The end of the year is an opportunity to look back at everything that happened over the past 12 months, and what better way to do that than to look at what you all found most interesting on this site?
We thought we’d offer a chance for the fans of LGBTQ Nation to get a look behind the curtain and see what’s popular. Here are the 12 articles that got the most traffic on LGBTQ Nation in 2023.
12. GOP congressman tries to attack Pete Buttigieg with “private flights” lie & immediately regrets it
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This past year, it seemed like the right was willing to attack Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg for anything. Flight got delayed? Must be Pete’s fault. Train broke down? Surely Pete should have repaired it better. No more peanuts on your flight? Thanks a lot, Mayor Pete!
One of the biggest attacks on him was that he rode around in “private jets” while working in the Biden administration and then sent the bill to taxpayers for those private jets, something he never did. Sometimes conservatives would let it slip that they mean “government planes” when they say “private jets,” which means the opposite, and even then that only described a fraction of Buttigieg’s flights.
In September, at a House committee hearing, he had had enough, and he brought numbers.
11. Conservatives are outraged over fake AI images of Target’s Satanic offerings
LGBTQ+-supportive businesses came under attack from the right this year, especially during Pride Month and the months leading up to it. After Bud Light, Target probably got the most hatred for their support of Pride.
That hate spread online and was partly fueled by conspiracy theories and completely fake news, including AI-generated images. Some conservatives shared fake pictures of “satanic” products at Target and were then outraged that Target would celebrate Beelzebub.
“Target has really gone over the edge,” one conservative commented online. “Not enough they are making girlie swimsuits for little boys to tuck. They need to go away too.”
10. Lauren Boebert called Pete Buttigieg “clueless.” It didn’t end well for her.
Not every movement needs a champion, but they all need a villain. The LGBTQ+ movement happens to have both.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is one of the main opponents of LGBTQ+ equality on Capitol Hill, and a big part of her social media presence is devoted to being mean to anyone she disagrees with.
So of course she has a problem with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. She blamed him for a system error that grounded planes for several hours in January, calling him a “clueless liberal.”
9. The Florida GOP has had enough of Ron DeSantis
The Republican primary started this year, and even though it seems like Donald Trump is a shoe-in, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) had quite a few moments in the sun as he tried to close Trump’s enormous lead.
His biggest problem, though, seems to be that even people who know him don’t support him. Including his state’s GOP.
Several prominent Florida Republicans spoke anonymously to Politico in an expose in April about how they just plain don’t like him.
“We’re not the party of cancel culture,” one GOP lawmaker said. “We can’t keep doing this tit for tat.”
8. Italy begins stripping lesbian mothers of their parental rights
Increasing homophobia is one result of the rise of proto-fascism in some European countries.
The election of far-right Giorgia Meloni as prime minister of Italy in 2022 meant that attacks on LGBTQ+ rights were soon to follow. The story of one lesbian couple being told that the non-birth mom would be retroactively removed from her child’s birth certificate caught international attention.
“It was as if I did not exist,” Michela Leidi said, adding that she “cried for ten days” after receiving a letter informing her she would be removed from her daughter’s birth certificate.
7. Donald Trump’s lesbian niece says Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to “bribe” him to be VP
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) loyalty to Donald Trump and political ambition aren’t questionable. She would love to be his vice president, and she’s mentioned it quite a few times. But how far is she willing to go?
Well, pretty far, according to Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump. She argued earlier this month that Greene was showing signs of extreme loyalty to Trump by spreading a conspiracy theory that the January 6 insurrection was a “Fedsurrection and undercover agents set people up with entrapment.” Mary Trump said this meant that Greene was signaling that she would pardon Trump if he lands in prison before he can assume office in 2025.
“Vivek Ramaswamy and Marjorie Taylor Greene just bribed Donald with immunity,” she wrote. “The media missed it.”
6. Lauren Boebert rails against sex-ed then announces her teen son is having a baby
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) takes very traditional, conservative Christian positions on matters of bodily autonomy, sex education, and sexual freedom, but her personal life doesn’t seem to match.
