Seattle dads hold mini Pride parade with their kids, neighbors
Two Seattle dads decided to have their own mini Pride parade due to the COVID-19 pandemic forcing larger Pride events to go virtual.
Ricky Shankar and his partner Nic Marcheso decided to have their own Pride celebration with their two children, London and Roman. They built their own miniature float and walked through their subdivision as their neighbors cheered and applauded.
Writing on Facebook, Shankar said, “Thank you to everyone who fought for us and continues to fight for us, including those living out loud in spite of the consequences.”
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The dads said they took the day to educate their kids on current “protests and others fighting for equality and their lives right now.”
June 2020 marks Pride Month which was established after the first Pride march in New York City was held on June 28, 1970 on the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.
In a recent turn of events, actions by the Trump administration look to reverse legislation passed by the Obama administration that protected LGBTQ groups, especially for those seeking sex-reassignment treatment and care for common illnesses such as diabetes or heart problems.
The Department of Health and Human Services said it will enforce sex discrimination protections “according to the plain meaning of the word ‘sex' as male or female and as determined by biology.” This rewrites an Obama-era regulation that sought a broader understanding shaped by a person's internal sense of being male, female, neither or a combination.
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Conservatives say the Obama administration exceeded its legal authority in broadly interpreting gender.The reversal comes in the middle of LGBTQ Pride Month. Activists and Democratic lawmakers noted that Friday was also the four-year anniversary of the mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 people were killed.
Under the Obama-era rule, a hospital could be required to perform gender-transition procedures such as hysterectomies if the facility provided that kind of treatment for other medical conditions. The rule was meant to carry out the anti-discrimination section of the Affordable Care Act, which bars sex discrimination in health care but does not use the term “gender identity.”
Women's groups say the new regulations also undermine access to abortion, which is a legal medical procedure.
“No one should fear being turned away by a medical provider because of who they are or the personal health decisions they have made,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center.
The ACLU says it has already moved to try to prevent the rollback of protections for transgender people. The LGBTQ civil rights group Lambda Legal said it will sue.
The Associated Press and Storyful contributed to this report.