38 United States The EconomistSeptember 7th 2019
2 20% of Democrats. The share of Republi-
cans who see gun rights as a priority has
risen to 76% since then, whereas the share
of Democrats has hardly changed.
Mass shootings seem only to further
galvanise people along party lines. A study
published this year by David Barney and
Brian Schaffner, two political scientists,
found that among those who lived within
25 miles of a mass shooting, average sup-
port for stricter gun control among Demo-
crats increased by two percentage points.
The opposite was true for Republicans.
Less than 24 hours after the most recent
mass shooting in Texas, nine new laws
came into effect in Texas, all making it easi-
er for civilians to carry guns. They were not
motivated by the killings in Odessa and
Midland, but rather by prior mass killings.
It will now be easier for licensed gun own-
ers to take their weapons into churches andother places of worship. Schools will no
longer be able to prevent gun owners from
keeping ammunition in their car parks.
Greg Abbott, Texas’s governor, says his
state’s newly enacted laws will make com-
munities safer. This might sound back-
ward, but for anyone who believes that
guns equal safety, more guns make perfect
sense as a response to a mass shooting.
President Donald Trump’s administra-
tion is preparing new legislation which
will expedite the execution of perpetrators
found guilty of mass killings, and intro-
duce a number of new gun reforms. The
Texan shooter had previously failed a back-
ground check, which meant he was unable
to buy a gun from a retailer. Yet he was able
to obtain a rifle from a private seller, a pro-
cess which does not require a background
check. Mr Trump’s mooted changes are un-
likely to close this loophole. 7“I
t’s harderto come out as conserva-
tive than gay,” complains David Elkins,
a pensioner whose t-shirt reads “It’s okto
be white, straight, and male”. Luckily he
found acceptance at Boston’s first straight-
pride parade. Behind him a clown with a
rainbow wig and green face-paint wan-
dered past a truck festooned with “Trump
2020” posters, and a child held a sign that
says “Make normalcy normal again.” The
music in the background veers from
“ymca” (an odd choice) to “God Bless theusa”, before settling on a disco number
whose chorus is just the word “freedom”
sung over and over. “We don’t hate gay peo-
ple,” insists Dawn, who is reluctant to give
her surname, and stands amid a sea of
American flags. “Some of us used to be gay.”
The event, held on August 31st, was or-
ganised by a group called Super Happy Fun
America, which says it campaigns for het-
erosexuals, America’s “oppressed major-
ity”. As the group’s name suggests, its in-
tention was partly to troll critics andprovoke them into outrage. The language
on its website often mockingly mirrors
that used by social-justice activists. Some
lgbt activists thought it was best to ignore
the parade and starve it of attention. Others
felt compelled to oppose it. The roughly
200 people who attended it were vastly out-
numbered not just by the almost 1,000
counter-protesters, but also by the police
keeping the groups apart.
Debates over gay rights have largely tak-
en a back seat in the current round of
America’s culture wars, compared with is-
sues of race and gender. (This is less true of
transgender rights.) Polling by the Pew Re-
search Centre shows that almost two-
thirds of Americans, including nearly half
of Republicans, now support gay marriage.
Straight pride, which has lived for years on
the fringes of social media, has struggled to
catch on; analogous movements like
men’s-rights activism and white national-
ism, both of which have inspired acts of
terrorism, are far better known.
Even among those at the parade, moti-
vations varied. A few, like Lois, who had
travelled from Los Angeles, warned darkly
of “gay domination” and “schools teaching
anal sex to five-year-olds”. Others, like
Kristy, a transgender woman, said they just
wanted to support free speech. Some
brought signs supporting the president’s
proposed border wall. “I’m only here to
make the left look ridiculous, to draw them
out and expose their true colours,” said Pat-
rick. Many spent the entire parade filming
the counter-marchers.
Attitudes like Patrick’s made it tricky for
the event’s critics to decide how to re-
spond. The organisers of Boston’s gay-
pride parade, which drew 750,000 people
this year, released a statement saying they
were “not interested in responding to their
bait”. The counter-marchers, chanting slo-
gans like “Boston hates you!”, disagreed. “I
know they want to go home and say ‘I trig-
gered a snowflake’, but it’s a stronger mes-
sage to oppose them,” said Meghan Self, a
schoolteacher. “To do nothing is to say it’s
ok.” Many described their opponents,
rightly or wrongly, as white supremacists;
like a lot of the parade-goers, they saw this
march as just another front in the culture
wars, or the resistance to the president.
The parade ended with speeches out-
side Boston’s city hall. The small audience
cheered as one roared “I want to say it’s not
okto be gay,” but they seemed more hesi-
tant when another, an African-American
woman introduced only as Barbara from
Harlem, said “Thank God for slavery”. Her
tribute to America’s “Judeo-Christian prin-
ciples” was interrupted by a cry of “not Ju-
deo!”. A later speaker declared, “We are liv-
ing in a time when bad is good and good is
bad.” Many of the counter-protesters, kept
far away with multiple layers of barricades,
would probably have agreed. 7BOSTON
Straight pride struggles to catch onProtestingDire straights