And while there were a few instances of “do as I say, not as I do” coming from her this year, the one that really caught LGBTQ Nation readers’ attentions was her opposition to sex education because it will teach kids to “have and enjoy sex” while having a minor son who got his minor girlfriend pregnant.
“We are raising our four boys to be men before liberals teach them to be women,” she said at a conservative event in March, adding that “not only am I a mom of four boys, but come April, I will be a Gigi to a brand new grandson.”
5. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs bill legalizing anti-LGBTQ+ medical discrimination
Around 75 anti-LGBTQ+ laws were passed at the state level this year, most attacking transgender children.
Florida was among those states, passing the “Protections of Medical Conscience Act” in March. The law protected health care providers from the “threat of discrimination for providing conscience-based health care.” For LGBTQ+ people, this likely means more medical discrimination.
“This bill is shocking in its breadth, vagueness, and government overreach into the private sector and regulated businesses. It goes far beyond any alleged claims of religious freedom,” wrote Kara Gross, legislative director and senior policy counsel of the ACLU of Florida.
4. Clarence Thomas is outraged that the Supreme Court refused to take up conversion therapy case
Conversion therapy should be a thing of the past, and 22 states and D.C. have passed laws protecting minors from pseudo-scientific and damaging attempts to change their identities.
But Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas believes those laws violate the Constitution’s free speech protections because what therapists say can’t be regulated by state governing bodies, even though therapists’ words are what they work with.
“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein,” he wrote in a dissenting opinion this month after the court refused to hear a challenge to Washington state’s conversion therapy ban.
3. Lauren Boebert blasts sex-ed classes. Twitter reminded her she was a teen mom.
This story really struck a nerve, effectively appearing on this list twice. This article was about the social media backlash against Boebert’s words.
“Lauren Boebert believes that we should take sex ed out of schools and get it back behind the bowling alley, where it belongs,” one person quipped.
2. Mike Pence left stammering when CNN host points out his hypocrisy on trans youth
Mike Pence dropped out of the GOP primary in October, but he was one of the better-known names in that race earlier in the year.
Pence’s political brand is that he’s boring, reliable, and extremely conservative. In his words, “Rush Limbaugh on decaf.” And his attacks on LGBTQ+ rights – ever since he suggested federal funding for conversion therapy as a means to fight HIV/AIDS when he ran for Congress in 2000 – have been the cornerstone of his claim to reactionary extremism.
“We’re gonna protect kids from the radical gender ideology and say no chemical or surgical gender transition before you’re 18, period,” he said at a CNN town hall event in June. Conservatives have been clamorning for “parents rights,” and, at the same time, trying to take away rights from LGBTQ+-supportive parents, and finally someone called him out on it.
“In this particular case, parents who say, along with the doctors, that what is best for their kids, what their kids feel most comfortable with doing, is gender transition,” CNN’s Dana Bash asked him. “The parents should not be allowed to do that?”
Pence did not appear to have a response ready for this fairly obvious question.
“Right, look, I, I, look… The, the s- state has the obligation to see to the safety and health and well-being of the people in the state,” he said. “And I accept that. Look, yet… I, I take your point, I take your point….”
Bash insisted that she wasn’t making a point, “It’s a question,” as Pence continued to stammer.
“Well, I, I, look, this… Well we have afoot in America that is a radical gender ideology that has taken hold in our schools, that has taken hold in our universities, it is afoot across the nation…” Pence responded, trying to talk about anything other than the inconvenient fact that many parents of transgender kids support their children.
1. Pete Buttigieg slams Lauren Boebert in just 7 words
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) attacked out Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg all year about anything related to transportation. She got mad at him for not visiting the site of the derailment in Ohio, and then she got mad at him for wearing personal protection equipment when he did visit it.
In April, she was still mad at him for not visiting the Ohio derailment site for several weeks, even though he had visited it in February. She posted a picture of herself saying she was “preparing for Mayor Pete’s next derailment.”
“Your budget plan cuts railroad safety inspections,” Buttigieg responded succinctly.
