely prominent in Eastern Europe, from Poland to Russia. It is especially strong in Russia.

Russian pride about “victory over Nazis” is not about fighting Nazi ideology, but rather about being proud of a Soviet legacy. Simplifying Nazis is bad only because they killed Russian Soviets.

Even in state Russian Orthodox Churches, you could buy the “Protocol of the Elders of Zion” Nazi propaganda book.

LGBTQ activists in Russia are generally less antisemitic than the majority of the population, but all the same, they were raised in this culture, so they allow themselves antisemitic jokes and sometimes share Russian supremacy ideas.

So, for them, anti-Zionism is just another, new, and more appropriate way to hate Jews, and they didn’t even try to hide antisemitic rhetoric, especially because many prominent Jewish LGBTQ people moved to Israel or to the US, so the community is mostly non-Jewish. 

Western European and American antisemitism

The situation is quite different in America and Western Europe.

“Why are you supporting Palestine in a way you have never supported people from other war zones, including any other Muslim lands?” I asked my friend and activist from Sheffield in the UK.

“Because there is a first time in modern history when a country committed such an attack against civilians!” They answered me. “Especially with our government’s support.”

I closed my eyes, suddenly remembering the Iraqi city of Mosul that was wiped out to the ground by US-led allies, killing not just ISIS fighters, but also peaceful townsfolk stuck under the occupation of the self-proclaimed “caliphate,” or the Syrian town of Baqhuz Fawqani, where families of ISIS fighters, including babies and pregnant women, were bombed together with Syrian civilians. 

And to mention, once again, Russian “clearing” operations and bombings in Chechnya and Ukraine, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s crimes against his own people in Syria, crimes committed by ISIS, or the ongoing war in Mali. 

My friend has no idea how wrong they were. 

Modern wars are extremely brutal, and there is an ongoing problem of dehumanizing enemies and war crimes that need to be solved. It’s a much broader problem than just Israeli‘s actions, but like one of my Jewish nonbinary friends is saying, “no Jews, no news.” 

Western antisemitism in the LGBTQ community, including the idea that all Jewish people are extremely privileged white oppressors, is based on a simple ignorance, no less than on prejudice. If in Russia I saw more activists who hate Jews and just want to be anti-Jewish in a modern way, in the UK and US LGBTQ community I saw more people who are generally caring about war crimes. But they refused to make their own analysis and refused to use the same standards for Jews that they use for other minorities — for example, not pushing them to condemn crimes they never committed.

The Palestinian rights movement has one of the biggest and more successful PR campaigns in modern history, while Jewish organizations failed to promote their agenda among non-Jewish populations.

“Most of them [LGBTQ activists and friends] don’t even know what Zionism is, to be really anti-Zionist,” my queer American friend noticed.

But, just like in Russia, some queer people are just bigots who now could show their hate publicly in a way that wouldn’t be condemned by their community.

Ayman Eckford is a freelance journalist, and an autistic ADHDer transgender person who understands that they are trans* since they were 3-years-old.

I was a SMYAL kid. 

When I began to come to terms with my sexuality in my teens, I thought I was the only person in the world struggling with a secret identity that I could not share with my friends. 

I was 16 when I moved with my family from tradition-bound rural Oklahoma to cosmopolitan Fairfax County. As my family settled into our new life, I felt that I could no longer pretend that I was straight — not that I was particularly good at the pretense. This move gave me the perfect opportunity to reinvent myself as someone more authentic than I had ever dreamed possible. However, I felt that I had nowhere to turn for advice.

I first went to my parents for counsel. While well-meaning, they had no experience in dealing with having a gay child and had internalized many messages society had foisted upon them about gay people. But still, seeing their son suffering, they suggested I speak to clergy and counselors at our church.

In the early 1990s, members of our church were still mixed in their opinion on sexuality. I had three youth ministers who confronted me and suggested “reparative therapy.” I shrugged off their suggestion, and one of the priests found out about the exchange. He asked to speak with me in his office.

Much to my surprise, this priest was not there to scold me or to gleefully tell me of my eternal damnation. Rather, he chided the youth ministers for their treatment of me and reminded me of my worth. He handed me a pamphlet for a youth organization for others like me: SMYAL.

The SMYAL pamphlet my priest gave me included a helpline number to get more information. I called the number and was greeted by the friendly voice of a volunteer counselor. He gave me encouragement and support in a conversation that may have only lasted a few minutes, but was revelatory for me. The counsellor told me about the programs offered at SMYAL and I began imagining what it must be like to meet other people who were going through the same things I was.

This was at a time before GSAs were in schools. Seeing no support in my new school, I was elated yet nervous to make the trek to D.C. for my first SMYAL “drop-in” session on a Saturday. Getting to D.C. from Fairfax was no easy task for a 16-year-old who had just earned his driver’s license practicing on the dirt roads of Pontotoc County, Okla. But I braved the Beltway and made it to the rickety row house that would come to mean so much to me.

