Over 100 bills targeting LGBT rights have been filed in 22 states for 2023 so far all in Republican controlled states.
Texas has taken the lead with 36 such bills, according to Equality Texas, Missouri is next with 26, then North Dakota with eight and Oklahoma with six.
A new slate of bills targeting drag performers has also emerged, likely in response to increasing protests in the past year against children attending drag brunches or Drag Story Hour, a national program started in 2015 in which drag performers read books to children at libraries, schools and bookstores
As right-wing politicians and media outlets have mainstreamed the use of increasingly inflammatory rhetoric against the LGBT+ community in the United States (New York Magazine, 8 April 2022; Vox, 21 April 2022), anti-LGBT political violence has ramped up: with incidents of political violence targeting the LGBT+ community