I walked up the stairs to the drop-in center. There was a long hallway filled with LGBTQ books: more than I had ever seen. Pro-LGBTQ books were hard to find even in the public library at the time. But even as I was marveling at the literature display, I was almost brought to tears coming into the room filled with other young people. For the first time in my life, I knew that I was not alone.

SMYAL would become my touchstone and the place I would look forward to going to every week. I met so many friends and even my high school boyfriend there. In our meetings, we would discuss our struggles and triumphs as well as get information on sexual health and healthy relationships, which we were not being taught at school. Many of us would go out after SMYAL meetings to explore what was then the “gayborhood” of Dupont Circle. We would drink sodas and tea at the Pop Stop, find stickers, literature and more at the gay bookstore Lambda Rising, and check out the new albums at Melody Record Shop.

By National Coming Out Day my senior year, SMYAL had given me the courage I would need to come out at school. And when administrators tried to stop me from bringing my boyfriend to the Winterfest Dance, SMYAL gave me the confidence and language to be able to advocate for myself, know my rights, know my worth and refuse to accept second-class citizenship.

By the end of my senior year, I wasn’t the only out kid in school anymore. Other students — including my younger brother — had attended SMYAL’s drop-in sessions and had begun to come out by the time I walked across the graduation stage. I was happy to no longer be alone. Thanks in large part to SMYAL, I had the skill set I would need to launch into the many adventures of college and adult life. And for that, I will be forever grateful.

Michael Key is the photo editor of the Washington Blade. Reach him at [email protected].

In conjunction with World Pride 2025, the Rainbow History Project is creating an exhibit on the evolution of Pride. In “Dawn of a New Era of Pride Politics,” we discuss how fewer than a dozen picketers in the 1960s grew the political power to celebrate openness, address police brutality, and rally hundreds of thousands to demand federal action.

By the mid-1980s, the LGBTQ community’s political demands and influence had grown. The AIDS crisis took center stage across the nation and locally. Pride events morphed from the entertainment of the 1970s into speeches, rallies, and protests. Groups like ACT UP, Inner City Aids Network, and GLAA made protests and public pressure year-round events, not just Gay Pride Day. Blacklight, which was the first national Black gay periodical, ran an in-depth cover story on AIDS and its impact on the community in 1983:

“The gay community has to think in terms of what it can do to reduce the incidence of AIDS,” a writer noted in the Q&A section of the article. He added, “If your partner has AIDS that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t show care and concern, and just throw him out… There should be support groups that would help gay people who have AIDS and not just shun them.”

Just about 10 years later, however, support extended to activism, the onus not just on gay people to reduce the incidence of AIDS. On Oct. 11, 1992, ACT UP protesters threw the ashes of their loved ones onto the White House lawn to protest government inaction and negligence.

“If you won’t come to the funeral, we’ll bring the funeral to you,” one protester said about President Bush, according to the National Park Service. 

The Ashes Action and many other protests brought awareness to the issues of the day – the epidemic, government ignorance, and police brutality, among others.

When the first High Heel Race began on Halloween 1986 at JR.’s Bar and Grill, a popular 17th Street gay bar, about 25 drag queens ran up 17th Street, N.W., in their high heels from JR.’s to the upstairs bar at Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse, where they then took a shot and ran back to JR.’s. It was joyous and grew in popularity yearly despite impacting the locals’ “peace, order, and quiet,” according to the Washington Blade in 1991.

In 1990, though, pushback from the neighborhood community against the High Heel Race meant its official cancellation in 1991 – no coordinators, no queens, and no planning. However, despite statements that it wouldn’t occur, people still came. Roughly 100 police officers arrived to break up the crowd for causing a public disturbance. They injured people with nightsticks and arrested four gay men. D.C. residents Drew Banks and Dan Reichard planned to file brutality charges, and lesbian activist Yayo Grassi had her video camera, recording the scene.

“This will set back a lot of the good will between the Gay community and the police,” said Tracy Conaty, former co-chair of the Gay Men and Lesbian Women Against Violence, in a 1991 interview with the Blade. “What people will see and remember now is that police used excessive force on a group of peaceful crowd because of their homophobia.” 

Other protests advocated for equal representation. D.C.’s 1948 sodomy law was first repealed by the City Council in 1981 – but Congress overturned the repeal. Still, gay activists urged the D.C. Council to consider action. 

“Here in the district, we have been thwarted by a bunch of nutty fundamentalists from other places, and so the whole population of Washington remain habitual, recidivist, repetitive, villains, held hostage by a small group of noisy fascists,” Frank Kameny said at a 1992 rally. A successful repeal of the law passed subsequently in 1993, and this time, Congress did not interfere.

Our WorldPride 2025 exhibit, “Pickets, Protests, and Parades: The History of Gay Pride in Washington,” centers the voices of the event organizers and includes the critics of Pride and the intersection of Pride and other movements for equal rights and liberation. But we need your help to do that: we are looking for images and input, so take a look around your attic and get involved.

Vincent Slatt volunteers as director of archiving at the Rainbow History Project. Walker Dalton is a member of RHP. See rainbowhistory.org to get involved.